Bloober Team's Onyx: The Dark Grip is a Switch 2 exclusive that can't be played on a TV

Nintendo revealed Onyx: The Dark Grip during Wednesday's Nintendo Direct, a new horror game from Bloober Team that breaks with the Switch 2's core hybrid pitch: it cannot be played while docked. The game relies on the console's touchscreen and tilt mechanics, forcing players to run it in handheld mode, a rarity for a platform whose main selling point is that it works on a TV or on the go.

Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind the Silent Hill 2 remake, Layers of Fear, and Cronos: The New Dawn, is returning to smaller-scope development with the title, which it had previously announced it was working on as a Switch 2 exclusive. The game casts the player as a lone traveler named Holden who is exploring a fog-shrouded ghost town after being "beckoned by a voice," according to Eurogamer. He uncovers what is happening there by exploring and by reading the minds of other people he meets.

The twist is that the player also directs the powers of a mysterious, god-like entity following Holden. That entity manipulates the environment to help the traveler progress, moving obstacles out of the way or getting a generator running. The more the player intervenes as the entity, the more unhinged Holden becomes. Polygon notes that Bloober could have mapped these actions to button inputs or the Joy-Con 2's mouse controls, but the studio chose touchscreen interaction instead, in part to sell the idea that the player truly is an otherworldly force. The on-screen traveler appears smaller, which makes him feel like an ant or a plaything.

That sanity mechanic is drawing early comparisons to Eternal Darkness, the 2002 psychological horror game for the Nintendo GameCube. In that game, players managed a sanity meter that drained whenever an enemy spotted them, and the less sane the character became, the stranger the game got. Polygon writes that if Onyx does something similar, it will be full of tension as players weigh the long-term effects of divine intervention.

No release date has been set beyond a general 2027 window. The reveal trailer showed off the touchscreen and tilt quirks but did not establish a specific launch period within that year. The game is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2.

The announcement lands as Bloober Team has been focused on larger-scale projects that have been well received, including the Silent Hill 2 remake and Cronos: The New Dawn. Onyx marks a deliberate return to the studio's smaller-scope roots, according to Eurogamer. Fans have responded with enthusiasm given Bloober's track record in horror, and the game was among the announcements in a Direct that also touched on other Switch 2 titles, though the exact scope of the full showcase was not detailed in the coverage.

What remains unknown is how the handheld-only constraint will be received, and whether Bloober will expand on the sanity mechanic beyond what the trailer showed. The game's full feature set, including how the mind-reading and exploration elements interact with the entity mechanic, has not been detailed.