Summer Game Fest 2022: All the news, trailers, and announcements

Following Summer Game Fest, Double Fine and iam8bit queued up for the 10th anniversary of indie showcase Day of the Devs. As usual, the broadcast curated a vibrant selection of indie games in development — everything from cute management sims to viral train-horror games.

In total, 16 games were showcased during the event, all of which we’ve rounded up below, with everything you need to know — trailers, release dates, and expected platform launches.

Ustwo games, the studio behind Monument Valley and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, announced its next game during the June 9 livestream for Summer Game Fest’s Day of the Devs. It’s a fully-voiced strategy game about dreams, relationships, and regrets called Desta: The Memories Between, and it stars a nonbinary protagonist named Desta.

Desta is in their 20s, and they’re returning home as an adult having left some of their relationships in a weird state. In dream sequences, Desta will hear from people in their life who’ve had an impact or taught them something. The game is also about Desta coping with their father’s death, and themes of loss — but, once again, this is a strategy game that includes lots of mechanics on top of the narrative.

Summer Game Fest returned this year on Thursday, June 9, with a livestream event in which host Geoff Keighley showed off new game announcements, new trailers for upcoming games, and some surprising reveals.

If you didn’t catch the stream on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, or Facebook, we’ve rounded up the biggest announcements and news below.

Bear and Breakfast, one of Polygon’s most anticipated games of 2022, is coming to Nintendo Switch and Windows PC via Steam on July 28. A new trailer debuted with the launch date during Summer Game Fest’s Day of the Devs broadcast.

As it turns out, running a bed and breakfast is a little harder than it looks. Well, now we know!

Have you ever sat down to enjoy a typical evening of Thomas & Friends, only to wonder: What if this experience was utterly terrifying, and shocked me to my core? What if Thomas had the near-infinite teeth of an apex predator, and the spindly legs of a horribly large spider? Well, friends. I have truly excellent news for you. Choo-Choo Charles, the horror game about a terrifying train is coming to consoles as well as PC. And new gameplay footage was shared at the Summer Game Fest’s Day of the Devs presentation on Thursday.

Developed by Two Star Games, Choo-Choo Charles is an open-world horror game. Its Steam page sums it up marvelously: “Charles is a bloodthirsty train, and you need to destroy him.” It’s simple, really. You operate a train, but you are being pursued by the dreadful Charles, who yearns to devour your delicate human flesh. Complete missions, meet settlers, and upgrade your train into a veritable tank. Your final goal: summon Charles the train into a one-v-one battle — then fight to the death. Don’t be the one who dies.

A fly’s life is a short one. And Time Flies, a forthcoming game from Michael Frei (Plug & Play, Kids) and Raphaël Munoz, turns that idea into a whimsical game. A new announcement trailer for the game was shared at Summer Game Fest 2022’s Day of the Devs segment.

In Time Flies, you play as a fly, zooming through a small open world, in order to complete a bucket list of whimsical tasks before your inevitable death. You can “learn an instrument,” “become rich,” “get drunk,” or “find yourself.” These tasks are all tongue-in-cheek, as the trailer shows off the player-controlled fly whizzing by guitar strings, or perishing in a glass of wine. Go figure.

The Last of Us Part 2’s previously announced multiplayer component will launch as a stand-alone game, Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann announced during Summer Game Fest on Thursday.

Druckmann said Naughty Dog wasn’t ready to reveal much about the game so far, but he did have a piece of concept art to share, showing two characters overlooking an apocalyptic city. Druckmann did say that the stand-alone multiplayer game will be as big as the developer’s single-player games, “and in some ways bigger.”

Inflexion Games’ first-person fantasy survival game Nightingale appeared Thursday at Summer Game Fest with a new trailer showcasing how its card system mixes with the 3D world.

“Nightingale is a first-person, PVE, open-world survival crafting game played solo or cooperatively with friends,” Inflexion said on YouTube. “Build, craft, fight and explore as you venture through mystical portals into a variety of amazing and fantastical realms.”

Volition’s upcoming reboot of Saints Row, titled simply Saints Row, won’t be available until Aug. 23 — but you can go ahead and design your character right now. Saints Row Boss Factory is a pre-release download that’s now available on all platforms, concurrent with its announcement at Thursday’s Summer Game Fest livestream.

