Summer Game Fest 2024: Every Day of the Devs announcement

Cozy games, retro games, and one home seeking love

Pikselnesia

The Summer Games Fest 2024 Day of the Devs showcase has come and gone, with nearly two dozen imaginative indie games on display. This summer’s Day of the Devs expo featured a varied range of games, from DLC for popular puzzlers, to a cyberpunk twist on Tamagotchi, clever compilations, and a whole lot more.

We’ve rounded up all the Summer Game Fest 2024 Day of the Devs announcements and trailers below.

Simpler Times

First up is a cozy, slightly nostalgic vibes game called Simpler Times from iam8bit and Stoneskip. The whole idea is that you’re basically just taking your time doing whatever – listening to music, messing around with a sketchpad, and savoring the moment however you feel like it, all set to a chill lo-fi soundtrack. Simpler Times is out now for PC via Steam.

Battle Vision Network

Capybara Games is blending genres together in some unexpected ways with Battle Vision Network, which the team describes as a spiritual successor to Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes with  “cozy puzzle matching gameplay with fast-paced online elements and tactics.” It’s a 1v1 puzzler where matching colors determines how your attacks unfold, and the community decides who gets to take the championship title home.

Cairn

Carin is the final game in The Game Bakers’ trilogy that includes Haven, and it’s all about falling down and yelling at rocks. No, really. It follows a young woman trying to push herself beyond her limits to reach a summit no one has ever climbed before, and it treats every setback and failure as a chance to overcome frustrations that extend beyond just the climb as you reset and try again. You’ll plan your route and try not to freeze or dehydrate along the way, and your pitons act as limited save points to record your progress as you go, so plan carefully.

Petal Runner

Nano Park’s Petal Runner uses old tech in some inventive ways. It looks brilliant, and you can see for yourself in our Petal Runner writeup.

Karma: The Dark World

If you like psychological horror, then Karma is probably for you. This dark, narrative-driven game is the first from Pollard Studios, and it’s doing some interesting things in the genre. You play as a worker for a company that serves an oppressive government, and your job is diving into their minds to find secret truths the person in question desperately tries to keep hidden. The story unfolds in two worlds – the mental world and the real world – and eventually, you realize what the government wants you to do is actually kinda bad.

UFO 50

Mossmouth, the makers of Spelunky, are launching a retro game collection, but it’s not the kind you might be thinking of. The team built dozens of retro-style games from scratch, from open-ended adventures to arcade throwbacks, and combined, they all tell a story about the fictional studio UFO 50. These aren’t mini-games, either. They’re full experiences that combine modern design sensibilities with retro ideas, and you can play them all from the start.

UFO 50 launches on Sep. 18, 2024.

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit

Cozy Grove 2 is officially called Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, and it’s basically a bigger, better Cozy Grove. You’ll spread kindness every day, get to know the spirits around the island, and help bring them a bit of peace and love. It looks absolutely gorgeous, and it’s mobile only for now. Look for it on Netflix later in June 2024.

Koira

Studio Tolima is making Koira, a creative spin on puzzle games that stars a young girl and her puppy companion. You free the puppy at the start of Koira and accompany them through the forest as you both try to find a way home and avoid capture from a group of shady forest invaders. What sets this apart from other puzzlers is that everything you do and see is musical. Objects, people, even trees all emit an instrumental sound of some kind, and you’ll use those sounds to make your way through the woods.

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure

Arranger is another clever twist on established genres. It stars Gemma, a self-described chaotic woman who moves in a unique way. When she moves, the world moves with her, and since her world is a grid made up of tiles, things get complicated quickly. You’ll have to plan carefully as you journey through the world, take on challenges, solve puzzles, and help people in need.

Arranger launches on July 25, 2024

Fear the Spotlight

Fear the Spotlight is the first game from horror makers Blumhouse. Check it our in our Fear the Spotlight write-up.

Screenbound

The developers of Screenbound saw someone playing a game in a busy environment and decided to make it a game. You play as someone playing a 2D game in a 3D world, and what you do in one environment affects the other. 

Zoochosis

Zoochosis asks the question “what if you were a night zookeeper in a zoo where the animals mutated into horrible monsters?”  and then makes you answer it. It’s freaky and intense, and it looks brilliant.

Tom the Postgirl

Speaking of creepy, Oopsie Daisies’ debut game Tom the Postgirl casts you as a peeping Tom – badumtiss – whose penchant for spying on other people might just be what saves the world. I say “people,” but it’s a mix of frogs, humans, birds, chickens, and, well, you get the idea. There’s a dark story behind all the weird happenings, bloodsoaked floors, and suspiciously innocent neighbors, and only Tom’s obsessive stalking can uncover it.

Psychorama

Psychorama is a cyberpunk horror visual novel, which is a lot of words, but to be fair, there’s a lot going on in Psychorama. It blends sci-fi with the paranormal and aims to “create a rift” to connect with people. Psychorama’s protagonist is a non-binary, bi-racial amnesiac whose position on the fringe of different cultures gives them insight into behaviors and ideas they might not have otherwise, and developer Rocket Adrift hopes the journey to recover your in-game identity helps bring you a closer understanding of your real-world self.

Building Relationships

“What if A Short Hike, but stupid” is the way Tanat Games describes their quirky adventure game Building Relationships. You play a single-family home on a quest for love, so off you roll – yes, you roll – to an island to meet new buildings and maybe even find someone special. There’s fishing, because why not, jumping, dashing, and even a car you can drive. It’s delightfully quirky and one you really need to see to understand.

A Little to the Left DLC: Seeing Stars

The cozy puzzler A Little to the Left is back with more puzzles, more stars, and more vibes. The Seeing Stars DLC adds a wide range of puzzles with multiple solutions and varied difficulties, with over 100 stars to collect, and many of them center on new intractable objects you can press or fold that add an extra wrinkle to your solution. A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars launches on June 25, 2024, for PC and console.

Hello Again

Hello Again stars a postal worker trapped on a seemingly deserted island. You’ll solve puzzles and use your powers of observation to uncover truths about the island’s mysterious past in what developer Soup Island calls “Animal Crossing meets Groundhog Day.”

While Waiting

While Waiting is a game about, well, waiting, or more accurately, what you do while waiting. It follows one person through his life, from birth to death, and lets you decide how he spends all those moments in between – for the elevator, for the shop to open, for traffic, you get the idea. You can be good and orderly or act like a complete chaos gremlin and turn the world on its head. I know what I’ll be doing, and it’s not the former.

Afterlove EP

Afterlove EP looks like one of those really special, personal indie games, mostly because it is. It follows a young man after his girlfriend dies, and he hears her voice from beyond the grave, encouraging him to continue and finish the album they were working on. It’s as much about coming to terms with loss as it is conveying developer duo Pikselnesia’s love for the city of Jakarta, as you explore the city and find a reason to keep moving forward.

Phoenix Springs

Phoenix Springs puts a modern spin on the classic 90s point-and-click adventure game, and one of the biggest differences is how you interact with the world around you as you try finding your long-lost brother. Rather than holding and moving objects to solve puzzles, you’ll ponder ideas, figure out how they relate to the environment around you, and use the right words to move a conversation forward and, hopefully, get closer to the truth.

Tides of Tomorrow

The makers of Route 96 are back, this time with Tides of Tomorrow. You play as someone who can see the past actions of others, which sounds cool, until you get kidnapped by theives at a theme park called Pleasureland. These visions of the past give you different options for how to act in certain situations, and your choices affect how the rest of the story unfolds.