13 Nintendo 3DS Hidden Gems Worth Playing

Ever Oasis

In Ever Oasis, you and the water spirit Esna create an oasis in the middle of the desert. It starts out as a tiny settlement, but new residents gradually move in. They open shops, ask for help, and sometimes even join you on your adventures.

Those shops also need supplies. You head into the desert, beat up some monsters, gather materials, come back, and hand everything over to the merchants. They sell the goods, you get a share of the profits, and the settlement keeps growing. You set out to save the world and somehow end up managing a supply chain on the side.

Outside the oasis, the game turns into a full-fledged action RPG. There are dungeons, puzzles, battles, and big bosses. You can bring two companions and switch between them. Each has unique abilities: one can curl into a ball and squeeze through narrow openings, while another can use a spear to reach a distant lever.

That makes new residents useful in several ways at once. The settlement grows, more shops appear, and new routes open up in dungeons that you could not access before.

The catch is that you can only change your party back at the oasis. Found an obstacle but left the right character behind? You have to go back. At least there is a teleport that can return you to the same spot afterward.

Pocket Card Jockey

Pocket Card Jockey looks like some kind of joke. A horse race plays out on the top screen while you solve solitaire on the bottom one. But how well you handle the cards directly affects your horse’s performance.

The solitaire itself is fairly simple. You remove cards that are one number higher or lower than the current card. For example, you can play a six or an eight on a seven. Suits do not matter. The goal is simply to clear as many cards as possible before time runs out.

Between these rounds, you choose where your horse should run in relation to its rivals. You have to consider its stamina and position on the track. So being quick with the cards is not enough. You can play an excellent round of solitaire and then ruin it by choosing a bad position among the other horses.

The horses also have stats that improve as they take part in races. Eventually they retire to the farm, where they can produce a new generation. So Game Freak somehow managed to work creature raising and breeding into this game too.

At first, the whole system can feel more complicated than you might expect from a solitaire game. But managing the horses is exactly what makes it interesting: you want to raise one that can finally outrun everyone else.

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is worth a look for the visuals alone. It has lovely pixel-art characters, colorful locations, and great animation. It also makes use of stereoscopic 3D: the background, characters, and foreground sit at different depths. A 2D game like this looks surprisingly cool on the 3DS.

In terms of gameplay, it is a Metroidvania. You travel between islands, explore dungeons, find new items, and return with them to places you have already visited.

In this game, Shantae has lost her magic and teamed up with her rival, the pirate Risky Boots. So instead of transforming into animals, she has to master pirate gear. The pistol can shoot enemies and distant switches. The hat lets her glide, while the cannon gives her extra jumps in midair. Yes, the cannon is also a jumping tool.

She has not forgotten how to hit enemies with her hair, either. That attack can be upgraded, along with some of the new weapons. The islands are full of secrets, and the game has multiple endings. So reaching the final boss and seeing everything the developers prepared are not quite the same thing.

Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure

The protagonist of Rhythm Thief lives in Paris and steals works of art. Then, a few days later, he returns them. At the same time, he is searching for his missing father, avoiding the police, and getting caught up in a story that somehow involves Napoleon.

Structurally, the game is somewhat reminiscent of the Professor Layton adventures. You walk around the city, talk to people, and look for clues. But a large part of the game revolves around rhythm-based challenges.

In one scene, for example, the hero sneaks through a museum and copies the poses of nearby statues so the guards will not notice him. You have to perform the right movements in time with the music. Other episodes have you running across rooftops, dancing, or feeding a dog. The game will not even let you feed a dog normally; everything has to come with a musical accompaniment.

The challenges use different control methods. Sometimes you press buttons, sometimes you move the stylus, and sometimes you tilt the console itself. There are around fifty musical challenges in total, so the game goes well beyond a single dance routine.

The hand-drawn version of Paris, the music, and the animated cutscenes work especially well together here.

SteamWorld Heist

In SteamWorld Heist, you control a crew of space robots who board other ships and take anything useful they can find. The locals are naturally not thrilled about this, so almost every raid ends in a shootout.

Battles are turn-based and shown from the side. You have time to think about where to position everyone and which cover to hide behind. But aiming is manual. You choose the angle of the weapon and fire, and bullets can ricochet off surfaces.

