My 5 Favorite Games from the GDC Showcase on Xbox

annual Game Developer Meeting Kicked off in San Francisco this week and as it does every year, Microsoft’s Xbox The brand has compiled a collection of game A demo that the media will try. All of these come from partner studios, especially partner studios under the ID@Xbox sub-brand.

I played the game for a few hours and spoke to some of the developers behind the title and presented a list of upcoming games highlights worth paying attention to.

clear clear nabure: expedition 33

The show standout for me is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, an upcoming role-playing game by French Studio Sandfall Interactive. Important highlights included a lovely art style that showed off a great amount of particle effects. The music in the game was also very enjoyable, especially in combat. RPG combat music is heard over and over again over the course of a long game.

But it was the combat itself that made Claire’s most exciting feature, and its obscurity, stand out from the typical JRPGs. It starts as a turn-based – time freezes between the exchange of attacks and defenses between you and the enemy – but introduces some real-time elements right away.

When using a special skill, you can press A at a particular moment to deal more damage or perform attacks at once, just like what you see in Paper Mario games. It also has the ability to bye Parry in RB when the enemy attacks, or for higher risk and rewards, for higher risk and rewards. This real-time action is paused on the turn, and is pushed further by allowing the player to control the character Gustav, and pushes LT to aim for a ranged attack, allowing the reticle to move freely to shoot enemy weaknesses.

This combination of turn-based battles and real-time action sequences gives the game a very enjoyable flow when attracting enemies. I’m excited to play the full game when it comes out on April 23rd for Xbox, PS5 and PC.

Hotel Barcelona

Hotel Barcelona is led by indie super duo developers Swery and Suda51, known for their fatal premonitions and No More Heroes games, respectively. When you hear these two names, you’re hoping that this collaboration will have a strange, dark tone. That’s exactly what Hotel Barcelona has.

This time, the developers are turning their creativity towards the side-scrolling logrique set in a horror film. Unleash your stronger and more powerful abilities and you will fight your way through camps that will bring you a creepy sleep. Each death sends you back to a mysterious hotel full of quirky and quirky characters. The game is very difficult, but Swery told me it was part of the design. It is intended to repeat these sequences and actually learn combat. Swery said there’s a lot here for fans of his previous films and that he and Suda51 are working hard to make the best game ever.

Hotel Barcelona currently has no release date, but will be coming to Xbox, PS5 and PC.

Mandrake

Mandragora is another side-scrolling action game, but it focuses on player customization as you level up. Our demo had three classes, but three more classes will be available in the full game in the future. What’s amazing is that your character upgrades six different skill trees, including trees from other classes. Do you want to play as a rogue with Dial Wheeled dual wheeled Dagger, yet still accessible to mage casting? Certainly, you can do it.

It is worth noting that combat shares more DNA with soul-like DNA than other side-scrolling action games like Dead Cell. The priority of stamina and animation is important for action costs. Players must be strategic when engaged in combat, as they cannot avoid attacks whenever they want. When you die (and you will), you will need to run the corpse to collect your missing resources.

Mandragora will be released on April 17th for Xbox, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC.

Flock

The herd was definitely the smallest game I played at the event. You control your child with a magic wand that allows dogs to move these large horned creatures away from you, like a flock of sheep. Leading creatures through a destroyed apocalyptic city, you will find and recruit these beasts in your flock. It gives a place where the wild thing is the atmosphere.

The puzzle is very easy to solve, and the gameplay is definitely about snuggling and munching your new friends. Once you’ve come out into colorful, lush pastures through the city, this game will show you the ability to advance the beast at a much faster speed. The demo ends after running through the magical flowers as the music crescens. It’s a rather short and light demo and I’m interested in how the team can extend this to a full game.

A swarm of Xbox and PCs has appeared in 2025.

to

From Takahashi Island, creator of cult hit Katamari Damasy, T has a more narrative-focused title. As a 13 year old, you’ve spent your whole life in T-pose (they don’t bend like the wrong video game character, just like their arms and shoulders are not bent). From there, the demo introduces some mini-games about things like living with this limitation. For example, children use special sinks and extra long toothbrushes.

Nevertheless, the game exudes charm and joy as you would expect from this creator. The world is filled with whimsical characters, and above all, I am sometimes a friend of Giraffe, who loves to make sandwiches. But to all the healthy elements there is a more moving yet dark side to the story of this era. The main character is bullied on the first day of school due to a T-shaped situation.

Takahashi explains that he tells an emotional story that hits near his home after the demonstration, reflecting his own experiences of being bullied when he grew up in Japan. When the story is the core element of his game, I am very interested in what he has to say to T and what this designer can do.

It will be available on T on Xbox, PS5 and PC on May 28th.