Three Gorgeous, Unreleased Games We Just Played That Should Have Your Attention

Hauntii is an upcoming twin-stick adventure game from Moonloop Games in which you play an adorable little ghost capable of haunting objects and using them to traverse the game’s version of eternity. Eternity features beautiful, bespoke graphics (almost all of which the four-person team illustrated on an iPad using Procreate), that are folksy and whimsical—the perfect vibe for a cozy ghost game.

Hauntii’s protagonist is, of course, a cute little ghost with glowing green eyes. You can use the twin-stick combat to shoot “essence” at objects, either destroying ones that will give you in-game currency or haunting ones that can be used to move around the game space. At one point, I jumped into a set of statues that I needed to move to unlock a teleport. At another point, I jumped into a tree that shook off some currency for me, my glowing green eyes peering out from the giant plant.

Hauntii also has a beautiful score to go along with its breathtaking illustrations, and though I only had ten minutes with it, I found myself wanting more. It’s due out for PC and console in 2024.

Viewfinder is an upcoming single-player puzzle game from Sad Owl Studios that will challenge you to see its shifting realities from different angles and viewpoints. You can use pictures of locations as means of changing reality, like holding up a shot of a bridge and literally pasting it into your world as a means of traversing a large gap, or turning a photo of a building on its side and using that wall as a ramp.

Viewfinder is set in a simulation built years ago by a group of friends, so there’s a retrofuturistic vibe to much of its art direction. You can also rewind time in Viewfinder, so if you fall off a crumbling bridge (as I do early on in my demo) you can scoot back to before you were a bumbling dolt and move forward as if nothing happened. Developer Matt Stark tells me the team doesn’t want Viewfinder to be too difficult or punishing, but more of an exercise in perspective.

Though I couldn’t get a firm answer on how long Viewfinder is, Stark confirmed that it’s “longer than Portal, but shorter than The Witness.” You can check out a demo of it on PS5 right now.

What if a game of volleyball met Pokémon? Beastieball, an upcoming game from the studio behind Chicory: A Colorful Tale, answers that question. The turn-based volleyball RPG puts you in the shoes of an up-and-coming Beastieball coach. You don’t play the game, but the cutie beasts do, and you need to help teach them how to get even better at volleyball.

Just moments into my first Beastieball match, I break out in hysterical laughter. After the other team returns my beastie’s serve, I send the ball back over the net and it absolute beams one of the dudes in the face, comically smushing his neck and head like a Looney Tunes cartoon. This is where it feels like Pokémon, as you go back-and-forth picking moves and hoping that they best the other squad’s.

Beastieball’s dev Greg Lobanov tells me there’s a lot more going on under the hood that I couldn’t see during my brief hands-on window. There’s a Fire Emblem-esque system that lets you bond with your monsters, making them better volleyball players. They also bond with each other, and their playstyles will change depending on their relationships. Beastieball was a good time, but there’s a lot I couldn’t see during my demo.

We’ve seen a lot at Summer Game Fest so far! Here are some of the most innovative games you should know about, an first-hand account of what it’s like to be right there when the reveals happen, and a comprehensive roundup of all the news coming out of the main SGF 2023 showcase.

Kotaku is covering everything Summer Game Fest, from the main show on Thursday to other events happening throughout the next week. Whether you’re into larger-than-life triple-A games or intimate, offbeat indies, you can keep up with all things SGF here.