With Gamescom just gone, Blizzcon hot on its heels and now a tinyBuild Connect we are living good for games announcements. The tinyBuild Connect on September 14th included a staggering 17 games (and one sale event) and you can get a glance at all you need to know from the showcase right here:
tinyBuild have their fingers in a lot of pies, and the variety in the heavy-hitters from today’s show prove their commitment to variety.
The Crab is Walking and Hypnohead developer updates
The Crab is Walking is the next game from the devs behind The King is Watching. Instead of managing a city that you need to keep a close eye on, you’re managing a city that rests upon the back of a colossal crab. When the crab encounters enemies you can deploy troops (and people who probably shouldn’t be troops) into auto-battler style skirmishes to defend your home. The Crab is Walking inherits the management + auto-battle hybrid format from The King is Watching, but is sure to feel fresh to players of the latter.
If you’re a fan of The King is Watching already, then the good news for you is that it’s received a full overhaul for Steamdeck and consoles! Better UI and performance enhancements have been added specifically to make the experience Steamdeck-friendly.
Kingmakers deep dive gameplay trailer revealed today
Kingmakers got a deep dive so rich with detail that we wrote our own article just for it, have a look below:
Kingmakers shows off RTS and Third-Person hybrid gameplay and more at tinyBuild Connect
Multiplayer vehicular survival game SAND gets first early access update
SAND, the early access multiplayer shooter where you manually control giant dunecrawlers armed with steampunk cannons, is getting its first major early access update. There’s no 1.0 release or anything yet, but this is a major milestone for a multiplayer-focused game to take. Player retention after this drop will potentially make or break the community, and honestly it’s unique enough a premise that I hope it survives its tenure in early access.
Horror game Road to Jukai announced at tinyBuild Connect
Road to Jukai was announced at the show, having never been shown before today. This game sees you take the role of a taxi driver in Japan, but instead of being a retired ex-yakuza with a pop star daughter (hello Yakuza fans) you’re caught in a horror story, exposed to creepy passengers and paranormal forests.
Updates and patches for well-loved games
In amongst the announcement and new content we also saw a few new updates on already-released tinyBuild projects
- Restory has a free update with new customers bringing new items to reassemble, which for one has made my fiance very happy
- Drill Core has an anniversary update that gives players new ways to ensure run longevity by taking sponsorship challenges and bounties. The end of a game will also show more comprehensive stats, to better inform you what worked and what didn’t that time around. Plus, 3 new skins!
- Happys Humble Burger Cult has a new Trial by Fryer multiplayer update, showcasing competing teams using fireworks, flamethrowers and mimicry to sabotage the opponents’ cooking stations so that they may offer the juiciest burgers to the cult. A completely normal thing to write news about.
- Hozy is receiving a free Hozy Hideaways expansion with new items and interactables so that you can more accurately recreate your space, or more bombastically create your dreams. There’s also a console release for Hozy coming in 2026, but no word on exactly when.
Of Ash and Steel Shattered Faith expansion announced
Of Ash and Steel would be described as a poor man’s Gothic, but Gothic is already Eurojank so where would that leave us? Despite launching to negative reviews, Of Ash and Steel is now at Mixed on 68%, clawing its way to Positive. It might not sound like credit, but there are so few games that try and do what Of Ash and Steel is doing in the genre.
Regardless, the new expansion Shattered Faith is adding a deeper magic system with new elemental attacks, traversal spells such as levitation and magic-related gear (that looks very Rogier, to me). While Eurojank RPGs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, the news that Of Ash and Steel isn’t being abandoned is fantastic for fans of the genre.
Dinosaur and mecha shooter game Ferocious gets console release
Speaking of Mixed reviewed games, here’s Ferocious! As I live and breathe it’s actually just peaked over into Positive, but we’ll have to see if those improvements translate over to the just-announced console edition. Ports can be notoriously difficult, but Ferocious is coming to the big 3…today! I regret I haven’t had a chance in the hour since the tinyBuild connect to play the console version of Ferocious, so keep an eye out in case it pops up on our site soon!
Probably Stolen, the Cyberpunk shopkeeper Papers Please game, gets a demo
Games where you sit in a booth and touch people’s stuff are surprisingly lucrative. Probably Stolen gives you inventory management and smuggling to be getting on with while you check people’s ID, items and stories. There’s a demo available now so you can see exactly how it differentiates itself from the genre, which I won’t spoil here (hint: check their teeth).
Graveyard Keeper 2 confirms increased gameplay scope and management mechanics
Graveyard Keeper 2 has been announced for a hot second, but the dive into how the second advances the ideas of the first does pique my interest. Rather than simply running your graveyard, managing relationships and doing quests, Graveyard Keeper 2 sees you building an army (literally, as it happens) of undead workers to help automate your money-making schemes. Once you’re strong (wealthy) enough you can even start fighting to take over the town district by district, all with your own zombies ferrying goods to-and-fro, levelling their skills and creating a sort of zombie society as you expand. As the trailer says, “fight zombies with zombies”.
Having more land than just the graveyard to buy, manage and optimise will make Graveyard Keeper 2 a bookkeeper’s dream. You can download a demo from Steam:
Cursed roguelike Hull Rupture gets a release date and demo
If you fancy yourself a ship management tower-defence game where instead of standard metrics like ammo and power you also have “people” as a resource, then Hull Rupture is your thing. You can play the demo now and experience the “propulsion at all costs” management gameplay for yourself before the game releases on November 4th.
The game alternates between management and tower defence as you have to protect your precious earthlings from alien invaders (so that you can exploit them, of course) and successfully keep enough propulsion to reach your goal.
The idea of an AI running a spaceship that will happily recycle humans into fuel so that it can reach its arbitrarily-inputted destination hits a little close to home nowadays, doesn’t it?
THE LIFT: Supernatural Handyman Simulator shows off a new story trailer
The Lift is an intriguing mix of simulator, horror game and interior decorator. As a repairman you have to fix the titular Lift, but with a world “inspired by the SCP foundation” you can be sure things won’t go swimmingly. Hopefully one of the creatures is British and, upon seeing the handyman arrive, will offer you a nice cuppa and a biccie.
Trainfort is an upcoming multiplayer survival game where your base is a train
Trainfort looks to want to capture the madness of multiplayer survival and tether it to a train. Rather than a stationary base, it’s a moving one. The premise is similar to Voidtrain, except much more grounded (literally) and with a focus more on the multiplayer chaos than the existential dread of eldritch horrors. The trailer shows us caving, protecting the train and customising the engine and carriages as well as a surprise visit from a shark, so it’s about what you’d expect from the genre.
Don’t take that the wrong way, though, it can be a very fun genre. You can sign up to playtest via Steam:
Brand new Hello Neighbor teased at tinyBuild Connect
tinyBuild are perhaps most instantly-recognised by their association with the Hello Neighbor franchise. To their credit, they were one of the premier entries in the reignition of mascot horror and have managed to capture audiences for almost a decade at this point. In between the trailers listed above, snippets of a Hello Neighbor game were shown. Opening a drawer here, locking yourself in a cupboard there, and finally ringing the neighbors doorbell. While no official date or title was shown, you can be sure that a new Hello Neighbor experience is in the works as we speak…
