By Nelson Schneider - 05/25/25 at 03:52 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! May was surprisingly Spring-like as it brought the first season of the year to a close. With Spring in the rear-view mirror, it’s time for us to watch the Games Industry go into its annual state of spastic catatonia known as the Summer Games Drought. With our mild Spring, is there any hope for a mild Summer as well? Or are we doomed to be confronted with our existing backlogs instead of coveting something novel that might get us fired up?
Sadly, the scourge of Shovelware will never go away, no matter how hard we ignore it. In June, we’ve got two bits of Licensed Swill coming: A “Smurftastic Collection” based on the 1980s’ favorite tiny, blue, Communists; as well as an anime game based on one of the OLDEST mech shows, “MACROSS: Shooting Insight.” (Does anyone even remember or care about EITHER of those IPs? Enough to fund new game development?!) In Cazual Swill, there’s the “100-in-1 Game Collection” hitting the Nintendo Switch, almost as if someone remembered that crap like that sold well on the Wii and slowly came to the realization that the Wii and Switch were made by the same company. There are no Annualized Swill releases in June, but there is a Noteworthy Port in “Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark,” which is leaving PC behind and going to both Nintendo and Sony (LOL, Xbox).
There are only two new multi-platform titles coming up in June, and neither one of them looks particularly exciting. There’s “MindsEye,” which is a new Sandbox/FPS set in a post-AI dystopia that seems like it’s just another Eurojank cyberpunk wannabe… but it might be okay. Then there’s the other title, “Chronicles of the Wolf,” a retro-styled Classicvania revolving around killing the Beast of Gevaudan (an Urban Legend from the 18th Century) instead of Dracula. Unfortunately, with most Classicvania-inspired retro games, the developers really like to double-down on the opaque mechanics and clunky controls of the Bad Old Days, and based on early chatter in the game’s Steam forum, this one is no different. But, hey! At least there are two brand new, original games that someone (probably not me) might enjoy.
At last, we come to exclusives… and there are a surprising amount of them (provided one fudges the definition of “exclusive” and a few release dates a bit. Sony and Nintendo are both represented again, with PlayStation getting both “Karma: The Dark World” (which is already on PC, but has only been for a couple months with no other console releases… so “exclusive”) and the next Norman Reedus Simulator, “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.” The Switch is getting “Locomoto” (with similar “exclusivity” caveats), which is apparently some kind of Train Sim specifically targeting Furries and/or the ‘Animal Crossing’ fanbase; as well as the newest ‘Rune Factory’ sequel, “Guardians of Azuma.”
Eeeeehhhhh…yikes! While it’s not quite as desolate and Drought-striken as some years, there’s definitely NOTHING interesting coming out in June that the MJ Crew will bother tacking. I guess we’ll just have to play the hundreds of unplayed Steam games (and, in Chris’ case, PlayStation games) we already have sitting here.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
