Short Intro

First, let me introduce myself. Cue Jeremy Clarkson's voiceover. Some say that I am the chattiest Estonian on the planet, and that I once made a song on my computer that was aired on national radio. All I can officially tell you though is that I work as a technical writer at coherence and that I have been the editor and writer of this blog for over 2 years now. Voiceover ends.

With that out of the way, what was I even doing at Gamesom? Well, have you met coherence? We have an officially stated mission to make it as easy as possible to bring new multiplayer games into the world. The more diverse, the better! Therefore I was sent to Gamescom with a single mission - find cool indie games, multiplayer or considering it, and write about them!

The Show

In case you didn’t know, Gamescom is huge. We’re talking 335 000+ visitors, 1400 exhibitors, and 230,000 square meters of floor space. It’s one of those shows where your physical and mental stamina set the limits to what you get to see. This also means that there's a good part of the 11 halls, some on multiple levels, to go through before you get to where you want to end up.

Getting Sidetracked

Inevitably, you get sidetracked. A lot. By stuff like this.

I’m sure that a lot of these games have already received the coverage they deserve, so I’m going to skip over all but the keywords. Apparently you can make a Korean spin on the beloved Sims games using Unreal Engine 5 and Raytracing, add a cute cat as a mascot, and everyone will be blown away by the visuals and love it in equal measure. It sure helps if your show booth is also simply spectacular.

You can also drive a full-size tracked tractor into the show hall and have actual farmers showing up in the audience praising your Farming Simulator games! I listened in as a German gentleman was thanking the devs for their game teaching him the complex art of tractoring around. He was happy to announce that he’s now being paid for it in real life!

Another part of Gamescom that is less-known is that there’s an actual job fair attached to it. You can go around and try little challenges like the virtual shooting range at Thales’ booth and apparently apply for a job in anything from banking to building planes for Airbus to stopping cyber bullies. Honestly, it was cool to see how many companies were there to offer jobs.

The Undiscovered Gems

Okay, so I finally made it past the distractions into the indie game exhibition area and could focus on my main mission. I have to admit that by the second day I didn’t have it in my feet to make it to every single indie game on that floor, so there’s a fair chance that I missed your cool game. If so, let us know in our forums or Discord. But I did find a number of games that I thought were genuinely amazing. Weirdly, they all start with a C - like coherence!

Cactus

What I loved about it: Easy, approachable, yet challenging. A novel take on the main character that fits like a glove.

If you’re a gamer that played games in the early 2000s, you’ve definitely heard of Serious Sam. It was a single-player shooter where you spawned in a closed arena and had to survive incoming waves of various enemy hordes as long as you could, while carefully seeking out better weapons, ammo, armor and health kits. Contrary to its name, Serious Sam never took itself seriously and as such was a very funny way to blow off some steam, with a bit of a difficulty curve.

As someone who sunk a good chunk of time in Serious Sam and all the sequels, I spotted this familiar mechanic immediately when I glanced upon Cactus. While watching the gameplay I talked to the devs Nils and Niklas to find out that, indeed, Cactus was inspired by their love for Serious Sam! They added their own twist though - the main character is a cactus that can use its own body as a weapon. This involves shooting spines, punching, exploding in a way that sends all your spines flying around at once, and several more.

Cactus looks like a potential hit to me, not just because of the fun mechanics and very pleasant graphics, but the main character is so well designed that it has proper Hello Kitty or Minecraft Creeper levels of icon vibes going on. For the moment, only single-player content has been revealed, but there is obvious potential for at least an online co-op to be added. You can find the free demo on Steam, with the full game coming in March 2025.

Catrophy Trail

What I loved about it: Great theme! Ragdoll physics is always funnier when you can share it with friends.

Who doesn’t love cats?! Krafton Inc.’s Inzou already convincingly demonstrated the kick that cats can add to a game, and Catrophy Trail does not veer from this time-proven formula. Only this time the cats are the main characters. Their job is simple - get a wagon, gather it full of stuff and try and transport it back to your home town, so you can upgrade it with the loot. Sounds simple enough? Only it’s not!

That’s because this world runs on ragdoll physics. Even simple tasks such as crossing a bridge suddenly become (quite funny) challenges, as you and your up to 7 additional friends try to somehow give at least an outward appearance of a concerted effort. Which is inevitably doomed to failure as getting 8 people to work in sync is somehow already amazingly similar to herding cats. And that’s even before you throw traps, ballistas and bombs into the mix. Jeez. Looks like a great game to enjoy either with your kids, or alternatively, fully grown friends looking for laughs. No demo yet, but you can apply to join the playtest and find your herd of cats here.

CAMPS

What I loved about it: A true labor of love, and a testament to solo devs's abilities. It's hard not be blown away.

CAMPS is a game I stumbled upon outside of the Gamescom venue, at a party. It’s just one of those cases where you sit down for a moment with a friendly stranger at a bar and you briefly talk about what either of you is up to. And then it turns out that this guy is living in some nondescript small town in Northern Finland and developing a game, all alone. What kind of a game? He pulls up a phone, and positions it on the table to show me. I don’t know what I expected to be seeing from a single dev project, but it sure as hell wasn’t this!

This is a military sandbox shooter akin to ARMA, made in Unity. It has 10v10 networked gameplay, 40 weapons, a handful of vehicles and a jetpack, automatically generated missions, fully destructible trees and terrain, ability to build base fortifications, a proper loot and inventory management system, and even a Game Master Mode where a GM can throw anything he likes against the players or run custom scenarios. You can download the demo from Steam and gasp at what’s possible yourself.

Alexander, the developer, is truly a force to be reckoned with. Get this man a publisher, pronto!

Carrera Hybrid

What I loved about it: Model race cars infused with software. It's good old fashioned fun taken to the next level.

This is one of those physical games that comes dangerously close to becoming an AR or Augmented Reality game. I have a soft spot for those as I was a part of designing and building several of these games myself a few years back. Many of you have probably seen and played around with electric slot car race tracks. This is that, but also so much more. Carrera Hybrid plants a permanent battery into their 1:50 scale model cars (chargeable via USB) that basically does away with the tyranny of the electrified slot. These cars can drive even around your house, on custom tracks you set up.

You control the cars via tilting your smartphone and pressing pedals on it. However, the cars have a bit of intelligence on their own as well - if you go out of the track, the cars can rejoin others on track automatically (assuming the wheels are still touching the ground).

And if you want to get deep into it, there’s all sorts of interesting features like configurable speed, tire grip, and braking effect. You can also simulate tire wear and be rewarded for picking the proper racing line on track, which gives you a short speed boost over your competitors. An option to have 16 players lining up on the grid should get the juices pumping for anyone who has even the slightest interest in racing cars.

Taking it All In

All-in-all, my first Gamescom was an amazing experience. There were plenty of cool “Gamescom moments” like running into the devs of Fallout London at the Cologne Cathedral’s steps; talking with the cultural attache and chief economic diplomat of Estonia in Germany about the economics of the game industry; meeting the dev of Alpa Kids whose app taught my kid to read, write and do simple math; seeing lots of super cool retro games and consoles (my fav was the Playstation 2 built into the BMW M3 CS model from NFS: Most Wanted), and generally feeling the excitement for new games that people my age often tend to forget, but yet need to be reminded of so badly!