The last major day of Summer Game Fest is here, and with it comes the last big set of reveals and trailers for various platforms and publishers, capping off with a Death Stranding 2 focused event. We’ve got your recap for the day below, along with some notes.
Overall I think this might have been a pretty disappointing Summer Game Fest, in the sense that a lot of the tone of the shows and the oddities of the event have really taken me out of it. Normally I’ve had a pretty large amount of energy stored up for them, but this year I just couldn’t seem to manifest it. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of events in the world and the show itself, a disconnect in my brain of the reality of events happening while trying to distract myself with game trailers, which then crossed over in weird ways when the shows were either devoid of cultural touches, or awkwardly reminded me that things were generally pretty awful and the show seemed to be okay with that.
This made Sunday’s slate of events difficult, considering who was up first: Microsoft. For those who are not aware, in early April of this year Microsoft was named as a priority boycott target by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in opposition to the ongoing genocide against them. This determination was made due to Microsoft’s similarly-ongoing provision of technology and resources to the Israeli military. While BDS realizes that Microsoft is almost inextricable from our daily lives–I am aware of this acutely as I type this into Word on my Windows computer–we can still make choices on where or how to spend our time and money, and where or how we will compromise when we are required to.
For that reason, we will not be covering the Microsoft presentation.
PC Gamer Showcase
The PC Gamer Showcase is always a little bit… odd. The show generally has a pre-recorded set of skits that revolve around some form of theme as the two hosts (Mica Burton and Sean “Day9” Plott) navigate the madness and zaniness of said skit to then introduce gaming trailers. I applaud the creativity and fact that PC Gamer doesn’t just rattle off trailers hype them up or other common tactics, but I often don’t always find myself doing more than rolling my eyes and sighing while waiting for the next trailer. I think it really just comes down to a matter of taste, frankly. There were a lot of games shown in this showcase, so I’ll be covering some of the more interesting or stand-out titles (to me). If you’d like, you can check the video above for the full showcase, or find a list of games here.
Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth
Developer: Hyper Games
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PC, Consoles
Marcy: I really love Moomin, which probably surprises no one. But I also really loved the Snufkin game, Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. So when I saw Hyper Games making another game in the Moomin universe, I was already on board, and Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth looks absolutely gorgeous from what was shown here. The game is billed a a point and click adventure game with puzzles, and I for one am immediately sold on all of this, with the beautiful backgrounds and aesthetics making me even more excited.
Kaizen: A Factory Story
Developer: Coincidence
Release Date: July 29, 2025
Platform: Steam Steam
Marcy: The set up of this game is that you play a Japanese-American who travels to Japan to overtake a factory in the late 80s economic boom, and that represents itself as a factory assembly line puzzle game. I sometimes really like these programmatic puzzle games, although I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. That being said, it looks fun and a little more accessible than others that usually fall into this category, and the publisher has a pretty good pedigree, so if you like this type of puzzle game (and you aren’t already aware of it), you may want to put Kaizen on your radar.
No, I’m Not a Human
Developer: Trioskaz
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: PC
Marcy: Papers Please has had a big impact on gaming in both the way it’s message was received (or ignored) and also for the gameplay loop of investigating people’s details and spotting differences or inconsistencies, which has manifested in a lot of games that have wanted to copy the gameplay loop (or similar) without the “political” messaging of the game. In some ways that’s spoiled a little bit of the concept behind the game. No, I’m not a Human is one of the first games that pulls from Paper Please’s lineage that I’ve felt compelled by the same way as the original. The extremely unsettling art and setting changes it from authoritarian fascism to survival horror, but with that also comes questions about what it means to be a human or take another’s life. This is further compounded by the fact that the game requires you to let people into your home, and then from there monitor and determine if you must kill them to save yourself.
goblinAmerica
Developer: Gil Lawson
Release Date: Q4 2025
Platforms: PC
Marcy: I’ve balked in past roundups about games being compared to other games, but I feel like the easiest way to speak about goblinAmerica is that it reminds me Cruelty Squad, a game that absolutely whips ass, so the comparison here is one of high praise. goblinAmerica is a first person shooter that seems focused entirely on the gameplay loop and experience, featuring a grisly, bizarre and comedic setting. I was very excited for this the first time we saw it last year and now that it looks further along, I’m even more excited for when it releases later this year. It also has Counter-Strike parkour, if you needed something else to help sell you on it.
PIGFACE
Developer: titolovesyou
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: PC
Marcy: In PIGFACE, you play as a woman called “Exit” who has done terrible things, and now has a bomb implanted in her neck. That seems fine with her, because the people who have implanted that bomb have tasked her with killing people, which apparently Exit seems overly happy to do (she laughs quite a lot in the trailer). Personally, I’m a big fan of women pursuing their passions, and the grimy 3D sandbox of PIGFACE seems like a lot of fun; the type of game that occasionally inspires multiple playthroughs to see just what ridiculous things you can do or paths to victory you can take.
ULTRAKILL: Layer 8 – FRAUD
Developer: Arsi “Hakita” Patala
Release Date: Game is in Early Access, Layer 8 out later 2025
Platforms: PC
Marcy: I suppose there are a lot of trans stereotypes, and if one of them is being super into (and super good) at ULTRAKILL, then I suppose that’s a lucky guess. ULTRAKILL fucking rules, plain and simple, and if you’ve never played it before and love challenging shooters, you are doing yourself a disservice not having played it already. And if you are worried there isn’t enough for you to do in the game yet, well, there’s a new chapter coming out later this year: FRAUD. The trailer reminded me of everything I love about ULTRAKILL, and I hope you will consider giving it a try.