For example, an enemy may be hiding behind a crate where you cannot hit them directly. But you can shoot at the ceiling and bounce the bullet down onto them. Of course, there is no guarantee you picked the right angle. You can line everything up carefully and still hit somewhere completely different.

The robots have different abilities, weapons, and equipment. Your crew gradually grows, opening up new tactical options. There are even hats to collect and put on your metal pirates.

The result is a game where both planning your moves and simply taking the shot are satisfying. Especially when you manage to hit an enemy hiding behind several obstacles who seemed completely safe.

Weapon Shop de Omasse

In an RPG, you usually walk into a shop, buy a sword, and continue saving the world. But what is the blacksmith doing while all this is happening? Weapon Shop de Omasse puts you in their place.

You play as an apprentice in a weapon shop. Heroes come in, tell you about their plans, and ask for suitable gear. The twist is that you rent the weapons out. If a customer completes the quest, they return the item and pay you. If they fail, you may end up without both the money and the sword.

Forging is done to music. You hammer the metal with the stylus, keep the rhythm, and watch its temperature. The quality of the weapon depends on how well you do. So you cannot just hand a random sword to the first customer who walks in and forget about it: your work may determine whether that person comes back at all.

The best part is that you can follow your customers’ adventures through a special message feed. Their weapons relay conversations and events back to you. Somewhere out there, a hero is fighting and talking to people, while you stand in your forge and read all about it.

There is plenty of dialogue and humor, and the main story unfolds through the people who visit the shop. So it is also a game about regular customers you gradually grow attached to, even though their adventures happen off-screen.

Dillon’s Rolling Western: The Last Ranger

The protagonist, Dillon, works as a ranger in the Wild West. Except he is an armadillo, and the villages he protects are attacked by stone monsters. Whenever he needs to get somewhere quickly, Dillon curls into a ball and rolls down the road.

During the day, you explore the area, gather resources, and prepare your defenses. You need to build towers, reinforce gates, and get as much done as possible before the enemies appear. In the evening, the monsters emerge from their lairs and head for the settlement.

You cannot just stand back and watch, either. While the towers fire at some enemies, Dillon races toward the others and deals with them himself. He slams into foes, spins, and attacks with his claws. It is a mix of tower defense and action where you patch holes in the defenses with your own armadillo.

The Last Ranger adds partners who can handle some of the work for you. But there is more to worry about as well: now you also have to protect a railroad and its train. Monsters can attack the train or destroy the tracks while you are busy defending the village.

As a result, the game demands quite a bit of attention. You are constantly deciding where to go and what you can still save in time. The controls rely heavily on the stylus, and the missions themselves are fairly long. This is not exactly a relaxed five-minute game.

Fantasy Life

In Fantasy Life, you can become a paladin, mage, angler, cook, or blacksmith. There are twelve professions in total, and you do not have to stick with one forever. Tired of fighting? Go fishing or chop down some trees instead.

The professions are also connected. A miner gathers ore, a blacksmith turns it into weapons, and then you can take those weapons out to fight monsters. Fish can be cooked, while wood can be turned into furniture for your own house. In the end, almost everything you pick up along the way is useful to someone.

Each profession has its own quests and rank progression, so there is a reason to revisit familiar places. Earlier you may have run straight past a tree; now you come back with the right tool and a completely different plan.

There is still a main story, a large world to travel through, and plenty of combat. Nobody makes you stand at a workbench all day. But it is very easy to get distracted from the next important task, because there is always something nearby to catch, chop down, or mine.

If you like gathering materials, upgrading equipment, and gradually learning new trades, Fantasy Life has plenty of that. Sometimes almost too much. You are supposed to continue the story, but there is still fishing business left unfinished.

Liberation Maiden

In Liberation Maiden, a schoolgirl becomes the president of New Japan, climbs into a giant flying robot, and sets out to liberate the country from invaders. That is probably enough of a plot summary right there. This is a Grasshopper Manufacture game made with Suda51 involved, so none of it is particularly surprising.

You fly over occupied territory and destroy enemy machines. The Circle Pad controls the robot’s movement, while the stylus is used to mark targets. You can lock onto several enemies at once and fire a whole volley of missiles at them.

