When Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer was announced for the Switch at the Nintendo Direct in March, Legend of Zelda fans were downright stunned. Seeing Link, Zelda, and all the familiar faces and locations of one of Nintendo's most coveted franchises show up in a third-party indie title seemed unbelievable. But it is a new era for the House of N, and the direction the company has been taking in the past few years is seriously exciting.
Now, to add to that excitement, crafty data miners have uncovered what may be the release date of Cadence—and it turns out that the game could be dropping in just a few days. According to the trusty Nintendo fan alert page, Nintendeal, the latest video game in the Crypt of the NecroDancer franchise will be a surprise release on 30 May, 2019. It seems like some Nintendoheads were keeping a close eye on the source code of the Nintendo eShop, and they located Cadence content scheduled to hit the storefront on the thirtieth. (Nintendo's official website has the release date as simply "Spring 2019.")
Nintendo is absolutely crushing it with the indie games as of late. Crypt of the NecroDancer is a peculiar rhythm-based series from Brace Yourself Games, with its first title gaining a sizeable fanbase of players from almost ever platform. Known as a "hardcore roguelike rhythm game," Crypt is a singular sort of experience that will undoubtedly push the imaginations of bigger Triple A studios who are looking to indie titles for creative approaches to mainstream gaming. Now that Nintendo is on board with this upcoming Zelda-infused Crypt game, we may be about to witness a lot more rhythm mechanics in big video games.
While Nintendo has yet to make an official announcement, all signs are pointing to a 30 May release right now. We'll have to stay tuned to see if this surprise release is really going to happen after all.
Dom Nero is a staff video editor at Esquire, where he also writes about film, television, tech, and video games.
