Annapurna Interactive held its first-ever digital showcase, which offered tons of details on its upcoming slate of games. The show included a release date reveal for Solar Ash, details on the long-anticipated Stray, and a handful of new games coming from the indie publisher.
Spun off from Annapurna’s film division, Annapurna Interactive has delivered dozens of high-profile indie hits over the past few years. The publisher’s first-ever Annapurna Interactive Showcase collected new updates on its games, some of which were announced as early as four years ago.
Only two games got a firm release date. The Artful Escape, a trippy adventure game about a rockstar first shown at E3 2017, is finally coming on September 9. It’ll launch on PC and Xbox consoles via Game Pass. Solar Ash, developer Heart Machine’s follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter, finally got an October 26 release date at the show.
Outer Wilds is getting its first and only DLC on September 28, titled Echoes of the Eye. A cryptic trailer didn’t say too much about what to expect. Meanwhile, the base game is scheduled to come to Nintendo Switch this holiday.
The showcase gave new details on two of Annapurna’s most anticipated games. Stray got a gameplay trailer, which showed a cat wandering around a city and solving puzzles with the help of a drone. The game doesn’t have a firm release date, but it’ll come to PS4, PS5, and PC in early 2022. Neon White got a deep dive too, showing off a unique card system where players can discard weapons to perform mobility actions. The game is still scheduled for a winter launch.
We saw a handful of new games during the presentation. Skin Deep is a first-person puzzle game by Blendo, which leans heavily into absurdist humor. A Memoir Blue is a pretty narrative-driven game by Cloisters featuring lots of jellyfish. Storyteller, a puzzler where players build storybook pages, is another new highlight among the batch.
In addition to those games, Annapurna announced several partnerships with indie studios, including Outer Loop, Jessica Mak, and No Code Entertainment Productions. The publisher is also teaming up with Ivy Road, a brand new studio founded by developers behind Gone Home and The Stanley Parable. The project is heavily under wraps, but it will feature music from Minecraft composer C418.
Finally, Annapurna offered platform updates for several of its biggest games. Gorogoa and Telling Lies are both coming to Xbox Game Pass. I Am Dead hits consoles on August 9, The Pathless comes to Steam on November 16, and What Remains of Edith Finch will hit the App Store on August 16.
