A demo of Hollow Knight: Silksong will be playable at this year’s Gamescom, with Microsoft set to show it off in tandem with the first public exhibition of the ROG Xbox Ally handheld.
Yep, the fates of this long-awaited Metroidvania sequel and Asus’ Xbox-branded portable PC continue to intertwine, like star-crossed lovers. Well, aside from how star-crossed lovers are traditionally bound by love and crossed stars, not a desire to make money and also a desire to make more money.
Developer Ludogram has announced a new first-person four-player co-op horror game called Invokyr, in which you and up to three friends enter an abandoned house and dare to play a cursed board game from the 1970s. Every dice roll will result in a new trap, dark twist of the environment, wicked creature, or worse. It’s in development for PC (via Steam).
Ludogram CEO Edouard Gaudel said, “Invokyr is a love letter to the thrill of board games and the fear of the unknown. It’s about camaraderie under pressure, betrayal at the worst possible time, and the creeping dread of a house that’s watching your every move.” Watch the announcement trailer above and check out the first screenshots in the gallery below.
You’ll discover single-use dice scattered throughout the house, and rolling it results in a unique effect that can either help or hurt your chances of survival as you face off against the Gamemaster (voiced by Baldur’s Gate 3’s Amelia Tyler). You can (and probably should) work together, but you can also abandon your friends as well if the going gets tough. Meanwhile, Ludogram promises reasons for replayability in that “every run reveals new secrets, unlockable rewards, and deeper layers of the mystery that binds players to the game.”
You can wishlist Invokyr on Steam if you’re interested.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Cherry picking.
Well look who finally showed up! Microsoft has today announced that Hollow Knight: Silksong (yes, the Hollow Knight: Silksong) will be making an appearance at Gamescom 2025 in a new playable demo.
In a new Xbox Wire blog post, the company confirmed that Silksong will be one of the titles coming to the Xbox booth for the duration of the event (20th-24th August). This will be playable both on PC and on the ROG Xbox Ally X — the company’s upcoming entry to the wonderful world of handheld gaming.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
We’re excited to return to gamescom in Cologne, Germany from August 20-24 to connect with our fans from all over the world.
This year, the Xbox booth will be full of fantastic upcoming games from Xbox and our incredible third-party partners coming to Xbox, PC, and Game Pass this Holiday and beyond – and yes, that includes Hollow Knight: Silksong. On top of that, there will be the first ever public opportunity to go hands-on with the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, as well as other fun activities and photo opportunities. We’ll also deliver two days of broadcasts live from the show floor on August 20 and 21, join up with our amazing community for another FanFest, and more.
Keep reading for more details on everything we’ve got planned for gamescom 2025.
This year the Xbox booth will feature over 20 games from our first party studios and our amazing third-party partners – spread across more than 120 gaming stations – alongside photo opportunities and experiences.
Attendees will be able to go hands-on with some of our upcoming game releases and hardware, as well as experience updates to some of our most beloved franchises, including:
We will also host an exclusive theater presentation of The Outer Worlds 2, the sequel to the award-winning first-person sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. Step into Protectorate territory for an exclusive look inside the Tomb of the Matriarch—an opulent facility where history, loyalty, and propaganda intertwine. In this guided theater experience, witness how The Outer Worlds 2 explores a society that trades freedom for security, and reveres its founders with unsettling devotion.
From our third-party partners around the world, the Xbox booth will feature playable demos for:
And we’ll have a couple more surprises at the show from our partners too.
You’ll be able to find us in Hall 7 of the Koelnmesse, North entrance. See below for the consumer show opening times:
gamescom 2025 will also see a celebration of the World of Warcraft community, unveiling the game’s next expansion, Midnight, with a dedicated booth in Hall 8. For the first time, players will be able to get their hands on the all-new Housing system. One of WoW’s most anticipated features ever, Housing will allow players to build, decorate and customize their own homes in Azeroth.
The booth will also feature a Community Stage with non-stop programming, including developer & creator meet & greets, esports competitions, cosplayers, and Midnight developer panels. The celebrations aren’t limited to the WoW booth, as the entire week kicks off with a World Premiere of the expansion’s opening cinematic during Opening Night Live on August 19, immediately followed by a special Midnight Expansion Reveal broadcast on the World of Warcraft YouTube and Twitch channels.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will be revealed live on August 19 during Opening Night Live at gamescom. Get ready for epic twists, developer intel, and the official start of a bold new chapter in Black Ops history. Then tune into Call of Duty social channels after the show for even more exclusive content.
