The Annapurna Interactive Showcase has just concluded, featuring nearly half an hour of game reveals, updates on existing games, and new partnership announcements.
Biggest among them were the reveals of a release window for Stray and the announcement of an expansion for The Outer Wilds, but here's a full rundown of everything we just saw, heard, and learned:
The Artful Escape
The Artful Escape, a musical story game about the nephew of a folk-music legend coming to terms with who he is, was first announced way back in 2017. Today, we saw a brand new trailer for the game at last bestowing a release date upon it: September 9 for Xbox (Game Pass, yes!) and Steam.
Within the new trailer, we also got a tease of a star-studded voice cast which includes names such as Michael Johnston, Caroline Kinley, Lena Headey, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Strong, and Carl Weathers.
Neon White
Neon White got a new gameplay trailer today showcasingits fast-paced movement and choice-based gameplay that has you discarding weapons to gain access to powerful traversal abilities. Neon White is coming to Nintendo Switch and PC this winter.
Outerloop Games
Studio head Chandana Ekanayake, lead programmer Justin Lalone, and animator Aung Zaw Oo made an appearance in Annapurna's showcase today to tease a partnership with the publisher on a new game. Outerloop was previously responsible for Falcon Age. While the team didn't offer any specifics on their next project, 80 Days and Falcon Age writer Meg Jayanth is working on this one too.
Ekanayake says that Outerloop's next game will tackle "immigrant culture growing up in the US, gossiping aunties, overbearing parents, and family pressure." We also saw a bit of off-screen footage of skateboarding gameplay.
A Memoir Blue: A Journey Into the Depths of Memory
Cloisters, an indie development team originally from New York City and now multinational and based in Taichung City, showed off a trailer for its debut project: A Memoir Blue: A Journey Into the Depths of Memory. The trailer hinted at a family-focused narrative with some oceanic themes and, as the title indicates, a journey into the world of memory. A Memoir Blue is planned for Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Nintendo Switch, and iOS at a later date.
Jessica Mak
Everyday Shooter developer and Soundshapes co-director Jessica Mak announced a partnership with Annapurna Interactive for a new, unannounced game. No specific details were shown, but Mak mentioned the importance of music, sound, and replicating the kind of flow a musician has when they are playing an instrument and turning it into gameplay — something we saw glimpses of as a blocky human shape ran through brightly colored 3D and 2D levels. Mak suggested this new game will involve action, adventure, and musical components.
Storyteller
Developer Daniel Benmergui brought a new trailer for Storyteller, a puzzle game about crafting stories. Players are given a title for a story, and are then given its pieces: characters, settings, or plot events, and are tasked with arranging them into a story that makes sense and fits the initial prompt. Storyteller is coming soon to Nintendo Switch and Steam, and a demo is out now on Steam.
Solar Ash
Solar Ash got a brand new trailer today, showing off more of its smooth parkour, colorful world, and the strange creatures that inhabit it. Best of all, we finally have a release date of October 26, 2021, for PS4, PS5, and PC.
Ivy Road
In an announcement that sounds like the set-up to a very, very cool joke, the creator of the Stanley Parable and Beginner's Guide Davey Wreden has partnered with the co-creator of Gone Home and Tacoma Karla Zimonja, as well as Minecraft composer Daniel Rosenfeld (C418) to create a new game being published by Annapurna. The group offered no concrete details as to what they're making, but the new studio is called Ivy Road, and Wreden and Zimonja spent a lot of their announcement video drinking tea from a very fancy-looking tea set in a pleasant, plant-filled room.
Skin Deep
Next, we got an update on Blendo Games' upcoming project Skin Deep, a first-person shooter with a sneeze meter, upsetting bodily injuries, being smelly, and all kinds of other weird, gross physical problems (or benefits, depending on how you see them). It's by the creator of Quadrilateral Cowboy and is planned for release on Steam at a later date.
Platform Updates
Annapurna dropped a rapid-fire reel of platform release updates as follows:
- The Pathless is coming to Steam on November 16
- What Remains of Edith Finch is headed to iOS on August 16
- I Am Dead arrives on PS5, PS4, and Xbox on August 9
- Telling Lies and Gorogoa are both headed to Xbox GamePass "soon"
Stray
At last, we got a meaty new trailer for Stray, the upcoming PlayStation and PC game about a lost cat wandering a city of strange, human-like machines. There's plenty of new gameplay detail in the trailer, including some very cute cat interactions, but the most important bit is that Stray finally has a release window: it's coming to PS4, PS5, and PC in early 2022. Not much longer!
No Code Entertainment Productions
Glasgow-based No Code is making a horror game of some kind, and this time, they say it's on purpose. The creators of Observation and Stories Untold made a brief appearance in the Annapurna Presentation today to tease a partnership with the publisher, with co-founders Jon McKellan and Omar Khan and lead designer Graeme McKellan discussing their strange relationship with the horror genre and the ways in which they have accidentally stumbled into it their entire lives. Khan described No Code's next game as their "biggest project to date," saying the studio had doubled in size to make it happen.
Outer Wilds
Finally, Mobius creative director Alex Beachum made an appearance with an update on the upcoming Switch release for Outer Wilds, which is planned for this holiday. But the even bigger announcement is that the game is getting its "first and only expansion" entitled Echoes of the Eye, which is planned for release on PS4, Steam, Epic Games, Store, and Xbox on September 28.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.