Your weapons and defenses are linked. The more projectiles you fire at enemies, the less protection the robot has at that moment. So constantly unloading everything you have can be dangerous.

Each level has you destroying installations that protect a large central target. Once they are gone, the boss battle begins. The robot flies through explosions, shots fill the air, and you try to mark the right targets on the screen in time.

It is all accompanied by anime cutscenes from studio Bones. The game is short, though, with only five main stages. It is more of a compact action game for an evening, with reasons to come back later and chase higher scores.

Crimson Shroud

Crimson Shroud looks as if someone arranged miniatures on a table and invited you to play a tabletop RPG. The characters even have little bases under them. They do not run around the battlefield with elaborate animations; they stay in place and sway as actions play out.

That is very much deliberate. The game tries to bring a tabletop adventure to the 3DS, complete with narrated events, dice rolls, and the need to imagine part of what is happening for yourself.

You control a party of three characters exploring ruins and gradually uncovering the story of a mysterious artifact. Battles are turn-based. Some actions require you to roll dice on the lower screen, with the result affecting success or the strength of the effect. You can also earn extra dice by combining abilities.

There is no conventional leveling system. The heroes become stronger through equipment that grants new abilities and improves their stats. That makes finding useful gear especially important.

The game does not always explain clearly what you are supposed to do next. There is even a point where progress requires an item that randomly drops from a specific enemy. That is an easy place to get stuck and start wandering through the same rooms again and again. Still, the idea of a small tabletop RPG spread across two screens works well, especially if you do not mind plenty of reading and slow-paced battles.

Tokyo Crash Mobs

Remember Zuma, where you shoot colored balls into a moving chain? Tokyo Crash Mobs works on roughly the same principle. Except the balls are replaced by people standing in line.

You grab a person and throw them into the crowd. Match three or more people wearing the same color, they disappear, and the line gets shorter. One heroine throws people, while the other rolls them along the ground. It is all controlled with the touchscreen.

There are various helpful tools as well. You can summon a flying saucer that carries away people of a certain color, or use an umbrella that changes the color of their clothes. And if you fail to deal with the crowd, the heroine can even be dragged into space through a black hole. Apparently, standing in line in Japan is more dangerous than it looks.

The characters are made from digitized actors, and live-action clips play between missions. It looks completely bizarre. The rules are easy enough to understand, though, especially if you have played Zuma or anything similar. The developers simply decided that ordinary colored balls were too boring.

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.

In Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Abraham Lincoln commands a squad fighting aliens. The game takes place in an alternate nineteenth century where almost everything, including the weapons, runs on steam. Visually, it resembles a comic book with bright colors and thick outlines.

You send four fighters on each mission. Battles are turn-based, but there is no overhead view of the entire field. The camera stays close to the selected character, so you have to read the situation from their perspective. To see who is hiding around a corner, you first have to peek around it.

Movement and shooting consume steam from each fighter’s personal supply. You can spend it on a long detour and then discover there is none left for a shot. Or you can take a good position and save some steam to fire at an enemy during their turn.

Characters use different weapons, and before a mission you can choose additional guns and boilers. Some boilers hold more steam, while others replenish it faster. Your equipment therefore affects how much a fighter can accomplish on the battlefield.

The lack of an overall map can be annoying at first. On the other hand, scouting actually matters: you have to move the squad so you can see what is happening without leaving your teammates exposed.

Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale

And finally, a small adventure about a boy named Sota who moves with his family to a Japanese town. His parents open a dry-cleaning shop, while he gets to know the neighbors and other children. The place has one unusual feature: giant monsters appear there on Fridays.

Most of the time, you simply walk around, talk to people, and untangle local stories. Gradually, you begin to understand what is actually going on. And you see it all through the eyes of a child, for whom a friend’s claim and an adult’s story can sound equally convincing.

You can play monster cards with the other kids. The winner earns the right to say a special spell, after which the loser has to fall down. Those are the rules. It is exactly the kind of logic children come up with.

The game has beautiful hand-painted backgrounds, calm music, and lots of everyday conversations. So do not expect constant battles with giant monsters. Much more often, you will be running around town and listening to what another acquaintance has to say. And before long, you may start looking forward to Friday yourself.