I am the proud of owner of an achievement for the Xbox 360 release of Super Meat Boy where the aim is to complete an entire chapter without dying. It’s something that I bring up whenever possible, as a testament to my skill and commitment to mastering one of the most frustrating (and satisfying) modern platformers of a generation.  

So when the opportunity to hop into a demo of Super Meat Boy 3D arose at this year’s gamescom, I had to do it. Would this be a glorious return to form for me, or a devastating fall from grace? Does this utterly absurd, high-speed, high-stakes game work as well in a three-dimensional setting?  

The demo would have me believe that the answer is a resounding yes. Meat Boy’s plight is familiar – he’s on a mission to save Bandage Girl from the clutches of Dr Fetus, and each level adds a slight uptick in difficulty as Meat Boy’s girlfriend is swept away each time.  

Taking control of Meat Boy again, even in his new, squidgy, 3D form, ignited the muscle memory of riding a bike – he moves in a very similar way to the original game and within a few levels I was hopping, sprinting, wall-running and of course, perishing like a pro. If these controls are lodged deep inside a part of your mind, it’s going to feel wonderfully nostalgic, but don’t fret if they’re not – everything still feels intuitive and responsive, another trick the original pulled off. 

However, unlike the original, the 3D element adds new layers of depth to each level – as well as moving up, down, left and right, Meat Boy now moves forwards, backwards, diagonally – having to consider depth perception at warp speed almost makes Super Meat Boy 3D feel like an entirely different game. Precision is utterly key in these moments, but there’s a forgiving element – a circle underneath Meat Boy will mark where he is about to land on a surface, making those extra risky leaps a little easier to calculate.  

Each level is an obstacle course, and your goal is to get from the start to the end. Simple in theory, but there’s a brutal buffet of disruptive, violent barriers between you and your lost girlfriend. It’s not just tricky jumps and avoiding falls – just the opening levels had me dodging chainsaw-wielding robots, giant, toxic cubes of slime full of eyeballs, and Meat Boy’s famous moving wall saws, to name a few. While some hurdles felt visible enough to prepare for, others took me by total, annoying surprise (and killed me instantly). Getting your butt kicked and learning for next time is what made Super Meat Boy so rewarding to conquer – and that masterclass is brought back for you to retake here. 

And while some of this is new, it wouldn’t remotely feel out of place if it were squashed down into 2D form and placed inside the original game, which feels like a testament to how developer Sluggerfly is preserving the authenticity of Super Meat Boy. 

Super Meat Boy 3D also looks great, these surroundings – from dreamy green platforms to harsh industrial caverns – feel familiar in how they’re designed, but with a stylish, modern flair. This new art style gives opportunity for fun new animation that really brings the characters and environments to life – squirrels running around with guns, lava spewing down walls, and of course, many more visceral ways in which Meat Boy can meet a swift end.  

All the swagger and attitude of the original Super Meat Boy is present here – and it feels as though Super Meat Boy 3D is built to iterate on its predecessor, not outperform it. That said, if you’ve never played the original, that doesn’t matter here – the premise is clear, and these opening levels are designed to welcome newcomers into Meat Boy’s weird, unforgiving world, but the initiation won’t be easy. The demo is respectfully saying “welcome back to Meat Boy”, but there’s enough new ideas here to make it truly feel like a successor worth playing, if you can handle the frustration.  

There’s a primal human pleasure in simply finding out what something does. It’s the reason you’d still want to push a button that says “do not touch”, or wonder what’s behind a locked door. Keeper thrives on that idea, building out a game of discoveries and experiments around it.

Seeing extended gameplay for the first time at gamescom, Keeper’s key trick – of telling its story in a never-before-seen world, all without words – means that almost everything you do is less about completing an objective you’re told to follow, and more about finding out what the objective is.

Shine Your Light

First revealed at Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, Keeper is a dreamy, otherworldly adventure that puts you in the misshapen body of a suddenly sentient walking lighthouse – but there’s no narrator, nor talking sidekick to explain where you are, what’s going on, and what you should be doing. Working these things out is the game.

“A key tenet of this game is the unexpected,” Creative Director Lee Petty tells me. “We wanted players to be able to relax a bit, chill out a bit, and embrace the unexpected. So to that end, there’s some experimentation, but there’s nothing the player can do to die in this game. They can’t mess up the experience. We sort of get the player on board early so that, when something unexpected is thrown at them, it’s not a moment of panic that they don’t know how to get through.”

