You can smell it in the air can’t you? Feel the chill in your nostrils and the earthy scent as leaves fall and the sun departs for another year? Yes, autumn is here, meaning we’re teetering on the cavernous hole of near-nothingness as the entire games industry gives GTA 6 the widest berth imaginable. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff to be excited about, of course. And the latest edition of the Galaxies Showcase has chucked a few more things onto the ‘ooooh intriguing!’ pile. Actually, quite a lot of things given its nearly two-hour runtime; but while you can watch the full thing and revel in its entirety if you’ve time, we’ve also picked out a few of the announcements that especially caught our eyes for your perusal. Was all this really just an excuse for Connor to enthuse about penguins? Perhaps!

Very promising musical adventure There are no Ghosts at the Grand has a demo

I’ve been very excited about Bristol developer Friday Sundae’s There are no Ghosts at the Grand ever since I saw it at a preview last year. It’s one of those things that reads like a checklist of my very specific gaming interests, being part musical, part home renovation sim, and part ghostbusting mystery adventure, all unfolding in a dilapidated hotel in a British seaside town.

The idea is you’ve got 30 days to renovate it (exactly why is part of the mystery given its protagonist has motives so secret, he’ll even try hiding them from the player), but there’s plenty more to do besides: you can explore the cobblestone streets, go sailing out at sea, or take a scooter into the countryside as you attempt to uncover the truth about the hotel’s strange past. By night, there are ghosts to deal with – and throughout all this, the cast is prone to bursting into song. And if that tickles you fancy in the same way it’s tickling mine, you can play a Steam demo right now ahead of its December arrival.

– Matt

AfterZero: The Last Drive looks like a frozen Pacific Drive

AfterZero: The Last Drive is possibly the first Pacific Drive-like, in that it’s a game about driving a car across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to scavenge, fix up, and upgrade your car, and build out your hideout. It’s the work of 3DClouds, the studio mostly known for Formula Legends, but The Last Drive is an altogether different beast.There’s a focus on environmental and traversal challenges, similar to the Snow/MudRunner games, or Over the Hill more recently. Its setting caught my eye, too, unfolding in a post-industrial world where it’s always winter. Everything is covered in snow, and the reveal trailer hints there’s a mystery at the heart of it all. Like Formula Legends, The Last Drive has a sort of blocky, inky artstyle that elevates its plastic toy-looking cars and objects, and it’s releasing sometime in 2027 for PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

– Sherif

Gritty space job simulator Contact Protocol makes its debut

Contact Protocol, an eerie, grim-looking (in a good way) starship job sim that places you in the shoes of a security officer working for a greedy corporation. Your decisions, while surely horrid, are keeping a crew of miners alive as you set course for Jupiter’s biggest moon. Aside from a killer premise, Contact Protocol has a wonderful aesthetic, offering a dirty, grisly look – full of delicious retro hardware – at a ruthless life among the stars. There’s a demo available on Steam now, and the full game’s out next year.

– Connor

Late Shift is a bizarro world-bender about a missing cinema employee

It’s hard to explain why, but Late Shift immediately reminded me of Susanna Clarke’s wonderful story Piranesi. I think it’s to do with the game being about escaping from a world you find yourself trapped in. Maybe it’s also because there’s a section with a white hallway.

On closer inspection, Late Shift, from developer AstroCat Studios, is probably more like Remedy’s work, presenting players with a bizarre, incoherent world that they have to find their way out of. Specifically, it’s a “short found footage anomaly horror game”, according to the Late Shift Steam page, told through the eyes of a missing cinema employee. Did you know former Eurogamer people Tom Phillips and Martin Robinson both used to work at cinemas? Perhaps it’s their story Late Shift brings to life. The trailer announced the release of a Late Shift demo, and the full game is “coming soon”.

– Bertie

Deperson is an eye-catching horror game set in a “nation consumed by surveillance and fear”

Call me superficial, but I was onboard with Deperson the second I saw its artstyle. Developer Error Thing describes its game as a “self-reflective psychological horror adventure”, and that begins when protagonist Aaron mysteriously finds himself in Indrija, a “nation consumed by surveillance and fear”. I’m not entirely sure what genre we’re dabbling with here on the gameplay front, but it’s got an air of point-and-click puzzler to it and it sounds like there might be a bit of action too. “Sometimes you’ll need to run. Sometimes you’ll need to think carefully,” says Error Thing. “Deperson is not a forgiving game.” Whatever it is, though, it’s certainly a looker, with a wonderfully unnerving hand-drawn animation style that’s as surreal as it is striking. Deperson is set to launch sometime next year, but there’s a demo out now on Steam, so I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.

