My 4 under-the-radar gems from Summer Game Fest — from Zelda-likes to murder gardening

While Summer Game Fest saw the debut of some of the biggest games the industry has to offer, it was also a chance for smaller teams to show off what they’ve been working on.

Across the Summer Game Fest Play Days event, VGC managed to go hands-on with Control Resonant, Alien Isolation 2, Stranger Than Heaven, and much more. We also sat down with the minds behind Final Fantasy 7: Revelation and Fumito Ueda, the legendary director of Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, to chat about this new game, Gen Atlas.

But it was in the quiet moments between the headline-grabbing games that we found some of Summer Game Fest’s most interesting titles. From contemplative reflections on life to murder-mystery gardening games, Summer Game Fest wasn’t all about world premieres and internet-breaking announcements.

Forever Ago

Forever Ago isn’t really suited to a show like Summer Game Fest. While dozens of journalists are rushing to their next appointments, it’s typically hard to get lost in a narrative adventure game. But Forever Ago got me. Not only did it get me, if I’d played it any longer, but I’d also have been going to my appointment misty-eyed.

The game follows Alfie as he visits locations that he and his late wife visited when they were young. Told through flashbacks and interactions with items within the locations, it’s incredibly charming. Alfie can take pictures with his retro camera. There doesn’t seem to be a gameplay mechanic tied to this, other than simply capturing the game’s lovely scenery, which is more than enough for me.

My demo saw Alfie explore a rural gas station that he, his wife, and their friend spent time at in their youth. Now in the twilight of his life, the gas station is staffed by a spotty teenager. The interaction between the two showed off the game’s great writing and performances.

It’s a description that was given to me a few times over the weekend, but Forever Ago really does feel like a playable version of the intro to Disney Pixar’s Up. Your mileage may vary with that level of emotional terrorism, but from my short demo and the game’s recently released trailer, I’m keen to continue the adventure, even if I know that the eventual, universal destination will likely be a tearjerker.

D-topia

D-topia was the most genuinely quirky game I played at this year’s show. The short sell is that you’re a worker in a strange, soulless, flawlessly clean factory. You wake up, walk to the factory, do your work, and return to bed. It’s unsettling, otherworldly, and intriguing.

The “work” you’re doing is completing logic puzzles. Some of them involve sliding blocks around so that the correct number matches the correct tile, which increases in complexity with every task. There’s the air of a mobile game to the puzzles themselves; they’re short, digestible brainteasers that can be solved in seconds if you know the answer, but gave me pause on plenty of occasions.

While the puzzles are fun, I’m far more curious about the setting of D-topia. I was introduced to a few of the game’s characters, and they’re extremely weird for what could have been just a junk-food puzzler. I went to the shop to spend some of the currency I’d earned during my shift, only to find that one of the kiosks had stopped working.

When I powered down the entire shop to fix it, it revealed a totally different side to the Apple store aesthetic of the world that points to an intriguing mystery outside of the puzzles. There was also a talking mouse.

Demi and the Fractured Dream

Demi and the Fractured Dream is a third-person action game clearly heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda. In this short demo, I battled a few enemies to learn the game’s satisfying dodge system, and got a look at how the game handles puzzles.

There’s a lovely aesthetic to the characters themselves, and the atmosphere established in the short time I got to play the game was engaging, if not particularly unique. What it does nail is combat balance. Even against the game’s first miniboss, as long as I stuck to the rules that were established against the tiny enemies, I was able to overcome it.

From what I got to see during my demo, there are a lot of games like Demi and the Fractured Dream, however, the mix of an enjoyable combat system and simple puzzles means this will likely find an audience.

While I didn’t get much of a sense of the story, the character designs and the clear inspiration taken from recent Zelda titles make me interested to play more and learn more about this world.

Grave Seasons

Grave Seasons is a twee farming simulator meets murder mystery horror game. In some ways, the game seems designed in a lab to be popular with the streaming set that propelled Stardew Valley to success. However, after playing 30 minutes of the upcoming title, I was impressed by just how unique it managed to feel despite being in such a crowded field.

By day, Grave Seasons is a farming game. It’s full of extremely detailed pixel art, diverse characters, and a huge amount of things to do. There’s an entire game’s worth of content just in this one element of the game. However, after a few days of peace and tranquility, the game takes a turn. I was called to the Mayor’s office, only to find a body. What happened is a mystery, a mystery that I need to solve, while also maintaining my crops and relationships.

This is a smart twist on the genre that I’m keen to see play out over a full year of in-game time. According to Blumhouse Games‘ creative director, Louise Blain, the way the mystery plays out over one year of in-game time echoes through the next murders and in how your relationships grow or fracture.

It feels like a game that’s going to spawn a 5000-entry spreadsheet of possible outcomes, but for me, the thrill will come from playing the mystery play out naturally and continuing my farming game tradition of making an absolute pig’s ear of my agricultural empire.