The world’s biggest consumer-facing videogame convention, Gamescom, opened its doors last week in Cologne, Germany, to over 300,000 people eager to check out new videogames. From hugely extravagant booths full of AAA videogames played under the watchful stare of an enormous inflatable Goku, to cramped booth spaces fitting as many indie games into their square footage as reasonably possible, the event is a ridiculous mix of big budget spectacle and spotlighted small team creativity.
I spent three days at Gamescom across a mix of behind closed door appointments and chaotic explorations of the main show floor, looking for the games at the show that were most worth highlighting. Some I think are future critical darlings, some ridiculous and silly adventures, and some are here purely because I am a sucker for a project with a well defined original art style. The thing they have in common is they have something worth paying attention to.
All Will Rise
If I had to boil this list down to just one game to keep an eye on out of Gamescom, it would be All Will Rise. I say that knowing full well that the game has zero online presence right now and isn’t an easy one to actually follow development on currently.
All Will Rise is a deck building card game, crossed with a Phoenix Wright style courtroom investigation and trial adventure, written by Meghna Jayanth (80 Days, Boyfriend Dungeon, Thirsty Suitors), about a trio of Indian environmental activists who manage to win legal personhood for a river. This act creates the precedent that damaging the river is legally equivalent to harming a person, a legal ruling soon put to the test when one morning the river is found filled with flammable chemicals and set alight in a seeming act of defiance to the ruling.
The game loop involves managing the time and morale of your part time activist volunteers collecting evidence and fighting for the cause, and engaging in verbal debates using a deck of cards that are earned through narrative choices throughout the game. In one example, I chose to try and find joy in the face of a really defeating moment and gained a card for my deck called “inappropriate joy” that narratively underscored the fleeting nature of this cheap win I’d tried to convince myself made things okay.
The verbal debates themselves play out pretty simply. You have emotional energy, which cards cost to play. There’s a number of stats, and each round you need to have the most of that stat when you both run out of card playing resources. Even if you lose a debate you may well still end up unlocking new cards in the process, making it easier to come back and try again with new resources.
The demo did an amazing job of capturing the vibe of a group of leftists who disagree on the means to achieving change, but agree on the end goal they need to reach, and the awkward tension such alliances often create.
The game’s developers are currently looking for a publisher, and I hope they find one. I think they’ve got something truly special here.
Fudgy Dice
Fudgy Dice is in its current form a little simplistic, but the core concept is fun, and I have hope that it could grow into something interesting across its development.
Players engage in RPG battles in 1v1 multiplayer matches (with a single player campaign planned before release) by combining and rolling dice with special abilities. Each die rolled has a certain number of sides and therefore potential maximum value, but often smaller dice will come with modifiers such as the ability to permanently increase the value of the first die they collide with, or regain health equal to their rolled stat. Dice can be combined, often doubling up on abilities but reducing their die size.
Once all dice have been rolled their face values are totalled, and players use their acquired number to deal damage, defend against regular attacks, or use character specific magic abilities ranging from reduced but unblockable magic damage to healing previous damage.
Based on what I saw at Gamescom, it’s currently a little bare bones, but I think there’s something with potential here.
Project Timi: Sasha’s Curse
As someone who absolutely adored the colorful diorama aesthetic of Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker, Project Timi: Sasha’s Curse unapologetically lifts that game’s whole deal, and I don’t think that’s a problem. I’ll always take more of a good thing.
Players control Timi, a magical youngster entering children’s dreams to defeat little nightmare creatures placed into their heads by an evil magic cat. This is done by exploring little rotatable puzzle environments, collecting pickups, completing quests that test your exploration of the diorama, and doing so while unable to jump.
Where this differs from Captain Toad is that Project Timi has a music rhythm combat system. Players can place a trap on grid spaces on the floor based on observed enemy movement patterns, then by pressing a button to the beat of the soundtrack, as an enemy jumps onto the trapped space, you can defeat the enemy with a burst of magic.
