Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a 2017 turn-based tactics game for the Nintendo Switch, made by Ubisoft with Nintendo's permission to use Mario and his friends. Ubisoft's Rabbids have wrecked the Mushroom Kingdom with a device that fuses objects together, and a team of three, made from Mario characters and Rabbids dressed as them, has to put things right.

Battles take place on grids with half and full cover, as in XCOM. Each hero moves, attacks and uses a skill each turn, and movement can be chained with dash attacks through enemies and team jumps off allies' heads, which makes moving as important as shooting.

It is the gentlest introduction to the genre there is, and also a well-designed tactics game in its own right. Movement in particular is smarter than in many serious games, because a good turn is a route through the map as much as a shot. It is funny and beautiful, and its difficulty later in the game surprises people who expected a children's game.

It has no permadeath and no strategic layer, and the story is light. A sequel, Sparks of Hope, came out in 2022 and dropped the grid.

Kingdom Battle takes the visible part of the XCOM reboot, cover, percentages and a small team, and drops the rest: no base, no research, no soldiers lost. It is evidence of how far X-COM's way of playing has spread, and a good gift for someone you want to bring into the genre.