The Tribeca Games Festival is back for its third year, with another terrific slate of games to be featured. In the previous two years, the Festival has featured games like Sable, Twelve Minutes, NORCO, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, Immortality, and American Arcadia. The seven games Tribeca chose this year are incredible examples of where storytelling is going in games.
(Up. Storytelling in games is evolving to an incredible point and these seven games prove it.)
Chants of Sennaar is being developed by Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment’s Indie Series. Inspired by the myth of Babel, players will explore, observe learn and decode languages in a universe “where ancient languages are both the lock and the key.”
Chants of Sennaar is coming out on September 5th for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Soccer fans will want to play attention to Despelote, a “slice-of-life adventure about childhood and the magical grip soccer held over the people of Quito, Ecuador in 2001.” You’ll play as Julián, an eight-year-old boy who loves soccer, and you’ll interact with the city and people in it as Ecuador attempts to qualify for the World Cup.
Developed by Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena and published by Panic, Despelote is coming in 2024 to PlayStation, Xbox and PC.
Dédawang da ting mi ando showxa ere! That’s Belter Creole for ‘that’s what I’m talking about!’ which I was gleefully shouting when I saw the first trailer for Telltale’s take at The Expanse. Even more so when I heard that the newly reformed Telltale would be working with Deck Nine for the game. Deck Nine excels at what makes The Expanse tick; interpersonal relationships, strong female characters and great stories.
This prequel story about everyone’s favorite Belter, Camina Drummer, will launch this summer with its first episode.
From KO_OP, Goodbye Volcano High is a “hybrid cinematic narrative/rhythm game/coming of age/interactive movie experience.” You play as Fang, voiced by Lachlan Watson, as they go through their last year of high school. (And the world is ending, so there’s that, too.) KO_OP is really hitting on all facets of the high school experience with this one – interactions with friends, dealing with crushes, and even playing music and writing songs about the whole thing.
August 29th is when you’ll be able to get your hands on Goodbye Volcano High and its stunning, hand-drawn art, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC.
From the same developers that created 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault comes A Highland Song inkle Ltd’s latest features hand-drawn animation and painted scenery that brings the Scottish Highlands to life, telling the tale of Moira McKinnon, who’s never seen the sea before. Her Uncle Hamish sends her a letter one day, urging her to come to his lighthouse where a surprise is waiting, leading her to run away.
There’s no date yet for A Highland Song, but it’s coming on Nintendo Switch and Steam.
Nightscape is coming from Mezan Studios, a team based in Doha, Qatar. There’s no Steam page for the game yet, but from what I’ve gathered through the @playNightscape Twitter account and the Tribeca page, the game is rooted in ancient Arabian astronomy and legends where you play as Layla, in a world where the stars have fallen to Earth. Layla’s father has a magical astrolabe, which she can use to awaken the power of the stars.
I wasn’t able to find a trailer for the game; I’m hoping we’ll see a full one at Tribeca next month. There are a few videos on @playNightscape, but some are over a year old, and I’d love to see where the game is now.
Laura Bailey. Ashley Johnson. Janina Gavankar. Troy Baker. Anthony Rapp. This is a third of the amazing cast behind Stray Gods: A Role-Playing Musical, formerly known as Chorus. It’s being developed by the Australian Summerfall Studios and it’s the story of Grace. Grace finds herself accused of murdering the last muse and needs to prove her innocence to a pantheon of Greek gods within seven days. She develops musical powers, which players will have to wield in that quest.
I played the demo for this during LudoNarraCon and was absolutely stunned by what I saw. Branching narrative games are one thing, but the branching narrative in Stray Gods includes branching in the middle of songs. That blew my mind.
Stray Gods is being published by Humble Games and will be on PC on August 3rd.