10tons Ltd., are known for recycling their game concepts and churning out one title after another by swapping assets and jiggling and jangling the mechanics within the game here and there just to mix things up. However, the company did finally step away from their 3D isometric engine that they’ve recycled for Neon Chrome, Jydge and Time Recoil in order to focus on a top-down vertical arcade scroller called Xenoraid.

Unlike 10tons’ other titles, Xenoraid is more like a bullet-hell arcade shooter in space. You blast through alien hordes using a wide variety of different weapons, and you can of course use your earnings to upgrade your ships and deck them out with new weapons and items.

The hook for Xenoraid is that during the combat phase you can actually swap out your ship and bring in another one during the middle of a fight to either give you a tactical advantage or spare you from getting your butt handed to you. There’s a trailer below to give you a quick overview of how the game is played.

It’s nothing too special and there are a bunch of other vertical arcade shooters on other systems, but the Nintendo Switch is a little bereft of these at the moment, so there’s a novelty factor for games like Xenoraid… for now.

10tons is smart to get out as many different types of games as possible to fill in the void for genres and sub-genres that the Switch lacks at the moment in order to get a jump on other publishers who have been slow to pull the trigger on releasing new games for the best selling home console of the year.

In addition to launching Xenoraid today on the Switch, 10tons also announced that they will be releasing the game Crimsonland for the Switch on November 24th. It’ll be a tough time to garner attention with a 14-year-old game, but the arena-survival game is a bloody throwback to the classic run-and-gun titles like Alien Shooter.

You can look for Xenoraid on the Nintendo eShop right now, or you can wait for next week and check out Crimsonland when it launches for the Switch. Worth A Buy has a quick review of the game you can check out in case you were interested.