This year at gamescom, we’re thrilled to introduce the Xbox Digital Passport Quest – a fun and interactive way to explore each Xbox booth and get a chance to win exciting prizes from Xbox and our top partners including Amazon, Meta, LG, NVIDIA GeForce, and NVIDIA GeForce NOW. As attendees journey through the broader Xbox booth, they will complete activities that showcase the benefits of Xbox Play Anywhere – buy a game once and play across PC, Xbox console, and supported gaming handhelds – and the unbeatable value of Xbox Game Pass – hundreds of high-quality games on Xbox console, PC and cloud. At Gamescom we’re celebrating our commitment to let you play the games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want.
We want everyone to be able to visit us in comfort and safety. As such, we are ensuring that all areas of the booth are wheelchair accessible, Xbox Adaptive Controllers will be available upon request, and there will be select demo stations with adjustable-height desks and monitors. Plus, we’ll have “Here to Help” staff to assist players of all abilities navigate our booth and game experiences.
For those who can’t make the trip to Cologne this year, we’ll be bringing the show to you with a broadcast live from the heart of the Xbox booth on Wednesday and Thursday. Join Xbox and friends for a deeper dive into some of the highly anticipated games at gamescom 2025 from our first party studio teams and partners around the world. We’re bringing you first-look gameplay, developer interviews, new trailers, updates, and more. We can’t wait to connect with fans across the globe and show off some of the amazing games coming soon to Xbox.
Keep an eye on Xbox Social channels for the full content schedule in the days leading up to gamescom.
The live English-language broadcast from Xbox’s gamescom booth will be available in Traditional Chinese, German, French, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Mexican Spanish, along with ASL and English Audio Descriptions. You can catch the Xbox @ gamescom Broadcast on regional Xbox channels on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and elsewhere.
Building on a successful tradition, Bethesda will once again bring gamescom directly to its global fanbase. The team will deliver three days of live broadcasts from the Xbox show floor in Cologne, beginning on Friday, August 22. Each daily show on twitch.tv/bethesda_de will feature developer interviews, game showcases, community segments, crafting highlights, and live IRL tours from the event.
Xbox FanFest is turning 10—and we’re celebrating a decade of unforgettable moments and community at gamescom 2025 in Cologne! From our first gathering in Los Angeles to this milestone event, FanFest has always been about bringing fans closer to the games, creators, and each other.
Winners of our 10th Anniversary Sweepstakes have been selected—congrats to all! Not a winner this time? Sign up at https://aka.ms/XboxFanFest so you don’t miss future events and giveaways. Already a member? Join the celebration and share your favorite moments with #XboxFanFest on social.
Our social media teams will be on the ground bringing you live coverage, updates, news, new videos, and lots of fun stuff too. And make sure to keep an eye on Xbox Wire all week for coverage of the Opening Night Live show, not to mention articles about many of the games on show.
For all the latest updates on Xbox at gamescom this year, stay tuned to the Xbox channels on X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and LinkedIn social channels, or the @XboxDACH X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube social channels for German-language coverage. We’re using #Xboxgamescom as our event hashtag.
The post Xbox @ gamescom 2025 appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Long-awaited indie sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong will be publicly playable at Gamescom on Microsoft’s Xbox booth, before its highly-anticipated launch, due sometime before the end of 2025.
Silksong sounds like it will be one of the booth’s biggest draws, alongside a first public outing for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — the third-party portable Xbox consoles also out later this year.
The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox’s biggest first-party game for the rest of this year that’s not Call of Duty, meanwhile gets a “theater experience”, which sounds like it’ll be hands-off demo.
In terms of other playable stuff, well, Obsidian’s garden sequel Grounded 2 will be there, if you don’t want to just play the Game Preview version at home. More excitingly, Ninja Gaiden 4 gets a first public hands-on appearance, while Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is there with an “exciting city update”.
Keen to play the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC? Us too, though on the Gamescom show floor Microsoft is simply showing the base game. (It’s very good but, uh, we played it last year.)
From non-Xbox studios, meanwhile, Microsoft has a long list of playable demos — including the likes of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and Borderlands 4, plus the Xbox versions of Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade.
If you’re visiting Gamescom, the world’s biggest video games show in terms of its public attendance, Xbox will reside in its usual home within Hall 7 of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from August 21 to 24. Alternatively, keep an eye on IGN for all of our coverage direct from the show floor.
Silksong developer Team Cherry recently said that its game was on track to launch later in 2025 but before the holidays.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The Cyberpunk 2077 modder behind a bunch of the game’s most popular romance mods is set to make NPC showering an optional extra in two of their works, with the hopes that these “non-sexy mods” will no longer be “hidden unnecessarily”.
Their decision comes as a response to recent changes Nexus Mods have made regarding creations that’re classed as “adult”, something the modding site’s done as a result of the Online Safety Act coming into force in the UK. The legislation’s seen the likes of social media and porn sites also have to adopt new age verification checks before allowing users to access a range of content deemed unsuitable for children.
