Gamescom 2024 has been a pretty interesting run, and it’s not over yet – that being said there were a ton of announcements and new videos for games like Monster Hunter Wilds, Star Wars Outlaws, Masters of Albion, Date Everything, World of Warcraft, Mars Attracts, Two Point Museum, Towerborne,, and dozens more you’re probably already hearing about, but for now, we wanted to share these first ten moments that really got us going.
It’ll be interesting to see where the coverage goes from here with some of Gamescom’s biggest teases lying in just around the corner. The world is still digesting some of the announcements so far, like the upcoming Xbox Adaptive Joystick or Secret Level, the new project from the animators of beloved series Love and Robots that’s set to tell stories from popular game universes, including an Armored Core segment featuring everyone’s favorite triple threat, Keanu Reeves.
Xbox really did turn heads already with a slew of great segments you can stream below, which was refreshing as we’ve been waiting for good news from them for a while now. Coming from an Xbox background whether we like it or not, it’s good see devs out there really swinging and trying new things while we still have competing consoles. We’re not sure how much longer that will last, so we’re working on diversifying, but one thing at time.
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Anyway, let’s dive right in to Part One, with Part Two coming either this weekend or early next week.
10. Redacted
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This highly aesthetic rogue-lite actually comes from Striking Distance, the folks behind Callisto Protocol, but their new project looks like a completely different thing. Redacted takes a more comic book and Dunwich-Horror inspired approach, even humorously so, complete with a ‘future-punk’ soundtrack from Mutato Muzika that we were bobbing our heads to before they mentioned it during the IGN interview. The game takes place in a massive prison as you race prisoners, prison staff, and monsters to the last remaining escape pod, and there are dozens of load outs, items, upgrades, and enemy types, so we’re sure that we’ll find ourselves blissfully incarcerated for some time once Redacted released.
Out October 31, 2024.
9. Dying Light: The Beast
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Dying Light’s original protagonist Kyle Crain mysteriously returns, but don’t get us wrong – it’s quite the welcome surprise. We were actually quite late to the Dying Light series, and we’re still knee-deep in it with the first one, but the series’ blend of par core and brutal zombie encounters was iconic, as was it’s terrifying day and night cycle. At first, the trailer’s stealthy open world madness had us thinking it was a possibly another Far Cry, but then the par core and zombies kicked in and our hearts leapt. We won’t spoil anything, but if you want to know more, and you probably do, check out the interview below.
Release TBA
8. Eternal Strands
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This gorgeous fantasy adventure game was announced a few months back, but the Playstation gameplay trailer featuring a brief interview with Yellowbrick Games Chief Creative Officer Mike Laidlaw was the perfect way to get us fully onboard for the release. The world building looks superbly laid out with a vivid art style, which makes it fairly exciting since the combat is based on manipulating the environment around you. The character design looks really interesting too, reminding us of the deeply diverse direction of early 2000’s bangers like Beyond Good and Evil and Final Fantasy IX, or perhaps more recently The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Described as a physics playground, if everything goes as smoothly as it looks, it’s going to be a hit, and we can hardly wait to uncover the mysteries of the Enclave.
Release TBA / Early 2025
7. Atomfall
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This intriguing survival RPG from Rebellion has a lot going for it, but just about all of it is mysterious – when we first head about it a couple months back, we were so bewildered we couldn’t help but think it was related to the somewhat similar Atomic Heart, but particularly after the IGN interview below, it kind of makes sense. Though both games are alternative cold-war narratives based on visions of vintage science fiction, Atomfall takes cues from a different set of influences, particularly old British standbys like Dr. Who and The Quatermass Experiment. It’s also a far more open and non-linear experience from what we can tell, with player’s having to scavenge and talk their way through a quarantine zone that truly gives us the creeps, despite being so beautiful. Even after the IGN interview, we still don’t know much, but we do know more than ever that as soon as we can, we’ll be eagerly checking it out.
Out March 2025, 2024.
6. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
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The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series made an undeniable impression on several genres back in the day, even if you often see it reduced to ‘survival horror’ in discussions. The first one is very much that, but it’s so much more, and if you grew up playing consoles, it’s an experience you may have missed out on even if you played games directly inspired by the series, though not for long – the long awaited sequel is coming to Gamepass looks set to double down on punishing environments, advanced enemy AI, and supernatural high-strangeness. It was also interesting to hear the developers discuss how Hear of Chernobyl makes it more difficult to sneak around but still rewards you for employing stealth, so hopefully that translates well for it’s multi-platform release this Fall.
Out November 20, 2024.
5. The Xbox Adaptive Joystick
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Xbox puts money where their mouth is and debuts a modular, highly-accessible product for people with physical delays and disabilities, and it actually looks like an amazing setup that can be tailored to an array of individual needs. For further modifications, players can take things even further by “designing free, downloadable 3D print files for Xbox Adaptive Thumbstick Toppers on Xbox Design Lab.” The designers that spoke at the Xbox booth talked about the team’s internal axiom “nothing about us without us,” meaning they don’t create devices for the disabled community, but rather with them. That’s an important distinction to make, and hearing how they collected the data through testing, adjusted their designs and marketplace, worked with manufacturers, and basically followed through in so many ways gave us genuine hope for progress and innovation for gaming accessibility.
4. Revenge of The Savage Planet
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Journey to The Savage Planet received positive reception upon it’s release, but it was still highly underrated. Thankfully the game did well enough to warrant a sequel, and we were incredibly stoked when we saw the reveal for it. The original’s persistent humor and occasionally grotesque vision of a metroidvania in space was told from a first-person perspective, but the switch to third-person for the sequel just seems to fit with even stranger, more exotic environments to puzzle, shoot, hack, and kick your way through. Oh, and instead of one Savage Planet, according to the developer interview with IGN, there’s going to be four, which seems like an almost controversially measured amount compared to a lot of releases we see today.
TBA 2025.
3. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
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As we watched the announcement trailer for Tainted Grail, out of our own ignorance we couldn’t tell what we were looking at – was it some surprise cut from Avowed or an expansion for Blade and Sorcery? No, it was something new, and pretty sweet looking too. Okay, technically not new altogether: The Tainted Grail is an established fantasy series, and The Fall of Avalon has been in early access for over a year. But after the trailer, we’ve got to say we’re piqued as hell to experience Questline’s uniquely dark take on post-Merlin adventure, particularly with it’s unique tale of a land stuck in a permanent autumn and imaginative character design.
Release TBA / Q2 2025
2. Starfield: Shattered Space
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Starfield’s first expansion is hurtling towards us like a giant meteor, and we’re still trying to comprehend our experience of the base game – especially with vehicles being added to the game literally a couple of days ago. The sci-fi saga was initially a pretty solid experience that we compared to Fallout 4, a game we still adore to this day, warts and all. Ultimately the level of the familiarity became a point of contention, but luckily Shattered Space looks like a step back towards the narrative design strengths that Bethesda Game Studios has been renowned for in the past. It also looks like it’s going to take a more involved stab at lore, an ingredient that wasn’t exactly lacking in the game, but perhaps still needed a pinch or two of salt to bring out the distinguishing factors of various factions, religions, rogues, etc.. Putting the focus on the game’s most mysterious and interesting clan, House of Va’arun, was certainly the right move, and it looks like we’ll be getting some extended anti-gravy sequences as well, which were one of the true highlights of base campaign.
Out September 30th, 2024.
1. Let’s Build A Dungeon: Game Dev Simulator
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Springloaded’s frankly insane sandbox proposition is potentially got our hearts racing the fastest out of all the announcements out of this year’s Gamescom so far. There’s been a decent amount of novel ideas presented already, and we’re sure more are coming up in the remaining days, but Let’s Build A Dungeon’s 4-th wall shattering immersive infotainment project is truly ambitious as it blurs the line between gameplay and game design.
Release TBA
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