Developed by Barcelona-based game developer Piccolo Studio and published by Krafton, Age Twisters is a 2-player co-op narrative adventure game. In it, you and one other person play as a grandfather and his granddaughter, solving puzzles by freely changing your ages and uncovering the dark secrets beneath a mother’s disappearance. At Gamescom 2026, we got the chance to go hands-on with the title in a couch co-op session led by the Piccolo Studios team.
Explore the relationship between Grandpa and his granddaughter after a mysterious package arrives on their doorstep with the hint that his daughter may be alive. While the granddaughter’s rebellion stems from missing the mother she never knew, the grumpy Grandpa can’t help but worry that he’ll lose her too.
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Inside the box are the titular Age Twisters, bracelets that freely change the wearer’s age. Without any pause, the characters can shift in real time between childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age with ease. The game’s isometric camera ensures both players can see the full field they’re interacting with, while tethering keeps them in place.
Age Twisters offers vibrant design and unique mechanics for co-op players.
In addition to the age-twisting, the game also uses twin-stick aiming for its interactive elements. When you have to do anything that involves aiming, players need to use both the left and right sticks to line up shots. This takes time to get used to, but it’s ultimately not hard to master, and we cover it in our 30-minute Gamescom demo.
As the game’s primary gimmick, the need to switch your ages in order to make it through sections of the game pushes conversation with your co-op partner in an interesting way. While the twin-stick shooting nature of the game does make it a bit difficult if you’re not familiar with those games, Age Twisters keeps the fun with every platform, and its tutorialization makes it extremely easy to pick up.
Additionally, the aging and de-aging mechanic pushes the player to pay attention to the environment beyond just whether you’re tall or small enough to reach a ledge. A mechanic shaped by the game’s larger message, each age you embody has its own benefits and drawbacks. As you approach benches that craft your special ability, you learn how and when to use it, and as the levels get more complicated, you have to learn how to switch between ages quickly and with intent.
In Childhood, players have faster movement and a sticky tongue/yo-yo tool that allows characters to swap positions with each other, enemies, or objects in the world to complete environmental puzzles and some platforming. In Adolescence, players have rhythm-based abilities that can slow down fast-moving objects, lasers, and enemy shots.
In Adulthood, players gain more strength, allowing heavy punches that can destroy environmental obstacles and smash through barriers. In Old Age, players gain magnetic powers to manipulate metallic objects, solve environmental puzzles, and pull items across the room.
While the game is ultimately a vibrant and cute co-op game, the complexity of the level design challenges players, and the best part of the design is that you can easily compensate for your partner. While the levels’ use of building on each new mechanic does require some familiarity with gaming to master quickly, the way that each level is designed allows each player to compensate for the other as needed, at least until the skills become second nature.
That said, each player’s character has their own abilities and creations that impact the role that they play in the game. The goal of the game’s message is to speak across generations and show the young that their elders have something to offer, and teach elders that the youth aren’t rebelling for no reason.
Gamifying the generation gap in Age Twisters is intuitive.
To do that mechanically, each character has strengths that make them special. But, as noted earlier, the age-twisting mechanic that allows new benefits and deficits for each character works to show that each generation has something to offer and may just need a little help in other ways too. By building value in each age range, Age Twisters ensures there is no reason to stay stagnant, but rather to use something from each generation.
The game’s ability to make its mechanics represent its narrative can’t be undersold. It’s smart game design that never hits players over the head with its themes. Instead, each level lets players discover it on their own through the banter between the characters.
On top of that, players who buy the game can send a free invite to friends via the Friend’s Pass to help facilitate online play without needing an extra copy. Additionally, while the game starts from a place of deep emotion, with the granddaughter yearning for a mother she may never see again, its humor is fantastic.
Age Twisters is gorgeously designed, embracing toys and hyperstylized sci-fi technology to put a smile on a face before doing anything else. With more and more people looking for explicitly co-op games to play on their couch with friends, partners, or other family, Age Twisters is an easy one to recommend for wishlists.
Age Twisters does not currently have a set release date, but is available for wishlisting on Steam.
