This week in PC games: Gamescom and GTA 6 fight for our attention

What the report says

Hello all! I regret to report that the Maw is in a really good mood this week. Its scales have an almost flirtatious lustre, flashing in and out of visibility as I gaze from my eyrie above north London. Its crimson coral coils and fins of mounded verdigris can be seen reflected in the distant moneytemples of Canary Wharf. Its fractal teeth and hair form expressionist whorls and divots among the haggard late summer clouds.The Maw is merry because this week is Gamescom week - a time of much videogame news and thus, a time of feasting for extradimensional gods with a hankering for headlines.

It also happens to be the week in which Rockstar and Netflix will stream a GTA 6 documentary (27th August), giving rise to many, many articles in the vein of "50 individually rendered breakfast cereal shapes you missed from the all-new Vice City". As if all that wasn't enough, there are a load of uncommonly chunky new PC releases to contend with. Here's my latest list.Monday 24th AugustBurned Horizons (early access) is a complex production, in several senses: a hard-eyed milsim and squad tactics game with 'no-XP' customisation, set during a fictional 2002 Europe-wide war against Russia.

The devs characterise it as a fable about Putin's imperialism, writing that "monsters like him don’t stop - until someone stops them." It's from a team based in Ukraine, the UK and the USA.Money for Girls: Amortized is a horror detective visual novel from lauded hypertext designer and former RPS columnist Porpentine.Tuesday 25th August1666: Amsterdam (early access) is the time-jumping, Dan Brownian witch 'em up from Assassin's Creed creative director Patrice Désilets. Once in development at now-dead THQ, the project has changed hands repeatedly in the course of an extended feud between Désilets and Ubisoft.Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 looks like a pleasant bit of 1-4 player xenomorph grand guignol, to purge the synapses while you wait for the probably more-elegant Alien: Isolation 2.Astral Court DX is a bullet hell that's set in heaven but isn't an actual "bullet heaven", in the sense of Vampire Survivors.

Key details

It casts you as a celestial convict doing platform challenges to stave off their execution. There are 189 levels, apparently. It looks like a Y2K shareware release (complimentary).Blood Dungeon is a frantic and suffocating platformer with bullet hell/heaven elements, from the creators of Nidhogg. Big fan of the apparent default character's scrambling arms and expression of constant panic.Sokogram is a hybrid puzzler that combines the block pushing of sokoban games with the paint-by-numbers of nonograms. This is somebody's very specific wet dream. Please don't tell me if it's yours – I have no need to be aware of such things.Western Rye (early access) is kind of like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare but with more of a survival game element, including base construction.

In other words, big ole cowboy sim plus carpentry and zombies.Wednesday 26th AugustFolk Emerging is a nomadic and ambitious 4X that begins during the long stretches of prehistory before humans started to get really into building cities. I think it could be great.People who dig very looty 90s RPGs are probably going to like the looks of Shadow Dungeon, though I think it has a dollop of Vampire Survivors DNA as well.Brigandine Abyss is about loudly dressed anime factions duking it out for control of a continent, with a turn- and hex-based combat system.

Six of the factions star in a story component featuring the revival of an empire. It's from a few of the people who worked on well-regarded metroidvania Ender Lillies.Sniper Camouflage Orange Spy Warrior I Buried Two Bodies in the Garden and the Police Haven't Figured Out Yet That They're Missing Because They Were a Lonely Old Couple Who Had No Relatives Simulator 2026 is a very long and unpleasant name for a game.Thursday 27th Augustthe cabin game (early access) is a much shorter name for a game, necessitating some additional description: you are stuck in a haunted cabin with up to four of your friends, playing cards that add rooms to the cabin while also, generally, making the cabin worse.Lou's Lagoon is a jolly adventure platformer set on an archipelago, in which you can loaf about in a seaplane.

More from the announcement

Jak & Daxter with a touch of the Brew Barons, maybe.Star Wars: Zero Company is an Ahsoka-era squad tactics game from old XCOM talent. I recently interviewed the developers about their publisher EA being suddenly acquired by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium.Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.