BODY: The most expressive thing on the Tokyo Game Show floor this year wasn't a photorealistic face โ it was a blob. System 3's blue putty mascot squashes, stretches and blinks his way through Putty World 35th Anniversary, and the little flickers of personality that cross his face as he absorbs enemies were doing more emotional work than most of the show's cinematic trailers.
System 3 confirmed the game is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in the second quarter of 2027, timed to the 35th anniversary of the original Putty, which launched on the Commodore Amiga back in 1992 and became a cult favourite for its unusual movement toolkit. Rather than running and jumping, you stretch, flatten, inflate and absorb โ a moveset that felt genuinely strange in 1992 and, in a platformer landscape now dominated by precision-jump roguelikes, still does.
The hands-on build made the design philosophy clear. The underlying physics retain a deliberately stiff, chunky 90s feel: momentum carries, stretches have weight, and there's a small commitment cost to every action that modern platformers usually sand away. Layered on top is a much smoother presentation โ fluid deformation animation, soft lighting, and a frame rate that holds steady even when the screen fills with enemies. The combination is slightly odd at first, then rapidly charming.
GAME Watch also sat down with System 3 for a CEO interview alongside the demo, covering the studio's long relationship with the character and its decision to build a new entry rather than another remaster. System 3 attempted a Putty Squad revival in the mid-2010s to muted reception, which makes this anniversary project feel less like a nostalgia cash-in and more like a second attempt at getting a long-running idea right.
The insider take
Bringing a British Amiga-era IP to TGS is a bolder play than it looks. Japan's retro-revival appetite is real but it tilts heavily toward domestic properties โ Famicom and PC Engine names, not Amiga ones โ so Putty arrives here without the nostalgia scaffolding it can lean on in the UK. What works in System 3's favour is the Switch eShop's proven appetite for tactile, animation-forward 2D action, and a character design that reads as kawaii on sight regardless of whether you've heard of him. That expressive blue face may end up doing the marketing that heritage can't.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).