I finally finished watching showcases as of an hour ago, including the Guerrilla Collective (I found out the actual show was only about two hours long). It’s been a very difficult day of game showcase viewing, but I am here, dragging my limp and drained essence behind me, to tell you about what I saw.
Let’s start with a gripe: these shows are too long, man. I’m sorry. It’s been funny to watch the evolution of digital showcases from these little furtive 30m-1hr joints to the behemoths it seems like everything has to be now, but I am fucking exhausted now, and we’re only about halfway through Summer Game Fest. I flat out refuse to cover the OTK Games Expo because that motherfucker was FOUR HOURS LONG. Absolutely not. I’ll fucking fight y’all. Die.
Anyway, what did I cover? Well, we had the Wholesome Direct, which wasn’t long, but did somehow manage to show 80 titles off, which was its own special brand of tiresome, and there was the Future Games Show hosted by Yuri Lowenthal and Laura Bailey, which ran for about 90 minutes. And as mentioned, I finally sucked it up and turned the Guerrilla Collective showcase on. I’m ultimately glad I did, but man, shit was still about two hours long. That was my limit. Can’t wait to crash and wake up tomorrow to do it all over again. GAMES
Wholesome Direct
The selection of games in the Wholesome Direct seemed to cover a wider array of genres and themes this time. The last couple of years (and you might have heard ~discourse~ about this) the show seemed to lean into the overly cutesy cozy business sim shit. There’s still some of that here but there are also other things! It was nice to see the “wholesome” category expanding a little bit.
I do have a genuine question: why do a lot of “wholesome” games seem so intent on being pastoral capitalism simulators? Like you’ve got a game where everyone is a cat and owns a teahouse, and you’re out here being a cat and starting a teahouse. Or the game where you are a cat and setting up a coffee shop in the woods. Or the game where you open a bookshop out of a camper trailer. Or you’re a magic farmer whose produce profits and prestidigitation saves the nearby town. And I could go on. That deserves a look I think!!
But not right now. Right now I am going to give you four recommendations of games to check out. We can talk about the sociopoliticoeconomic natures of the games later.
Station to Station is a very pretty voxel-based train simulator that seems to let players get ever more intricate as their train networks grow. I am not the kind of person who loves trains, but this is absolutely a shoe-in for the people who are. I would absolutely watch many streams of people playing this, though. (Also ignore the Future Games Show shit, it showed up at both events.)
Everdeep Aurora might be the most stylish game I saw today. This pixel art is absolutely fucking breathtaking. The environments are so intricate, I just want to stretch the limits of what I can explore among them. The character designs are extremely good. Everything just has so much… p’zazz. I’m more than sold here.
These genius motherfuckers. It’s been a full goddamn decade since the last Nintendogs title came out for the Nintendo 3DS. Nobody in that ENTIRE DECADE has thought to capitalize on my absolute consuming desire to pet a realistic dog in a video game? Are you fucking kidding me? Anyway, Little Friends: Puppy Island might just be the most video game of all time when it comes out, so, you know. Fuck. God dammit look at their faces. AAAA
The amount of Moomin shit I’ve consumed in my life would fit on a single page, but I have always been fascinated by what I’ve seen of the Finnish-Swedish comic. It’s gorgeous and weird to look at, seemingly funny as hell, and also deeply socially and naturally conscious—a Ghibli precursor for sure. Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley is a game I’ve had on my wishlist for a hot minute. Happy to see this little update.
The Future Games Show
Was it cringey? Was it full of PR speak? Did I find myself bored to tears at times? Yes to all, but the Future Games Show still did happen to have some things that piqued my interest. RIP to that one dinosaur game that got buffered into oblivion though. We will never know what you are.
The impulse to call this “a soulslike” or “side-scrolling Bloodborne” has me very upset. The Last Faith is so clearly just real fucking in love with Castlevania, and we love it for that.
Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson looks great, and is a rhythm-based RPG from the looks of things. I’m specifically interested in this game’s soundtrack.
I really liked the way REKA combined folk-horror with basebuilding here. I’d be interested to see more of this game and maybe play a demo of it. It looks like it’s coming out next year – absolutely on my radar.
The game I was most excited about seeing anything on was Pacific Drive, a game that combines the mechanical tinkering of My Summer Car with Annihilation. Exploring the Pacific exclusion zone in a station wagon you jury-rigged to battle the supernatural just seems like it’s going to be a great time. I can’t wait to play it.
Guerrilla Collective
The last and longest presentation I could stomach had a pretty high density of games I was interested in and hadn’t seen elsewhere. Because of course.
Lmao, you can’t watch this video here, but it’s just the Remnant II story trailer. Anyway, this sold me on the game. I think it has just enough vague proper-nounery that I’ll feel right at home coming over from Destiny.
There’s a fucking TROMA game coming out soon. A TOXIC CRUSADERS game, even. That’s wild to me. This looks super solid and I’m sure it’ll be a blast to play.
For fans of: Typing of the Dead, being a wizard: Leximan looks extremely rad. You type spells out, or alternately choose from a floating cloud of morphemes to beat the shit out of obstacles and enemies. I love this.
There was no other title I popped harder for during my watchthrough of the Guerrilla Collective Summer Showcase. A deckbuilding, top-down, tactical mech fighter where you get in a robot that seems to be a cross between a Gundam and an Evangelion unit and beat up ARCHANGELS. Hell yes. Fuck yes. Absolutely. Sign me up. Right now.
I can feel my enthusiasm draining from my body as I face the prospect of another three or four days of this shit. What hubris I had to think I could or even should cover Summer Game Fest like this. I am going to be a shell of a human being by the time I’m through. God help me. God help us all.