At its core, Project Timi owes a lot of its DNA to Nintendo’s adventurous little mushroom captain, but the addition of one original mechanic does enough for me to feel good about recommending it. Not enough games make this kind of use of rotatable levels, and I want to encourage more of that.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Look, I know this is a huge game that really doesn’t need my help being promoted, but I played the Monster Hunter Wilds demo at Gamescom, and it’s really good, and I need to talk about it somewhere. Indulge me, I’ll keep it brief and get back to the independent games any moment, I swear.
That Monster Hunter Wilds feels satisfying to play isn’t a surprise. It’s the newest entry in a series that has long since found its footing, but I really enjoyed one of the new specific feature additions, manual targeting and wound infliction.
By holding down L2 while fighting a monster, players can now aim their attacks at specific body parts using the analogue stick. This is important because enemies will now gain visible glowing red wounds when hit enough times in a single location. Attacking this wound deliberately will cause a burst of damage on the enemy.
It’s a simple addition, but one I think does a lot to slightly tweak the feel of a series at this point largely built on solid foundations.
It’s fun. I hunted some monsters. I look forward to doing so again. AAA corner done.
Immortal
I’ll be honest up front, I went and checked out Immortal, a game made by a small Estonian development team, primarily because its art style caught my eye. I saw a GIF on social media a few days before flying out, and it stuck in my head.
Immortal is a side-scrolling beat-em-up brawler where you play as a demonic humanoid character with two fighting styles, which boil down to light or dark modes. You can switch fighting style mid combo, with each having unique attacks.
What makes the game mechanically interesting is how these combat styles function as a risk reward system. An on screen meter shows the balance of how you’re using each combat system, with a frenzied state of sorts activated if you ever swing completely one way or the other. This state comes with some obvious benefits, such as being able to one hit kill enemies with stylish flashy finishers, but is balanced by the fact that if you take any damage before the state ends, you lose that fighting style entirely for a brief window of time.
Immortal doesn’t have a traditional health system, instead using your combat styles as your health marker. You can lose one of your combat styles and continue fighting with the other until it returns, but if you ever lose both combat styles at once your character finally goes down.
Immortal does look fantastic in person—the way the game uses bright and high saturation colours paired with strong held poses to emphasise hits is super satisfying—but I am pleased to say the combat system means I don’t just have to recommend this based on art style alone.
Date Everything
Date Everything is a dating sim with a pretty unique mechanic: You’re in a house where every single item is a romanceable character with a unique humanoid form and personality. It’s a ridiculous gimmick, but more ridiculous is the fact it works great in practice.
I started my time with its Gamescom demo making the obvious early choices. I ran to the bathroom and tried to date the toilet, who turned out to be a shitty Soundcloud rapper named Lil Crapper, who spat some bars that would make The Great Mighty Poo blush, before challenging me to prove my rhyming skills before trying to pursue him further. It was as over the top as I had hoped rushing to date a toilet man might be.
But then things started to get a little funky. I accidently managed to initiate a romance with the game’s UI, triggering a romance scene with UI-Chan, a cute anime representation of a textbox who seemingly had found all my prior engagement with the game’s mechanics somewhat sensual. The interaction undoubtedly recontextualised the rest of the demo, as no matter who I was dating I was at the same time interacting with my ever-present lover.
Lastly, and maybe the most directly interesting of the characterizations I spent time with, I tried dating a door in the house who was depicted as a bouncer. How perfect a choice is that? Built big and square, allowing or denying passage, such a great way to characterize something so mundane in a way that makes sense in practice.
I have no idea how this idea will fully work in practice. Maybe the joke will eventually run thin, but right now I can’t stop thinking about this game. I’ve spent Gamescom wandering around looking at inanimate objects and thinking about what they might be like if they were a person. Is the Gamescom cafeteria table I am writing this at secretly short, wide, and weirdly into having food stacked on his head? I don’t know, but I bet Date Everything has an answer, and I want the game in my home already so I can find out.
Laura Kate Dale is a videogame critic with a focus on accessibility coverage. She’s been previously published at The Guardian, Polygon, IGN, Kotaku UK, Destructoid and more, and can be found on Twitter @laurakbuzz.