Indivisible

After a successful crowdfunding campaign, Indivisible has been catching eyes with its incredibly beautiful hand-drawn and hand-animated aesthetic. The game comes from Lab Zero Games, the developer behind beloved fighting game Skullgirls. While Indivisible is hardly a fighting game, the DNA is indisputable.

Indivisible combines action, platforming, and role-playing elements to create something unique, challenging, and fun. While various fantastical settings are explorable over the course of the story, my Gamescom demo takes place in Tai Krung City, a bustling metropolis under the thumb of a ruthless crime lord.

Making your way through the city is straightforward, but you're going to need some platforming chops. From simple jumping across platforms and pogoing like Scrooge McDuck across dangerous electrified blocks to pole-vaulting upward to reach higher levels and sticking her spear into the ceiling to cross large gaps, protagonist Ajna has an eclectic and ever-growing arsenal of moves to help her tackle the obstacle courses that make up Indivisible's levels.

Platforming may be an integral part of getting to Ajna's destination, but it's not the only core mechanic. When you run into an enemy, you enter the battle screen and your party emerges. You bring three companions to fight alongside Ajna, but choosing your allies likely won't be easy; there are more than 20 recruitable characters, each with their own abilities, to add to your party. My demo party consists of Ajna, a support character, a mage, and a brawler.

In battles, each character is represented by a face button. When you want to attack with that character, you press that face button. Energy refills any time the character isn't attacking or blocking, with some party members having longer recharges or more attacks they can store up. When you attack with a character, you can modify using the d-pad for upward or downward strikes. When you get locked in an intense battle, it feels like you're executing loosely improvised combos in a fighting game, harking back to Lab Zero's fighting-game expertise.

The characters also have super moves, which use a shared super meter in the upper corner of the screen. Each time you land an attack, the meter charges incrementally. Finally unleashing a super is satisfying and powerful. I'm excited to figure out how to work them seamlessly into combos as I master the combat in the final game.

While we've covered the game on multiple occasions since its 2015 reveal, we're getting to the point where we're just ready to play the long-awaited RPG. Thankfully, the finish line is in sight; Indivisible launches on October 8 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Switch version coming some time after that.