Geoff Keighley and his three gaming showcase friends made for a hell of a day
- Nate and Julie
- Jun 7
- 7 min read
Summer Game Fest is properly in full swing after today with four different showcases, each with their own batch of world premieres and exciting announcements. We, of course, were live reacting to all of it over on Twitch and came away feeling pretty excited about the games coming out in the next year or so.
Come along with us as we stroll through the day’s shows, giving a sense of why each show excited us and highlighting one game from each show that we hope you don’t overlook among the 100+ games showcased in this one day.
ACCESS-ABILITY SUMMER SHOWCASE 2025
Every AAA game’s marketing team wants players to believe that their innovative, earth-shaking game is Doing Things You’ve Never Encountered Before. The indies featured at the Access-Ability Summer Showcase are where that kind of action actually is.
We’re always incredibly impressed with this show, which broadcasts multiple versions including American Sign Language, British Sign Language, and audio described. It’s amazing to witness developers get to proudly show off the ways they’re making their games playable for more people. Accessible game design choices truly benefit everyone and make games more inclusive and intuitive regardless of ability. In the grand scheme of this huge week of gaming news, where disabled gamers often have to temper their excitement, not knowing if they’ll even have the option to play a game that catches their interest, the Access-Ability showcase is creating greater transparency.
With many titles introduced by disabled gamers, game devs, and accessibility advocates, the showcase featured around 20 games, including the likes of Chromagun 2: Dye Hard, which uses unique shape symbols denoting paint colors for colorblind gamers; frantic retro shooter Blow-Up: Avenge Humanity, which showed off outlines and desaturated backgrounds that help make enemies more clearly visible amidst more cluttered scenes; and Bits & Bops, a collection of rhythm minigames designed to be playable without sighted assistance.
Created and hosted by accessibility critic and consultant Laura Kate Dale, the show is in its third year, and if you want to see more of it, show up and support their efforts to expand to a biannual show with the first winter Access-Ability Showcase set to come on December 11, 2025.
DON'T MISS: INTRAPOLOGY
As we wrap up this first block of summer game news, Intrapology is still circulating in our minds. Not only is it a total creative standout in what we saw today — it’s unlike anything we’ve seen in one of these gaming showcases, probably ever. It’s part theater, part game: a narrative-driven queer indie game performed live by actors online, with voting and text entry that make it interactive for the audience/players. It’s like a choice-driven narrative game with real people.
As equal parts theater geeks and gamers, it was of course a fascinating pitch for us. It also resonated as people continuing to be COVID-safe, as the “let it rip” approach the U.S. has taken has removed a lot of public entertainment from our lives where it used to be a staple. During the presentation, Intrapology Creative Director Zoyander Street said, “Combining games and theater in this way allows us to bring interactive theater to people who experience barriers to in-person venues due to disability, chronic illness, or regional inequality.”
Intrapology’s next performance is June 15, so we wanted to shout out this one that stretches the definition of what a game can be.
SUMMER GAME FEST
Despite the efforts of a dumb hat and a weird emphasis on the “sizes” of development teams, Geoff Keighley’s big funky summer show finally met the moment. (In case you were wondering, this article’s title is a jab at Keighley’s confusing phrasing about a game being made by “a solo developer and his nine friends.”) After years of feeling like the little sibling to December’s big Game Awards showings, this year’s Summer Game Fest felt just as exciting and bombastic as Keighley’s other show.
Co-hosted by the ever-delightful and pun-equipped Lucy James, this year’s Summer Game Fest brought genuinely exciting reveals (including a new Scott Pilgrim game that had us on the verge of excited tears) and a variety of games that really showcase what the industry has to offer. There was a comedic puppet boxing game that looked unreal (Felt That Boxing), a LEGO co-op game about two adorable bricks traversing a LEGO world (LEGO Voyagers), and a Resident Evil 9 announcement that took three teasing attempts to finally stick (Resident Evil Requiem).
As always, Keighley’s shows are a bit imperfect, but they spotlight the industry in fun ways and offer a giant platform to some truly special games.
DON'T MISS: FRACTURE BLOOMS, DEVELOPED BY SERENITY FORGE
Speaking of special games, Fractured Blooms blew us away, and we hope you don’t miss it amidst all the flair and chaos of Summer Game Fest’s other reveals.
In this horror narrative life sim, players are stuck in a loop in an idyllic but eerily still homestead. As protagonist Angie, you’ll be planting, nurturing, cooking, and rediscovering some hard truths about your reality and what it is you’re really trying to keep alive through your work. Developed by the team at Serenity Forge, most known for their incredible indie publishing work, Fractured Blooms has some big potential.
