Summer Game Fest 2025: all the news, trailers, and announcements

Summer Game Fest 2025 was definitely a weird one, but even with everything going on outside, the games on display were still immaculate. My favorites, the ones that I live for, are small, unique, and made for pure love of expression. Being able to see that love so clearly on display, expressed through such painstaking and often thankless work, and also being able to show them to our audience who might not otherwise encounter them, is the defining privilege of my job. That’s what I love about Summer Game Fest, weirdness and all, and hopefully when these games come out, you’ll check ‘em out too.

I loved the first Escape Academy and vibrated through my chair seeing that Coin Crew Games had returned to Summer Game Fest with a bigger, more expansive sequel. Instead of selecting levels, now you can explore an open world, solving puzzles as you discover them in a college campus setup. I love this new direction: the open-world exploration better melds the quirky / cute storytelling of Escape Academy with the actual act of solving puzzles.

The Wholesome Direct is always full of cute and charming games to keep an eye on for the future. But it’s also a great place to find things to play now — and that’s especially true this year. The 2025 edition of the livestream showcase included a number of games that released during the show itself.

So if you like what you see, there’s no wait at all.

Now that Summer Game Fest 2025 is off and running, it’s time for my favorite part of the show: Day of the Devs. Day of the Devs is a yearly showcase highlighting the newest, quirkiest indie releases, and it is frequently the source of some of my favorite games SGF has on offer. This year is another banger slate of titles from your favorite indie publishers, like Devolver Digital, Annapurna Interactive, Panic, and more. I’ll have more to share about these games once the show is over, but for now, here are my faves from the Day of the Devs Summer Game Fest showcase 2025.

Snap and Grab is a slick-looking action puzzle game that mixes Ocean’s Eleven with Miami Vice. Set in the hyper neon aesthetic of the ’80s, Snap and Grab lets you live out your master thief fantasies. Case the joint with your camera, taking pictures of the merchandise you wanna steal while also snapping pics of the people, places, and things that’ll help your team get the goods and get out. Coming next year to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles.

After a very convincing tease that suggested news was in fact not incoming, Capcom just officially announced Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry in the franchise. It launches on February 27th, 2026 on PC, PS5, and Xbox.

The announcement came via a lengthy trailer that took quite a while before revealing itself to indeed be the next Resident Evil, focused instead on an office space. But then, naturally, things got pretty creepy. Capcom says the new game will indeed be survival horror, but didn’t provide much other info, explaining only that players will “escape death in a heart-stopping experience that will chill you to your core.”

In 1999, the iconic New York rap group Wu-Tang Clan released their very first video game, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. Now, 25 years later, the Wu have returned with a new game project called Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver. Announced simultaneously at Summer Game Fest and at the opening performance of the group’s farewell tour, Rise of the Deceiver is part of the apotheosis of one of the greatest rap groups of all time.

The Verge had the opportunity to speak to the game’s developers at Brass Lion Entertainment about working with some of rap’s living legends on a project that is both the end of an era in rap history and the beginning of something new.

Yacht Club Games, the studio behind the Shovel Knight series, is launching its next game, Mina the Hollower, on October 31st, the team announced as part of Summer Game Fest on Friday.

Mina the Hollower is a top-down adventure game that looks like it was ripped directly from a Game Boy Color. You play as Mina, a mouse, and you’ll use things like your whip and the ability to burrow underground to take on enemies.

Square Enix just announced Killer Inn, a new “murder mystery action” game, as part of Summer Game Fest on Friday.

In a Killer Inn match, 24 players are divided into two teams of “wolves” and “lambs,” and it’s the job of the lambs to discover and kill all the wolves or for the wolves to kill the lambs. (Just to be clear, you play as humans, but with the title of wolves or lambs.) When wolves kill a lamb, they’ll leave clues like a piece of hair or clothing that the lambs can use to try and identify the wolves.

I’m not sure how it took so long, but a real-time strategy game set in Westeros is finally in the works. The new game is called Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, and it’s described as a “classic, premium” RTS game for PC that will let players take control of the various houses and factions in George R.R. Martin’s fantasy universe.

The game is being developed by PlaySide Studios, and will include both a single-player campaign and multiplayer options. Here’s the official description:

Now in its third year, the Access-Ability Summer Showcase is back to redress the lack of meaningful accessibility information across the ongoing video game showcase season. As we see progress broadly slow down, it’s also a timely reminder of the good work that’s still happening in pursuit of greater accessibility in gaming.

“At a time where we are seeing a slowdown in accessibility adoption in the AAA games space,” organizer Laura Kate Dale says, “we’re showing that there are interesting accessible games being made, games with unique and interesting features, and that being accessible is something that can bring an additional audience to purchase and play your games.”