Gamescom 2020 – ASH “Demo Booth”

Gamescom kicked off this week with a bang – the all-digital expo bringing trailers, streams and – perhaps most excitingly – demos for dozens of upcoming releases. Application Systems Heidelberg (ASH) has sent the Welsh Gaming Network demo codes for some of their games – check out our first impressions below!

Most of these games have demos available on Steam too – so if you wanna check them out, click the links in the headers.

Ghost on the Shore

Ghost on the Shore is a colourful, first-person walking sim. You’re stranded on an island with a ghost in your head for company – and you’re working with it to unravel the mystery of who – or what – inhabits the island. It’s nice, colourful, and the story set-up is intriguing. It looks like it’s shaping up to be a beautiful walk around the ghostly Rogue Islands.

Growbot

The demo for Growbot was one of the shorter ones on offer. But it was just enough to get a flavour of this old-school animation point-and-click. The captain of your Growbot ship has gone missing, and it’s up to you to explore and repair the ship, solving puzzles along the way. I really loved the style of this one – reminiscent of classic hand-drawn animation, all pastel and stop-start-y. Check the trailer above to see what I mean!

Haiki

A precision-platformer with a colour change mechanic. The controls are pretty tight and the colour change mechanic adds an extra layer of difficulty to some already-tricky levels. Very satisfying to play. I was a little disappointed by the lack of d-pad support (really helps with precision vs using an control stick) – but it’s early days. Still played well.

Mutropolis

More colourful point-and-click goodness. More hand-drawn aesthetic, and a bit of added humour. The demo starts at a dig site in the 50th Century, looking for artefacts of our time. I thought it was pretty charming, with light dialogue and a fun premise. Enjoyable to puzzle around with. The demo is available on Steam for all, too!

Rosewater

Another point-and-click, this time more in the vein of the Broken Sword series – going back-and-forth between multiple screens/buildings to figure out puzzles or get new items to move forward. Set in the Wild West, the demo caveats that there will be voice acting and more sound elements in the full release that weren’t present here. But even without, it looks to be shaping up pretty nicely.

There you have it! Let us know what you think of Gamescom – and the games – in the comments below. And don’t forget to grab demos and sale games over the next few days on the Steam Gamescom hub!