Summer Game Festwas a whirlwind of titles this year - between the Opening Night Live presentation, Day of the Devs, and theXbox Games Showcase, the entire weekend was stacked top to bottom with announcements. Journalists from all over the world also spent three days playing some of the next few years’ most exciting upcoming games, from indies to triple-As. I was lucky enough to be one of them, seeing 17 games throughout the weekend, and I walked away extremely impressed.
This list, of course, will reflect my own biases, particularly in areas such as genre preferences and the appointments I signed up for based on my expertise. Honestly, I didn’t see a single bad game during Summer Game Fest, but some especially stood out to me,whether it was their concept, gameplay, aesthetics, or just the way they made me feel. These are my personal favorite games from SGF 2025.
Grave Seasons Is Stardew With A Supernatural Killer
A Subversion Of The Cozy Farming Genre
Grave Seasonstakes the typical ideas of a cozy farming game and subverts them, as the town of Ashenridge isn’t some idyllic small town in which players - who, in this game, just escaped from prison - can get away from it all. A supernatural killer is hunting the villagers, and it’s up to players to prevent future victims’ fates and find out the identity of the murderer. Even in my brief hands-on with the title, during my time clearing out the farm property of trash and weeds, I uncovered a severed hand - presumably from the previous farmer who went missing recently.
Games likethe fan-favoriteHarvest Moon inspired it.Each playthrough is designed to be a year, with a different killer being chosen randomly from a select pool of characters each time, giving players a different mystery to solve. There are still the usual things to do each day, like farming and fishing and romancing - players can even woo the killer - but there are also clues to connect, villagers to save, and breaking and entering to do, too.
Dosa Divas: One Last Meal Is The Ultimate Food Fight
Destroy A Corporation With Your Food Truck Mech
Dosa Divas: One Last Mealis a blend of turn-based fighting, cooking, and familial drama. Ten years prior to the events of the game, three sisters ran a restaurant with their parents, but a blowout fight caused them to go their separate ways. One of them, Lina, has gone on to build an evil instant meal empire, creating a world where no one cooks anymore. However, armed with their sentient food truck mech named Goddess, Amani and Samara are working to save the world as they fight off Lina’s corporate goons.
Dosa Divascomes from Outer Loop games, which previously released2023’sThirsty Suitors. I was a huge fan ofThirsty Suitors, and the same DNA is definitely present here, from the colorful world to the eccentric turn-based fighting. This time around, instead of having different thirst-related weaknesses, enemies have certain flavor weaknesses, and there are now more quick-time button presses during fights that can help with both attacks and blocks. Between fights, players will cook - which takes place as a set of minigames in the surreal Preparation Realm - for the townsfolk they encounter, building friendships and their overall reputation.
Mixtape Is A Perfectly-Curated Mesh Of Memories
Nostalgia, Teenage Summer Shenanigans, & An Amazing Soundtrack
Mixtapetakes the ideas of memory, nostalgia, and their ties to music, and binds them all together into an unforgettable experience. The game takes place on the last night teenager Stacy Rockford will be spending in their hometown of Blue Moon Lagoon before moving to New York to become a music supervisor. Though the game takes place as Rockford and their two best friends gear up for one final blow-out party, it weaves in and out of other memory vignettes of their teen years, from rocking out in the car to running from the cops at a party.
Mixtapeis made by Beethoven & Dinosaur, the studio behind the award-winningArtful Escape, and features great music and stunning visuals just as its predecessor did. The soundtrack is what it all hinges on, and I was very pleased with the selections during my half-hour demo, when I experienced memories set to things like “That’s Good” by Devo and “Just Like Honey” by The Jesus and Mary Chain. Though the music is its throughline,Mixtapeis about so much more: coming of age, the subjectivity and idealism of memory, bittersweet nostalgia, and, of course, really sick skateboard tricks.
Out Of Words Is A Gorgeous Co-Op
Handcrafted Animations That Defy Gravity
It’s no secret I loved this game - I shared earlier that I believeOut of Wordscould be a GOTYcontender after it releases, but it bears repeating just how lovely this title is. After teenage protagonists Kurt and Karla are sucked into an unknown world having lost their mouths, the pair must go on a journey to try to get them back. It’s co-op only in the style of games likeSplit Fiction, but with much more dependence on each other when it comes to traversal, with players tossing back and forth control over gravity.
