Everything Announced At The Devolver Direct 2023

While Geoff took to the stage with guests like Ed Boon and Nicolas Cage, making announcements and driving the hype train during Summer Game Fest, another presentation was taking a decidedly different approach. The Devolver Direct for 2023 followed the publisher’s trend of, well, not following trends and opting for an off-the-wall presentation that included a slightly disturbing narrative and several reveals and announcements. Nina Struthers may be dead and buried, but the unique stage offering lives on.

Labelled The Return of Volvy, this direct celebrates the resurrection of Devolver’s long-forgotten and completely fictitious mascot, Volvy. He has one big hand, for gaming.

Here’s everything announced during Devolver Direct 2023:

Wizard with a Gun

Seven minutes in, and we have our very first look at an upcoming game. An online coop survival game, Wizard with a Gun shares a few similarities with the excellent Don’t Starve, particularly in art style and premise. This new trailer begins as a cinematic, showing a group of magical gun-slingers fighting off waves of nasty enemies before succumbing to their overwhelming numbers. We then cut to some gameplay footage, showing off the title’s mix of isometric combat, crafting and resource management. While we don’t have a release date for this one yet, a single-player demo dropped on Steam directly after the Direct, so you can head on over and give it a try for yourself. The full game is slated to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

The Talos Principle 2

Announced a few short weeks ago during the PlayStation Showcase, The Talos Principle 2 is the follow-up to the acclaimed first-person puzzle game by Croteam. This new trailer gave us our first proper look at gameplay, with the player making their way through some grand sci-fi environments while shifting blocks, manipulating portals and messing around with lasers. The scope and scale of the sequel look to have grown significantly from the original, so fans of puzzle games should keep this one on their radar. Coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2023.

Baby Steps

Huh, this is an odd one. The next game from the team behind Ape Out, an incredible action title that intrinsically fuses gameplay with free-form jazz, is a literally walking sim. If you’ve ever played the browser game QWOP, Baby Steps is basically that but in 3D. A basement-dwelling gamer that eats pizzas and smokes his bong all day is sucked into a video game and looks to have forgotten how to walk, so it’s up to you to independently control his legs in order to traverse the digital world. This all makes a lot more sense once you know that this team also created Getting Over It. This one is heading to PS5 and PC in 2024.

Human Fall Flat 2

Introduced by friend of the site, Skill Up, is a sequel to a dorky and endlessly entertaining physics-based platformer. Human Fall Flat 2 will be running off a new physics engine and will be bigger and sillier than the original, promising plenty of coop shenanigans and undoubtedly a good amount of laughter. We’ve got absolutely no idea when this one will be released, but you can head over to Steam and add it to your wishlist.

That’s it, nice and quick. Four very different games to check out, two new and two previously announced. I’m a sucker for Devolver’s output, so I was very pleased with this little offering, but I was also entertained by the bizarre showcase itself, so I would suggest watching the entire thing. It leans heavily into the scary future of AI-generated content and the gross corporate practices that come with it, so, you know, nothing too heavy.

You can watch the full Devolver Direct here:

What did you think of Devolver Direct 2023? Any stand-out titles for you? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.