The forthcoming installment in the action-adventure open-world series will be available to play on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, and Saints Row Boss Factory is available on those platforms as well. The characters created in Boss Factory can be used in Saints Row once it’s out, but you can show them off before then. Each character will have a unique code to identify them, allowing players to share the look they designed — even across platforms.

There’s a whole lot lot going on in space these days. Hoyoverse teased a new look at its upcoming sci-fi adventure, Honkai: Star Rail, at Summer Game Fest on Thursday.

Honkai: Star Rail is a new sci-fi open-world adventure from the makers of Genshin Impact. The game follows the story of a protagonist who has embarked on an interstellar trip aboard the Astral Express. The game features turn-based fighting where you assemble a team of unique fighters, each with their own unique combat abilities. It is latest entry to the Honkai series, but is intended to appeal to old and new players.

Bloober Team’s taking another stab at its psychological and psychedelic horror franchise Layers of Fear. Layers of Fears, officially announced at Summer Game Fest on Thursday, is slated for release on PlayStation 5, Windows PC Xbox Series X in early 2023.

Bloober Team, know for its horror games, is co-developing Layers of Fears with Anshar Studios, which released an isometric cyberpunk game called Gamedec in 2021. The developers say Layers of Fears is “built upon the foundations of the original Layers of Fear, Layers of Fear: Inheritance, and Layers of Fear 2.”

Zenless Zone Zero is the latest project from Genshin Impact developer miHoYo’s subsidiary, Hoyoverse. The lavish cinematic trailer was revealed during the Summer Game Fest livestream event.

Presenter Geoff Keighley kicked off the trailer with a touch of analysis, saying that ZZZ offers “the detail of Genshin Impact with a fast-paced action style.” The “futuristic urban action game” as he called it takes place in a city called New Eridu where a vast conspiracy of some sort is running amok. According to the official website, players will “live dual identities” and serve as “Proxies” operating in “a warped reality.” The mercenary lifestyle requires players to explore dungeons, called Hollows, with a squad of other players.

Old-school beat-’em-up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is getting a seventh playable character, developer Tribute Games and Dotemu revealed at Summer Game Fest on Thursday. Casey Jones, the hockey mask-wearing, stick-wielding vigilante, will join Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Splinter, and April O’Neil in the homage to Konami’s Ninja Turtle games of yore.

“Casey’s balance of range, speed and power makes him a formidable all-around threat,” the developer said in its reveal.

Bandai Namco revealed a new look at One Piece Odyssey, a new JRPG based on the long-running anime and manga One Piece, on Thursday. The publisher revealed new information about the Straw Hats’ next big adventure during the Summer Game Fest livestream.

In the new footage shared during the Summer Game Fest livestream, the Straw Hats’ ship is launched high in the sky, and the crew must avoid obstacles, eventually making it through the clouds. In brief glimpses of gameplay, we can see characters exploring new locales in order to crack “hidden mysteries.”

Ahead of Cuphead’s new DLC release date, Studio MDHR debuted a new trailer during Summer Game Fest on Thursday. The new DLC, called The Delicious Last Course, is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One on June 30.

At Summer Game Fest, Studio MDHR showed off new gameplay from Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, with Ms. Chalice in combat in an icy arena against a shapeshifting boss.

Sci-fi Horror game Routine finally has a new trailer, over a decade after it was announced. The game resurfaced during Summer Game Fest on Thursday.

Routine is a first-person game set in an abandoned Lunar base, designed around an ’80s vision of the future. Players will use their Cosmonaut Assistance Tool to hack various computer systems around the decrepit station, while they evade their enemies.

Two industry veterans: Troy Baker (The Last of Us) and Roger Clark (Red Dead Redemption 2) have teamed up to work on a new thriller game set on Mars called Fort Solis. The two announced the game on stage at Thursday’s Summer Game Fest.

The debut trailer for the game teased the concept: Space settlers are living on Mars, but then something goes wrong. All we see are snapshots of a space base, locked doors, and red lights that all indicate some sort of threat or mishap. After we watch these frantic but mysterious clips of the base, we see a brief final clip of a man saying, “Something is going on here, and I need to find out what it is.”

Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the next turn-based game from the team behind XCOM, revealed a host of new characters on Thursday. Chief among them is Peter Parker himself. Spider-Man is confirmed for this XCOM-like turn-based strategy game from Firaxis. The game also has a new release date: Oct. 7, 2022.

