Side Order

Side Order​

Side Order

Type	Single-player campaign
Players	1
Ranked
Weapons	Various
Controllers	Joy-Con Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
Release Date	22 February 2024

Fuuuuuture!

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Side Order is an upcoming single-player campaign mode comprising Wave 2 of the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass paid downloadable content. It was revealed through a teaser trailer during the February 2023 Nintendo Direct and is scheduled to release on 22 February 2024. The mode is intended to be highly replayable.

Release History

During the Splatoon 3 Direct on 10 August 2022, large-scale paid downloadable content involving Off the Hook was announced to arrive in a later Splatoon 3 update. A Tweet was put out by Nintendo of Europe the same day reiterating Off the Hook's association with the DLC.

During the 8 February 2023 Direct, Side Order was revealed as Wave 2 of the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass, without a release date. The teaser trailer features Agent 8 in a bleached-out version of Inkopolis Square. Shortly after the Direct, some brief information about Side Order was listed on official Nintendo websites detailing the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass.

A longer gameplay trailer was shown during the 14 September 2023 Nintendo Direct, in which the Octoling player character seen in the teaser trailer was confirmed for the first time to be the Octo Expansion's Agent 8; additionally, Pearl and Acht were revealed as major supporting characters. The mode's Floor progression system and Palette skill tree system were briefly demonstrated. After the trailer was shown, the Spire of Order's name was revealed, and the mode's release date was stated as Spring 2024 at the earliest.

The same day as the trailer's release, an official Japanese website went online.

On 21 November 2023, an online version of the winter issue of the Japanese Nintendo Magazine was made available for free; pages 42-43 of this issue cover Side Order. An English language version of the issue is also available, though its translation is noted to possibly differ from official localization choices, as the magazine is not intended for the international market.

On 24 January 2024, Nintendo social media accounts posted a release date trailer for the DLC, which was shown to be 22 February 2024. It also revealed vertical artwork for the DLC, similar to past artworks revealed for the series' other campaigns.

On 13 February 2024, Nintendo posted a longer overview trailer, containing extended new gameplay footage accompanied by a voice over. On the same day a Fresh Season 2024 trailer was released, which included a short Side Order teaser at the end. The Japanese website was also updated.

An unknown time prior to the 13 February 2024 trailer's release, Nintendo invited journalists to play Side Order early at Nintendo headquarters locations in San Fransisco and London for ninety minutes to two hours depending on the location. These reviewers subsequently released reviews for the mode immediately upon the overview trailer's release. Participants of the early access demo include Splatoon community content creator ThatSrb2DUDE as well as journalists writing for Gamespot, Video Games Chronicle, The Mercury News and Nintendo Life. Early reviewers claim Nintendo accommodated all travel expenses, though they were not allowed to record their own footage of the demo event. Within the reviews the mode was noted as fun, difficult and frenetic, often compared to Salmon Run Next Wave or the roguelite genre.

Trailers

Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass: Wave 2: Side Order teaser trailer

A teaser trailer revealing Side Order was shown in the latter half of the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass trailer shown in the February 2023 Nintendo Direct. The teaser trailer opens with a slow pan across a dull, stark white version of Inkopolis Square from Splatoon 2, slowly focusing on Agent 8, who is wearing new gear. This altered version of Inkopolis Square features presumed dead or bleached coral; Deca Tower has been replaced with the Spire of Order. A swarm of fish-like objects "swim" around Agent 8 towards the end of the clip shown.

Throughout the trailer, various cryptic static images and short video clips briefly flicker on-screen; the images primarily depict Agent 8 in strange bright white locations, as well as Off the Hook, while the clips seemingly depict biological components such as cells, blood, and organs.

A dull, slightly out-of-tune music box melody with steady electronic percussion accompanies the teaser trailer, which slowly grows more intense; towards the end, someone can be heard speaking.

Side Order trailer

A second Side Order trailer which focused on gameplay was shown in the September 2023 Nintendo Direct. The trailer opens with Agent 8 in an updated version of the dull, stark white version of Inkopolis Square alongside the Pearl Drone, a drone resembling Pearl, as the same out-of-tune music box melody featured in the first trailer plays.

