Here we are, the last Sunday of this month in which I completely arbitrarily decided to try to see if I could blog every day, and it certainly had nothing to do with any kind of event organized around BLogging in AUGUST. It’s hard to imagine: only 6 more posts to go, and I have 2 in the can in case of emergencies and then there’s my usual monthly recap (mostly redundant this month but I still plan to do one). So I only need three more ideas and I’ll have made it! Yay go me!

But anyway, once again I’m going to call out a few games I’ve seen while watching Gamescom and Gamescom-adjacent coverage (which I am STILL doing, by the way…there’s SO much. Currently watching the Future Games Show coverage which I think just ‘happened’ to come out during Gamescom though I’m not 100% sure). I don’t bother talking about games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle or Star Wars Outlaws since I figure we all know about those. I like to share somewhat lesser-known games that just caught my eye for some reason (or in some cases, no particular reason!)

Redacted is a rogue-lite with what appears to be a lot of permanent upgrades you can purchase between runs. I can’t really do TRUE rogue-likes where you completely start from scratch every run. I just don’t have the patience. I need something to make me feel like I’ve made some kind of progression each run. Redacted is by the same team that did The Callisto Project but has a VERY different aesthetic. Bright and colorful and low on the gore. The premise is that you’re a guard in a prison on Callisto and the prison is overrun by beasties. There’s one escape pod left and you have to get to it before one of the prisoners (of which only a few are left) do. So you’re fighting monsters, you’re fighting these prisoners, and if you find the corpse you left from your last run, you can fight that. It’ll be as powerful as you were last time you died, so there’s a lot of risk there, but if you beat it you get back an upgrade that you had on that run. Big risk. big reward. Anyway here’s the trailer

Staying in the world of rogue-lites is 33 Immortals. This isn’t a new announcement but I’m mentioning it because there’s a beta running on Game Pass this weekend and I’ve tried it. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about it, but suffice to say that assuming it ships in good shape and isn’t full of bugs, I’ll be picking it up. The premise here is that you join 32 other players on a map chock-full of baddies. If you wander off on your own you’ll probably die, but herding 32 strangers is hard, right? And there are these mini-dungeon areas you’ll find that have even tougher enemies but again, going in alone is almost certain death so you have to kind of organically join a crowd and hope everyone goes in there. As with Redacted there are permanent upgrades you can purchase between runs so you’re always getting a little stronger. And once again, bright and colorful graphics. Here’s a 9 minute segment from the Xbox Gamescom coverage about the game:

Eternal Strands is not a rogue-lite! It’s fantasy game featuring mostly magical, physics-based combat, from what I can see. It’s from Yellow Brick Games, one member of whom is Mike Laidlaw who used to be with Bioware. I don’t actually know a lot about this one other than what is in the trailer, but I just got a good vibe from it. Maybe it’s because I followed Laidlaw back on ‘good’ Twitter so I feel that weird artificial connection to him that you get when you 1-way follow someone on social media. Ha!

Now if you know me, you know I love nautical themed games and I love pirates, even though, yeah I know REAL pirates weren’t, and are not, nice people. Just let me have this, OK? Rogue Waters is a pirating tactics game. It has both ship-to-ship and cutlass-to-cutlass combat, and just to be clear these are Saturday matinee pirates, get me, matey? It is not 100% clear how the ship-to-ship fights play out but once you’re on the enemy deck it appears to be pure tactics gameplay. Guess we’ll see when it comes out at the end of September.

Last up is Lost Skies which just caught my attention because grappling hooks and gliding. I love flying in games almost as much as I love captaining a pirate ship. This is another game I know almost nothing about but the very short trailer enchanted me, even if I can’t quite articulate why.

Oh, one last bonus game that doesn’t quite fit in the ‘you might not know about this one’ bucket, and that is Warhammer 40K Space Marines II. I’m sharing this just because I thought this was going to be another horde-mode co-op game like Vermintide but it is not. It’s got a proper single player campaign… two of them in fact. You CAN play these co-op but you don’t have to. And there’s PvP too if that is your thing. Here’s a 10 minute segment from the Xbox Gamescom show:

Man there’s a lot of games coming out, aren’t there? We all need more free hours in our days. We need a device that lets you step out of the time flow to a pocket dimension where you can play as much as you want, then step back into real time refreshed and ready for life’s annoying responsibilities. Someone invent that, please. I realize while you’re inventing it you probably won’t have any time for gaming, but y’know, just take one for the team, OK?