Every game shown during Nintendo’s indie showcase at Gamescom 2019

By Gabe Gurwin August 19, 2019

Nintendo kicked off the Gamescom 2019 festivities this year with its Indie World showcase, a recorded video presentation that features trailers and details on nearly 30 different upcoming Switch games. Some of these titles are potential sleeper hits, while others are acclaimed indie games coming to Switch for the first time. If you missed out on the action, we’ve compiled some of the biggest titles announced below along with a list of all the other indie games shown during the presentation.

Contents

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
Eastward
Superhot
The Touryst
Hotline Miami Collection

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition

Ori and the Blind Forest - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch

The Xbox and PC exclusive Ori and the Blind Forest seemed like a perfect fit for the handheld Switch, and Microsoft seems to have thought so, too. Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition is the same great action-platformer released on the other systems, playable for the first time on a Nintendo console. It arrives on the Switch on September 27.

Eastward

Eastward - Announcement Trailer

Previously announced for PC and Mac, Eastward is a gorgeous adventure game filled with exploration, combat, and goofy characters. It’s from Chucklefish, which assisted in the development of Stardew Valley, and the game seems to have much of the same charm as everyone’s favorite retro-styled farming role-playing game. Eastward will be available in 2020.

Superhot

SUPERHOT Nintendo Switch Trailer

One of the most innovative first-person action games of all time is now on Nintendo Switch. Yes, we do mean now, as it’s available today! Superhot blends elements of puzzle games with traditional first-person shooting by only having time move when you move, and it packs it all up in a lovely cyberpunk story that fans of The Matrix will adore.

The Touryst

Shin'en: The Touryst (Nintendo Switch) Trailer

A block-style adventure game that looks like it was created from an ’80s-inspired LEGO set, Shin’en’s The Touryst is a bizarre title that looks to be full of mysteries. You can venture to a local arcade and play classic racing games, or dive into the sea and meet sea monsters. A science-fiction twist seems to be at the heart of it. The Touryst is out this November.

Hotline Miami Collection

Hotline Miami Collection - Launch Trailer - Nintendo Switch

Devolver Digital’s excellent Hotline Miami and its sequel are now available on Nintendo Switch. The tough-as-nails top-down shooters test your ability to think on your feet and make the most of your combat opportunities while questioning your violent actions the entire way. It’s the perfect collection to play after finishing Katana Zero, an indie title from Devolver also available on the Switch.

These are just a few of the many games shown during the Indie World Showcase. The remaining titles that were shown are listed out below:

Risk of Rain 2
Freedom Finger
Röki
Torchlight II
Skater XL
Youropa
Dungeon Defenders: Awakened
Skellboy
EarthNight
Blasphemous
Close to the Sun
Cat Quest II
Spiritfarer
Trine 4
Creature in the Well
One Finger Death Punch 2
Best Friend Forever
PHOGS!
What the Golf?
Kine
Hybercharge: Unboxed
Northgard
Sparklite
Munchkin: Quacked Quest

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Topics

Gaming

Skull and Bones: release date speculation, trailers, gameplay, and more

Two ships fire cannons at each other other a small island in Skull & Bones.

Ubisoft has a few notoriously troubled games in development that have left fans scratching their heads for years now. Aside from Beyond Good and Evil 2, the most curious game that has managed to avoid cancellation despite years of delays, restarts, and who knows what else behind the scenes is the pirate game Skull and Bones. It was first announced in 2017, and we've gotten almost nothing but bad news regarding this title in the years since. Despite having a playable build in 2018, for press only, the game has undergone major, if not complete overhauls.

Promised as a fully fleshed-out game built around the incredibly popular ship combat featured in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Skull and Bones was poised to make a big splash following that game's success. Gamers loved all the pirate activities seen in that game, so expanding on that should've been an easy move. However, public statements about the game have almost completely vanished, leaving many gamers high and dry regarding the status of this pirate epic. We pulled out our compass, plotted our course, and dug up all the details on Skull and Bones that you need to know.
Release date

Gaming

Atlas Fallen unexpectedly gives Forspoken some real competition

Two Atlas Fallen characters stand together in key art.