Agent 8 is shown descending into an unknown Floor via a grappling attachment on the Pearl Drone. The Pearl drone, Agent 8's equipment and Jelletons, new type of unknown fish-like enemy are revealed, then gameplay footage of Agent 8 in combat with the enemies is shown. The new enemies appear to spawn en masse from a black orb-shaped mechanism.

Cutscene footage of Agent 8 and Pearl encountering Acht in an elevator is then shown; within it, Acht introduces themself as an old friend of Marina's. The Floor Selection and Palette screens are shown, then Agent 8 enters the Exposed Winding Floor. Gameplay footage of several different unknown Floors is shown in quick succession, then the trailer abruptly cuts to a clip of Agent 8's octopus ghost entering a crystalized shell resembling their form, seemingly spawning into a Floor. After a cut to black, Agent 8 is shown running in slow motion alongside the Pearl Drone towards a very large six-tiered mechanical contraption; each of its tiers has separate types of protruding components and spins independently of the others. After another cut to black, the mode's title is shown with glitch and black coral effects.

Throughout the trailer various scenes depict the Spire of Order's Floors seemingly spontaneously generating with a Matrix-style code effect. Many Floors shown appear to have blocky, black holes in their walls reminiscent of a greeble effect. Additionally, armor pickups and an unknown can-shaped pickup bearing Marina's poster design can be spotted within certain Floors.

Agent 8's ink color is significantly paler compared to the previous trailer; their ink color tint appears to change between clips, seemingly being affected by different color chips. Their gear appears at various stage of upgrade throughout the trailer; the seemingly well-upgraded version includes thin, bright, hologram-like extensions on their Dualies, as well as an eyepiece similar to the See-an-Enemy HUD.

The trailer opens with the same musical box tune heard in the teaser trailer, then cuts to a slow-paced electronic glitch song with prominent industrial percussion. Midway, the song swaps for a more intense electronic song, then at the end into a different slow, echoed song.

Release date trailer

The key artwork of Splatoon 3: Side Order.

A third Side Order trailer revealing the mode's release date as well as new key artwork was posted to Twitter and YouTube on 24 January 2024.

The trailer opens with the train cutscene seen in Splatoon 3's tutorial; the player's character is instead listening to Muck Warfare (rather than Anarchy Rainbow) alongside a sleeping Smallfry and other passengers. As the player dozes off, the music becomes more and more distorted, accompanied by glitch effects. The yellow Matrix-style code seen in the second trailer slowly fills the screen.

The scene cuts to what is presumably Agent 8's point of view upon waking in the Order Sector version of Inkopolis Square. Pearl calls out to wake them, as the Square is seemingly generated on the spot by the yellow code effect. The glitch effects seen in the previous scene intermittently appear. The music box theme from the previous trailers plays as someone can be heard speaking, similar to the first trailer's ending.

The trailer then cuts to the campaign's key artwork, which unfolds from the upper section, gradually descending to the lower portion: at the zenith, Marina and Pearl (in her Inkling form) are displayed, alongside black silhouettes with red eyes. Notably, the central silhouette bears a resemblance to an Inkling sporting the "haircut" hairstyle. The middle segment showcases Jelletons circling an unknown entity, as well as Acht and Yume'ebi. The lower segment highlights Agent 8 and the Pearl Drone. During the descent, the 22 February 2024 release date slowly fades in.

Overview trailer

A fourth Side Order trailer showing an overview of the gameplay was posted to Twitter and YouTube on 13 February 2024.

The trailer features a voiceover explaining the mode's basic gameplay loop, which consists of Floor selection, Color chip enhancement and Objective completion.

New Floor objective types, Jelleton types, bosses, Color chips, and available weapons were revealed in this trailer. Additionally, the Membux and Prlz currencies were introduced.

At the end of the trailer various footage of Side Order gameplay and cutscenes is shown, along with the announcement of replica gear and main weapons which can be used in multiplayer battles.

