Mario+Rabbids: Battle Kingdom lands on Switch August 29th

After an unexpected leak last month, Mario+Rabbids: Battle Kingdom has been officially announced at Ubisoft’s E3 press conference, with none other than Miyamoto himself coming out on stage to introduce it.

Rather than making another ‘jump game’, Miyamoto challenged Ubisoft to create a Mario game that’s "never been made before" with a "unique flavour." And Ubisoft’s certainly made good on that promise.

Launching on August 29th as a Switch exclusive after three years in development, Battle Kingdom features a mixture of exploration and strategy gameplay. On the surface, it could almost be a successor to Super Mario 3D World, as it incorporates a very similar art style and sense of presentation.

However, in an almost XCOM-like twist, Mario and his rabbit companions will eventually switch from exploration mdoe to battle mode, where your party must use cover and a combination of arm cannons to take down other rampaging rabbids.

As characters level up, a variety of combo attacks will be available, incorporating classic Mario jump attacks and power-ups, and more iconic Mario heroes will become available over time, including Princess Peach, Luigi and Yoshi.

We must admit we were a little skeptical of the title when we first saw those early leaked documents, but after an extensive gameplay trailer, consider us converted. Here’s the game in action: