The highly anticipated sequel to Golf Story, Sports Story, has just become available on the Nintendo Switch, much to the surprise of players. The developer behind the game, Sidebar, announced the release during the ongoing event known as Inside the House of Indies in what largely amounts to a shadow drop.Inside the House of Indies recently saw the announcement of several upcoming games for the Nintendo Switch along with numerous other shadow drops over the course of this past week. Sports Story was revealed on the final day of the event. “Mmmm, fresh games! From now until December 23, peek inside the front door for a fresh daily video update featuring exciting announcements and more from our indie partners,” the official description for the event explained. “Happy holidays!”The game was teased last month during Indie World, revealing to potential players that Sports Story could be expected at some point in December, but Sidebar held back from giving a firm launch date. The developer wound up giving fans of the franchise a full release instead of the expected announcement of a launch timetable.The news quickly spread throughout the community, industry watcher Stealth for example noting on Twitter that “Sports Story is out now!” Stealth went on to describe how “this is an absolutely major indie release for the holidays. Golf Story was so good and Sports Story is several times more ambitious.”When a follower noted how “they shadow dropped it,” Stealth replied that “it was shadow dropped, but once Nintendo announced this five day indie announcement event on Monday, we all sort of just assumed it would launch Thursday or Friday.” The industry watcher however added “still massive for the holiday weekend!”
Sports Story was first announced back in 2019 and was initially going to include golf along with cricket, tennis, soccer, fishing, baseball, and more in addition to a "decasportathon.” Sidebar had the game scheduled to release at some point in 2020.