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One of the best things about an indie game showcase is that you'll see at least one preview that makes you think "huh?" and "lol!" in equal parts. For the Day of the Devs presentation at Summer Games Fest 2025, Tire Boy definitely fits the bill. Mechanics-wise, it's an open-world action-adventure game, which is pretty standard fare. However, like the name says, you play it all out as a tiny anthropomorphized tire. It looks super goofy, but in a way that might also be super great.

The trio from GameTeam6 who presented the early build of the game explained that they wanted to do some odd things with scale in the world, and that's definitely been accomplished. Most other characters tower over little Tire Boy, whether they're a friendly owl, an enemy frog or just a really big heckin bunny. But there's also some sweetness promised as Tire Boy tries to uncover the secrets of his past and his tire people. It's the sort of wacky combination that can be a lot of fun in practice. 

The studio has a ways to go before it's ready to play; they didn't suggest any time frames for a demo or release window, but Tire Boy can be wishlisted on Steam if you want to keep tabs on this quirky project.

There's a new puzzle game in town, and this one tackles remote work and corporate data manipulation. Pocket Boss is coming to Steam and the developers just dropped a trailer during the Day of the Devs showcase event, which is part of Summer Game Fest.

Pocket Boss casts players as an employee working remotely, trapped by the whims of an ever-demanding boss. The game is primarily set inside of a chat window, though the puzzle element kicks in when the aforementioned job creator demands changes to data in order to maximize profits and erase competitors.

When that happens, the perspective shifts to a minigame. There looks to be plenty of different designs here. One game involves flinging a competitor's market share off of the screen, while another has players navigate a physical representation of the stock market without crashing. It's like a corporation-soaked take on the WarioWare franchise.

The game is published by Playables, which is the studio behind the novel-looking Time Flies and the interactive cartoon KIDS. We don't have a release date for Pocket Boss just yet.

Playables

Of course, this is just one game announced during the beefy Day of the Devs stream, and that's just one event of many throughout Summer Game Fest. It's a good time to be someone who likes to read and watch trailers about upcoming video games.

Relooted is a heist game about reclaiming African artifacts from the Western countries that stole them, developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop. Relooted is set in a future timeline where Western nations have signed a treaty to return plundered items to their African regions of origin, but things aren't going to plan. Western leaders are instead hiding the artifacts away in private collections, so it's up to a ragtag crew based in Johannesburg, South Africa, to strategize and steal them back.

Relooted is broken into missions, and each one includes a briefing about the artifact, an infiltration planning stage, and the heist. Gameplay is a mix of puzzle and action as you case each building, set up your run, and then execute the plan. Once you grab your target artifact, the security alarms go off and you have a limited amount of time to escape, so thorough preparation is key.

In the Day of the Devs reveal video for Relooted, producer Sithe Ncube cites a wild statistic from a pivotal 2018 report on African cultural heritage, saying, "90 percent of sub-Saharan African culture heritage is in the possession of Western collections. That is millions upon millions of deeply important cultural, spiritual and personal artifacts, including human remains, that aren't in their rightful place."

The locations in Relooted are fictional, but the 70 artifacts you have to steal back are real, and they're all currently in Western and private collections, far from their original homes and owners.

Nyamakop is one of the largest independent games studios in sub-Saharan Africa, with about 30 developers working on Relooted right now. Its previous game, the globular platformer Semblance, was the first African-developed IP to ever come to a Nintendo console, hitting the Switch in 2018. In order to get Semblance on the Switch, Nyamakop co-founder Ben Myres had to bootstrap his way around the world, buying one-way tickets and finding new partners on the fly in a daisy chain of game festival appearances. Here's how Myres explained it to Engadget at E3 2018:

"The entry curve into being an indie game developer in South Africa is like a cliff face. Because you don't have the contacts, the platform holders like Xbox, Sony. You don't have reps that live in your country. The press that matter are all here. There isn't a big enough market locally to sell to, so you have to make works to sell to the West, which means you have to go to Western shows and you have to meet Western press. So basically, if you're not traveling a ton, you're not going to be able to make it."

Nyamakop has grown significantly since 2018, and Relooted is an unabashedly African game built by a majority-POC team, Myres and Ncube said in 2024.

