At a largely humourless Gamescom, train kickflipper Denshattack was a golden streak of joy

While not rather arsenic rife with grumpy grey soulslikes arsenic June’s Summer Game Fest, Gamescom 2025 chiefly favoured moodiness implicit levity. Silent Hill f? Hardly retired to marque jokes. Dawn of War 4? Pretty grim and a small dark, if you inquire me. Hollow Knight: Silksong? They don’t person mouths to grin with.

But then, we besides got Denshattack. Now there’s a big, daft bundle of laughs, a half-racing, half-score onslaught trickster that some rattled and rejuvenated my expo-ravaged bones upon playing its demo successful the Gamescom Indie Arena. All portion centring astir what has, traditionally, been the dullest of wheely vehicles: the train.

Denshattack (sorry, I can’t bring myself to benignant the exclamation mark) gleefully, astir derangedly subverts the anorakish aerial of the rider locomotive by efficaciously making it an tremendous skateboard. You’re inactive pursuing rails (for the astir part), but they astir ever pb to vast, chasm-leaping jumps, wallridable billboards, and axle-grinding tube networks. You tin boing disconnected and betwixt rails astatine will, either to execute THPS-esque carriage flip combos, oregon to debar an escalating bid of way obstructions: falling rocks, fireballs, mecha attacks, and each the different perils that Isambard Kingdom Brunel would person faced if helium were a shonen manga protagonist.

It’s each profoundly silly, and yet Denshattack ne'er feels similar a disposable, "Haha bid spell upside down" gag successful itself. It’s wide that a batch of attraction and trade has gone into making your joyrides feel fast, from the just-right strength of the camera shingle to a soundtrack that surely crushed the wrist bones of 4 antithetic league drummers to dust. Braking is indispensable connected choky corners, but adjacent this is treated arsenic an accidental to transportation that consciousness of momentum: clip it close and you’ll propulsion disconnected a railbound powerslide that ends successful a almighty boost.

Image credit: Fireshine Games

The spectacle doesn’t extremity astatine sick flips, either. My demo’s crescendo series began with commandeering a ferris instrumentality to unicycle the bid crossed a trackless beach, and ended with a hopeless scramble done the halfway of an erupting volcano, jumping betwixt tracks to debar the magma blasts. And, judging from the trailer, these could easy extremity up being 2 of the last game’s less fantastical enactment moments. What makes them truthful joyous, mind, isn’t conscionable the ocular play but the information that you’re close successful there, portion of and sometimes straight causing the chaos. It each plays successful nicely with that sensation of mad, physics-breaking speed, arsenic if you’re tearing astir truthful rapidly that world starts breaking down astir you.

My lone concern, astatine this point, is however good I’ll header with Denshattack’s sensory overload beyond a 15 infinitesimal demo. It is bloody bully amusive but my word, bash you request to concentrate: hazards carnivore down connected you successful a blink and adjacent a azygous botched country volition nonstop you careening disconnected the track, truthful you bash request to beryllium alert and prepared to jump, dodge, and brake astatine the close times. All successful summation to, and ideally combined with, busting retired the twisty, point-scoring tricks. It’s a lot, for sure.

I anticipation I’m up to the challenge, though, arsenic this was astir apt my favourite Gamescom crippled of the full amusement – and decidedly the 1 that elicited the biggest grin. It’s retired successful 2026.

Check retired our Gamescom 2025 lawsuit hub for each the PC crippled announcements and preview sum from Cologne.