A collaboration between Kong Orange and WiredFly,Out of Wordsfeatures a team of talented animators who used to work at companies like Laika, the studio behindKubo and the Two Strings, and it absolutely shows. My preview took me to several parts of the game, from glowing catacombs to an eccentric underground city called Nounville, all of which were beautifully handcrafted environments, as are the characters themselves. According to developers, things get even darker as the game continues on, which I’m quite excited for.
Snap & Grab Is Like Heisting Hitman
An ‘80s Art Theft Sim With Lots Of Flexibility
Snap & Grabreminded me of a blend betweenlast year’sCrush Houseand theHitmanseries. It has the former’s neon, vaporwave aesthetics and focus on the visual arts, and the criminal flexibility of the latter. Protagonist Nifty Nevada is a world-famous fashion and pop culture photographer, but that career is simply a cover for her true passion: grand larceny. Players will travel to luxurious, star-studded locales snapping photos, which are really instructions for Nifty’s team to commit a heist later, and can retry with a myriad of different tactics to see what works.
The game comes from No Goblin, the developer ofRoundabout, and keeps that same sort of wackiness in its crimes and how they can be successfully completed. During my preview, for example, one of the heists involved impersonating a chef so that I could sneakily feed a tiger a hotdog for great financial gain. Because there’s no penalty for wrong ideas, players are encouraged to experiment with different scenarios to see how they play out, and each heist has lots of different potentially correct moves.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault Is More Dungeon-Diving Fun
Running A Shop Now Comes With More Roguelike Elements
Moonlighter 2picks up where the first one left off, with hero Will now dealing with a demanding landlord in the small village of Tresna and a mysterious new set of dungeons. The core idea of the game remains the same: pillage dungeons in your off time to acquire rarities and relics to sell in your shop. However, the pixel-art graphics have gotten a major overhaul - which, though I was initially sad to see go, the new art is undeniably lovely and quickly growing on me - and combat has received big modernizations as well.
Ranged attacks are charged via melee, and enemies can be staggered and knocked away once reaching a certain low point in health with a smack from Will’s backpack, damaging other enemies in the process. Both shopkeeping and dungeon crawling have incorporated more roguelike elements in an effort to add variance. Players can now modify things like weapons on the fly as they progress and add perks to their sales techniques and profits as they serve customers, alongside the more permanent upgrades purchased in town, making for much more versatile gameplay.
TOEM 2 Is Silly Photography Goodness
So Much To See, Help With, & Take Pictures Of
TOEMwas one of myfavorite cozy indie gamesof the past several years, andTOEM 2felt like going right back into the game I loved. Although it shares many similarities with the first game, it also boasts some noticeable and important differences. Environments are now 3D, making it feel even more like a world you want to get lost in. There are also more ways to explore, with added jumping and climbing that mix in a lot more verticality and make things feel more dynamic.
Just like the initial Something We Made entry, though, I was immediately swept up by the various tasks the people I found around the world had. I took a photo of goats for a troll, got a potion for an injured knight, blew a sculptor’s mind with my prowess, and much more all within half an hour. I can easily see it being another game that’s very easy to get stuck in a loop of “just one more thing” with much like the firstTOEM, and I can’t wait to see what the new characters have in store for me.
Crisol: Theater Of Idols Is Horrifying Folklore
Fighting Evil With Your Own Blood Is No Easy Feat
I’m admittedly not usually a horror person, particularly survival horrors where you’re meant to die a lot and learn as you go, butCrisol: Theater of Idolsmanaged to be a hit for me. Protagonist Gabriel is on a holy mission from the Sun God in the cursed world of Hispania, a horrifyingly-reimagined version of Spain. The big mechanical twist of the title was definitely part of its sticking power for me - bullets are made with Gabriel’s blood, and he can only utilize so many before dying.
This greatly amplifies the typical bullet rationing often found in the genre, making for a constant balancing act of health and firepower. A debut from Vermila Studios with Blumhouse Games serving as publisher, the two in combination certainly know fear and ambiance. It’s a world of cursed toys and other contraptions, drawing on inspiration from a blend of folklore, religion, and history for something really unforgettable atSummer Game Fest.