– Matt

When Sirens Fall Silent is a psychological horror styled like a true crime documentary

I had no idea about When Sirens Fall Silent until last night, but it stood out like a fart in a church during the Galaxies Showcase. This heavy psychological serial killer horror is the new game from Martha is Dead and Town of Light studio LKA, and I’m in love with the mood and styling of it. That’s an odd thing to say given the subject matter, but its story appears to be told through a mixture of news reports, recorded interviews, and various pieces of media, all painstakingly styled with a mid-90s aesthetic. The result is something not unlike a true crime documentary, and I’m very fond of those.

The part I’m worried about, after seeing a pretty young woman in a plunging neckline top manacled by her neck to a chair in the opening, is that there’s a questionably seedy undertone to the trailer. But reading more about When Sirens Fall Silent reveals it to be a story directly dealing with misogyny and trafficking and trauma and – much more hopefully – redemption. It’s got me fascinated, and it’s due next year.

– Bertie

Stuntman: Hollywood gets a new trailer, which seems like the perfect time to mention I played it at Gamescom and liked it

Now, in itself, a Knight Rider crossover trailer for Stuntman: Hollywood – a game already bulbous with Universal IP crossovers, ranging from Jurassic World and Miami Vice to Back to the Future – isn’t especially exciting. But it has reminded me of my very tired, very confused time with it at this year’s Gamescom. The gist is you, a stunt man, race around circuits as a bullish director bellows instructions at you in a bid to get the perfect shot.

That might be a daredevil hairpin bend on a freeway, or a race against a speedboat, or – in the case of the Jurassic World stage I played – an absolutely wild motorbike chase while a volcano erupts and dinosaurs pursue you. It’s a game that demands pretty quick reactions, which is exactly what I didn’t have as the show was drawing to a close and my Gamescom flu was setting in – and I was terrible. But I did enjoy the ridiculous spectacle of it all, and its Galaxies Showcase trailer has reminded me it’s one to keep an eye on.

– Matt

Wild n Chill does for survival games what the Kingdom series did for fantasy town building games

Kingdom is the game series that comes to mind when I see Wild n Chill. Because, just as Kingdom did fantasy town building side-on and in pixel art, Wild n Chill is doing survival games in the same way. The vibes, as no one says, are immaculate: a person and their dog go out into the wilderness and set about chopping down trees and constructing a shelter and then building a solitary life out there. It’s cosy, it’s warming, it’s peaceful.

I just wish you didn’t have to be so crude as to chop down trees. It’s a personal bugbear of mine, but you wouldn’t presume to go out into the wilderness and start chopping down trees in real life, would you? You’re overthinking it, Bertie. You’re overthinking it. Wild n Chill is “coming soon” to PC (Steam) and now all of the consoles, by the looks of it. The brilliantly named Wombat Brawler is making it – a team that’s made a few similar other games before.

– Bertie

Mr. Records still doesn’t have a release date, but it’s getting a level editor

Mr. Records immediately caught my eye when it showed up during Day of the Devs earlier this year. It’s the latest game from Glee Cheese, the studio that made the enjoyable A Musical Story back in 2022, and tells the tale of a man named George who can travel through music. As he does, players are transported through vibrant worlds they’ll need to rhythmically interact with. There seems to be a bit of a management focus too, given that each level, when completed, turns into a vinyl LP you’ll need to match with customers back in your record store, and it all looks delightful. What’s more, we now know it’ll feature a level editor when it comes to PC in Q2 next year. Oh, and there’s a Steam demo too.

– Matt

Squad is coming to consoles

One of the most surprising reveals at Galaxies was that Squad is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2027. Squad, if you don’t know, is essentially a more approachable version of Arma, in that it’s a realistic multiplayer shooter where class dependency and logistical planning are core elements of gameplay. Matches in Squad feature combined arms combat and take place across massive maps – up to 4x4km and supporting 100 players.

Squad on console, which doesn’t yet have a release date, includes select maps from the PC version and it also supports console cross-play. But if you’ve ever seen gameplay of Squad, you’ll know it seems nearly impossible to translate that depth – especially in UI and command options – to controllers, but the developers at Offworld Industries believe they’ve figured it out. They’re so confident, in fact, there’s an PS5 Alpha Preview available now until 25th October that anyone can play.

– Sherif

My Penguin Friend steals hearts, minds, and arguably the show

Listen, I don’t need to sell you on the wonderful nature of penguins. Penguins are wicked; everyone loves penguins. A trailer showing a penguin waddling around and honking across town made for an outstanding sight last night. A penguin on a skateboard, pushing around a beachball, and swimming through storms and shipwrecks. Hell yeah, I’m down. My Penguin Friend – a “penguin puzzler” set on an unfamiliar tropical island, according to developer Good Gate Media – is coming to Steam next year, and can be wishlisted now.

– Connor

Eurogamer is a Galaxies media partner.