The Best Games We Played at GDC 2024

The Game Developers Conference—or GDC—is a yearly meeting of the best and brightest minds in the videogame industry that happens in San Francisco every spring. While most of the event is dedicated to developer-focused events like talks and panels about working in games, a handful of events dedicated to showing off upcoming games to media and developers have popped up on its periphery. And with E3’s unceremonious demise in the rearview, gaming publishers are scrambling to find new places and ways to show off their games at events like GDC, meaning there were a ton of games to check out at the Bay Area’s premier gaming event. As such, we weren’t able to check out every single game on display, but we did sample a healthy smattering of games. Here are some of our favorites!
Nightshift Galaxy
There’s a distinct lack of flashy, cartoonish dogfighting games on the scene. Nightshift Galaxy fills that niche with aplomb, delivering on Star Fox-inspired mech and aerial combat that scratches my constant itch to live out my childhood dream of piloting an X-Wing or an Arwing. The level I played took place on a small planet with varied, diverse landscapes that was dense with bespoke moments and interactions in a way that—shockingly—reminded me of Katamari’s level design philosophy of all things. The starship (which also transforms into a mech) was a dream, with responsive dashes and strafes that expertly nailed the balance between swift and weighty.
Dungeons Of Hinterberg
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom aside, I’ve never been much of a 3D Zelda head. I find their controls largely unresponsive and frustratingly overengineered in a way that’s kept me from finishing a single one. From what I played during GDC, though, Dungeons of Hinterberg understands that the connective tissue in between well-designed puzzles is just as important as the puzzles themselves. Sprinkling in snowboarding-like traversal and rail grinding alongside weighty combat between cleverly designed puzzles fixed my issues with the genre’s core conceits and let me just enjoy trawling the wintery dungeon. Once I finished a dungeon and defeated a cool boss, I spent some time in the small Austrian town of Hinterberg and enjoyed hanging out with some of the locals in a cute, Persona-like social sim setting. Dungeons of Hinterberg checked all the boxes for me and I’m so excited to see what this graphic novel-inspired game accomplishes in its full release.
Cylinder
Cylinder reminded me of a Lumines-esque take on Puzzle Fighter. Instead of operating on a grid-based 2-dimensional well, you’re rotating and shifting tiles around a full-on cylinder. Tiles still fall in from the top, but it adds enough depth to push the game forward without alienating people (like me) who play ungodly amounts of well games. That is to say, it’s extremely my jam. The goal is to match at least four tiles of the same color in a square, line, L, or T shape. If you plan well enough ahead (or get lucky enough) you can pull off even more impressive combos that net you big bonuses to beat your opponents.
Worship
Worship is like if Pikmin was metal as hell. In this black-and-white-and-red, hand-drawn isometric puzzle-strategy game, you play as a cult leader whose Pikmin-like followers will (and often do) die for the cause. You can pick them up and bleed them to draw symbols on the ground to accomplish various tasks like casting spells, unlocking doors, and more. You can also use them to pick stuff up and carry it elsewhere or even throw them at enemies. It’s instantly familiar in the best possible way, and infusing satanic, gory imagery into an otherwise cute style is always a win in my book.