PaperSeven showed off their new story-driven adventure game today on the Twitch livestream at Gamescom – Blackwood Crossing.

Taking part on a train between two orphaned siblings, 14-year-old Scarlet and 10-year-old Finn, you play as Scarlet as she follows her brother through the train and into surreal changing landscapes as we discover the past, present and feelings of both siblings.

Like any good game of this genre you must go around and find clues as to how to proceed, both through items you can pick up and examine closer as well as items set around the landscape around you. Using these to solve puzzles will let you proceed in the game and eventually get to the root of why they are on the train and what has happened.

Indeed, the trailer can explain it a bit better than I can;

As you can see, eventually it gets very dark as we seem to delve almost into an atmosphere shaped by Finn’s own thoughts and feelings as his beloved sister enters teenagehood and grows apart from him. It seems wonderfully rich, and I am curious as to the fully story.

If you too are interested, we’ve been told to expect the game sometime in early 2017, with a simultaneous release on Xbox One, PS4 and Steam. More information can be found at blackwoodcrossing.com.

Amplitude showed off more of their upcoming 4x strategy game today, with another faction we can expect to see in Endless Space 2.

For those who don’t know, Endless Space 2 is a sequel to another 4x strategy game. You basically grow your faction’s population, colonise planets, fight other factions or choose diplomacy to negotiate with them – all while managing resources, space, troops and much more besides. The game is turn-based and decisions will have to be made with how to handle things like overpopulation, battles that you get into and so on.

Shown off today at Gamescom was the third playable faction they’ve introduced us to, the Lumeris. Primarily money-making and trade obsessed, the Lumeris’ bonus means that they are able to buy new planets for colonisation instead of going through the processes of making a mothership and flying it over to set up the outpost to grow to a colony.

We’ve still no ideas about how soon we can expect to see this game coming to our various platforms, but rest assured we’ll be keeping an eye on its progress.

One of the games shown off today on Twitch’s livestream stage from Gamescom 2016 was a VR game being published by Polish studio Klabater and developed by Carbon Games.

Based off Alice in Wonderland, Alice VR sees you taking the role of ‘Alice’, awoken on a space station by an AI who informs you that a malfunction has left you needing to make a planetside journey to find fuel. Instead you find an abandoned town and despite being told to stick to instructions by the ship’s AI, exploring could lead you to find the secrets hidden away there.

The game was made for VR play, but it will be available to play without the need for a headset. Because of the made for VR experience part though, the movement is slow and deliberate so as not to disorientate the player or make them feel ill. There is a run option that can be turned on though, if you wish to pick up the pace a little.

There’s a lot of puzzle solving to this game, some involving the Wonderland-esque mechanic of shrinking and growing. There are also tracks around that allow for movement on ceilings and walls. The choices you make throughout the levels the game is set over will have an effect on the ending too, so choose wisely.

Alice VR will work on Rift, Vive and other PC VR headsets, although not on PS VR quite yet. The game is set to release in October some time, for more information visit the site at alice-vr.com

Having revealed one of their upcoming games earlier that day, Kalypso were the last to take to the Twitch livestream stage today to reveal that they were due to publish a game developed by Kite Games that is sequel to a series last seen in 2007 with Sudden Strike 4.

Sudden Strike, for those unaware, is an RTS series of games set during World War II in which you can play as all sides in campaigns and battles and the forth game is no exception. Sudden Strike 4 will have 20 different maps all over Europe with campaigns set with the German, Allied and Soviet armies. You start each level with a certain number of troops and because this is not an RTS that involves base-building it is more tactical in that you need to plan well how best to make use of what you’ve been given.

While what you get given is limited in itself, with clever use of your own troops it is possible to take control of enemy vehicles that are emptied of opponents or some of their weaponry if it is not completely destroyed and you are able to repair it. Environments are very destructable with buildings being easily levelled if you attack them hard enough and each battle and map are based off real life locations and battles that took place during World War II.

Helping you out is the Generals system, which allows you to choose from a few different generals with different bonuses based on how you want to tackle a battle. Completing battles earns you stars which can then level up those abilities and unlock new skills. There will also be challenge modes which see certain limits being put onto maps to see how you can cope with the extra difficulty.

The game will come with singleplayer and a multiplayer option for up to 8 players (4 vs 4), and is releasing in Spring of 2017. The game’s already up for pre-ordering though.

Kalypso today announced their new game in a Gamescom livestream, revealing their ‘city ruler’ game Urban Empire.

Urban Empire is a hybrid of a strategy game, a management game and a city builder which sees you taking the role of an important family, tasked with building and ruling over a new city as mayor. The game starts in 1820 and as time goes by years advance until the game ends at 2020. This means that you pass through at least five different eras, starting from the Industrial Revolution, playing through a national awakening, the time of the two world wars and the decades between, going through the cold war era and finally ending up in the modern time and a little beyond.

Choosing between 3 maps, you build your city by setting out areas to build, setting out a network of roads from a few choices offered and then assigning areas to residential, retail and industrial. Then you place down services and let your city build around the assigned area. The first service you will need to place will be the City Hall where you do most of the political parts of the game, choosing to alter taxes, funding; proposing laws and working with the political parties to try and keep a balance between keeping them happy and also the regular citizens, which are divided into several difference classes as well.

As time goes on, you use brainpower (accumulated through the years with schools) to research new technologies from a ‘web’ that allow for new services, buildings and business to be built. Citizen happiness will have an effect on these as well, with middle-class happiness improving the quality of goods and the efficiency being affected by working-class happiness. Both improve with high happiness levels.

Keeping the balance is important as over the years you risk being voted out of power if you lose favour with enough of the voting public. The first era though has been described as a ‘tutorial’ so that by the time that is a risk, you should know what to do to prevent that.

If you’re interested, the game is already up for pre-order. Currently the release date set on its Steam page is January 20th 2017, so keep your eyes open for more information as we approach that date.