Edmonton video game developers fast travelled to Europe to show off their projects to hundreds of thousands of people at Gamescom in Germany. Taking place in Cologne, Gamescom is the world’s largest gaming conference. The 2026 event saw 368,000 visitors from 131 countries and the event’s digital content got more than 624 million views. There were 1,743 companies in attendance to show off their products, from new and upcoming games to different peripherals, including 100 from Canada. Of those, five are Edmonton studios brought to Germany through Edmonton Screen: “Studios have the ability to showcase to audiences that might have never heard of them if they weren’t at an event like Gamescom, and many (attendees) are travelling from other parts of Europe, but they won’t necessarily end up at an event in Canada,” said Ronnie Villanueva, with Edmonton Screen. In addition to showing off locally-made games like Yancy and The Rabbit Haul to gamers, studios also had the chance to pitch their products to publishers. Game Con Canada launched a similar industry-focussed event this year, the North American Games Industry Summit (NAGIS), but the Cologne event, Gamescom Biz, is a bit bigger. Companies like Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Sega and Ubisoft, to name a few, were in attendance this year. “This is one of those types of relationships where you do want to do your due diligence and make sure that before you proceed with a publisher, the studio needs to understand what are the pros and cons for the video game, how how will it impact the studio, and what will the future partnership and arrangement with that publisher look like,” Villanueva said. Edmonton screen has brought 14 studios to Gamescom over the years, some more than once, and at least one publishing deal has come from the event. Developed by Crimson Herring Studios, Victorian steampunk role-playing game Sovereign Syndicate was released in 2024 with Zugalu Entertainment and Gamersky Games. Other studios, like Daisy Chain Games, took the opportunity to show off their project to a large audience right before hitting “A” to publish their first game, Slipstream. FPS: First-Person Studio view of Gamescom Busy. Fun. Tiring. Those are some of the ways Daisy Chain Games described Gamescom 2026. “It’s just such a surreal experience, and I still haven’t wrapped my head around it fully,” said studio co-founder Jawdat Toume. Slipstream is a competitive racing game where players are bubbles, using parts of their bubble bodies to launch through the track. “Whenever you spit out a little piece of yourself, other people behind you can eat that and then it makes them bigger, and so it provides a little bit of a catch-up mechanic,” Toume said. Slipstream released on Sept. 3, days after Gamescom ended, and while the team hasn’t seen massive sales, they’re very proud of their accomplishment. “It’s not really about the number (of sales) for us … we’re building a foundation for ourselves with a fanbase, with people who we know and would be willing to work with, who would be able to support us moving forward with our future games,” Toume said. “Slipstream was very much a way for us to test the waters and see if we worked well as a team together.” That fanbase was materializing in Germany as some of the people who came to their booth to try the game got “competitive.” The team had a leaderboard set up to record the fastest times through the tracks and some would come back or even message the team on social media to check if their times had been beaten yet. “We had people who stayed there for hours training on a specific track to get as fast of a time as possible,” Toume said. “It’s just so awesome to see that people were so excited about the game that they wanted to improve themselves at it. “When we originally conceived the project, we wanted to build a racing game that was skill-based and that people would be able to learn and want to improve at quickly, and that’s just proof that what we were trying to do worked.” The experience was similarly hectic and exciting for the team at Lucid Rain Studios. “Very much a blur,” said creative director Delena Martens. “We’re still (slowly) remembering things that happened as we speak to people about the event … it was a lot,” added CEO and game director Rosche Rheeder. The team say they were literally running from their booth to various meetings and events at Koelnmesse GmbH, where Gamescom is held. For comparison, the Edmonton Expo Centre has around 522,000 square feet of versatile space. Koelnmesse has around 3,056,950 square feet of exhibition floor area. With the amount of people packed into Gamescom came a lot of feedback on Lucid Rain’s upcoming game, Inferius. “We got to see a lot of excitement for the momentum that we’ve been building up for a while now,” Rheeder said. “We didn’t know that we earned that level of attention from