Atlas Fallen has the potential to surprise a lot of people. Although it's launching in just two months, we haven't seen much about this new game from The Surge developer Deck13 and publisher Focus Entertainment since its reveal at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022. That's a shame because after going hands-on with an early build of it, I've found that Atlas Fallen has the potential to appeal to people who didn't like one of the year's most divisive titles: Forspoken.
Atlas Fallen - World Premiere Reveal Trailer | Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022
Square Enix's open-world action RPG featured some neat ideas with its fast-paced magical combat and freeing traversal abilities, but many people couldn't get into it. While more focused on melee combat than magic, Atlas Fallen is a similarly ambitious open-world game that delivers satisfying movement and action that's different from the norm. That makes it a game that might scratch some itches that Forspoken didn't fully reach due to its heavily criticized writing. If it's not on your radar yet, you might want to know what Atlas Fallen has to offer.
Encouraged exploration
Based on my demo, I'm not fully sure what to expect from Atlas Fallen's mysterious story yet. The basic premise is that player was a person from the lowest caste in this world's society who was bonded with an ancient gauntlet. That gauntlet has an amnesic spirit named Nyaal living inside it and is now trying to save the world from gods that have left it in desert-filled ruins. The narrative wasn't a big focus in my preview build, though, and the script is full of jargon that probably will only make sense once I play more of the game.
A talking companion bonded to the player's arm and hand is already an unexpected narrative coincidence between Forspoken and Atlas Fallen. But neither game's story is the appeal of either to me: It's their fun traversal and combat that interest me. The few seconds of Atlas Fallen's sand-surfing and fighting in its Gamescom trailer caught my eye last year, and both lived up to the hype.

As I worked my way out of a cave at the start of the demo, I learned how to raise large structures out of the ground, surf across large patches of sand, and dash through the air with the help of my gauntlet. After I entered the game's open world, I could play around with all my movement options and found them to be a treat. Open-ended games with large worlds like Atlas Fallen can live or die on how satisfying they are to explore, and making movement fun is a crucial way developers can make traversal enjoyable.
Forspoken was able to capture some of that magic despite its problems, and it looks like Atlas Fallen has too. Of course, that's only one part of the game, as players will run into many enemy Wraiths and need to fight them. That's where Atlas Fallen's engaging combat system comes into play.
Satisfying combat
Deck13 and Focus Entertainment had yet to go into much detail about Atlas Fallen's combat before now, so I was shocked by how unique it was. The core combat revolves around attacking, dodging, and parrying, with weapons shapeshifting as you use them in different ways. It's faster-paced than I expected from a developer who previously made Souslikes, but it's the Ascension system that really caught my attention.
In between fights, players can equip their character with Essence Stones that buff or add abilities, assigning them to one of three tiers in the process. Once they are in a fight, attacking and defeating enemies causes players to gain momentum, which fills a bar at the bottom left of the screen. As this bar fills, or "ascends," players gradually gain those Essence Stone abilities, getting more powerful the more aggressive they are.
Ascending does come with a catch: The more momentum you build, the more damage you take. Players can counteract this by equipping defensive or health-related Essence Stones or using "Shatter" once an Ascension tier is filled to deal lots of damage and crystalize enemies for a short while. To succeed in Atlas Fallen, I needed to fight aggressively, but fights would quickly turn in the enemy's favor if I missed a crucial parry or dodge when I had lots of momentum.

This system gives each fight a push-and-pull feeling not common in action games. Most of the time, games like to make players feel significantly more powerful or weaker than everything around them; Atlas Fallen does both. This unique system hasn't gotten more attention and promotion, but it ultimately is what makes Atlas Fallen stand out the most at the moment.
There's something exciting about how mysterious this game still is to me, as that means there could be lots of surprises when players finally get to try the whole thing in a couple of months. It's shaping up to be an unexpected, almost accidental alternative to Forspoken. If you're still looking for an action-heavy RPG with innovative movement and combat gameplay ideas, Atlas Fallen should be on your radar.
Atlas Fallen will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 16.

Gaming

Former PS5 exclusive Ghostwire: Tokyo Comes to Xbox Game Pass in April

Akito with KK and the neon colors of Tokyo and invading spirits.

Former PlayStation 5 exclusive Ghostwire: Tokyo will launch for Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC on April 12. A free update called The Spider's Thread will release on the same day for all platforms, including Xbox Series X/S, PC and PlayStation 5. The game is being added to Xbox Game Pass.

Ghostwire: Tokyo was first released on PS5 and PC on March 25, 2022. Despite Microsoft owning Bethesda at the time, preexisting agreements were honored and the game remained a timed console exclusive on PS5. The same situation occurred with Bethesda's Deathloop, which initially launched on PS5 and PC in September 2021 and then came to Xbox Series X/S a year later.