Cocoon is a game that makes perfect sense while you're playing it. That would be an unremarkable achievement if it wasn't also a game that forces you to use its levels to solve themselves. At Summer Game Fest 2023 I had around half an hour to play through the game’s opening, and it has stuck with me more than anything else I saw at the show.

Cocoon is the debut game from Geometric Interactive, a studio founded by former Playdead employees Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid. Carlsen was the lead gameplay designer of the award-winning puzzle platformers Limbo and Inside, and Schmid the audio programmer of Inside. The pair also collaborated on 140, a minimalistic indie platformer, and have been working on Cocoon with a small team in Denmark for over five years.

As in Limbo, Inside and 140, controls and interactivity in general are pared back to a minimum. On an Xbox controller, that means movement with an analog stick and interactions confined to a single button. The complexity comes from the environment, the narrative from exploration. It’s reminiscent of Tunic or Hyper Light Drifter in its lack of dialogue and tutorials.

Orbs are everything in Cocoon. They're assets that open doors, trigger switches, reveal hidden paths and solve puzzles, but they’re also levels themselves. Remember that scene in Men In Black where there’s an entire galaxy in a little marble on a cat's collar? Geometric Interactive has taken that idea and made it a core mechanic. Each orb is a distinct world with its own vibe, original puzzle mechanics and a boss fight. You can hop in and out of these worlds by placing an orb into sockets dotted around the game, and can even bring orbs into other orbs, which, given the abilities they unlock, will likely be critical to finding paths forward.

I say there’s a “boss fight” in every orb, but there is no conventional combat in Cocoon – there is just a single interaction button, after all. You defeat bosses by using something in the environment like a water spout or an exploding mine. These fights are also forgiving: I took a “hit” once, and it revealed a delightful mechanic: Instead of dealing damage or killing me, the boss booted me out of its world. I then had to traverse back to the fight to finish it off. Defeating the two bosses I found granted new powers of sorts, in classic Metroidvania style, which allowed progression to new areas and the discovery of more orbs.

There were other simple environmental puzzles to solve. One involved ascertaining the order in which to hit some switches, another had me pulling towers around to open a door. A slightly trickier one involved some doubling back to navigate a hidden path. Given this was the very start of the game, I’m sure the complexity will ramp up significantly. By the end of my playthrough, I was already jumping in and out of worlds in order to get orbs to where they needed to be. 

A colleague who was watching my demo said that they could tell I’ve "played a lot of these types of games” — thing is, I haven’t. Cocoon is a game where everything makes sense, but you can’t explain why. I'm sure, as in other puzzle adventures, I'll get stumped in some places, but exploring this world felt completely natural. After a while I stopped being surprised that everything I tried just worked. Solving puzzles became a flow state as I giddily wandered around carrying my precious orbs.

Cocoon is firmly at the top of my wishlist already, and it’s tough imagining anything overtaking it. It’s being published by Annapurna Interactive, and will come to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles later this year.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

You probably wouldn't think of McDonald's if you're asked to guess which company would release a retro game this year. But yes, the fast food giant did indeed launch a 2D retro game seemingly in the style of Game Boy Color, and it's all in celebration of Grimace's 52nd birthday. The company teamed up with Krool Toys to develop the platformer that you can play on a modern PC or a mobile device. In it, you control Grimace on a skateboard as he searches for his missing friends — and collect enough milkshake for all his guests — before his birthday party begins.

While I fumbled a bit trying to control the purple mascot as he jumped over obstacles and slid across hand rails, I could only blame my own clumsy handling of the game's controls. The game worked smoothly on a computer, and you can even expand the screen if you don't mind getting blurry graphics, which truly do look like they were created for Nintendo's old handheld. The game was most likely created using a drag-and-drop tool for Nintendo handheld games called GB Studio. Indie developers like Krool have been using the program to create retro games, because doing so from scratch is typically very time- and resource-consuming. As a nice nostalgia-inducing bonus, even the website for the game is a throwback to the era marked by colorful and busy Angelfire, Lycos and Geocities web pages.

McDonald's only officially released Grimace's Birthday as a fun little game you can play on PC and mobile, but people were quickly able to find and share a copy you can download. While it's not an official release, it will allow you to play the game on a Game Boy emulator in case have one. 

During the Xbox Games Extended Showcase, it emerged that several more indie titles are bound for Game Pass. One of them is Neon White, which was one of Engadget's favorite games of 2022. It debuted on PC and Nintendo Switch last June before landing on PlayStation in December. There's no Xbox release date as yet, but as soon as Neon White lands on Microsoft's consoles, Game Pass subscribers can try it at no extra cost.

Neon White is a fast-paced platformer that could help you to live out whatever dreams you have of being a speedrunner. You'll need to take out every demon on a level before you can reach the exit. Chances are you'll want to do that as quickly as possible to achieve the best time possible and beat your friends on the leaderboard. Oh, there are dating sim elements too. It's a strange, stylish game, but what else would you really expect from publisher Annapurna Interactive?

Microsoft revealed during its second showcase of the week that nine more indies are coming to Game Pass on their respective launch days through the ID@Xbox program. Little Kitty Big City, an adorable narrative puzzle game in which you'll help a lost cat get home, is coming to Xbox, Switch and PC early next year (a demo will be available during Steam Next Fest later this month). Another Crab’s Treasure, a charming Soulslike, is also coming to those three platforms early next year.

Techtonica is a first-person factory automation game, while The Wandering Village is a city-building sim that plays out on the back of an enormous, roaming creature. The other indies that Microsoft said are bound for Game Pass are the turn-based RPG Sea of Stars, social simulation adventure Mineko’s Night Market, handmade narrative title Harold Halibut, hospital management game Galacticare and narrative adventure The Bookwalker.

Have you ever struggled to bring together four folks for an Overwatch team? Tried to figure out how you and your friends can play Destiny 2 simultaneously? 

Can you imagine assembling 33 players for a 25-minute raid? 33 Immortals plans to do exactly that.

Channeling the animation style of retro cartoons (and a little Banner Saga), 33 Immortals is a massively substantially multiplayer roguelike top-down action game, from the creators of Spiritfarer. At a session following this week’s Xbox Showcase at Summer Game Fest, five fellow spirits and I tried to escape hell. 

In this early build of the game, there were two character types in play: a swordsman who could deal heavy close-range damage and an archer who could send up to three arrows toward enemies before having to reload. I got to play as the latter. Alongside the standard attacks, I could hold the action button to charge up a heavier piercing shot. The archer, when he reloads, recalls his fired arrows back to him, meaning strategic placement can effectively double the damage dealt.

All the characters also have a dash move, while trigger buttons open your world map, emote wheel and co-op powers. These co-op powers will vary depending on your character type and often demand careful planning to pull them off. Pressing the RB trigger displays a trio of circles on the ground; two of your fellow immortals need to activate the empty circles in order to trigger the attack. For me, this rained arrows on a wide area of the map, but for the swordsman, it launched a wide-ranged healing spell.

Thunder Lotus

With plenty of enemies on-screen, especially in the more challenging portal dungeons, it’s a lot of fun just chaotically spamming attacks, helping the rest of your team finish off mid-bosses, or picking off easier foes at a distance before they coordinate their attacks.

If the sword and bow options sound a little limiting, don’t worry: 33 Immortals will offer up plenty of different character types to play with. With seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues, we’ll likely get to play around with seven different warriors. Outside of co-op powers and quirks, the button layouts don’t change among characters, making it easier to try out every option. To add a little more complexity, you can gather up in-game currency from monsters you kill, exchanging them for healing or trinkets to boost attack speed, defense and more.

And you’ll likely have to try, try and try again. Each raid is built to be around 25 minutes long, and you'll want to keep as many players alive (and online) as possible so you'll be able to fell the boss at the end. More players will mean it’ll take less time to shave the health bar of bigger enemies, as the game apparently isn’t built to scale with how many characters are playing. More immortals is always better.

By the way, you’re not quite immortal as a fighter, either. After taking too much damage, you’ll fall and reappear as an ethereal spirit, not able to do anything but float around until another raider can resurrect you – something that proved to be particularly frustrating in the middle of difficult fights. Naturally, it’s just better if you fight more cautiously, heal your allies and… don’t die.

33 Immortals is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. You're rebelling against God’s final judgment that your soul is damned, and there's a fun twist in the way God delivers his anger when you beat one of his dungeons. As you step out of the portal, the ground around you will get immolated in holy fire, and you’ll have to dodge this and spawning enemies until God chills a little.

While this was an early demo, latency was a struggle for my machine, but the team has plenty of time to stabilize – and offer demos that are not in the middle of a hectic Xbox showcase. I’m excited to play a roguelike as part of a mob, and I'm curious to see what the other character types will be.

33 Immortals is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2024.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

"Basically, we're not planning a distinct sequel at all."

Dan Greenawalt, GM of the Forza series, has been working on Motorsport games for two decades, but his remarks in a post-Xbox Showcase briefing on Sunday suggest this next release could be the last in the series. Forza Motorsport is the eighth title in Turn 10 Studios' driving sim franchise, and the first new entry in almost half a decade.

Forza has been one of Microsoft’s most reliable first-party properties. Ignoring Playground Games' spinoff Horizon series, the original Xbox had one Forza title, the Xbox 360 had three, and the Xbox One had three. Barring a few launch hiccups, every title has been well-reviewed and the franchise as a whole has sold millions. We’re now in the third year of this console generation, and there’s been no Motorsport game for fans to play.

A lot’s changed since Forza Motorsport 7 arrived in September 2017. The “day one with Game Pass” paradigm shift started with Sea Of Thieves in 2018, and has since become Microsoft’s entire business model. Now, Microsoft measures success more like a social network (or a tech news publication), focusing on monthly active users and playtime, rather than sales.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Forza Motorsport is set up more like a service game than a traditional AAA title.

While many of the modes that Forza players expect, especially the online multiplayer component, are being reworked and improved, Turn 10 is betting that its new career mode will keep players coming back week after week. At Summer Game Fest, the game’s creative director Chris Esaki talked a group of journalists through this new career-mode loop and the shift in philosophy for the series.

Esaki described Forza Horizon as “a whole new take on falling in love with cars.” We saw a career mode event called the Builders Cup, which began with a narrated showcase of a trio of cars. After picking one to roll with, you then head into “open practice,” where you get to know the car. These sessions are packed full of stats and challenges; you earn Car Experience Points (CXP) for every corner you take, and the closer to perfection you are the more CXP you’ll get. CXP is specific to each car, and is used to upgrade parts and customize vehicle performance.

After open practice, you head into a race, where there’s a new “challenge the grid” system that lets you essentially bet against your racing talent. You choose where on the grid to start and how fast your AI opponents are, with higher rewards as the difficulty scales up. After competing in the race itself, you’ll earn money for new vehicles as well as more of the car-specific CXP. Then it’s onto the next open practice, more tuning and customization, and more races.

Esaki calls this loop “level, build, dominate.” He sees it as a way to get players interested in a broad swathe of cars, rather than having them head straight to a Ferrari or Bugatti. That might sound like the ethos of another popular racing sim, but while there are definitely elements of Gran Turismo 7’s cups and café challenges in here, the Builders Cup feels both more contained and more repeatable. It’s all by design: Similar to recent Forza Horizon games, players can expect a big content update monthly, which then rolls out week-by-week.

We’ll likely hear much more about Forza Motorsport in the lead up to its release on October 10th, and I’m interested to try out the new simulation features, like a massively overhauled physics system and improved opponent AI. For now, though, the pitch seems solid. I’m a huge fan of Gran Turismo 7, but if you don’t enjoy online sim racing and the toxicity that comes with it, its single-player experience is fairly threadbare. In contrast, Turn 10 seems to have developed Forza Motorsport as a game that will last forever, with new experiences every week designed to satiate gamers’ desire for fresh races and Microsoft’s desire for monthly active users.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

It's been a packed few days of game announcements, but Summer Game Fest isn't done yet. Microsoft will host the awkwardly named Xbox Games Showcase Extended at 1PM ET and you can watch it below.

The stream perhaps won't be quite as newsworthy as the main Xbox showcase that took place on Sunday, but it seems like it'll have some juicy details. Microsoft says this presentation will include deeper dives into several of the first-party projects it showed off at the weekend, including Avowed, Towerborne, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom and the Dune expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This showcase will include gameplay walkthroughs, interviews and some behind-the-scenes features. We'll also get a look at some games from Microsoft's third-party partners, and some "special guests" will make appearances.

There are two more Summer Game Fest events taking place today after the Xbox affair. At 4PM ET, you'll be able to check out Dames 4 Games. This will feature "interviews with women who work in the industry, women who love gaming and those who aspire to make a change." The stream will include looks at several indie games.

At 6PM, you can tune into the Black Voices in Gaming stream. This will focus on projects from Black developers, games with Black protagonists and interviews with Black creators. You can catch both the Dames 4 Games and Black Voices in Gaming events on Guerrilla Collective's YouTube and Twitch channels.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

There's a good chance that you've forgotten all about Pragmata, Capcom's eerie, dystopian sci-fi adventure game. Now, Capcom is giving you a chance to forget about it all over again: a new teaser for the game has revealed that the title will miss its 2023 release window.

"It is with a heavy heart that we must further postpone the release of Pragmata," the development team wrote at the end of the game's new trailer. "Our team is currently hard at work making the best game that we possibly can, but we need more time."

As the message implies, this is actually the second time that Pragmata's release has been postponed. First announced in 2020, Pragmata was teased with a cinematic trailer showing a soldier and a young girl exploring an abandoned city before winding up on the surface of the moon. The original teaser hinted at a dystopian future and a close relationship between the lead characters, but little else. About a year later, Capcom released a video of the young girl apologizing for the game's delay. This year's trailer is similar, but at least it shows off some gameplay.

We now know that the young girl is named Diana, and she seems to be under the protection of her heavily armored friend. Together, we see them fighting robot-like creatures, exploring futuristic environments and teaming up for high-speed piggy-back rides. While the soldier does most of the pair's fighting in the trailer, it also reveals that Diana has special abilities.

Capcom

What are those powers? What are these two characters doing on the moon? What happened to the rest of humanity? Those questions will have to wait. The Pragmata team did not set a new release window for the game, promising instead that it was doing its best to "ensure that the final product is one that is worthy of your patience."

Pragmata is planned to release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC gaming platforms.

Ubisoft’s open-world Avatar game is almost here. At the company’s Summer Game Fest preview event, we got a substantial look at the story and gameplay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. James Cameron introduced the game in a prerecorded segment, teasing “new environments new flora and fauna and characters”.

A cinematic trailer lays out how this tale will fit in with the Avatar movies. In short, it’ll cover the events of both games, with the protagonist being kidnapped during the events of the first film and schooled by the human invaders. After the events at the end of Avatar, you are cryogenically frozen… then unfrozen 15 years later in time to fight the RDA’s continued invasion.

The game itself is an open-world first-person action-adventure game, where you'll be able to combine Na'vi skills and weapons with human assault weapons and a casual rocket launcher or two. It wouldn't be an Avatar thing without the ability to bond with sentient animals you can ride. The trailer teases the ability to ride direhorses as well as your very own ikran. You'll be able to feed and customize your partner when not flying down waterfalls. Frontiers of Pandora will include a new western expanse not seen in the movies, where you'll meet as-yet unseen Na'vi clans, including a secretive healer clan. 

You'll be able to equip and grow your character to fit your own playstyle, crafting weaponry and items from resources and upgrading your own skills as you see fit. 

Frontiers of Pandora launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC and, oddly, Luna. (Yes, Luna!) on December 7th 2023.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

When I saw the announcement trailer for Immortals of Aveum in the winter of 2022, I was surprised by my own interest in the game. Immortals came from an unproven studio founded four years prior by Bret Robbins, a AAA creative director who most recently built a trio of Call of Duty titles: Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare, and WWII. Ascendant Studios, his independent venture, was partnering with EA on its debut game, a first-person shooter in a militaristic fantasy world. On the surface, it didn’t sound like something I’d be drawn to.

But Immortals of Aveum caught my eye. Its cinematics were beautiful and the trailer showcased frenetic combat with bright beams of magic, all while actors Gina Torres (Firefly) and Darren Barnet (Never Have I Ever) narrated an epic story of rebellion, political sabotage and dragons. From a first-person perspective, the protagonist’s hand movements were quick and sharp, and they looked like a satisfying build-up to powerful attacks.

With a few months of hindsight, I remain interested in Immortals of Aveum and I think I’ve figured out why. There aren’t a ton of first-person action games that rely on mechanics other than guns — Dishonored, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hexen come to mind, but it’s a small field overall. That might be one reason Immortals of Aveum stands out as something fresh, but it’s also nice to see a new, AAA-level game that’s single-player and narrative-driven with a contained campaign, rather than an open world of live-service features. Learning more about Ascendant helped, too: Robbins was also the creative director of the original Dead Space and his team included former Telltale Games members, lending weight to the assertation that Immortals of Aveum would center a dense storyline.

I played a demo of Immortals of Aveum at Summer Game Fest 2023, and it was gorgeous. Its cinematics were particularly impressive: The motion capture was smooth and the character models were finely detailed, with delicate eye markings and layers of gear. The clarity of the cutscenes made it easier to get lost in the dialogue and the ravaged fantasy world of Aveum, even in a short period of time.

Gameplaywise, I had access to the blue type of magic, which granted me two abilities: a whip that pulled enemies toward me, and a burst of balled-up energy, spammable as fast as my finger could press R2. I also used the Animate ability on a giant rock hand, using a telekinesis-type power to manipulate its fingers and bridge a gap between two cliffside landings. Playing with a gamepad on PC, I found the mechanics to be almost too smooth, with my reticle often sliding beyond my intended targets, but this is something I think I’d get used to after 30 minutes longer with the game. Even with the hyper-lubricated controls, I appreciated the lack of a noticeable aim assist.

EA

I didn’t encounter the sheer number of enemies that Ascendant has shown off in trailers for Immortals of Aveum; my hordes maxed out at about eight. But by the end of my play time, I felt like I’d started to learn the rhythm of the game’s combat, and I can see it becoming frenzied — in a great way — with the addition of new magical powers. And, sure, some more enemies.

The most jarring part of the demo was actually traversing the terrain — there were plenty of craggy mountainsides and rock walls that looked perfectly climbable by modern action-adventure standards, but they weren’t. Maybe I needed to spend more time learning the intricacies of gap-jumping and ledge-grabbing, but I found my character to be slightly less spry than I wanted, unwilling to fully double-jump or pull himself onto platforms. However, the movement restrictions seemed purposeful, and the game wasn’t sluggish by any means: Immortals of Aveum felt more like a puzzle game than a climbing adventure, with a series of locked stone doors and multicolored gems to throw magic at in specific patterns.

EA

My demo broke once, when a bug prevented a stone door from opening, and a developer had to get me back on track. I was assured that the game will be in full working condition by launch day, in about six weeks.

Ascendant Studios is independent, but it’s marketed as a AAA team and it has about 100 employees. Immortals of Aveum certainly looks like a big-budget game; it’s built in Unreal Engine 5 and heading to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on July 20th. I remain intrigued; I'm excited to get my hands on a few more magical powers and see where this world of high-fantasy politics leads.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Microsoft Game Pass members will soon be able to stream PC games on NVIDIA's GeForce Now, following the announcement of a pact between the companies earlier this year. "This will enable the PC Game Pass catalog to be played on any device that GeForce Now streams to, like low spec PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, mobile devices, TVs, and more, and we’ll be rolling this out in the months ahead," Microsoft said in a blog post.

It doesn't appear to include the whole catalog, as GeForce Now members will be able to "stream select PC games" from the library, the company wrote. Still, it'll give PC Game Pass subscribers access to what we called "the enthusiast's choice for game streaming" thanks to the high performance offered by NVIDIA's latest RTX 4080 cards.

Previously, the companies announced that Microsoft Store would be coming to GeForce Now for purchases. In addition, Xbox games have already come to GeForce Now, starting with the arrival of Xbox exclusive Gears 5 last month. 

In February, Microsoft and NVIDIA struck a 10-year deal to bring games to the GeForce Now service, including Activision Blizzard titles like the Call of Duty series. Microsoft also signed an agreement with Spain-based cloud gaming provider Nware in April, and previously inked pacts with Nintendo, Steam, NVIDIA, Boosteroid, Ubitus and EE to make its games available on those companies' platforms. 

Many of those came about when Microsoft's potential acquisition of Activision Blizzard was being scrutinized by regulators in Europe, the US and elsewhere. Since then, however, UK regulators blocked the deal over cloud concerns, saying it would give Microsoft "incentive to withhold [Activision Blizzard] games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market." With the news that it's offering its PC Game Pass subscription on GeForce Now, it may still think it can convince regulators to get on board.