Glen Schofield, who co-created Dead Space, co-founded Sledgehammer Games, and most recently directed The Callisto Protocol, said “it’s tough out there” in the games industry, and admitted he had potentially “directed my last game” after failing to secure financial support for his latest prototype.
In a candid post on LinkedIn, Schofield said he’d been working with his “great artist” daughter, Nicole, who went to him with an idea for a new horror game — maybe even a new horror sub-genre, although he didn’t specify what — and had been working on the idea for the last eight months.
Alongside a “small, talented crew” of six U.S. devs and a “full crew” in the UK, Schofield said he started talking to people, most of whom “loved the concept.” Initially surmising he’d need around $17 million, the director was advised to lower the budget to “get it to $10 million,” before being told to further streamline the project to come in at around “$2-5 million.”
“So last month, we decided to walk away. Some ideas are better left untouched than done cheap,” Schofield wrote. “We had a team of six here in the States and a full crew in the UK. Now, everyone’s looking for work. They’re all talented folks — if you’re hiring, let me know.
“As for me — I’ve worked on games of every size. From two of us to over 300 devs. Spent the last 15–20 years making big AAA titles with great teams. That’s what I do. That’s what I love. But with the industry on pause, AAA feels like it’s a long ways away.”
Schofield says he’s “back to [his] art,” but admits he misses AAA development.
“I miss it all; the team, the chaos, the joy of building something for fans. I’m still around, making art, writing stories and ideas, and still cheering the industry on. But maybe I’ve directed my last game. Who knows? If so, thank you [for] playing my games.”
Striking Distance was founded over six years ago by Schofield. The studio is a subsidiary of Krafton, the parent company that owns the rights to the widely popular battle royale game PUBG. The studio was initially formed to create a narrative-driven game set in the PUBG universe, but ultimately released The Callisto Protocol, a third-person survival horror separate from PUBG that released in December 2022.
Callisto Protocol was met with mixed reviews and plagued with problems, from performance issues to reports of studio crunch and issues with crediting people who contributed to the development. Roughly a month after release, it was reported that the game failed to meet Krafton’s sales expectations, and Schofield eventually left the company in September 2023.
We thought The Callisto Protocol was ‘Good,’ awarding it a 7/10 in our review, writing: “The Callisto Protocol is a satisfyingly gory spiritual successor to the Dead Space series, but it’s ultimately more of a striking modern mimic than a scary new mutation.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Dusty extract-o-shooter The Forever Winter got an update over the weekend that added another mech to the growing list of horrifying war machines that roam its post-apocalyptic world looking for fleshy idiots to squash and eat. “The StiltWalker is a multi-legged destruction machine: equipped with multiple missile and machinegun weapon systems,” say the developers in an update post on Steam. Pfft. What’s so scary about that? Just shoot some rockets at it.
“It is also equipped with a point defense system that can detonate explosive munitions that are fired at it from a distance.”
Ah. Well. Nevertheless.
Docky Kong.
If you’re anything like us, your Switch 2 has likely become a Donkey Kong Bananza machine for the past two weeks. We mean that in a figurative sense, of course — it’s the game that has dominated most of our time of late — but some arty fans have taken it much more literally.
Take Reddit user freakintoddles, for example, who recently took to the r/NintendoSwitch forum to share their latest creation: a Switch 2 dock cover modelled on DK’s iconic barrels. It looks bananas in the best possible way and, what’s more, its creator has even shared how you can make one yourself… if you have a 3D printer to hand.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection will release on September 30 — at least, that’s what the Xbox App was telling prospective players over the weekend.
Look now, and you may get the placeholder date of 31 December, 2025, showing on the Xbox app’s Legacy Kollection storefront (or at least I did when I checked first thing this morning), but for a brief time yesterday, players were getting a different date: either September 29 or September 30, depending upon where they were in the world.
As posters on Reddit suggest, this will more than likely get confirmed at the next Evo weekend, the annual celebration of all things fighting games, the next of which is set to take place in Las Vegas on August 1. It’s possible the release date went live a few days ahead of schedule before being quietly switched back to the placeholder date.
Details about the Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection were revealed last month. Highlights include confirmation that all arcade and console games support online multiplayer with rollback netcode, as well as confirmation that there are more secrets yet to be revealed.
Players can also expect the bundle to guide them through Mortal Kombat history with behind-the-scenes materials and interviews.
“Digital Eclipse’s interactive documentary format explores how Mortal Kombat changed the way society perceived video games,” an official description from the studio says. “By using digitized humans as player sprites in an over-the-top, martial-arts fighter, the game thrilled players, shocked critics, and laid the foundation for a franchise that has thrived for more than 30 years. Hear firsthand from the original dev team of Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel, and Dan Forden, along with other exclusive interviews, rare concept art, vintage marketing materials, and archival video footage.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