Fresh Season 2024 teaser

A brief teaser for Side Order was shown after the fake-out ending in the Fresh Season 2024 trailer posted to Twitter and YouTube.

The teaser is a fast-paced montage of new Floor and boss gameplay footage, cutscenes, close-ups of stage details and a brief look at a customization screen for Agent 8. Most notably, it briefly shows Pearl in her regular Inkling form speaking, as well as Acht at their DJ table.

Story

The mode takes place in "what has become of" Inkopolis Square, the main hub of Splatoon 2, in "what would've happened" if Team Order had beaten Team Chaos.

Agent 8 has been unexpectedly transported to the Order Sector, a mysterious world that is built out of its own unique rules. Agent 8 wakes up to find what appears to be Inkopolis Square, suddenly drained of color and uninhabited. They are challenged to ascend the Spire of Order, a tower that changes floor structure each time it's entered, which has mysteriously replaced Deca Tower, as "something wants to make the entire world orderly". Pearl, having been transformed into a drone called the Pearl Drone, accompanies Agent 8 and assists them in combat.

Marina can be encountered within the mode.

Acht, also known as Dedf1sh, has "wandered into" the Order Sector, and appears to travel between Floors alongside Agent 8 inside an elevator within the Spire of Order.

Gameplay

The mode's missions take place in the Spire of Order's many different Floors; the Spire contains thirty Floors total, where a boss is encountered every ten floors. Players can unlock different main weapons, which are assigned to individual Palettes.

Menu for obtaining upgrades with Prlz

Before each Floor begins, the player may select one of three objectives to complete; harder objectives yield greater rewards. After selecting a floor, the player is given Color chips. The color chips provide many different enhancements, some of which are similar to gear abilities, like Ink Saver (Main) or Run Speed Up.

Clearing Floors rewards the player with Membux, which can be used as a currency on Floors containing vending machines. However, if the player loses all their lives, they will lose all their Color chips and must restart from the first Floor. When this happens, the accumulated Color chips and Membux will be converted into Prlz, which can be used to buy permanent upgrades via a certain character in the Square that will subsequently apply to all future runs through the Spire.

Some of the upgrades are:

Player

• Max Lives: Increases the maximum number of lives available per run.
• Damage Reduction
• Max Armor
• Broken-Armor Jump

Pearl Drone

• Drone Action Slots
• Drone-Gauge Turf Charge

Mechanics

The following gameplay mechanics will appear in Side Order:

• Weapons
  • Main:
    • Shooter
    • Roller
    • Charger
    • Slosher
    • Splatling
    • Dualies
    • Brella
    • Blaster
    • Brush
    • Stringer
    • Splatana
  • Sub:
    • Splat Bomb
    • Curling Bomb
    • Fizzy Bomb
    • Sprinkler
    • Splash Wall
    • Burst Bomb
    • Ink Mine

• • Special:
    • Killer Wail 5.1
    • Triple Inkstrike
    • Reefslider
    • Ink Storm
    • Kraken Royale
    • Triple Splashdown
    • Wave Breaker
    • Ultra Stamp
    • Booyah Bomb

Characters

• Agent 8 - Octoling - The playable avatar.
• Pearl - Drone (Inkling) - A member of Off the Hook who accompanies Agent 8.
• Marina - Octoling - A member of Off the Hook with an unknown role in the story.
• Acht - Octoling (Sanitized) - A musician who meets Agent 8 and Pearl in the Spire of Order.
• File:SO Unknown character.jpg Yume'ebi - Owner of a stall selling items which can be bought with Prlz.
• An unknown character briefly seen in a promotional video.

Floors

Side Order's level system consists of the Spire of Order's individual Floors, which are randomly generated on each run.

The player will pass through a 10 floor tutorial phase before access to the full 30 floors of the Spire of Order. During this tutorial phase, the Color Chips are not randomized, and will be the same for every player. After the tutorial an unknown event occurs which leads to the player's run being cut short; it is "technically" or "theoretically" possible to scale the entire Spire without the initial reset event, but this method limits the player to only one life.