"There is the thing about making games for Africans — we say that a lot," Ncube told GamesIndustry.biz. "We say that should be a thing, we should make games for Africans because we're playing games that were made in the West. But will people even play those games, if you make them? And then if you make games targeting people ... even if you were to make one that's really good, there's no guarantee that you'll have a lot of people playing it. So I think there's some level of confusion, I can say, in terms of unexplored aspects of the African games market."

Relooted is in development for Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox Series X/S, and while it doesn't yet have a firm release date, it's available to wishlist.

Neverway already looks, sounds and feels like it's going to be something special — in a grim, grotesque and hellishly depressed kind of way. (Side note: That could be a nice tagline, no? It's grim! It's grotesque! It's hellishly depressed! It's... Neverway! OK, I'll stop.)

Neverway is a life-sim RPG starring Fiona, a young woman who quits her dead-end job to live on a remote island farm for a while, where she ends up becoming the immortal herald of a dead god. Fiona has to fight through nightmare realms and battle repulsive horrors, while also tending her land and maintaining relationships with townsfolk. She's able to meet and date more than 10 distinct characters, and forming friendship bonds unlocks combat abilities. The game features farming and fishing mechanics, and there's also a crafting system for secondary tools like the hookshot, which supplements Fiona's primary weapon, a sword.

Neverway comes from Coldblood Inc., an independent Vancouver studio founded by Brazilian-Canadian developers Pedro Medeiros and Isadora Sophia. Medeiros is the pixel artist behind Towerfall and Celeste, two stunning indie games, and Sophia is an ex-senior software engineer at Microsoft and the creator of the open-source Murder Engine, which powers Neverway. The game also features music by Disasterpiece, the composer behind Fez and the top-tier horror film It Follows, with sound design by Martin Kvale of NokNok Audio. OuterSloth, the indie game fund established by Among Us creators InnerSloth, is providing financial backing for Neverway, and Coldblood Inc. is self-publishing it.

Though Neverway was officially announced one month ago during the Triple-i Initiative showcase, it still made a splash as part of the Day of the Devs event tied to Summer Game Fest 2025 this week. Neverway is heading to PC at an undetermined future time, and it's available to wishlist on Steam now.

Fusing light psychological horror with the quiet melancholy of American Realist painter Edward Hopper, developer Thomas Waterzooi is following up his puzzle games Please, Touch the Artwork and Please, Touch the Artwork 2 by having you just watch the artwork instead. Please, Watch the Artwork is an upcoming spot-the-difference game featured during Day of the Devs that tasks you with observing a museum of living paintings and tracking down a sad clown that may be harshing the other paintings' vibe.

In the game, you'll observe living versions of classic Edward Hopper paintings, like Nighthawks or Automat, and look for inconsistencies, like a character behaving strangely or objects being out of place — what one could describe as sad clown interference. You'll then click on the offending area and it'll be repainted, restoring the living painting to its normal gloomy self. 

Please, Watch the Artwork riffs on popular horror titles like I'm On Observation Duty, Five Nights At Freddy's and dozens of other similar games on Steam that make you look at fake CCTV footage of a garages and office buildings. Waterzooi's game just takes a slightly classier approach. The combination of classic art and eclectic puzzle mechanics has paid off well in the past, too: Please, Touch the Artwork was nominated for numerous awards, including an Apple Design Award.

Please, Watch the Artwork will be available on iOS and Android for $4.99 and on Steam for macOS, Windows and Linux devices for $7.99. Waterzooi's Day of the Dev's presentation didn't include an exact release date for the game, but he did suggest that it will be out around Halloween.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio first teased "Project Century" in 2024, and at Summer Game Fest it debuted a new trailer revealing the game's full name: Stranger Than Heaven. The game clearly draws on the bareknuckle brawling of the Yakuza series, but this time is set in the jazzy Japan of 1943.

It's hard to get a full sense of the story from the trailer alone, but similar to RGG's previous games, it looks like Stranger Than Heaven will feature an open-world full of enemies to whoop and narrative choices that'll be as determined by who you punch as who you help. If the player character Mako Taito isn't a private eye, he does appear to be investigating something.

