Gamescom 2025 Full Roundup
Gamescom ran from Aug. 19 – 24 in Cologne, Germany, and every day brought world premieres, new trailers, and more. The Opening Night Live (ONL) event was viewed by 72 million people, and over 357,000 attended the overall event; both stats mark an improvement on the 2024 expo. In terms of exhibitors, there were 1,568 stalls this year, from AAA companies right through to independent devs.
“This year, gamescom 2025 is sending out a particularly positive signal,” said Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – The German Games Industry Association, the co-organiser of gamescom.
“After two challenging years for the games industry, you could really feel the mood improving this year. The new record figures underline not only the global appeal of gamescom, but also the upward trend in the entire games industry.”
Gamers who couldn’t attend or who missed eneba’s livestreams can rest easy as we’ve got a roundup of the news from ONL, as well as the main expo days.
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Gamescom Opening Night Live
As to be expected, this opening ceremony was hosted by perennial MC Geoff Keighley. He rolled out clips and trailers for a few expected games, but also a few surprises. Here are the highlights from ONL.
That’s right – Hollow Knight: Silksong is real and it’s coming out on all major platforms on Sept. 4, 2025. Initially conceived as DLC that would follow the new main character, The Hornet, Team Cherry instead decided to make her the focus of a full sequel.
That was almost six years ago, with radio silence the whole time; no interviews, no updates, nothing. But now it’s almost here, and other developers on social media have already hit their “PANIC” button and delayed the release of their games (even though they’re not the same types as Silksong).
Panik Arcade, the studio behind hellish gambling game Cloverpit, said on X after the Silksong reveal: “Due to Silksong (can’t wait to play) launching just a day after CloverPit, we decided to delay our release.” Aeterna Lucis and Faelands are a couple of other titles whose studios posted on X that they don’t want to compete.
Cronos: The New Dawn, by Bloober Team, had a new trailer shown off at ONL. This was accompanied by an impressive real-life Traveler (the player character) onstage at gamescom, and a release date of Sept. 4. Bloober Team are evidently confident in their game as no word from them regarding delaying so as to avoid competing with Silksong.
Fans of sci-fi shooters, mecha, and zombie monsters were well catered-for during ONL, thanks to various games that included some variation of these things. But, only one mashes them all together into a nu-metal trailer, and that’s Cinder City by NCSOFT.
The gods are cowards and it’s up to you as the Lampbearer to kick their asses, if the Lords of The Fallen II trailer is anything to go by. Developers CI Games earned a lot of goodwill from gamers when they updated the original Lords of The Fallen back in April this year, with a ton of new content and features, including a free Friend’s Pass, and the sequel looks set to build on the enhanced gameplay of the first.
For the Emperor! In the grimdark future of the video game industry, there is Dawn of War IV to look forward to. Building on the bones of the well-received franchise, KING Art Games take over from original devs Relic, and have based the newest title on the first game, but with a ton of new features and ideas.
Players will get to fight against, or as, the cyborg undead Necrons, for example, but battles are set to be bigger, bolder, and include more perks based on a faction’s background. Necrons can auto-heal on home turf, while the Adeptus Mechanicus can deploy the noosphere, a cybernetic network, to AOE-buff their units.
Gamers are still nuts for multiplayer FPS titles, and sure enough, here comes the latest Call of Duty. Black Ops 7 continues the sci-fi spin of the series by subjecting players to some mind-bending technobabble that effectively turns otherwise real-world maps into fractured video game set pieces. It’s out on Nov. 14.
ONL, like so many video game events, was full of comedy gold, including a hilarious trailer for The Outer Worlds 2, from Obsidian. The “Head of Sequels” appeared to introduce gameplay that had that gratifying mix of self-aware humor and snark that everybody values in this industry.
Other ONL Reveals
The upcoming Deadpool VR game received a trailer that showed the Merc With a Mouth is the unwitting pawn of intergalactic TV magnate Mojo. He’s a huge, lumbering monster on mechanical legs, but fans of traditional trundling death machines weren’t left out on ONL, as Wargaming showcased the world premiere of World of Tanks 2.0, which likely contained one hundred percent more snapping turtle than anyone expected.
The Rest of Gamescom 2025
There was a heck of a lot more shown in the several hours that the ONL event ran, but a good chunk of these were then repeated or elaborated upon during the rest of the expo. Other than the gamescom awards, here are the other highlights from the rest of gamescom 2025.
Resident Evil Requiem got a new trailer, as well as offered attendees a hands-on demo. The ninth mainline entry into the undead series looks to be building upon the last few titles, not just in terms of story, but also gameplay. The demo let players try and hide from a deformed hag capable of biting heads off, as well as switch between third-person and first-person views.
Silent Hill f also rolled out a story trailer that perhaps asked more questions than it answered. As the series’ famous fog envelopes the Japanese mountain town of Ebisugaoka in the 1960s, schoolgirl Hinako comes face-to-deformed-head with twitchy, body horror enemies. Gamers won’t have to wait long to see if this entry’s focus on combat is hit or miss, as Silent Hill f launches on Sept. 25.
Coming across like an apocalyptic environmental fever dream version of Little Nightmares, Ayasa: Shadows Of Silence is the debut title from Aya Games, and was one of the non-AAA titles premiered at gamescom 2025.
It follows Ayasa, a young girl caught in a collapsing Inverted World, where light and darkness are split into symbolic lands. These also include biomes related to what the developers called “the human soul” – from hope and faith, to greed and betrayal.
Any gamers who caught the movie, Hardcore Henry, are likely to eat up Better Than Dead, a new game from MicroProse. Known for its strategy titles like the Civilization series, Better Than Dead marks a departure in tone and style for the studio founded by Sid Meier.
A grainy bodycam viewpoint puts players in the shoes of an unnamed woman, who’s left for dead but returns to wreak vengeance on seemingly anyone she sees. If Collective Shout wishes for female empowerment in games, this is what the monkey paw has given them.
It wasn’t all blood and guts at gamescom 2025 – it was also cute Tectonic frogs. Walk The Frog is an upcoming point-and-click adventure in which a German frog with the delightfully obvious name of Froggo must find his way home. It’s sure to have fans of cozy indie games declaring “Mir gefällt es!”
Not Just AAA Games
Gamescom 2025 continued the fine tradition of video game events that favored AAA titles, but that’s not to say indies were completely ignored. Other than the games mentioned above, attendees got the chance to visit the Indie Arena Booth. This marked the collective games of various small and medium-sized studios; over 130 games from 30 countries were covered this year.
From parking garage simulators (Parking World) to “the world’s first AI detective game” (it isn’t) Sherlock Holmes: Night Stalker, and steampunk RPGs (Sovereign Syndicate) to cuter steampunk-adjacent RPGs (Forge of The Fae), the indie games showcased at gamescom 2025 truly covered every angle.
Roundup Roundup
Time to roundup this roundup because there were approximately 5,000 trailers shown during gamescom 2025 and it’s a fool’s errand to try and sum all that up. We have Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 Roundup articles that cover a few extra highlights, however, including Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, God Save Birmingham, and Pragmata.