Floor Selection

Agent 8 on the Floor Selection screen.

During a 30 floor run the player will be given the option of 3 floors with varying difficulty, objectives, and rewards. Each selection has a difficulty, objective, and color chip reward, with floors of "Rigorous" difficulty awarding two instances of the given color chip. Membux will be earned based on the difficulty of the floor the player selects. The Color Chip is applied before start of a floor.
Upon selection of a floor, the player will spawn onto a starting platform while the objective text will be displayed to the player. The Cage will spawn at the end of this starting platform, where the player can ride the Cage above the main platform, which will give allow players to strategically plan where they will land on the floor platform using Pearl Drone to glide down.

Spire of Order Map

The Spire of Order's map as Agent 8 ascends a Floor

After finishing a floor, the Spire's map will appear and show a few completed floors below the player, future floors above the player, and what floor the player is currently on.
The background of the Spire map will change colors depending on what third of the spire has been reached. The first ten floors have a dark grey background, floors eleven through twenty have a dark turquoise background and twenty-one through thirty have a dark purple background.

Spire map icons

• File:SO Key spire map.png

  A key icon located next to one of the floors of the spire map

• 

  A vending machine icon located next to one of the floors of the spire map

• 

  A Player icon indicating what floor a player is located on within the spire map

• 

  A boss icon indicating a boss floor on the spire map

Floor Names

The following Floors' names have been revealed:

• Spiraling_Slope.Floor
• Exposed_Winding.Floor
• Sitting_Duck_Valley.Floor
• Exposed_Switchback.Floor
• Fortress.Floor
• Frantic_Double-Decker_Crisscross.Floor
• Rolling.Floor
• Escape-Artist.Floor
• Whirling-Shell.Floor
• Wide-Open.Floor
• Explosion-Festival.Floor
• Unreasonable_Shelterless_Up-and-Down.Floor
• Whirling-Enemies(High)_Two-Bridge.Floor
• Dizzying_Unstable-Footing(Bounce-Pad).Floor
• Targeted(Giants)_Open-Season_Gateway.Floor
• Unreasonable_Mountain_Battlefield(Ascent).Floor
• Large-Underpass_Covered.Floor
• Frantic_Scampering_Two-Bridge.Floor

Floor Objectives

Conjecture

This article or section involves something that has not been specifically named.
The name(s) presented could be conjectural.
Reason: Some objectives and names are not fully revealed, and as such aren't fully understood

Objective	Description
Destroy the portals!	Agent 8 must destroy all Jelleton portals found on a given Floor
Defeat the fleeing foes!	Agent 8 must pursue and defeat specific Jelletons on wheels that flee from them
Unknown Infinity Ball objective	Agent 8 must guide one or more Infinity Balls; this mode is similar to Octo Expansion's 8-ball stations
Unknown zones objective	Agent 8 must keep a Splat Zone inked for a timed duration while Jelletons attempt to attack and claim the Zone
Unknown Turbine tower objective	Agent 8 must ink a Turbine tower to move it along a fixed path

Boss Floors

Boss	Description
Pinging Marciale	The Pinging Marciale is a large Jelleton similar to the Rampaging Octowhirl. Its arena has bumpers at the edges; if the Pinging Marciale hits them, a Wave Breaker-like shockwave hits the Floor.
Unknown tower boss	The tower boss has layers that rotate around itself, with rectangular weakpoints that slightly protrude from each layer. Players must defeat it by knocking down each individual layer one by one.
Unknown Inkling/Octoling army boss	This boss takes the form of Jelleton-like ink blobs in the shape of Inklings/Octolings that attack using weapons. The boss is fought in waves of four to five such creatures at a time.

Floor Features

Features that can appear on a floor within the Spire.