Thursday’s trailer introduced Venom in style, quickly chased down the mean city streets by Lilith herself — the game’s big bad. She seems to have him under her control. That’s when Peter Parker drops into the fight alongside Blade, a handful of other heroes, and player character known only as The Hunter. There was even an after-credits goof. Additional enemies that were revealed include Fallen versions of Sabretooth, Scarlet Witch, and the Hulk.

Flashback 2 finally has a release window. Announced during the 2022 Summer Game Fest livestream, the game will be released in winter 2022.

The sequel, developed by Microids Studio Lyon, comes 30 years after the launch of the original cult classic action-adventure game. According to a release, after “defeating the Master Brain in the previous episode, Conrad and his allies are once again facing the Morphs species, threatening all civilizations. Adding insult to injury, Conrad’s best friend Ian is being kidnapped in front of him. Another dirty trick from the Morphs?”

Frost Giant Studios, a team composed of many former Blizzard Entertainment developers who worked on games like StarCraft 2 and Warcraft 3, revealed its debut game on Thursday at Summer Game Fest. Stormgate is a new real-time strategy game that promises an “ever-evolving story through thrilling campaign missions where science fiction and fantasy collide.”

Stormgate was developed in Unreal Engine 5, according to the game’s Steam listing, and it will support 4K visuals and “hundreds of units in epic, large-scale wars across a variety of maps and tilesets.” Frost Giant says it aims to make real-time strategy games more approachable, lowering the skill floor while keeping the skill ceiling high. Stormgate will include 1v1, cooperative play, and a competitive ladder. Players will play as a variety of races and factions, including humans and a demonic onslaught of alien invaders.

Publisher Rogue Games and developer Demagog are asking players to venture into a bleak, flooded world in Highwater, a “narrative-driven isometric survival game” announced Thursday during Summer Game Fest.

Somewhat like in Golf Club: Wasteland, the 2018 dystopian golf game from Demagog, the ultra-rich are rumored to be evacuating the doomed world and heading to mars in Highwater. (In Golf Club: Wasteland, the ultra-rich have already left for Mars, but vacation on post-apocalyptic Earth for a breezy round of golf.)

A new level for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been revealed. The level, called Dark Water, was debuted during Summer Game Fest 2022. The ship level shows off some impressive visuals and firefights from the game, but the most notable part might be its moving cover, which makes it unique among the other levels of the game that we’ve seen so far.

Players join a few other members of Task Force 141 as the team infiltrates the cargo ship, fighting through it, then chasing another one down by driving their boat directly inside. On the deck of the second ship, there are dozens of enemies and shipping containers sliding all over the place, giving the level a changing battlefield, and players spaces to dash through from one fight to the next.

Aliens: Dark Descent is a new single-player squad-based action game from Tindalos Interactive. The game was announced during the Summer Game Fest livestreaming event.

The cinematic trailer for Dark Descent shows a small team of Colonial Marines working to move through a base of some kind. Multiple Xenomorphs rush them, pushing them back into the complex. It appears that all hands are lost in the expedition, and only an analog audio recording is left behind. At the end we catch a few seconds of gameplay, which shows a team of four Marines using automatic weapons and a rocket launcher to slow — but not stop — an onrushing wave of creatures.

Space is hard. Space with murderous robots and flesh-eating mutants is even harder, and the new gameplay trailer for The Callisto Protocol really does drive that fact home. The video arrived on Thursday during Summer Game Fest Live, showing off more of its viscous menace than ever before.

Striking Distance CEO Glen Schofield was on hand at the event to showcase the new clips of what Geoff Keighley called “raw gameplay footage” from current-gen hardware. Yep, still moist, dark, brutal, and creepy.

Just one week after officially unveiling the game, Capcom is already giving fans a new, extended look at Street Fighter 6, the company’s next-generation fighting game. On Thursday, at Summer Game Fest, Capcom showed off Guile in battle against his American rival Luke and veteran fighter Ryu.

Guile in Street Fighter 6 looks familiar to how he’s played since his debut in Street Fighter 2 — his Sonic Boom and Flash Kick return — and his high-stacked hair looks wider than ever. Capcom says in addition to Guile’s signature moves, he’ll get “fresh additions” to his move set, and will be a “powerhouse of a character who retains his ability to keep opponents at a distance.”