The most exciting new games launching this summer

The table may have felt a little bare recently, but the combination of Summer Game Fest and some focused scouring of the lesser-trodden regions of this year’s release schedule have yielded an encouraging picture for the next couple of months. What follows, while far from definitive, is a list of games that I think are worth paying attention to. With any luck you might find something that lights your candle, too. 

The Alters inimical blend of base building, resource management, and body horror was a striking (and wonderfully odd) highlight of last year. It’s a divisive game, sure, but all the better for it, and Last Variable will expand on the original’s questionable HR policies with a story focused on Jan Scientist (all the other Jans have left) and his self-assembled team of science selves. This time you’ll be building an underground base to avoid those fatal sunrises, terraforming various biomes, and attempting to unravel the mysteries of The Oasis. Fingers crossed there aren’t any workplace romances to deal with.

If you were lucky enough to experience Patapon on PSP, you’ll have fond memories of one of the most joyous meldings of hardware and software ever devised (and if you don’t feel that way, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re dead inside). Outside of remasters, the chirpy rhythm-action series has kept the volume on low for some years now, so the arrival of an early access spiritual sequel in September last year – helmed by Patapon designer Hiroyuki Kotani, working with much of the original dev team – was welcome indeed. Ratatan will leave early access in July, so if you haven’t dipped in yet, now’s the perfect time to do so.

Yes, we’ve already had a remaster – also developed by Halo Studios (née 343 Studios) – but this is a full, ground-up rebuild in Unreal Engine 5. As the title suggests, it’s campaign only, so don’t hold out for any Slayer action. However, you can play co-op with up to three other bleary eyed nostalgists and enjoy pointing out all the changes to each other, such as the addition of nine new weapons from across the series, the ability to hijack enemy vehicles, and three original missions alongside a pre-cigar-addicted Sergeant Johnson. I, for one, cannot wait.

A game about driving a delivery truck at speed through a small town while avoiding the police and deliberately smashing into objects and pedestrians in order to fuel the medical-emergency-induced delusions of your first RTA victim as the two of you cooperate across two worlds towards the shared goal of stealing the Scroll of Resurrection from the grasping bony hands of a marauding, imagined evil known only as the Skeleton King? You had me at ‘A’.

It’s hard to get past the Steam page blurb: “experience the innovative ‘one-person, one-dog action RPG’” is just an inherently funny sentence, okay? But despite this unintentionally Partridge-esque description, Game Freak’s (yes, the Pokémon people) epic-looking action RPG is shaping up to make a bit of a splash. The game blends real-time and turn-based combat against the backdrop of a futuristic Japan setting that evokes Fumito Ueda’s work, as well as Okami and just a dash of Death Stranding. And here, you’ll only be forcing one captive creature to fight your battles for you. That’s progress. It’s certainly a looker, and I will absolutely be naming my dog-wolf Seldom.

In many ways, Big Walk is the antidote to Melbourne-based House House’s previous project, Untitled Goose Game. Whereas the latter starred one of gaming’s most antisocial protagonists, Big Walk – which was inspired by the frustration of relying on Zoom calls during lockdown – is all about spending time with friends (or strangers) while exploring a vast open world and chatting. To that end, the studio has developed a nuanced proximity-based voice-chat system which aims to make communicating feel natural. Distance, sound-proof glass, and other obstacles will require you to find creative alternative ways to communicate, however. 

Halo might feel quite old at this point, but it has nothing on Defender of the Crown. Kellyn Beeck’s 1986 strategy extravaganza kicked off Cinemaware’s incredible run of cinematic, technologically barnstorming releases. And you can still play that version here, albeit with a few quality-of-life enhancements. However, there’s also Classic mode, which sports an attractive lick of modern paint; and Kingdom mode, a roguelike deckbuilder which tosses in procedurally generated maps, special dice mechanics, and multiple difficulty levels. Phwoar.

Stardew Valley is a lovely slice of bucolic cosiness, and as a result ConcernedApe’s game found the massive audience it deserves. But it let itself down in one key regard: a flagrant lack of brutal murders. Thank goodness for Grave Seasons, then, which covers all of that farming and life-sim bumf, but also tasks you with unmasking an indiscriminate serial killer. Or should that be cereal killer? That’s a wheat joke, guys. Anyone? Fine, let’s move on.

Mafia: The Old Country was really rather good, so a generous dollop of additional story is an offer I can’t refuse. Man of Honor adds two new chapters and sees Enzo Favara team up with Ennio Salieri (there’s no ‘u’ in ‘honor’, after all – unless you spell it properly, I suppose), who’s recently been released from prison and has scores to settle. Along with the narrative stuff, there’s also a sprinkling of new content for Free Ride mode, including the new locations, vehicles, and weapons that have been added for the story. 

Entropy looks like a grubby PS1 game, which is more than enough to get my attention. There’s something about the aesthetic which is particularly effective at amplifying disquiet (see Crow Country, Inscryption, or even Easy Delivery), and developer Lovely Hellplace takes full advantage of this fact while it sends you to battle demons from hell in this tactical turn-based RPG. It’s creepy, weird, and somewhat inscrutable. One to watch when it goes into early access in the second half of August.

If you haven’t dipped into the A Plague Tale games yet, I implore you to do so. Yes, there’s a little jank along the way, but outside of those moments what you’re left with are technical and emotional tours de force, and quite a lot of rats. Resonance, the third entry in the series, is a prequel set 15 years prior to Requiem (or, err, 14 years and six months prior to Innocence) and takes things in a slightly different direction. For one thing, Amicia and Hugo are out, replaced instead by Sophia – the plunderer we meet in Requiem. Stealth sections are also, ironically, nowhere to be seen, and we’re in Crete this time, rather than France. The most intriguing aspect, however, is a dual timeline that sees you jump between Sophia and Theseus – yes, that one. 

X-Wing-Com. There, I got it out of my system. And even though it doesn’t even work as a pun, let alone a description, I’ve managed to successfully sum up Zero Company in my own special way. Crafted by an amalgamation of developers who have collectively worked on XCOM, Civilization, and Gears of War among other games, Zero Company is a turn-based tactics game set in the Star Wars universe (towards the end of the Clone Wars) that features XCOM-style permadeath. Here’s hoping I can add Jar Jar Binks to my squad…