In three portions taken from early sections, I see how Keeper slowly introduces new ideas in subtle ways. With only the ability to walk, shine a beacon, and the help of a bird companion called Twig, the player needs to work out what they should be doing through context clues.

“The lighthouse beam has two main modes,” explains Petty. “It has an unfocused and a focused mode. The unfocused mode is for exploring – as you shine it around, you might see little subtle shimmers or reactions in the world. Bigger transformations occur when the player focuses that bigger, brighter beam on things, and that’s often used to solve puzzles as well.

“Twig rides along on the lighthouse and can do things that the lighthouse can’t. The lighthouse doesn’t have arms, only legs. Twig however, can directly manipulate things in the world. So what the player can do, for example, to solve a puzzle is use a combination of that light ability and Twig’s ability to pick up and collect things.”

I see this early on, as the lighthouse comes across a lumpen… thing blocking its path. Under the unfocused beam, the creature bristles slightly, enough to show you that it’s reacting – and, focusing the beam, it puts a claw in front of its eyes. This produces a shimmer, which attracts Twig, who flies to grab the claw, and an option to “tug” appears on the screen. Twig pulls at the creature, who flops to one side, revealing a seed that Twig stows away for a future puzzle.

It’s a sequence of purely organic discovery – the game doesn’t tell you what you need to be doing, and the weirdness of it all means you don’t come in with a preconceived idea of what you should be doing, other than trying things out. And this is repeated throughout. I see the lighthouse effectively organising a dance of creatures attracted to its light to smash through a sheet of ice, a gorgeous discovery that touching a certain spore-like plant will allow the lighthouse to subvert gravity itself, and even a wild sequence in which it becomes apparent that the beam can control the flow of time on objects it touches in a certain area.

The real ace in the hole here is that Keeper’s world is unlike any other – its bucolic landscapes inhabited by scuttling, alien-like creatures, trees with faces, and flora with unusual effects. It means that, even once you do work out where to go, or what to look at, the effects of your interaction remain a surprise. Crucially, Double Fine never want that feeling to go away:

“We wanted the entire game to have this sort of organic, almost handmade, bespoke feel,” Petty adds. “It’s not a game of repeating actions as much as a game of wandering among unique areas and set pieces that change.”

In just 15 minutes of gameplay, I see – by my count – 11 different puzzles (not to mention smaller interactions as you prod and poke at the world around you). It’s clear that the aim here is to keep surprising the player with what they realize they’re being asked to do. Not all of this is ‘mission-critical’, either – the more you explore, the more you’ll find:

“There’s a lot of stuff for the player to discover along the experience,” adds Petty. “Some of those come in the form of environmental storytelling, some of those things are in the form of hidden interactions with the various creatures, and a lot of it is also just about the players’ interpretation of the games events, and finding meaning in the experience.”

Crucially, though, this is all done with the same small pool of button presses. It might have been complex for the developers to find so many ways to play with these toys, but they didn’t want the player to be bogged down by an unwieldy control scheme:

“We wanted Keeper to be an experience that wasn’t especially difficult to play,” says Petty. “It’s not a game about control, mastery or incredibly hard challenges, because we wanted this sort of unique, weird-but-chill experience for players to go on. We don’t have a need for all those buttons on the controller.

“And we also just have a really big set of accessibility features where people can map the controls to what they want. If they prefer to play with keyboard and mouse, or they play on a controller, we support both of them.”

For a game this overtly strange, it’s a way of easing you in – in all ways, Keeper has been designed as a welcoming experience, not an alienating one. You’re discovering this world, not being repelled by it – and it seems there’s a great deal to discover. What I’ve seen is from its earliest stages, and a literal cliffhanger at the end of the demo – in which the lighthouse tumbles into an abyss caused by a bridge, well, ceasing to exist under its feet – promises that there are far more surprises to come.

Keeper arrives for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, and Steam on October 17, priced at $29.99 USD. It will be an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and available day one with Game Pass.

Keeper

Xbox Game Studios

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

From Lee Petty and Double Fine Productions, Keeper is a beautiful and surreal otherworldly adventure, and a story told without words.

On an island in a long-lost sea, a forgotten lighthouse stands dormant in the shadow of a distant mountain peak. As withering tendrils spread and coalesce, it awakens. Taken with a mysterious sense of purpose and joined by a spirited seabird, it embarks upon a heartening tale of unlikely companionship, an odyssey of mystifying metamorphosis, and an unexpected journey towards the center of the island, into realms beyond understanding.

