Summer Game Fest 2024: Day 2
| Author: | Brian Powell Jr |
| Date: | June 8, 2024 7:58:51 pm EDT |
| Last Updated: | June 10, 2024 10:36:46 pm EDT |
| Read Time: | 3 min read |
| Tags: |
Summer Games Fest - Day 2
The second day of the 2024 Summer Games Fest was a day dedicated to upcoming games and games developed by Latin and Women-led studios. The presentations showed today were:
- The Future of Play
- Wholesome
- Latin American Games
- Women-Led
It was a little confusing seeing some of the games spread out across multiple presentations.
The Future of Play
| Title | Genre | |
|---|---|---|
| Abyss X Zero | Metriodvania | A retro-graphics anime-themed game with female leads |
| Zodiac XX | Not Sure | |
| Battle Suit Aces | Card Battler/Deck Builder | Mech Suit warriors. Game supported through the newly announced Outersloth program |
| All Systems Dance | Rythmn/Dance | A dancing game about rising up against robots. Dancing makes them perceive you with value instead of a data entry |
| Yooka-Re-Playlee | Adventure | A remastered version of the Banjo-Kazooie inspired game Yooka-Laylee |
| Nova Hearts | Not Sure | |
| A Date with Death | Not Sure | Coming 2024-12-09 |
| Lok Digital | Puzzle | A game about spelling words to fill a grid black |
| Croakwood | City Builder | From the creators of Parkitect |
| Cozy Marbles | A game about building tracks for playing with user-designed marbles and doing other various things with marbles | |
| Phoenix Springs | Coming 2024-09-16 | |
| Reka | Crafting | A game where you build a house on the back of a giant chicken |
| Sandara: City of a Thousand Eclipses | ||
| Airborne Empire | Strategy | A game about sentient birds with a floating city and moves around the map with exploration. |
| Dungeon Clawler | Turn-Based Combat | Attacks are made by retrieving items with skill/arcade games |
| N.O.D.E. | Exploration | Explore the world as robot |
| Copycat | Narrative | A cat simulator. Coming to Steam in September 2024 |
| Light Odyssey | ||
| Psychroma | ||
| Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut | Adds new chapters/content |
Wholesome Direct
Wholesome Direct featured a bunch of indie games that have kind of a relaxing vibe to them. A cool game that was showcased, Ete, had a watercolor painting style to it and also incorporated it in the gameplay. An interesting game, Fantastic Haven, is a blend of a zookeeping game and world building where you play a wizard with the ability to modify the world to your will.
As an intermission, Jemima, the Founder and EIC of Patch Magazine, highlighted their special edition on the Wholesome Games lineup from this year’s Summer Game Fest. Patch Magazine is a small, UK-based editorial focused on indie games. You can sign up for a subscription on their website for $6 USD and get monthly editions, and they also offer limited extra copies for purchase on their website.
Latin American Games
A comedic kind of game showcased during the Latin American Games Showcase was a game called Goblin Cleanup. The game is centered around cleaning up and resetting a dungeon between hero runs. Resetting the dungeon involves peril and dying just adds to the mess you need to clean up.
It was a little hard to keep my interest for the 90 minutes this section was running as there wasn’t much in the ways of intermissions or introductions to some of the content. What intermissions there were required subtitles. One interesting thing they mentioned at the end was that most, if not all, of the games showcased were either self-published or from developers seeking publishing assistance.
The last game they showcased, Mariachi Legends, looked like an interesting game to play. As a side-scrolling action-platformer you play as a detective and vigilante of sorts.
Women-Led
The Women-Led segment was fairly short, lasting only 30 minutes. I would have liked more of this content to be showed off as the games showcased were diverse and intriguing. A few notable games:
- A Roman mythology-themed 4X game, Citadelum, looked like an interesting game with some unique spins.
- If you wanted to be a reality TV show producer, then check out The Crush House. Part of the game involves some exploration as there are some strange happenings around the house.
- In a similar vein to Goat Simulator, the upcoming game Just Crow Things allows you to cause mayhem and get into shenanigans as a crow.
- Munch is an over-the-top hack-and-slash kind of game in that you play a monster with the sole goal of killing/eating things to become stronger.