Colors Live is a popular painting/doodling app that's been available on all manner of Nintendo platforms over the years - and now a Kickstarter campaign from its creator is aiming to bring it to Nintendo Switch.

But Colors Live for Switch comes with one distinctive upsell: it will be delivered with a SonarPen stylus, which plugs into the Switch's 3.5mm headphones jack and uses soundwaves in order to deliver pressure-sensitivity for more nimble painting control.

A post on Gizmodo explains how the SonarPen works in more detail. The pen doesn't require batteries or charging, instead it plugs into the headphone jack where a tone (at 8,000Hz) is sent through the cable and to the tip of the stylus. The SonarPen, using a built-in microphone, can then assess the dampening of that signal depending on how pressure is applied by the user, reading the sound signal to give some degree of pressure sensitivity.

That's a clever way to bypass the Switch's simplistic touchscreen. It's also an affordable way to implement a system that's less dynamic is sensitivity than, say, an Apple Pencil, Microsoft Surface Pen, or Wacom Stylus (none of which would work with the Switch, of course, but which offer thousands of levels of pressure-sensitivity - and a higher price point).

The Kickstarter campaign offers the Colors Live app with Sonar Pen for a starting backing price of 370SEK (that's Swedish Krona - the home currency of where the title's producer, Jens Andersson, is based) - which equates to about £32/€36/$40. Not bad, eh?

However, there's always a word of warning with crowdfunding. While this project has already bypassed its target (by over 700 per cent at the time of writing), meaning it will be funded, there are potential barriers for production, timescales, and even approval by the relevant companies - such as Nintendo itself.

If all goes the plan, Colors Live and the SonarPen should be in backers' hands by August 2020.