RGG's released a Like a Dragon spin-off, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii earlier this year. Before that, it's last major entry in the melodramatic crime saga was Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth in 2024. Besides the gameplay similarities, it's not clear if Stranger Than Heaven is set in the same world as RGG's other open-world action RPGs. At the very least, it does seem incredibly stylish, though.

Stranger Than Heaven is still in-development and doesn't currently have a release date.

If you've ever dreamed of being a student at a school built entirely out of escape rooms and silly puns, Coin Crew has the game just for you. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School is heading to PC in 2026, and it's available now to wishlist on Steam. It's the sequel to Escape Academy, which is one of our absolute favorite puzzle games in recent years, particularly when played as a couch co-op experience.

Escape Academy 2 expands the campus into an open world, allowing players to explore and uncover secrets between classes, ramping up the student role-playing vibe. Coin Crew also drew inspiration from games like Animal Well and The Legend of Zelda series, which incorporate riddles and mysteries into the standard exploration gameplay loop, creating a free-roaming puzzle flow.

The original Escape Academy attracted more than 4 million players, and the sequel appears to be even bigger and radder. There's no release date for now, but Coin Crew is looking for playtesters through its Discord channel. The Escape Academy series is published by iam8bit, and the sequel was revealed during the Day of the Devs showcase tied to Summer Game Fest 2025.

While many of us soldier on with the remakes and VR takes on the Resident Evil story, Capcom is prepping the next chapter of the story: Resident Evil Requiem. The sequel was fully revealed as part of Summer Game Fest Live, kicking off a week(ish) of gaming announcements and release dates.

Intercutting the starting moments of REs of the past, Capcom did a fake-out, teasing that we'd have to wait a little longer to see Resident Evil Requiem — it turns out they only meant a 30-minute wait.

The teaser trailer raised more questions than answers, teasing locations from previous games, like Raccoon City — and its ruined police department. It appears the game will follow Grace Ashcroft, as she tries unveil grim mysteries and, er, gets kidnapped. She's the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft — a Resident Evil character that I do not remember at all. 

Capcom confirmed a year ago that veteran director Koshi Nakanishi will lead what is definitely not the ninth chapter of Resident Evil. (If you don't count Code Veronica, who even are you?) Nakanishi was involved in the development of Resident Evil Revelations and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, among other Resident Evil titles. 

Resident Evil 9 is set to launch on February 27, 2026, but a demo will be playable in August at Gamescom, so book your tickets for Cologne, Germany.

Photography games can be hyper-realistic simulations of the real thing or a vehicle for ogling cute creatures, but No Goblin's Snap & Grab is forging a different path by treating photography as a key ingredient in a good heist. The upcoming game as part of the Day of the Devs showcase at Summer Game Fest 2025, ahead of its launch in 2026.

Based on the trailer, Snap & Grab can be broken into two distinct parts. There's the snapping, where you'll play as a professional photographer grooving through (high-fashion) high society, taking pictures of things you want to steal. And the grabbing, where you'll lay out those photos in a workflow of sorts for your team of thieves to follow during a heist. Some of the things you'll photograph might be obstacles or parts of the environment you can manipulate in your favor and it looks like more than a few could just be cute pictures of dogs.

Like No Goblin's other games, 100ft Robot Golf and Roundabout, over-the-top, silly theming is the name of the game. In the case of Snap & Grab, that's a sort of cartoon-y 80's aesthetic — think Miami Vice by way of Johnny Bravo and you'll be in the ballpark of the hair and shoulder pads No Goblin is playing with.

Luckily, you won't have to wait long to see the game for yourself. No Goblin says Snap & Grab is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X / S in 2026.

Tribute Games, the developer behind the fantastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, is back with its take on another comic book IP. Scott Pilgrim EX is a beat-em-up coming to PC and consoles in 2026.

This looks like a real evolution of its work with those pizza-loving turtles. There's a large map to explore with plenty of secrets, seven playable characters and, most importantly for Pilgrim fans, a brand-new story. Vegans, robots and demons have taken over Toronto! This seems only nominally better than ex-boyfriends.

The developer promises "countless creative combos" and all kinds of quests "across space and time." The graphics and soundtrack are both absolutely soaked in retro goodness.

If the idea of a sidescrolling Scott Pilgrim beat-em-up seems eerily familiar to you, it's not the Mandela Effect. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game was first released all the way back in 2010.