Gravhounds, a co-op action game about a crew of working dogs on a hostile planet, was announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 by Octopus Panic, which co-host Sjokz described as a seven-person independent studio founded by veterans of the Halo and Battlefield franchises. The closing card says early access is coming in 2026 and invites players to join a playtest at gravhounds.com.
The trailer opens in a corporate habitat pod with the taglines “the perfect worker”, “loyal, obedient”, and “bred to serve”, before revealing the workforce: bulldogs, retrievers, and hounds in orange exosuits and blue coveralls, one of them wearing a cone of shame. Recruitment posters read “drop in and get to work” and “upgrade or be wiped out”, with a cheerful robot screen as the company mascot.
The gameplay is third-person shooting across candy-coloured alien meadows and deserts: dog squads dropping from orbital pods, mowing down swarms of blue-and-pink bugs, manning turrets, dying (a grey “you died” screen) and respawning, and bailing out under fire. Menus show a sniper rifle with damage and magazine stats, a mod selection between Inferno Grenades, Last Round, and Stockpile, and a class tree split into Breaker, Worker, and Runner, with a character called Zane on the crew select screen. The banter that came through the stream: “watch out for the wildlife”, “okay, this is becoming a problem”, “you gotta be kidding me”.
No platforms were listed on the card.