The Plucky Squire
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Release date: 2024
Set in the colourful confines of a children’s picture book, this playful action-platformer sees you adventuring from a top-down, 2D perspective, before leaping out of the book’s pages and into its owner’s 3D bedroom. Even in my short demo, Plucky Squire’s gameplay ideas bound in and out of focus with a Mario-esque level of invention, as if the game’s creators simply cannot contain their excitement about each new mechanic. From hand-drawn heroes leaping between pages to grab missing words that solve a puzzle, to diving inside a Magic: The Gathering-esque trading card frame to do battle, each new encounter brims with a grin-inducing level of imagination. Tom Regan
Paper Trail
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
Release date: 2024
The deserving winner of UK Game of the Show at this year’s Gamescom event, Paper Trail is a gorgeously illustrated origami puzzle game, where you fold the levels as if they were paper to help characters along their way. There is a little bit of Monument Valley about it, though it is less austere. The colours and deftly minimalist character design hint at its creators’ varied art and animation influences. Keza MacDonald
AK-xolotl
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Release date: 14 September
“Cute marine creature with big guns” is a video game concept that youwould imagine has arisen at plenty of game jams, but developer 2Awesome has really run with it here, creating something very silly and fun. It’s a top-down shooter where AK-wielding axolotls spray bullets and dodge around enemies and attacks, and when you’re not on destructive rampages, you raise pixellated baby axolotls util they, too, are ready to pick up an assault rifle. Like Cult of the Lamb, it’s cute and dark. KM
The Many Pieces of Mr Coo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
Release date: 7 September
A surreal and rather morbid Spanish point’n’click adventure game whose hand-drawn animation reminds me of the adverts I saw on European TV on holiday in the 90s. Its little yellow mascot, Mr Coo, has been chopped up and all his body parts move independently through weirdly proportioned Dalí-esque environments and slapstick puzzle setups. KM
Headbangers Rhythm Royale
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
Release date: 31 October
You know those horrifyingly amusing musical toys that keep cropping up in viral videos? The ones with mouths that contort into unsettled little Os when you squeeze them to make them sing? This is a party game full of those. You play headbanging birds in an array of Simon Says or Parappa the Rapper-style rhythm games to triumph as the most musical pigeon of all. KM
Tiny Bookshop
Platforms: PC, Mac, iPad
Release date: TBC
This is a very peaceful-looking affair in which you run a bookshop out of a little caravan in a seaside town, arranging shelves and having pleasant chats with customers while they browse your literature. You can paint the caravan, and arrange comfy little chairs and tables outside, adorned with mugs of tea. Surely this is every introvert’s dream. I feel calmer just looking at it. Anyone know the going rate for a wooden book-caravan? KM
Little Nightmares 3
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
Release date: 2024
At the moment, this is just a trailer, but what an arresting trailer. Now under the care of developer Supermassive Games, this creepy cooperative horror adventure sees two miniature Tim Burton-esque doll-creatures make their way through extremely discomfiting scenes. Giant one-eyed dolls push chubby hands through brick walls, grasping for you. Hench butchers stalk around in the background. It’s like It Takes Two, but horrible. KM
PowerWash Simulator VR
Platforms: Meta Quest
Release date: later this year
When I flew to Cologne to experience the future of interactive entertainment, I didn’t expect to leave Gamescom enamoured of a VR hose. Yet after 20 giddying, jet-stream-firing, nozzle-adjusting minutes, I’ve properly drunk the pressure-powered Kool-Aid. The satisfying, bubbly busywork of 2022’s Power Wash Simulator entranced millions. Unsurprisingly, it is an experience that is perfectly suited to virtual reality, each squeeze of the Oculus Quest trigger providing gratifying feedback as you point and spray – its haptic vibration and the hose’s hiss perfectly coalesce soothingly as you banish dirt. It didn’t make me feel queasy, either; it was a welcome escape from the heaving bustle of the convention hall. A simpler, better world, where the only enemy is grime on a park fountain. TR
Dead Pets Unleashed
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC
Release date: TBC
