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Everything announced at the Annapurna Interactive Showcase

Giovanni Colantonio
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Annapurna Interactive held its first-ever digital showcase, which offered tons of details on its upcoming slate of games. The show included a release date reveal for Solar Ash, details on the long-anticipated Stray, and a handful of new games coming from the indie publisher.

Annapurna Interactive Showcase

Spun off from Annapurna’s film division, Annapurna Interactive has delivered dozens of high-profile indie hits over the past few years. The publisher’s first-ever Annapurna Interactive Showcase collected new updates on its games, some of which were announced as early as four years ago.

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Only two games got a firm release date. The Artful Escape, a trippy adventure game about a rockstar first shown at E3 2017, is finally coming on September 9. It’ll launch on PC and Xbox consoles via Game Pass. Solar Ash, developer Heart Machine’s follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter, finally got an October 26 release date at the show.

Francis looks out at a colorful sky in The Artful Escape.

Outer Wilds is getting its first and only DLC on September 28, titled Echoes of the Eye. A cryptic trailer didn’t say too much about what to expect. Meanwhile, the base game is scheduled to come to Nintendo Switch this holiday.

The showcase gave new details on two of Annapurna’s most anticipated games. Stray got a gameplay trailer, which showed a cat wandering around a city and solving puzzles with the help of a drone. The game doesn’t have a firm release date, but it’ll come to PS4, PS5, and PC in early 2022. Neon White got a deep dive too, showing off a unique card system where players can discard weapons to perform mobility actions. The game is still scheduled for a winter launch.

The main character of Neon White faces down some monsters.

We saw a handful of new games during the presentation. Skin Deep is a first-person puzzle game by Blendo, which leans heavily into absurdist humor. A Memoir Blue is a pretty narrative-driven game by Cloisters featuring lots of jellyfish. Storyteller, a puzzler where players build storybook pages, is another new highlight among the batch.

In addition to those games, Annapurna announced several partnerships with indie studios, including Outer Loop, Jessica Mak, and No Code Entertainment Productions. The publisher is also teaming up with Ivy Road, a brand new studio founded by developers behind Gone Home and The Stanley Parable. The project is heavily under wraps, but it will feature music from Minecraft composer C418.

Finally, Annapurna offered platform updates for several of its biggest games. Gorogoa and Telling Lies are both coming to Xbox Game Pass. I Am Dead hits consoles on August 9, The Pathless comes to Steam on November 16, and What Remains of Edith Finch will hit the App Store on August 16.

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Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni Colantonio
Section Editor, Gaming
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
Everything announced at Annapurna Interactive Showcase 2022
A dinosaur makes its way through the trees in The Lost Wild.

Hot off the heals of the well-received Stray, Annapurna Interactive held its second annual showcase today so its fans could see what indie games the publisher has in store. Annapurna Interactive Showcase 2022 was a presentation full of neat game reveals, port announcements, and developer partnership confirmations. We've rounded everything Annapurna Interactive highlighted here, so you can make sure you didn't miss anything in the show. 
Thirsty Suitors still looks great

The showcase kicked off with another look at the gameplay of Thirsty Suitors, which recently won a best in show award at this year's Tribeca Festival. The game's quirky dating sim meets turn-based RPG meets skating game premise looks like a joy to experience. We got a look at some of the player's funnier attacks, like calling their ex's mom. Unfortunately, Thirsty Suitors still has no release date.
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Annapurna Interactive's Stray is the most noteworthy game releasing this week. It's an atmospheric post-apocalyptic game that muses about humanity's self-destructive tendencies and how nature will outlast us all. Oh, and it stars an adorable cat.
Stray's purrfect protagonist has garnered a lot of attention, in turn exposing people to an emotional experience about humanity's impact on nature. But what if I told you it wasn't the only environmentally friendly game starring a cute animal to launch today on July 19. Enter Endling: Extinction is Forever.
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Endling - Extinction is Forever // Release Date Reveal Trailer
Extinction in real-time
From the start, Endling: Extinction is Forever doesn't pull any punches. You play as a mother fox, running through a burning forest at the beginning of the game. She's knocked off a cliff by a dying moose, almost hit by a car, and hides in a small cave. She gives birth to four cubs, which you can customize with different colors and fur features. It's a memorable start to the adventure, and the struggles only continue from there.
One of your four cubs is kidnapped by a hunter at the start of the adventure, and from there, you explore with your three remaining cubs by your side. You'll scavenge for food, teach your cubs how to dig, climb, and more as you encounter new obstacles, and learn more about the megacorp ruining what was once a lush area rife with wildlife. Your three remaining cubs can die in some situations, too, so the survival aspect of Endling: Extinction is Forever is emphasized just as much as the exploration of this ever-evolving map.

The routes you explore constantly evolve as the game progresses, not just visually but in the obstacles you encounter. Areas that were once safe will have instant-kill guard dogs, making treks for food longer. The furry hunters roam the map, keeping you on your toes, and food appears somewhat randomly, so you aren't guaranteed to get fed from the same spot every day. The game does an excellent job of putting you in the mindset of this miserable animal that just wants it and its cubs to survive while the world around it is doing everything to kill them.
A couple of strays
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An orange cat sits in a sunbeam.

Ever since it was first announced in 2020, Stray has been melting players’ hearts. That’s because of its unlikely hero, a stray orange cat that has turned a sci-fi city into its personal playground. Considering that video game developers usually tend to anthropomorphize their furry leads, the idea of playing as a regular old cat who walks around on all fours and scratches up couches seemed both irresistible and fresh.

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