Like the Wii and Wii U before it, the Switch library includes a number of fitness games to help someone with a workout. Granted, Ring Fit Adventure is likely the title that most comes to mind. But there are quite a few options, and another is about to appear in September 2021. XSEED picked up Knockout Home Fitness, which appeared in Japan as FiNC Home Fit. It’s closer to Fitness Boxing and seems like it might have its own niche to fill.
Similar to Fitness Boxing, Knockout Home Fitness is a Switch fitness game dedicated to participating in sessions with virtual trainers while holding your Joy-Cons in your fists. Each session involves performing actions in time with your instructor and an energetic background track. You can do one daily personal training challenge, which lasts about 15 minutes and consists of a stretching phase, a warm up, and a challenge session. You then have the option of doing separate three-to-five minute workout sessions.
As you might expect, there are different training and customization options. You can choose which sorts of sessions you want to participate in, both by setting the areas you want to focus on and looking through the list. So you always choose your focus area, what you hope to achieve in that session for those muscles, and a period of time for it all.
When you have a training session ahead of you, you can see which song will be playing and the different parts of your body that will be focused on. So if you have a problem with your knees, you could avoid a workout that involves them. (Or, since this is a game only tracking your arm movements, you could fake it.) Your data is then tracked in-app. There’s also an optional password protection element in effect, if you don’t want someone to see things like your weight.
What I’ve noticed so far after a few days of working out is that Knockout Home Fitness seems like the sort of Switch fitness game focused on manageable workouts. In each of mine, which consisted of one Personal Training session and at least two 3-Minute Fitness sessions, it seemed like the sort of thing you set up, do for a half an hour, then go about your day. It is a very low-pressure sort of experience so far. The exercises I’ve seen aren’t terribly intense, the optional mirror effect makes it easy to tell what to do even if I have the sound down and everything is clear and easy to understand.
Granted, my time with Knockout Home Fitness has been short so far. This is the sort of game that’s best judged after playing it for multiple days in succession. You see how you react to trainers you “meet” and the sessions you “attend.” But from the outset it seems like a manageable way to get a bit active every day.
Knockout Home Fitness will come to the Nintendo Switch on September 28, 2021.