Serenity Forge’s Founder and CEO, Zhenghua (Z) Yang, says the project is “inspired by real stories from my own family and the quiet suffering that often goes unseen in our world.” Serenity Forge apparently pitched it to Keighley as “Doki Doki Literature Club meets Silent Hill,” and if all those ideas coalesce in the ways we hope — and if they match the genuine horror that both of those games can provoke — Fractured Blooms may be the next big thing in indie horror.
At the very least, the offputting chorus of voices that seem to be buzzing in the protagonist’s head will leave us feeling weirdly zen.
DAY OF THE DEVS
Day of the Devs is in its second year of operation as an independent non-profit organization, but they are years-long veterans of delivering showcases that offer up curated lists of incredible games in one of the most artfully curated gaming showcases operating today. This is a show we could never bear to miss, and 2025 was no different.
This year’s showing had a genuine 100% hit-rate, with both of us at VGG tossing the entire slate of games shown directly onto our wishlists. What makes this show so special is that it isn’t just a trailer-after-trailer-after-trailer uncontextualized mess, but instead a show that gives us that sweet gameplay footage we’re striving for alongside proper breakdowns of what we’re seeing from the people who made it. It offers insight, personality, and the promise of that sweet taste of developer’s intent that makes projects like these so special.
Day of the Devs never misses and we thank them for their continual efforts to serve up delectable indie games.
DON'T MISS: TIRE BOY, DEVELOPED BY GAMETEAM6
It’s impossibly hard to pick just one game as one not to miss from a show as excellent as this, but if there’s one that we hope people keep in their back pocket moving forward, it’s this expressive and comedic open world adventure.
Tire Boy puts you in the… tire of a young lad who has a tire for a body and was raised by a giant owl known as Nestwijk. You navigate this oversized world with childlike wonder, rolling down hills and using saxophones to bash beasties like bears and snails.
When it comes to whimsy, Tire Boy’s got it in spades, and the fluid tire-based movement tied to its inherently silly setup and story make for the kind of game that seems like it’d be a joy to play. Massive SPM potential (smiles per minute), and that goofy slack-jawed smiley gaming sensation is what gave VGG its name.
DEVOLVER DIGITAL PRESENTS BALL X PIT: THE KENNY SUN STORY
When we say you can never predict what Devolver Digital is going to do next, we mean you can never predict what Devolver Digital will do next. Ahead of this show, which was said to be a focus on one game that the Devolver team themselves had lost hundreds of hours to, we were convinced that it was all a bit. That this supposed BALL X PIT was going to be the framework for a variety of reveals from Devolver Digital’s publishing house and that indie legend Kenny Sun (who we definitely didn’t forget until Mr. Sun’s Hatbox was shown in the stream) had just attached his name to a bit.
I mean, what do you expect from us when Devolver Digital sold us on a fictional mascot, delivered a horror short film with six game announcements in it last year, and had previously employed the “game as a showcase” concept in past years?
The real bit was that it was all real and it was all genuine and that BALL X PIT looks rad as fuck.
DON'T MISS: BALL X PIT, DEVELOPED BY KENNY SUN AND FRIENDS
So, about the game. BALL X PIT is a buzzword slurry of a game that I gobble up like a hungry hungry mouse. It’s a brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite. Think classic arcade brick-breaking games, but the bricks are a ton of shambling monsters and in between the brick-breaking you’re building a town and managing its resources.
If the words alone are overwhelming, we encourage you not to look at footage of this game — seeing it in motion is a satisfying mess of things flying. Damage numbers, coins and gemstones, and balls. Lots of balls. It seems to be a simultaneous blend of gratifying synergies that fans of Balatro and its kind of game will adore alongside chaotic fast-paced brick-breaking gameplay that's less common in those types of games.
It sounds like an incredibly satisfying roguelike experience and we’re gonna go hop into the demo now that we’re done writing, okay bye.
If you’d like to see the VGG hosts holler, nearly cry, and laugh along to the show, watch our live reactions to all four of the June 6 shows. And if you’d like to hear us pull out more of our highlights and most anticipated games from each show, watch our recap.
Games spotlighted in our recap:
Felt That: Boxing: A puppet boxing game that feels like the Muppet game we’ve all been waiting for.
Out of Words: A handcrafted stop motion co-op adventure that will almost certainly make us cry in the end.
ILL: A horrifying physics-driven horror shooter that will almost certainly make us cry in the end (out of fear).
Relooted: A repatriating heist game that sees you reclaiming real African cultural and spiritual artifacts from Western museums.
Big Walk: A group-driven multiplayer experience that’s all about vibes, puzzle-solving, playing with communication, and going on a big walk with your friends.
Snap & Grab: A photography heist game that has you using your trusty camera to plan jobs and falling in love with the detective coming after you. (Be gay, do crimes.)
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