Last night marked day 3 of Gamescom and today marks day 4 of our coverage. Don’t worry, we’re bad at maths but we’re okay with words. It’s a rather long show, clocking in at over 5 hours so we’ll just be picking out highlights in an effort to save you reading the video game equivalent of the Silmarillion. As usual, the whole show is embedded above if you want to enjoy all the fluff, and the individual games are below.

Severed Steel

Severed Steel is a fast paced and fast-to-die first person shooter where you play a woman with an energy cannon for an arm and a penchant for grabbing weapons off enemies while soaring through the air or doing a sweet flip. A demo is available via Steam if you want to get in on the wall running, sliding, goon perforating action ahead of the 17 September 2021 release date.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Aiko’s Choice

The excellent stealth strategy game Shadow Tactics is getting a standalone expansion titled Aiko’s Choice. Set in Japan’s Edo period, and as the title suggests, the expansion focuses on kunoichi Aiko and will feature three new main missions and three new shorter interlude missions. Aiko’s Choice is coming in December 2021.

Project Haven

Project Haven is a tactical RPG where you’ll take control of a mercenary team in a near-future city, ready to fight anyone who points a gun in your direction whether they’re gangsters or government gimps. The trailer shows an action point system for moving and actions, and an aiming system lifted right out of Valkyria Chronicles. The characters look a little plastic-y (not quite Shader Model 3.0 bad but still noticeable) and the animations are a little stiff but the concept looks solid. Project Haven isn’t coming until 2022 but an alpha demo is available via Steam.

Lake

Chill slice of life mail delivery game Lake got a new developer walkthrough that takes a look at a brief bit of dialogue involving the game’s lumberjack character and protagonist Meredith. As the developers say, nothing is earth-shatteringly dramatic. There’s a demo available via Steam right now and the game releases on 1 September 2021.

Path of Calydra

Bright and charming adventure Path of Calydra got a developer walkthrough looking at one of the four elemental affinities and its combat abilities. We get to see the kid protagonist take on the earth element and gain a backpack with two huge rock arms that can either smash enemies or wield a laser sword. As you’d expect, elemental interactions are key to defeating enemies efficiently. A demo is available via Steam.

Lemnis Gate

3D artist Corey Casperski explains the basic structure of a Lemnis Gate match: the turn-based FPS is set up in a 25 second time loop, each turn players add more characters into the mix to attack an enemy objective and defend their own. Between your turns you get control of a drone to watch the opponent’s turn unfold so you can formulate a strategy. Lemnis Gate is releasing on 28 September 2021.

Spine

Despite being shot like a hipster freerunner’s personal jerking material this CG trailer shows off a woman running away from a drone and soldiers in a cyberpunk city, a copy of her being caught and shot before disintegrating, and then the predictable ass kicking that follows. Right at the end of the trailer we see her unfold her arms from under her coat and dun dun duuuun! It was robot arms all along and now she has four arms! Okay, we’re being silly but a coat with robot arms is pretty sweet. But what is Spine? A quick trip to the Steam page tells us it’s a team based hero shooter with PvP and PvE elements.

Dying 1983

With all its talk of being released from a container and someone being able to see the real world at last we were just starting to take this trailer seriously when a hilarious fish-headed woman appeared on screen and we actually blew energy drink out of our nose laughing. Once you get past the fishiness there’s an almost SCP-like weirdness going on where innocuous items are labelled as dangerous and contained. It seems like the focus will be on puzzles and exploration but a brief clip also showed a gun so combat might be on the table too.

Outbreak Island

This open world survival crafting game (wait, don’t go!) is about a detective going to a sealed island to look into the cause of the mysterious accident that caused it to be sealed. You’ll have to deal with the wildlife from deer to bears and the island’s crazy inhabitants whose combat strategy seems to be just wanting a hug. Normally we tune out this genre completely but this one actually has us intrigued, the use of a camera and investigating a mystery has plenty of appeal.

Arboria

This rogue-lite advertises itself as a “Troll 2-like” which uh… yeah, we totally see it. There’s fairies with boobs, a Crypt Keeper-esque Jamaican stereotype, and plenty of weird disgusting plants and monsters absolutely everywhere. Arboria is releasing on 9 September 2021.