some people, so it was very humbling.” Inferius is a horror, roguelike, deck building game that draws inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In the game, players take on the role of the Pilgrim, journeying through the nine layers of Hell. “We are big fans of classic literature in general, and there’s not a lot of classics that are retold well through games,” Martens said. This was Lucid Rain’s second year at Gamescom, though for that first year the version of Inferius they had was a “very rough” and “buggy” build. “But we still had a lot of interest even last year with how rough the game was,” Martens said. “It was really cool coming back this year with a year’s worth of production done, a really polished build, and some people remembered us from last year.” Along with a demo they made just for Gamescom, a trailer for Inferius was played during the Awesome Indies Show. That show grew its digital reach by more than 670 per cent this year and saw around 302,000 views. Locally made, locally showing Travelling to present your work to an international audience in a foreign country can be exhilarating, but it can also be expensive and out of budget for small, indie studios. Now, as NAGIS begins to draw international attention to Edmonton, it becomes more accessible for indie creators to show off their games. “That is something that is understated. A lot of studios, they’re emerging talent, they’re young entrepreneurs, they have to prioritize their resources and their funds very, very carefully,” Villanueva said. “It also just opens new doors because a lot of these publishers have never actually come to Western Canada, and that’s very powerful for us because there’s a lot of talent here that’s now getting recognised.” Also helping studios along the way are a number of organizations and groups, including: The Gamescom trip with Edmonton Screen was organized through the organization’s Summit Push Program, which aims to increase the visibility of local video game companies. “Canada has a very rich history in the games industry, and we’re starting to see that come through now,” Rheeder said. Breaking through barriers For people looking to break into the game development industry, sharpen their talents or hone new ones, game jams are a great tool, Edmonton Screen, Daisy Chain and Lucid Rain all say. The Alberta Game Jams are taking place Sept. 25-27 in Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge. Game jams are multi-day events where developers make a game from scratch based on a theme. Both Slipstream and Inferius can trace their roots back to game jams. “Game jams are actually one of the most powerful ways to get involved and you have something tangible at the end of the game jam that you can show a potential employer or you could show other people in the community,” Villanueva said. Having a strong portfolio is something Rheeder says can really help junior developers, more so than a resume. “In this industry a resume is more just like a checklist of do you know certain software,” Rheeder said. “The portfolio is really the showcase of your creativity, and this is a very creativity-focused industry.” He also advises people to start out by making small games, make a lot of them and learn how to market them. “One of the big things that we’re noticing with the industry right now is the flood of indie games in general,” Rheeder added. “A lot of these indie games are barely making enough money to cover their Steam registration costs. “That’s really sad to hear. But nine times out of 10, those studios haven’t done any ounce of marketing or any ounce of build up to their game. Community is very important.” Discord servers, like Lucid Rain and Daisy Chain both have, are one way to engage and grow a community. What are the pros looking forward to playing? The next year is bursting with anticipated video game releases, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake to Grand Theft Auto 6 and Fable. From the indie side, Villanueva is looking forward to playing Inferius when it releases in 2027. “I wasn’t expecting to get into a horror game, but after seeing the character design and the art direction, it just pulled me in. I was very curious about it,” he added. For the Daisy Chain members, Yancy and Our Eyes See No Evil are anticipated releases for Toume and co-founder Alexander Salm. The third of the studio’s four co-founders, Alex Kumpula, is looking forward to the full release of Highway Hijinks. Martens is looking forward to The Rabbit Haul, which releases on Sept. 21, and Fowl Scourge by local studio Void Cup Games. Last, but not least, Rheeder is excited for The Eventide from Studio Reset, which was started by former BioWare developers. Edmonton Screen plans to return to Gamescom for 2027, and hopes to bring even more studios, potentially some new ones, potentially some returning ones. Bis nächstes Jahr.
