7 New and Upcoming Video Games to Be Excited about in 2019

Hosted iatn the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, the Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the largest event for video-game industry professionals and brings together around 28,000 attendees each year. GDC is home to a packed expo floor, summits that feature talks by industry professionals, networking events, and an awards show.

As you might expect, GDC is a great place to get a whirlwind tour of up-and-coming games. Having so many on display together makes it a little easier to keep up with everything coming out soon. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get there—the price tag, location, and length of the conference can make it, and by extension the video games displayed there, hard to access. Fortunately, I was able to spend the week at GDC 2019 in March, and I scoured the expo floor for cool games to highlight to all my fellow Twin Cities geeks back home.

This is just a short list of what stood out to me and can help serve as a small guide to some cool new and soon-to-be-released projects coming out of GDC that weren’t national news items. These video games are in different stages of development, but all were in some sort of playable form at GDC.

Here is what excited me.

1. World Next Door (Rose City Games)

Lovers of comics, anime, and video games unite! World Next Door stood out to me among dozens of video games at GDC because it has a little something for everyone, with a genre-bending combination of narrative- and action-driven play. As if that were’t enough, the game even has an accompanying comic book. You play as Jun, a “rebellious teen” trying to escape a parallel world inhabited by magical creatures. The creators write, “Inspired by the emotional storytelling and thrilling action of both anime and indie games, players can expect to meet and develop friendships with an eclectic cast of characters while uncovering the mysteries hidden within this world.” I only played a demo, but the mix of exploring the story in heavy-dialogue scenes and playing real-time puzzle action kept gameplay varied and engaging. The game was developed by Rose City Games and is the first video game published by American anime and manga company VIZ Media. Released March 28, 2019, World Next Door is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Puzzle-action play in World Next Door. Rose City Games

2. Falcon Age (Outerloop Games)

The endearing interactions players share with their raptor in Falcon Age immediately grabbed my attention. I watched players smile as they fist-bumped, dressed up, and bonded with their raptors. Although the cute birds serve a nice hook for the game, this video game isn’t solely about raising and interacting with a falcon. It isn’t a pet simulator—it’s a first-person action/adventure game. Playing as Ara, you will hunt, gather, craft, and explore a desert world as you join a rebellion fighting back against a force of robot colonizers. Interested in the story, but sure you want to play through the fight sequences? No problem: the game offers two play modes, story mode and imprint mode. Both offer the full experience of the story and world, but imprint mode makes fighting optional. It gives gamers a little more control over their player experience if they don’t want to stress out over difficult fights. Falcon Age was released April 9, 2019, for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.

Gameplay from Falcon Age. Outerloop

3. Losswords (Local No. 12)

Word-game enthusiasts and literature geeks should check out Losswords, in which “it’s up to you to put literature back together.” Read excerpts and “play” through literary classics by reassembling their pieces. Different modes let you fill in the blank, rearrange words, find words that have been anagrammed, or remove extra words. I played through excerpts of Pride and Prejudice, but the game will offer dozens of classic public domain texts once the final version comes out to the public. Overall this game excited me because provides players an approachable and new way to engage with literature. Losswords will be released in summer 2019 for iOS.

Fill in the blank mode in Losswords. Local No.12

4. Table44 (Alon Adda)

Table44 is a riot to play with friends and strangers alike. The game’s inventor and creator, Alon Adda brought it to GDC as part of Alt.Ctrl.GDC, an exhibition showcasing video games that use alternative control schemes and interactions. Table44 looks like it’s straight out of a carnival—it consists of a table with LED lights and a pillar in the center. Each player, up to six, gets assigned a color, and they all scramble to touch their color on the table as the LEDs flash and change colors as fast as they can. As players touch their color, the console plays music that responds to their touch. The first person to touch an allotted amount of colors wins. It’s like multiplayer Simon, but instead of memorizing a pattern of colors, you just have one assigned color and have to scramble around the table to touching it as fast as possible. Adda has not commented on whether or not Table44 will get a full release, but I hope to see it pop up at bar or arcade some day.

5. Mutazione (Die Gute Fabrik)

I had a Cuban upbringing, and a healthy dose of chisme—gossip—was integral to my life with my grandmother in Miami. Gossip was how I learned about the people around me and was a way to bond with new neighbors. So when I heard there was a game that builds its world through gossip, I had to go check it out. Mutazione describes itself as a “mutant soap opera where small-town gossip meets the supernatural.” You play as Kai, who is nursing her ailing grandfather back to health. Tend your garden, make friends with the local colorful mutants, and explore a tangled, dreamlike world. In this narrative-driven (and gossip-driven) game, the drama is just as important as the “adventure” part of the story. The intrigue behind the characters and world has left me anxiously awaiting its release later in 2019.

Gameplay from Mutazione. Die Gute Fabrik

6. Sloppy Forgeries (Playful Systems)

Many games at GDC had booths set up with bean bags, couches, and chairs. The Sloppy Forgeries booth consistently had a full couch of people sitting and playing, in addition to a crowd of people around it watching it. Featured as part of the Indie Mega Booth and Day of the Devs, this fast-paced local two-player game focuses on just one objective: paint your copy of an iconic painting faster and better than the person competing with you. The enormity of the task—recreating a classic painting in minutes with nothing but a mouse—brings joy to the game. It’s a simple concept that drew in spectators and players alike as people commented and took delight in some pretty sloppy forgeries. Playful Systems has not yet announced a release date or platforms for the game.

Sloppy Forgeries multiplayer mode. Playful Systems

7. Creature in the Well (Flight School Studio)

Creature in the Well looks like most hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers, but it has one big difference: in this game, every single room in the dungeon looks like a pinball game. Swing your flipper like sword as you venture into a desert mountain and restore power to an ancient facility. The chaos that comes from bullets and attacks bouncing around the pinball-inspired rooms augments the inundation of rapid-fire attacks and overwhelming action common to hack-and-slash games. Carefully launch projectiles at the perfect angle so they can bounce and hit enemies in different areas or run as attacks bounce around the room. Creature in the Well will come to Switch, PlayStation4, Xbox One, and PC in summer 2019.

If you are looking for some new games to pick up in 2019, these are some great titles to look out for. They dare to break molds and cross genres. They feature news kinds of characters, stories, mechanics, and visual styles. As the video-game industry and the people who make games change, we see the content being developed change as well. I’m proud to highlight these games and the studios developing them.