Octopath Traveler released in 2018 with a strong fan response. The game was initially only available on the Nintendo Switch, owing to Square Enix’s decision to premiere public betas for its smaller throwback games. Octopath Traveler might not have spearheaded this initiative, but it was the first Square Enix game to use an HD-2D art style that involves using modern graphical technologies to render backgrounds which characters move through as pixelated sprites. This visual technique made Octopath Traveler notable, and was replicated in Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent.