Peek at the Week (Aug 24-30)

Guten Tag aus Köln!

I couldn't be more excited to be back in Cologne for another gamescom! I think this may be my tenth (!) show, and I can't wait to see what this year has in store. I'll be here for Opening Night Live and, of course, to get hands on with a load of games to write about for you all in the coming weeks.

While gamescom is obviously the biggest thing on the calendar, there's still plenty happening in the world of games, so let's get into the peek at the week ahead!

Game releases

• Fancy a break? Ultrapool mixes pool with roguelite elements
• An early LFG rec is finally releasing! Messhof's Blood Dungeon, a roguelite bullet heaven game whose demo I became obsessed with
• Time to hack and or slash in loot 'em up Shadow Dungeon and Divinium, a gorgeous 2D Metroidvania
• Get to the bottom of Uncle Lou's disappearance in Lou's Lagoon, a survival and crafting game where you also fly a seaplane
• Sludgineers is an incremental clean 'em up where you clean the countryside, process pollution, and upgrade your equipment
• If you build it, they will come in cozy city builder A Little Age
• Big releases of the week: Thursday is busy with Star Wars Zero Company, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 2 and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

Events

• gamescom (Aug 26-30) is the big thing happening this week. It's world's largest video game event and there'll be plenty of gaming news coming from it. Geoff Keighley and sjokz kick off the week with Opening Night Live (Aug 25), a two hour long extravaganza featuring announcements and news from games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past and Final Fantasy VII Revelation. gamescom Awesome Indies (Aug 27) will have a bunch of excellent indie reveals and gameplay to show, hosted by the wonderful Jane Douglas!
• The MIX (Aug 24) is happening in-person in Cologne, so head on down to play a bunch of incredible indies! If you're not able to, there's a Steam event running all week where you can check out the selected games from home
• I had the honor of curating some games for the Weird Days: Job Simulator event on Steam! There are over 100 job simulator games taking part, but trust me, these aren't your run of the mill gigs! I had a blast going through the games and picking my faves, go check them out on the event page! Thanks so much to Newt and the team at Dark Cocooning for asking me to take part, it runs from August 24-31. Here's a little more about the event from the Dark Cocooning team:

Weird Days is the first edition of a Steam event dedicated to indie games that don’t quite fit into the usual categories. There are so many strange, funny, and creative indie games out there, but many of them are difficult to discover through Steam’s traditional categories. With Weird Days: Job Simulator, we wanted to create a festival that highlights job simulation games with a weird twist: games that transform jobs, everyday tasks, and daily routines into unexpected, absurd, unsettling, or sometimes completely horrifying experiences. The goal is simple: to give players a place where they can discover original, fun, and completely weird games.

• GamingUp had a showcase on August 23, showcasing games from Germany, Austria & Switzerland. They also have a Steam event with all the featured games so you can check them out from home
• Games From Spain are rarely plain! Check out this collection celebrating Spanish games (Aug 17-31). There are 30 playable in person at gamescom, and plenty of demos to dig your teeth into via the Steam page for the event
• PokémonXP & Worlds is happening in San Francisco, celebrating 30 years of everyone's favorite pocket monsters
• And yes, Grand Theft Auto VI is finally getting its gameplay reveal via Netflix (Aug 27)

Next week

Next week is PAX West, which I'll also be attending! Hope to see some of you there.

Some quick LFG housekeeping: The Friday newsletter this week will be my picks from the games announced at gamescom, and I'll have a special edition go out early next week with more hands on impressions. Tschüss!