Nintendo Job Posting Gets Listed for “Level Designers for New 2D & 3D Action Games”

It looks like Nintendo has posted a new job listing for what they call “level designers for new 2d action games”. The job description seems pretty clear – Nintendo are working on new 2d games for the Nintendo Switch. But the question begs to be asked, what 2d games are being developed for the Switch?

[プロジェクト採用]「新作2Dアクションゲームのレベルデザイナー」（東京勤務）の募集要項を掲載しました。https://t.co/uAz7IZnUeV pic.twitter.com/p1hNU2xUvq

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) August 6, 2020

In case you don’t read Japanese and can’t find the drive to copy and paste the above test into Google translate, the tweet’s text translates to the following:

“[Project Adoption] The application guidelines for “Level Designers for New 2D Action Games” (working in Tokyo) have been posted.”

The tweet also contains a link to the job listing on Nintendo’s Japan website.

After clicking the link and visiting the job descriptions page, I actually missed an important piece of information the first time. It wasn’t until I came back to the page later and was looking it over again for this article that I found the following:

“Level designer for new 3D action games”.

So not only is Nintendo currently scouting talent and hiring for new 2D games, but they ALSO are hiring for 3D titles as well.

While the 3D action games position could be for titles like Breath of The Wild 2, it seems more likely that Nintendo would be scouting entirely new talent for new upcoming games that are now beginning into development. It’s a lot easier to bring someone new in right from the get go of a project, rather than towards the ending of a project’s timeline (and having to fill them in and catch them up to speed with everything doesn’t seem worth the work).

So it seems that Nintendo is going to be working on some new first party titles. Regarding the 2D action games job listing, many might speculate (and also hope) that this could be a 2D Metroid game. To be fair, while this is possible, the likelihood of Nintendo developing this in house seems low to me. I personally think Nintendo would pass off a 2D Metroid game to another studio and work on something else in house themselves.

Clearly this is all speculation and I could be entirely wrong. For all we know, Nintendo could very well already have been developing a new 2D Metroid game for some time now and be looking to bring in additional talent midway through the development cycle. It is possible and there were rumors that came from an “insider” that this was the case.

With the lack of announcements from Nintendo about upcoming games, it’s been a bit wonky lately for Switch owners. We’ve had too many rumors being passed around, only to be let down when most don’t come to fruition (or aren’t as we would have hoped). With these job listings being posted online, it seems to be clear that Nintendo is still developing new 2D and 3D games that we can expect to see in the future.

Whether or not we get a Nintendo Direct with new information on upcoming titles remains to be seen, but at least Nintendo still seems to be working hard behind the scenes to bring new games to the Switch soon.