Floor Feature	Description
Inkrail	An Inkrail on an unknown floor inside the Spire of Order
File:Side Order Dash Track.jpg Dash Track	A dash track within the Spire of Order
Gusher	An Enemy Gusher within the Spire of Order
Crates	A Crate
Armor	A case of Armor in the Spire of Order
Ink refiller	A Ink refiller inside the Spire of Order
File:SO Marina Canned Special.png Marina Can	A can, featuring Marina's poster, that partially fills up the player's special gauge
Disc Piece	A Disc Piece within the Spire of Order
Batteries	A pack of Batteries within the Spire of Order
File:SO unknown top mechanism.png Unknown top mechanism	A type of top-shaped mechanism found within floors that when attacked, rapidly pierces through nearby enemies for high damage and can bounce off walls

Danger effects

Danger effects are debuff events that can occur on any given floor, and are marked as such inside the Floor Selection screen. Danger level floors will contain an augmentation similar to Salmon Run Next Wave's Known Occurrences. If a player decides to avoid a Floor marked with Danger upon its initial appearance, the Danger augmentation is more likely to re-appear over more floors in the player's Floor Selection screen over the course of the run. It is possible for a Danger effect to become unavoidable and persist for the rest of a run.

Danger augment	Description
Foggy Danger	Agent 8 must fight within fog that surrounds the main platform
Enemy ink everywhere	Agent 8 must fight on a main platform that is fully covered in enemy ink
No Pearl Drone Danger	Agent 8 must fight without the help of Pearl Drone

Quotes

“	As for the second wave, we're flummoxed! What is that strange tower? Why has everything turned white and ghostly? What's on that Octoling's mind? We're going to get to the bottom - or maybe the top - of this, so stay tuned for further updates on our research.	”
— @SplatoonNA on Twitter

“	A new single-player campaign called Side Order super jumps to the Splatoon 3 game in the second wave of this DLC. See what has become of Inkopolis Square, the central area featured in the Splatoon 2 game!	”
— eShop description

“	Challenge yourself to a new single-player campaign, Side Order! See what has happened to Inkopolis Square from the Splatoon 2 game, and what would've happened if Order thwarted Chaos to rule the city!	”
— Official DLC webpage

“	As Agent 8, you wake up to discover Inkopolis Square has been drained of colour and its residents have gone missing. Alongside a drone who claims to be Off the Hook member Pearl, ascend the floors of the Spire of Order and strengthen your abilities as you climb the tower in a single-player experience that's designed to be replayed over and over!	”
— Official UK DLC webpage

“	Based on what we know so far, it's safe to speculate that Agent 8 is in for a tall order of trials in this new world. Side Order is planned to launch spring 2024 at the earliest, so please have patience while we make everything...perfect.	”
— @SplatoonNA on Twitter

Gallery

➤ View the gallery

Trivia

• Side Order marks the first single-player campaign to feature a returning protagonist as the playable character.
• Side Order's inclusion of Acht marks the second instance of a non-idol musician making an interactable debut, the first having been Harmony.
• Side Order was announced in February of 2023, two years after Splatoon 3 was announced.
• February being the 2nd month of the year, Side Order's release of the 22nd of February and it being the 2nd wave of the DLC may be a reference to its main characters (Off the Hook, Acht, Agent 8) debuting in Splatoon 2.
  • Multiplying the three twos in the release day equals to 8, a possible reference to Agent 8 as well as the Octo Expansion, which also had the number 8 as a recurring theme.

Etymology

A side order is another term for a side dish, a food item meant to accompany a larger main item as part of a meal. The title is a pun on the mode being a side story about Team Order, the Splatfest team led by Marina that lost the Final Fest in Splatoon 2.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	サイド・オーダー Saido ōdā	Side Order
Dutch	De Toren der Orde	The Tower of Order
French	Tour de l'Ordre	Order Tower
German	Ruf zur Ordnung	Call to Order
Italian	Torre dell'Ordine	Tower of Order
Russian	Порядочная порция Poryadochnaya portsiya	Decent serving
Spanish	La cara del orden	The face of order
Chinese	秩序篇 Zhìxù Piān	Episode Order
Korean	사이드 오더 Saideu odeo	Side Order