Bohemia Interactive reveals a Minecraft competitor and a horse-themed comedy platformer, but remains silent on the status of Arma 4

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