Ghost Haunting Brings Classic Point and Click Design Back to Life
During our meeting with Daedalic at Gamescom 2026, the first game presented to us was Ghost Haunting, a handcrafted 2D point and click adventure developed by Cologne based studio Creative Monkeys. We did not play the game ourselves during the meeting, but the presentation provided a detailed look at its story, visual direction and accessibility systems. The project is heavily inspired by the LucasArts adventure games of the 1990s, combining low resolution pixel art, linear storytelling, environmental puzzles, item combinations and conversations with strange characters. The developers want the game to look like something from the classic era while still benefiting from three decades of improvements in game design. Every pixel has reportedly been created and adjusted by hand, reinforcing the feeling that this is a carefully produced adventure rather than a quick attempt to imitate retro graphics.
The story follows Gigi, an unpredictable eight and a half year old girl whose grandmother was the only person who truly understood her. After her grandmother dies, Gigi is not given a proper explanation of what happened and assumes that she has simply travelled to the realm of the dead. She later discovers Baron Butternut, a demon trapped inside a talking pumpkin, as well as the truth about her grandfather’s secret work hunting ghosts and monsters. Gigi decides that if spirits can travel from the realm of the dead into the world of the living, she should be able to make the same journey in reverse and bring her grandmother home. Despite the subject of death, the game is built around absurd comedy, including a toilet dwelling goblin, an organisation of verified vegan vampires and a suspicious character named Dr. Calligraphy. The adventure is set in Germany’s Eifel region, with forests, castles, legends and real locations used to give the fictional world a strong local identity.
Modern Features Without Losing the 1990s Spirit
Creative Monkeys is also trying to make Gigi’s Adventure approachable for players who have little experience with point and click games. The game includes an optional tutorial, a hotspot highlighting system and a built in hint feature with three assistance levels: a small hint, a more direct hint and a complete solution. Hints can be connected to an optional point economy, with points earned by exploring the environment, examining objects, solving puzzles and completing chapters. The system does not involve paid currency, and the developers explained that players who interact normally with the world should always have enough points to continue the main story. More experienced players can disable these systems completely and use a preset designed to recreate the less forgiving experience of adventure games from the 1990s. Each comfort feature can also be enabled or disabled separately, including during an active playthrough.
The studio primarily sees players between the ages of 30 and 50 as its core audience, particularly those who grew up with classic adventure games, but the game is also being designed as a family friendly experience with an expected German age rating of six and above. Ghost Haunting is currently planned for release in early 2027 on PC, Mac, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, with the intention of launching on the supported platforms at the same time. Full human recorded voice acting is planned in English and German, while subtitles are expected in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. At Gamescom, the demo was available at three stations in Hall 10, while a public online demo was being considered for release shortly after the event.
Hordeguard Mixes Tower Defense, RPG Systems and Village Management
The second game was Hordeguard, developed by Light Deer Games Studio, a two person team from Slovakia with around 35 years of combined development experience. At its core, this is a Viking themed tower defense game, but the presentation showed that its structure goes well beyond placing towers and waiting for waves of enemies. Players control a Viking hero responsible for building and protecting a village from creatures inspired by Norse mythology. Each level revolves around a central building called the Household. If the Household is destroyed, the level is lost, but the death of the hero does not immediately end the attempt. A defeated hero enters a ghost state and loses the ability to interact with buildings or objects, but can return to the Household to revive and continue defending the settlement.
Players gather wood, stone and gold from the environment before spending those resources on barricades, fortifications, towers, houses and specialised buildings. Trees gradually regrow, providing a renewable source of wood, while stones do not return but are intended to be available in large enough quantities to prevent major shortages. Buildings such as the Household and Barracks can be upgraded, allowing players to recruit warriors and archers, increase unit capacity and improve the settlement’s overall strength. Units can follow the hero or be positioned at specific defensive locations. The game also includes craftable traps whose effectiveness depends on placement and timing, passive bonuses obtained through special structures and companions unlocked through altars. These systems suggest that successful defence will require more than building the same layout every round, since the player must balance resource collection, army composition, trap placement and the limited time before the next attack begins.
Side Quests, Morale and Cooperative Play Add More Strategic Layers
One of the most interesting mechanics shown in Elements of the North was the ability to leave the village between enemy waves. When the player exits the settlement, the wave timer pauses completely, removing the immediate time pressure and allowing the hero to explore surrounding areas. Resources used for village construction cannot be collected outside the settlement, preventing players from pausing the timer and gathering unlimited materials without risk. Instead, the exterior areas contain side quests, enemies, loot, gems and experience points. Levelling the hero unlocks a choice of upgrades that can improve attributes such as damage, movement speed and carrying capacity. The player must therefore decide whether the hero is strong enough to explore safely or whether it is better to remain inside the village and continue preparing for the next wave.
Village morale is another system that could significantly affect how each level develops. Morale decreases when the hero dies or when important buildings are destroyed. If it falls too low, soldiers may stop following commands and the player may lose the ability to recruit additional warriors. Structures such as the Tavern can restore morale, adding another priority to an already busy construction economy. The full game is planned to include five biomes, with three levels in each biome and a boss battle at the end of every third level. Local cooperative play is supported, while full native online multiplayer is not currently planned because of the size of the development team. Steam Remote Play Together may still provide a way to use the local co-op system over the internet. Elements of the North was available through a limited Steam Playtest at the time of the presentation, with a PC release targeted for around summer 2027 and console versions potentially following later.
Star Trek’s Q Trials Focuses on Replayability, Procedural Sectors and Strategic Runs
The final presentation introduced Q Trials, a free mode for an existing Star Trek game, alongside a paid DLC based on the USS Equinox. Q Trials is designed as a more gameplay focused and replayable experience than the main campaign, while still using its established resource, crew happiness and ship upgrade systems. At the start of a run, players select a captain whose bonuses can affect factors such as mission duration or resource capacity, followed by a group of heroes who accompany the ship. The mode introduces Q Modifiers that combine a positive effect with a disadvantage, such as improving morale while making certain actions take longer. Separate Challenge levels provide purely negative effects, with each higher level including the penalties from all previous levels. Completing runs unlocks more difficult tiers, but players are not forced to select the highest available challenge.
A complete journey contains between eight and thirteen procedurally generated sectors, with changing layouts, themes, factions, events and exit options. One sector might contain alien species, another may be covered by a nebula that interferes with scanning, while others could be largely empty. Players can cooperate with factions, fight them or steal information from their stations, and each decision can affect the route home. The developers described the design philosophy as less reading and more gameplay. Instead of sending characters through lengthy text heavy missions, players assign heroes directly to points of interest, with success rates determined by relevant skills such as Command or Science. John de Lancie returns as Q, providing the introduction, ending and occasional comments during a run. The paid Equinox DLC adds a smaller ship with reduced crew capacity, less energy and less building space, along with a redesigned Mess Hall, a new bridge and references to the moral decisions seen in the original Equinox storyline. Q Trials is free for owners of the base game, while the Equinox ship is sold separately and is also included in the expansion pass, with both originally presented for a simultaneous release around October 2026.
Overall, Daedalic’s Gamescom 2026 presentation covered three projects with very different priorities: a nostalgic and character driven point and click adventure, a layered Viking defence game built around resource management and morale, and a Star Trek mode designed to generate challenging strategic runs with much stronger replay value.
