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Welcome to video games every week on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, divided into two parts. The first is a space for short tests and ramblings on video game trends and related subjects of me, Jess Conitt, a journalist who covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from last week that you need to know, including titles outside of Engadget.
Please take advantage – and I will see you next week.
June exceeded me in a mist of plane travel, a light illness, demonstrations and pride, and it is now officially time to close the book on the summer game 2025. Towards this year’s show and they are all worth reading, but before I go for good, I wanted to highlight a last lot of games that I can’t stop thinking. This week, I present three mini glimps directly from SGF 2025 – and only two of them are horror games, which is a strong growth display on my part.
Crisol: Theater of Idols
Crisol: Theater of Idols I was not on my radar until I required myself and I did not play it at the Blumhouse stand, but now it sucks hard and strong, as if the booms directly emanated from the intestines soaked in blood. It is a first -person survival action game which takes place in a denied version of Spain which is filled with modern folklore monsters. The deadly puppets and the giant skeletons, odiously decorated, hunt you in the dark streets and the imposing Gothic buildings, the light of the bright lamp of each 3D crude 3D detail. The whole demo wanted to get lost in a terrifying and nightmarish carnival, and I enjoyed each piece.
In CrucibleBlood is your source of ammunition, and emptying you the corpses of humans and chickens to fill up on your health bar as well as your weapons. Crucible is tense and beautiful, recalling Dishonored Or Resident evil villageAnd enemies are both robust and difficult to escape. Crucible is the first match of the independent Spanish team Vermila Studios, which received a For the project in 2020. It is published by Blumhouse and should be released this year PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S.
Sear seasons
There is something deeply in Ashenridge, the idyllic rural village where Sear seasons is defined. At first glance, Sear seasons is a cute agricultural simulation based on the story with detailed pixel art, juicy romance options and layers of home maintenance mechanics. You spend time planting, watering, harvesting, making items, collecting garbage and chatting with the villagers – then you dig a cut hand. Pilar, your attractive neighbor who runs the tailor store on the road, says something threatening about the fate of the previous owner of your house. The atmosphere changes; Shadows are starting to look sinister. Night Falls and the real horror is unleashed, suddenly, violent and all the more shocking in such a peaceful setting. A supernatural serial killer is in freedom in Ashenridge and, between planting crops, it is up to you to investigate (and perhaps get out) the murderer.
Sear seasons is a game that will live or die by its tone, and so far, the developer Perfect Garbage has absolutely nailed the atmosphere of harmful and creeping dread. Ashenridge is a beautiful small town with tons of people to meet and activities to finish, and the character’s avatars are sexy, sweet and super intriguing. A paranormal murder investigation is simply the icing at the top of a competent agriculture and meetings card, and I can’t wait to take a bite from the full game. In SGF 2025, the developers said that Sear seasons The experience should take around 20 hours. Sear seasons is published by Blumhouse, and he must strike and consoles in 2026.
Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School
Academy East Over the past five years and I have been exceptionally delighted with the suite, which transforms school into an open world of puzzles, puzzles and word games. With Escape Academy 2: Back 2 SchoolThe developer Coin Crew goes all on the student game atmosphere, and the whole campus is strewn with mysteries. It is also playable as a cooperative experience of shared screen sofa, which is one of the greatest forces in the series. The solutions shouting frantically to your friend feel better in person than on a discord of discord, do you know?
I played the original Academy With a local partner, this is how I tried the continuation of SGF 2025. I dragged Eic Aaron Souppouris to Eic Aaron on the IAM8BIT stand and we plunged, starting in a class covered with sneaky environmental indices. In Escape Academy 2The assignment is simple – go out – but the execution is complex, and we quickly threw names, dates and mathematical problems, trying to solve a series of delicate and interconnected puzzles and leave the room. After obtaining a single index of the developers, we headed for the corridor, which was bordered by puzzles based on lockers, and we finally reached the office of the director, which was a playground contained in the puzzle game. We had to use a pen and a piece of paper to keep track of a few sections, and overall, our interactions were fresh. Coin Crew not only deploys the same problems with different solutions for the future, and the new puzzles were intelligent, innovative and super satisfactory. (We cannot say as much of all the puns, but that is part of the charm.)
Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School Offers a local and online cooperative, you will therefore be free to shout to your friends in the format you prefer. Coin Crew still works on the game and there is not yet a release date, but it is now available for .
The news
The only thing worse than not to disclose the use of AI in the creation of a video game is not to disclose it, then to deploy it so negligently that the players immediately notice it. Independent developer and editor 11 Bit Studios learned this first -hand lesson with AltersA futuristic basic construction game featuring an astronaut and its alternative reality clones. In the week following the release of the game on June 13, the messages started And Display of the text generated by AI in the game, on several languages. On June 30, 11 bits published a declaration confirming its use of AI in development AltersSaying that it was only used in the background text and to help with the last-minute location efforts. “No matter what we decided, we should have let you know,” wrote the studio.
I would really love to stop writing titles like this. Microsoft is preparing to dismiss a large number of Xbox employees this week, as part of a planned reduction of 3% of business staff. It is a loss of around 7,000 jobs in total, and according to Xbox leaders expect “substantial discounts throughout the group”. The shots follow a round of In Xbox in January 2024, another and last year d’Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games and Tango GameWorks (the latter who lives under Krafton). Meanwhile, Microsoft declared a net turnover of $ 25.8 billion in the first three months of 2025, with an annual increase of 8% of Xbox content and services. Well done?
Netflix began to strengthen its video game division around 2021, with the Night School and the deployment of a game library in the application offering popular mobile titles without additional costs to subscribers. Netflix currently supports more than 100 games, including The door of death,, Hell,, The case of the golden idol,, The rise of the golden idol,, Braid anniversary,, Katana zero And the Monument Valley series – but they disappear in July. A total of 22 games will be deleted from Netflix at various times in July, and the slaughter follows similar discounts in the interactive division of the company, including the recent closure of a .
Because we know you will get something – What are you taking during the summer sale in Steam this year? Share your loot in the comments! If you are overwhelmed, let me suggest humbly ,, ,, Or .
On a related note, do not forget to check (the almost complete) Playdate Season 2.
… But it is certainly no more. Resident Evil: Requiem The director of producer Masachika Kohariki Clarifi That their new game is an offline solo experience, but they said that at the start of development, the team has seriously planned to do so online and in the world. This experiment has fueled rumors on Requiem Presentation of a new direction for the Resident Evil franchise, but it turns out that the final product will be a With the ability to exchange between views in the first and third person. Spoory.