Blippo+
Developer: Blippo+
Release Date: 2025
Platforms: Switch, Playdate (Out now), PC
Marcy: An FMV game replicating the television of an era gone by (and, by extent, another planet in the game), Blippo+ caught my eye as one of the most charming, queer, and weird games of the entire weekend, and one that I immediately had to wishlist. I almost considered buying a Playdate on the spot because of it, until I learned it was going to come to Steam. Blippo+ is not a ‘game’ in the traditional sense, but instead you, the player, are given the ability to channel surf various live action shows. It has a wonderfully analog, late 80s to mid-90s cable tv aesthetic and quality to it that I love. I think if you’re a fan of Tim & Eric or analog media explorations, you’ll probably find Blippo+ as interesting as I do.
Love Eternal
Developer: brlka
Release Date: 2025
Platforms: PS4/5, PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Marcy: Another game that I feel is hard to describe without comparison, when Love Eternal showed off the platforming puzzle/challenge mode, my immediate thought was to compare it to Celeste, which, again, is not a bad thing at all. The premise here is that the protagonist, Maya, has been taken from her family by some sort of lonely, malevolent deity, but the pixel art segments and creepy storytelling is what really drew me to the game. I loved the expressive art and I wanted to know more about the story: who was Maya, who was the creepy girl, what was with her mother, and more. I also love the sort of malevolent deity that may affect your gameplay and force you to react, so I’m all aboard this one.
Grave Seasons
Developer: Perfect Garbage
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: PS5, PC, Switch, Xbox Series X/S
Marcy: Last year, Blumhouse stated it would be helping back and support developers who wanted to make horror games. In October of last year the first game to benefit from this was Fear the Spotlight, an amazing horror game with a PS1-retro aesthetic that I highly recommend. I use that mostly to support that Grave Seasons has a lot of potential to be another stellar game from their backing, even if the initial conceit of “horror farming life sim” may not seem as original as when Grave Seasons was first announced (during this very Summer Game Fest there were at least 4 other games that fit that description). What I like about Grave Seasons is, well, the art: the characters are attractive and interesting and notably diverse of body, color, and queerness, and the romance mechanic baked into every farming simulator seems to be open and affects gameplay. The trailer showed a character dying, but it seems like who that is or when or how that happens can be affected by your choices (I hope, they were really cute) so I’m looking forward to the game when it comes out later this year hopefully.
Death Stranding 2 Showcase
Marcy: As one might expect from a show by Geoff Keighly, the last big event of the weekend (but not the last showcase, there’s the Black Led Games Showcase on Monday) involved his bestest friend in the world, Hideo Kojima. This one is mostly for the Death Stranding 2 Girlies, because if you didn’t like the original game, nothing on this panel was really going to do much to win you over to the sequel. In fact, a lot of the gameplay shown in Death Stranding 2’s showcase looked oddly clunky, meaning that the game is still as difficult and unwieldy to control as usual (which I think is cool).
To help decide if you want to watch it, the first part of the showcase was mostly Kojima talking about his design decisions and thoughts, as well as things that influenced his concepts of the sequel to the game. I know there are often jokes about Kojima as a wannabe film auteur or even gaming’s first/pre-eminent ‘game auteur’, but the man is genuinely interesting to listen to and has a pretty open and unique game design thought process. I enjoyed listening, but if you mostly wanted to see the game, you can probably skip the first half.
The second part of the showcase focused on gameplay, and I have to admit that, as I said above, it looks exactly like Death Stranding 2 for better or worse. The person helming the gameplay demos seemed to be having a difficult time, particularly during a boss fight against the character Neil (the one from the trailer on Friday), which… while funny, I think goes to show why sometimes it is better to produce gameplay videos ahead of time. There were a few segments where Kojima seemed visibly annoyed at the person playing so poorly, and their inability to do “well” seemed to make the panel a little uncomfortable (Keighly really tried to sell it as to how great it was to show off your game ‘live’ even if that meant you had problems happen, which… sure, Jan).
That said, the Showcase really didn’t produce any new knowledge of tantalizing information we didn’t already have. Perhaps the most unique was that the music in the game will apparently respond to player choices, so I’ll be curious to see what that means or how that is implemented, but if you’re looking forward to Death Stranding 2, much of what’s in this showcase probably just confirms that excitement. If you didn’t like Death Stranding, well, that probably isn’t going to change much based on this.
Wrap-Up
Marcy: The somewhat self-aggrandizing final show of the night being Geoff up on stage with his buddy Kojima really did kind of feel like the bow to send off this odd weekend. I have to admit that there are a lot of points in which I was working on these round-ups while having newsfeeds and social media in the other window, and the juxtaposition of what was happening in Los Angeles while the Summer Game Fest happened roughly 15 miles away from it just ate at me at times.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding escape in your hobbies or passions and having a show happen while the world is on fire is also not inherently wrong. I do think that the tone-deaf nature of the show, however, speaks to the larger problems of gaming culture often trying to cater to the lowest common denominator of consumers, as does the price tag to entry and being included in the Summer Game Fest itself. One of the big issues of E3 was purportedly the price and the culture that the show had constructed, and it feels a little like SGF is tilting in that direction as well.
I can’t help but wonder if forgoing any sort of even moderate attempt to connect gaming to the world around it in a meaningful way will be the biggest flaw of the SGF across the years. It will certainly be odd to look back at this SGF in context of history around it, and think back on it as, “The time that guy wore a MAGA hat spoof a day before the President of the United States sent the National Guard into Los Angeles against his own citizens.”
No matter what, there’s peace and comfort in the things we love and enjoy. I’ve always loved gaming and I’ve found a lot of comfort and amazing people in this space, and so I’ll focus on looking forward to more games that help remind me that there really are things to look forward to in this world, even when that gets harder and harder to do. I guess we’ll see how that changes when Gamescom rolls around.
Until then, take care of yourselves, dear readers.
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