Sometimes you wait forever for a bus, and then two completely different modes of transport come along at once. Such is the case with Bohemia Interactive, whose long awaited Arma 4 is still in the reforging stage of its development. In the meantime, Bohemia has announced that it’s publishing two very different games at this year’s Gamescom, one that’s all about airships, and another that involves a weird horse.
The first of these is Skyverse, which boldly asks the question “What if Minecraft’s terrain generation algorithm had a senior moment and broke up the world into a bunch of floating islands?” Developed by Enjoy Studio, Skyverse is a blocky sandbox RPG that looks pretty darn similar to Minecraft, but with a more overt fantasy theme and the aforementioned floating island twist. Players can traverse these islands on their very own airship, stopping off to explore, harvest resources, and delve into skeleton-filled dungeons.
The second game is Brute Horse, a “slightly unhinged” action platformer from developer Place of Departure. Taking place in the realm of South Vulgaria, Brute Horse revolves around three characters, a barbarian known as Brute, his horse (and best friend) simply known as Horse, and a female assassin called Michelle, who are all seeking the most powerful weapon in the land. There’s a trailer below that doesn’t show any gameplay, but does give a sense of its knockabout tone. It has vague whiffs of ye olde comedy actioner Armed and Dangerous about it, although probably less British given it’s developed by a Czech studio, and hopefully with a better game beneath the jokes (I played some Armed and Dangerous last year and it has not aged well).
Both new games place significant emphasis on multiplayer, with Skyverse letting you explore its voxelly, procedural worlds with pals, and Brute Horse allowing two players to team up as Brute and Michelle in couch co-op. Frankly, I’d be more excited if Brute Horse let players team up as rider and horse; that seems like a game idea with potential for shenanigans.
Brute Horse is set for release sometime in 2025, while Skyverse has a vague “Coming soon” label on its Steam page. I’m somewhat intrigued by both titles, but let’s face it, what we really want to know from Bohemia Interactive is “when Arma 4 plz?” Bohemia hasn’t said anything specific about the sequel to the hugely successful Arma 3 since 2022, and that was in the context of Arma Reforger, the studio’s “bridge” to Arma 4.
Reforger left early access last year to a middling reception, although the studio has continued to support its weird mixture of military D&D toolset and glorified engine testbed. June brought a major update that added AI vehicle control and the ability to command squads, as well as a bunch of new weapons and game master features. The general consensus is that Reforger will one day transform into Arma 4, although when that will take place, only Zeus knows.