How do you follow one of the most hilarious first-person shooters ever created? Turns out: give us a skateboard and tell us to get nuts. During a recent hands-on opportunity with an early build of High On Life 2, I could instantly recognize many returning hallmarks from the original, most notably the return of the talking weaponry, Gatlians, but also the ability to use Knifey’s grapple to pull me onto ledges, and tons of sharply written dialog that blend this wild universe together. But it was skateboarding that really caught my attention.

Picking up some time after the end of High On Life, the hands-on preview kicked off with me skydiving into the world of ConCon (Convention Convention), which is a planet full of floating platforms housing (you guessed it) conventions. A bounty has led us here, targeting senator Muppy Doo, a politician who is in league with the evil executives at Rhea Pharmaceuticals who are intent on turning humankind into… prescription pills.

My mission? Make my way through multiple conventions to find him. First up is ParkingCon, a collection of crashed cars piled on top of each other with dozens of aliens fighting over the few remaining parking spaces – one space was even being “held” by a plastic chair – and we need to free one up to give returning character Gene’s flying Winnebago a chance to park by any means necessary (e.g. shooting aliens).  At first, I came to this with the approach of a standard first-person shooter, focusing on enemy groups one at a time, trying to clear these parking spaces, and cycling between my two available Gatlians: Sweezy (laser pistol) and Gus (shotgun). Then I hopped on the skateboard and everything changed.

High On Life Pro Skater Edition

The skateboard effectively replaces your sprint button, but it’s the speed and agility that comes with it that makes it such a game changer. The more I moved around the level on the board, the more objects I found to grind on by pressing the LB button, like handrails and concrete dividers. I even found some sections that resembled quarter pipes and noticed that certain cars were positioned just right to give the impression they were ramps to jump off. That’s when it dawned on me that this entire level was basically a skatepark! This is going to be great.

The speed of battle really picked up the more I became comfortable finding areas to grind, while cutting down enemies left and right with Sweezy and Gus. I could even “throw” my skateboard at enemies for a one-hit kill and found it hugely helpful that the same button tied to grinding was also Knifey’s head-latching ability, which would smartly pull me to rails or grindable objects if I was going to be coming up short. It means you can get into a real flow, even in a game where you wouldn’t expect it.

If you recall from the first game, traversal with Knifey’s grapple was a big component, unlocking a variety of environmental and platform puzzles. Now with the inclusion of the skateboard, the platforming aspects are all amplified and it wasn’t long until the demo started showcasing what else I could do.

Continuing to the next floating zone involved grinding on floating buses, bouncing on giant inflatable balloons, and then wall riding to safely cross a chasm of clouds, where I reached PoliCon (a politics convention). The skatepark motif continued here as well, with plenty of handrails and other objects to grind swiftly across this new zone, moving through to my next objective. And that’s when our personal assistant Suit-O stepped in.

So, What Else Can You Do?

For our demo, Suit-O was ever vigilant in popping up at the bottom of the screen and making sure we stayed on schedule for our 30-minute preview – intentionally fast-forwarding us through highlights of the demo, and “accidentally” leading us to the conclusion of a boss battle with one of the game’s new characters, Sheath, voiced by the amazing Ralph Ineson. What followed was a hilarious (and bloody) dissection of his alien bounty hunter character – whose head is then transformed into a new Gatlian. Yep, a boss voiced by a famous actor is also a gun in this game.

Sheath complimented Sweezy and Gus nicely with the feel of a battle rifle – Halo fans might find the familiar “punch” here — and his alt-attack is an Impaling Spike that can be used to string together subsequent targets and to create Spike ziplines, which I later use to cross over to the next convention, MurderCon (it’s exactly what you might think it is). I love that these Metroidvania-like components are still present from the previous game, opening areas formerly unreachable once you have acquired the specific tool to do the job.

Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!

Once we’ve stepped through the gates into MurderCon, the demo’s narrative shifted slightly to focus on Knifey who, as returning players may recall, loves to get bloody. He was predictably overjoyed to attend a convention that’s all about one of his favorite subject matters. Before I knew it, we were neck deep in a battle royale, surrounded by a laser tag arena aesthetic with lots of neon strewn about. And, yes, tons of enemies to shoot at. The speedy traversal elements took a backseat here, as the demo showcased more of a traditional multiplayer-like shooter layout, allowing us to lean more into our Gatlians and their abilities.

