A lot of incredible quality of life features and new content was revealed during the pre-release Splatoon 3 direct. Still, if players weren’t focused on the three-team reworking of Splatfest events, they were likely more interested in the ability to easily play with friends online or the new Table Turf Battles.
One major complaint about both Splatoon and Splatoon 2 is that the online matchmaking system made playing with friends extremely difficult in most cases.
For Splatoon 3, Nintendo has gotten out ahead of the game’s release and confirmed playing with friends will be much easier thanks to a handful of changes. One such change is the appearance of Ghosts, or 3D holograms of friends who are playing online already that you can interact with to drop in on their battles where available.
Just be aware that dropping in might put you on the enemy team, too.
Players can also create private groups and send out a recruitment notification to allow friends to join—though it looks like this might be a general thing and not something you can send out to just one player. And, even if you don’t have a full squad, you can still ready up and fill the remaining spots with random players once matchmaking begins.
Along with that much-requested feature, Splatoon 3 will also feature a new, competitive card game called Table Turf Battle (TTB.)
TTB is a grid-based card battler spinoff of the classic Turf War game mode in Splatoon, where players need to cover as much of a map with their team’s ink to win. In a similar way, each card will have a set cost, shape, and effect that will help players cover and maintain control of the grid.
We still don’t actually know much about the specifics of TTB, but it will be playable from day one when Splatoon 3 launches on Sept. 9 and features more than 150 cards to collect throughout your time with the game. More information will be shared closer to launch.
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