While Xbox boss Phil Spencer and game director Todd Howard proudly show off space-epic Starfield to a throng of journalists, I am standing in a corner of the Xbox booth, quietly scrubbing a mouldy dildo. This is the first mini-game I encounter in Triple Topping’s provocative punk adventure, Dead Pets Unleashed, which stands out from the twee platformers and party games sitting either side of it at the show. Struggling to make rent and running late for band rehearsal, players choose whether to repay protagonist Gordy’s friends by taking on extra shifts at the cafe, or to just go on tapping their way through punk bangers and hope everything works out. With dialogue choices galore, you decide whether to stir up trouble in this slightly demonic, mini-game-filled narrative adventure. A more risque take on 2017’s coming-of-age tale Night in the Woods, this is for people who like their games full of heart, feminism and punk rock anarchy. TR
Return to Moria
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC
Release date: 24 October
You’d be forgiven for losing hope in playable Tolkien after February’s Gollum, but LOTR’s latest licensed game may get the legacy back on track. Heavily inspired by 2020’s Valheim, this atmospheric survival adventure sees up to eight players exploring Moria’s long-abandoned depths. An impressive demo shows our vertically challenged heroes constructing awe-inspiring keeps, brewing foamy tankards of imperial stout and belting out perfectly harmonised dwarven shanties while carving through Moria’s ancient, crumbling walls. The louder they sing, the faster they work, but also the more likely they are to attract unwelcome attention. As you cleave through its procedurally generated caverns in the search for treasure, there’s an element of foreboding to these dimly lit depths – a nagging feeling that you’re only ever moments away from disturbing the many horrors that have made these ancient mines their home. TR
Still Wakes the Deep
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox
Release date: 2024
Developed by Brighton’s celebrated The Chinese Room, this oil-rig chiller offers up a refreshingly grounded twist on playable horror. From the authentically grimy 1970s carpets that line the rig’s well-worn corridors to chats with crewmates laden with Scottish slang (I caught a reference to Barnsley FC), this stunningly rendered tale feels closer to an acclaimed Channel 4 drama than to Resident Evil’s B-movie shlock. While this expedition will eventually drill down into more supernatural horror, Still Wakes the Deep’s cast of relatable human characters hints at the kind of grown-up, A24-esque scares that video games don’t often deliver. TR
Thank Goodness You’re Here
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PC
Release date: 2024
Described as a “comedy slapformer”, this is basically what would happen if you turned the Beano into a video game. Set in the fictional northern England town of Barnsworth and based on Yorkshire folklore, it casts you as a little yellow fella exploring collages of everyday English life, such as Big Ron’s Big Pie Shop, the allotment and a town square where someone’s got their hand stuck down a grate. KM
Back to the Dawn
Platforms: PC
Release date: later this year
A grimy, noirish, pixellated prison-break game, except all the characters are animals. You are a reporter-fox framed for a crime you didn’t commit, and now you must survive inside prison, explore outside the guards’ line of sight, make alliances, manage your enemies and eventually break free. I’m intrigued by the tone and visual style of this one – it’s gritty, but not overserious. KM
Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
Release date: 8 November
Sega’s Like a Dragon series has long been heralded as a Japanese tourism simulator for audiences abroad, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise this depiction of Osaka castle. Where in reality the Shogun’s iconic fortress emanates grandeur and majesty, here it has been transformed into a blasphemously gaudy virtual playground for scowling Yakuza member Kiryu, drenched with neon and filled with casinos, scantily clad girls and candy floss. It’s a joy to roam around this seedy twist on an iconic landmark. Moving away from the turn-based combat of 2021’s Like a Dragon, Gaiden returns to the combo-chaining brawling of old. The snippet I play offers a stunning-looking and predictably silly slice of crime-laden fun. As I accidentally make Kiryu lose at roulette, I opt to redeem his rep by dressing him like a mix of a 1970s porn star and a deep-sea diver, before proceeding to pummel a series of literal clowns in an arena, cheered on by baying spectators. Never change, Sega. TR
Keza MacDonald and Tom Regan attended the Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany. Regan’s travel and accommodation expenses were met by Gamescom; Keza’s were met by Nintendo.