Sheath feels great with that perfect battle rifle punch, and using his Impaling Spike to tie groups of enemies together was incredibly fun. Sweezy is still a solid laser pistol with an alt-attack that creates a slowdown bubble that surrounds a group of enemies. And Gus’ shotgun and disc shot abilities are great at clearing crowds of enemies. All this fighting culminated in a boss battle with a large, ogre-like character named Brutus, who had a giant pyramid-like helmet fused to his head. It wasn’t long after that me and my Gatlians made short work of him and were crowned winners of MurderCon.

Finally, I was whisked forward once again by Suit-O to face off with Muppy Doo. At first, the encounter was your standard fare of dodging incoming attacks and unleashing some hurt with my Gatlians. But it was the next phase of the battle that I wasn’t quite ready for – and was unlike anything I’ve played. The final boss battle took place… in the menu screen.

See, Muppy Doo has a shrinking ability and was able to get so small that he snuck into my suit’s mainframe and tied up Suit-O. After freeing Suit-O by “clicking” on him, he became my mouse cursor as I clicked through my menu screen, trying to uncover the mini Muppy Doo who was trashing my sub systems.

Muppy would pop his head out from behind an icon, or start destroying menu items, and we’d punch him, forcing him to duck into another sub-menu. After a bit of this click-tag, it became worse for my character, forcing a full system reboot and deleting my save game… which rebooted into an entirely different game – Bible Adventures. No, really. Eventually, things continued to escalate to the point where the only solution was to have Knifey stab me to death – which he was more than willing to oblige. And thus, we wrapped up our time with High On Life 2.

A few games under their belt now, I like that Squanch Games is really starting to settle into a mindset of, “Wouldn’t it be funny if…” and find ways to go through with it, while making it incredible fun (and incredibly funny) in the process. Finding that balance is not an easy thing to do – kind of like trying to ride a skateboard while blasting aliens in the face. Of which we’re very excited to try more of once High On Life 2 launches for Xbox Series X|S on February 13, 2026, available on day one with Game Pass Ultimate.

High On Life 2

Squanch Games, Inc.

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

You’ve done it. You’ve taken down an intergalactic cartel, brought humanity back from the brink of extinction, and hunted dangerous bounties to the far corners of the galaxy. Bounty hunting has brought you fortune, fame and love; but when a mysterious figure from your past reappears and puts a price on your sister’s head, your cushy life gets thrown into chaos.

Do you have what it takes to risk it all and bring down an intergalactic conspiracy that once again threatens your favorite species (humans)?

High On Life RETURNS as you and your beloved rag-tag team of alien misfits shoot, stab, and skate your way through gorgeous, dangerous worlds all across the galaxy to blow up the EVIL pharmaceutical conglomerate hell-bent on putting price tags on HUMAN LIFE!

As always, gamescom 2025 kicked off with an Opening Night Live showcase, giving fans a fresh look at the amazing titles in store from Xbox for the rest of this year.  

Opening the show, viewers got a huge first look at Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, showing off the game’s co-op Campaign, and teasing what’s ahead for Multiplayer and Zombies. That came alongside new gameplay for The Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s The Order of Giants DLC. Plus, we showed off more of Double Fine’s otherworldly Keeper, revealed a new expansion and a PS5 release for Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition, and offered up the cinematic trailer for the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion. 

And to cap it all off, we also introduced a teaser for Season 2 of the award-winning Fallout TV show. 

And this is just the beginning, with gamescom now officially underway, Xbox will soon be opening the doors to our showfloor booth, and showing off everything from the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, to a first public hands-on for Ninja Gaiden 4, to Hollow Knight: Silksong, to an exclusive theater presentation of even more gameplay from The Outer Worlds 2 – and much, much more besides. 

If you can’t attend the show, fear not. Xbox Wire will be publishing stories all week, covering games from our booth, while the Xbox @ gamescom Broadcast will bring you even more first-look gameplay, new trailers, announcements and deep-dive interviews live from the show floor across August 20 and 21. There’s so much more to tell you about. 

But for now, catch up on all of today’s news and reveals from Xbox below: 

Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition – New DLC and PS5 Release Coming Later This Year 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, Game Pass – also available on Steam and PlayStation 5 

World’s Edge announced the Age of Empires franchise will once again be landing new frontiers with the launch of Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition onto PlayStation 5 later this year. In its ongoing quest to bring the joy of the Age franchise to even more platforms, the PS5 launch will also arrive alongside brand new DLC: Dynasties of the East, available for players on all platforms at the same time. Pre-orders for Dynasties of the East, as well as Age of Empires IV on PS5 are open now. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Opens the Show With First-Ever Gameplay 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, or play it day one on Game Pass – also available on Battle.net, Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 

Opening Night Live kicked off with the worldwide reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, introducing viewers to a 2035 world on the brink of chaos. Fan-favorite David Mason returns, leading an elite Black Ops squad on a covert mission to the sprawling Mediterranean city of Avalon. Players can squad up or play solo in a mind-bending Co-Op Campaign that spans neon-lit rooftops in Japan, coastal strongholds, and even the deepest corners of the human psyche. 

