Splatoon Raiders is a treasure-hunting expedition game that incorporates Splatoon's paintball weapons into an island adventure. Play involves using your ink-based weapons to kill enemies and create coloured pathways to gain the advantage. It stands out for putting the shapeshifting, world-painting abilities of Splatoon's popular squid-ink characters to the test in a proper campaign.
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Splatoon Raiders places you in the role of a mechanic who joins three friends on an expedition to the Spirhalite Islands. After arriving, you explore islands to hunt for treasure, uncover secrets, collect resources and fight hostile Salmonids. Along the way, you work to upgrade your ink-powered tools and equipment to access new areas and gain the upper hand. It's the same satisfyingly tactile splatting but without the chaos of the multiplayer and with novel applications of its classic paint-based weapons.
As you progress, new regions, equipment, and customisation options become available through resources gathered during expeditions. Raids into dangerous areas yield salvage and treasure that can be used to improve your capabilities, while increasingly challenging enemies and environmental hazards demand more effective strategies and gear. In this way, you learn to customise your character around each of the three types determined by the Ink Tank backpack: Speed Tank, Power Tank, and Tactical Tank.
The result is a game that employs Splatoon's competitive ink-shooting as an exploration-focused adventure. After only light campaigns in previous games, this offers a chance to properly put the Inklings' novel shooting and traversal skills to the test.
