Our pick of Day of the Devs announcements includes the latest from the developers of Chicory, as well as a gorgeous sheep-herding adventure.
The summer game announcements are coming thick and fast. Straight after the two-hour bombast of last night’s Summer Game Fest came Day of the Devs, a showcase put together by Double Fine and Iam8bit. There’s always a fascinating selection of indie games in this show – and last night was no exception.
We’ve put together a list of highlights from the Day of the Devs Digital Showcase 2023, but if you want to check out the whole hour-long livestream for yourself, you can watch it here.
First up, Beastieball is the latest game from the developers of the wonderfil Chicory: A Colorful Tale. It’s a bit like Pokémon (although not as much like Pokémon as a certain other game announced last night), except here you’re getting your monster friends to face off against each other in a sport that’s similar to volleyball.
Simpler Times feels like a cross between Unpacking and Gone Home. You play a young woman who is about to leave her family home, and as she packs her belongings, she reminisces about her past and the journey to becoming an adult.
Hauntii has a gorgeous art style that’s reminiscent of the limited palette of mid-century book covers – similar to the style used by How to Say Goodbye last year. Your little ghost can possess objects and use them to do various things, while the basic controls are like a twin-stick shooter – although here there’s more of a focus on narrative and puzzle solving than shooting.
Coccoon is from Jeppe Carlsen, the lead gameplay designer on Inside and Limbo, and it takes the form of an adventure game set across multiple worlds, each contained within an orb.
Summerhill is an absolutely gorgeous-looking game about sheep herding, of all things. It’s a tale about ‘love, loss and livestock’ in which you and your sheepdog work together to rescue lost sheep and explore a “mysterious, long-forgotten world that lies beyond the borders of home”.
Retro Gadgets entered Early Access last year, and it remains fascinating. You can use simple tools to create gadgets like clocks and retro game consoles, then export them to your desktop or share them with friends.
Mars First Logistics mixes lovely Sable-esque graphics with construction-based gameplay, in which you build tiny rovers to transport awkwardly shaped objects across the surface of Mars. It’s launching into Steam Early Access on 22nd June.
Finally, Saltsea Chronicles is from Die Gute Fabrik, the studio behind Mutazione, and it tasks you with taking a ragtag crew on a high-seas adventure in search of a lost captain. The art style is incredibly striking, and the story promises a deep conspiracy along with plenty of twists and turns.
If you have a chance to watch the whole hour-long Day of the Devs stream, we’d highly recommend it, since it’s one of the rare digital showcases where every game is introduced by the developers themselves from the comfy quarters of their studios. If anything, it’s a chance to have a nose at their lovely plants and furniture. No indie studio is complete without at least half a dozen leafy plants liberally scattered around.
For more on the current deluge of summer game announcements, take a look at our round-up of the Guerrilla Collective Showcase and the PlayStation Showcase.