Treyarch’s Miles Leslie (Associate Creative Director) and Raven Software’s Natalie Pohorski (Lead Producer) joined Geoff Keighley onstage to share more about the Co-Op Campaign’s narrative, mission variety, and Endgame —an epic PvE experience where you’ll reach new levels of power to survive overwhelming odds. Footage premiering at the show offered a look at the Co-Op Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies, setting the stage for the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 on November 14. 

Fallout – Season 2 

Surprise teaser trailer for Season 2 of the award-winning Fallout TV show! 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants DLC Shows Off New Gameplay 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere – also available on Steam, PlayStation 5 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the award-winning cinematic adventure from MachineGames, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, released the all-new gameplay trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants. In this story DLC launching on September 4, 2025, players will dive beneath the bustling city of Rome as Indiana Jones to uncover the dark secrets of the Nephilim Order. 

The content will be accessible to those who own the Premium Edition, Collector’s Edition, or Collector’s Bundle on September 4, or it can be purchased separately (base game required). 

Keeper: Learn More About Double Fine’s Otherworldly Experience 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, or play it day one with Game Pass – also available on Steam 

Keeper Creative Director Lee Petty appeared in an interview to discuss the otherworldly experience coming from Double Fine, on October 17. Showing off new gameplay from early in the game, Petty explained more about this truly unique adventure, from its inspirations (including ’80s classic ‘The Dark Crystal’) to how it offers an emotional heart through its unlikely duo of heroes. 

Playing as a walking, wordless lighthouse, players will be able interact with the world through shining its light. By using its bird companion, known as Twig, they’ll be able to work together with the mysterious creatures of the island they’re exploring, uncovering its mysteries as they go. 

“We can’t wait for people to get in there and experience our strange, beautiful world for themselves,” concluded Petty. 

Ninja Gaiden 4 Unsheathes a Story Trailer Featuring New Brand-New Gameplay 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, or play it day one with Game Pass – also available on Steam, PlayStation 5 

Revealed during Opening Night Live, the Ninja Gaiden 4 story trailer tells us more about the central characters that surround the Raven Clan’s young ninja prodigy, Yakumo, and his quest to slay the Dark Dragon. In addition to showcasing high-octane action, the trailer introduced a new weapon in Yakumo’s deadly arsenal, the Assassin’s Tools. New characters, new environments, and challenging new enemies were also revealed, that will collectively push players’ skills to the limit. 

Ninja Gaiden 4 launches on October 21, pre-order now to receive the Dark Dragon Descendent Yakumo skin. 

The Outer Worlds 2 Shows Off Its Cast of Companions 

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, or play it day one with Game Pass – also available on Battle.net, Steam, PlayStation 5 

We got a fresh look at the upcoming sci-fi RPG when Obsidian Head of Sequels, Mark returned after his starring role in The Outer Worlds 2 Direct earlier this summer. In a trailer featuring new gameplay and a focus on six of the game’s Companion characters, we met: Earth Directorate Agent, Niles; drone healer, V.A.L.E.R.I.E.; bloodthirsty cultist, Aza; field medic Inez; the pistol-toting Marisol; and the Warhammer-wielding Tristan. As the trailer put it – they’ve got guts, they’ve got gear, they’ve got sidequests. 

The Outer Worlds 2 launches October 29, 2025 – and if you can’t wait to see more, the gamescom Xbox booth will include a theater presentation with all-new gameplay. Can’t be there yourself? Check back on Xbox Wire this week for a full rundown of what’s shown. 

World of Warcraft: Midnight – Blizzard Entertainment Unveils the Next Chapter

PC via Battle.net 

World of Warcraft executive producer Holly Longdale took to the stage to unveil World of Warcraft: Midnight, the next chapter in the Worldsoul Saga.  

Check out the premiere of Midnight’s beautiful opening cinematic and step into a story where the Void threatens to consume the Light… and maybe start planning your dream home while you’re at it, as the new Housing feature is coming in this expansion!  

Pre-purchase for World of Warcraft: Midnight is available now on PC via Battle.net.