Giant’s Uprising

Giant’s Uprising puts you in the role of an escaped slave, a giant escaped slave. Though the trailer is entirely CG, a quick trip to the Steam page tells us you’ll be destroying humans and their settlements, smashing castles and buildings. Also seen in the trailer are Final Fantasy style airships and everyone loves a good boat strapped to a balloon. Giant’s Uprising has a demo available now via Steam and will be getting an Early Access release on 2 November 2021.

Vagrus: The Riven Realms

This RPG looks like it goes heavy on complex character building, team management, and text heavy stories. Set in an area called The Riven Realms that have become corrupted and overrun by beings that invaded through cracks in reality. Players take on the role of a titular Vagrus, a leader of a band of adventurers, traders, mercenaries, or whatever other work you can find in the harsh landscape. A demo is available via Steam and the Early Access version of the game is already out.

Rhythm of the Universe: IONIA

Rhythm of the Universe is a VR casual puzzle adventure game about saving a nearly extinct creature called the Harpa, one of many music-inspired creatures. Puzzles and magic are also music-based, with one puzzle calling for playing a magic xylophone. If you’re lucky enough to have a PCVR headset a demo is available via Steam. Rhythm of the Universe is releasing on 23 September 2021.

Farming Simulator 22

For farmhand aficionados we’ve got another entry in the well respected and long-running Farming Simulator series with this new gameplay trailer showing off another lovely rural environment and some of the machines you’ll be using to turn it into a lush land of poo-sprayed profits. Farming Simulator 22 is releasing on 22 November 2021.

Aeon Drive

Set immediately after the ending to Dimension Drive, this game transposes the teleporting heroine to cyberpunk Barcelona and will include a coop and PvP speedrunning race modes. The twist is that each of the 100 levels only gives you 30 seconds to complete them so accuracy and skill will play a large part in swift progress.

Going Medieval

This colony management sim puts you in control of building your own medieval structures and settlements and has been in Early Access for a couple of months. This trailer takes a look at the upcoming features coming in future updates including trading caravans, travelling merchants, diplomacy, raiding other villages, taking prisoners for ransom or slaves, social interactions between villagers, religious influence, fire, snow, ruins, cave systems, and plenty more.

SciGirl: The Internship

SciGirl is an action platformer about a woman shrunken down in order to look for a missing professor who made a mistake with a chemical that can shrink or enlarge matter. The game is split into four worlds of different scales, from nano to macro with each progressively larger world gated off by bosses. Gameplay an animation looks a bit rough but given that it’s in a pre-alpha state that’s to be expected.

Kainga

Kainga is a rogue-like city builder. You’ll have to adapt to a procedurally generated tech tree and environments that may have lots of space but sparse resources or even large creatures that may stomp your settlement without even realising. You can also hold festivals for different effects, one shown has an acid spitting snail being attracted and tamed. The mix of 2D villagers and 3D maps and models looks surprisingly good too.

Naser: Son of Man

Any trailer that opens with an angry Persian man sticking a flamethrower up the arse of a robot bobby is a winner in our book. There’s also the cool setting, Elizabethan colonialism backed by ruthless robotic soldiers and high-tech airships crushing a peaceful Persia, whose prince (not that one) takes up arms to defend his people against the oppressive British invasion and then for revenge. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Grow: Song of the Evertree

Grow is a world crafting sandbox game set on the branches of a gigantic tree that holds multiple worlds on its branches. Players can craft and design their own towns, placing buildings and decorations to attract villagers who can be assigned to particular buildings for work, and must be kept happy with gifts. Players must explore up the tree to find resources and combat a corruption called The Withering. Grow is releasing on 16 November 2021.

That’s it for the new stuff today. We’ve had a bit of a mixed bag with very little standing out. Our picks of the show today are; Naser for the wonderful robo-Elizabethan and Persian world, great aesthetics, and flamethrower/robo-arse action. Severed Steel, because we’ve already played the demo and it’s brutally difficult but also great fun. Lake for looking like a super chill post delivering slice of life in a nice rural town. And our number one pick Outbreak Island, for making an open world survival crafting game look like something we actually want to play rather than ignore as hard as possible.