The 12 best new games we played at Summer Game Fest 2025

The annual Summer Game Fest is more than just livestreams of trailers and announcements; it’s also an in-person experience where many game developers are showing off their playable games for the first time.

Polygon was on the ground for the 2025 SGF experience and we played a lot of demos while we were there. Typically these are 20-, 30-, or 40-minute experiences, so they’re not always indicative of what the final product will be. Nonetheless, here’s a list of 12 game demos we played that made us the most excited for the potential that lies ahead.

“Big guy, little girl” has become a well-worn subgenre of video games, so I didn’t expect much from Capcom’s Pragmata, and yet the 20 minutes I had with the game were some of the most fun I had at the entire show. Our big guy is Hugh, a waylaid astronaut who ends up stranded and wounded on a space station overrun by evil robots. He’s rescued by one of the few non-evil ones, Diana, who also has been designed to look like a little girl. The two team up to get through the space station together, but Diana is no lightweight; it turns out her hacking skills are what’s truly needed to save the day, and Hugh’s third-person shooting abilities are only useful once Diana has stunned an oncoming robot first. Hacking as Diana means solving fun block puzzles even as a hulking, threatning robot is steadily approaching; none of them ever go so fast that Hugh and Diana can’t dodge out of the way, thereby giving the little girl time to do her thing so that her accompanying big guy can shoot the bots to bits. Somehow, instead of being frustrating, it just works, and after 20 minutes, I very much wanted more. —Maddy Myers

Tentative release date: 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance

Sega’s ninja hero Joe Musashi returns in Art of Vengeance, a dazzling ode to the Genesis side-scroller era. The basic gameplay remains consistent with the history of the series: you’re running, you’re hacking, you’re slashing, you’re leaping up platforms to knock enemies off their guard. As Joe plows through sword-wielding brutes and lightning sorceresses to understand who burnt his village to the ground, he picks up a few new moves, including elemental magic and a rage-fueled attack of mass destruction — and it’s all deeply satisfying thanks to studio Lizardcube’s precision controls and a lush art style. Between splashy backgrounds and the hard-lined illustrations of the characters, the two stages of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance I played were as much a pleasure to stare at when Joe was standing still as it was to string together combos while he was whupping ass. OK, the whupping ass part is pretty fun, too. —Matt Patches

Release date: Aug. 29, 2025 on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, and PC

The team that crafted quite possibly the finest version of Tetris ever made, Tetris Effect, is back with a follow-up to one of my other favorite puzzle games. Lumines Arise uses the same general structure as the original PSP-launching Lumines, but tosses in modern, trippy visuals like giant chameleons that beat their heads along to the music, or psychadelically enhanced astronauts. There’s also a new “Burst” mode that allows you to activate a superpowered, screen-clearing ability once you’ve generated enough energy. There aren’t too many puzzle games that have ever held a candle to Tetris for me, but Lumines has always scratched that itch for me, so seeing what amounts to a full sequel to the original, rather than just a remaster, had me fully vibing. —Russ Frushtick

Tentative release date: Fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 with optional PS VR2 support and PC via Steam with optional PC VR support

For those of you who, like me, wonder why there aren’t more games set in demon-infested post-apocalyptic futurescapes, good news, the folks at Heart Machine (Hyper Light Drifter) agree. After an invasion by otherworldly forces leaves Luca with two crushed legs, a sly demon, Rehm, arrives just before death to strike a deal: he’ll heal her if she’ll let him possess a space in her corporeal self. With the snap of a finger, Luca is reborn with demon powers, and ready to fight her way through the wreckage of the world she knew. Imbuing Metroidvania play with Heart Machine’s signature aptitude for graphic style, Possessor(s) really grabbed me with its voice and story; Rehm is a jerk who still knows a thing or two about the conspiracy at the heart of this disaster, and he banters with Luca through Hades-esque dialogue cutaways. In Possessor(s)’ opening 30 minutes, the cleverness bleeds right into the gameplay, from the demon enemies who possess and turn everyday machinery into snarling foes, and the found weaponry you rely on to survive. Good news: kitchen knives do well against hell beasts. —MP

Tentative release date: 2025, with a demo out now.

This year’s award for Most Psychedelic Experience That Had Me Screaming “OH MY GOD WHAT THE” Every Few Minutes goes to Art Is Rifle. Thai developer Arman Pakan describes Art Is Rifle as an “open-world, FPS puzzle game with rhythmic bullets,” but that doesn’t totally capture the disorienting (in a good way) quality of the play, which I entered with zero explanation, zero hand-holding, and zero clue of what I was doing. When I first hit the ground, I was using a colored-ball launcher to change the colors of different black-and-white objects, and eventually, I figured out a correct order that would open the doors to another section of the hovering platform. Each puzzle required a new way of thinking about the “gun,” its “ammo,” and how projectiles would act in the loopy physics of the world. Eventually, I got stuck — and jumped off a platform into an entirely different part of the world. Was I playing Art Is Rifle the right way? I have no idea, and was happy to be so lost in such a vivid dreamscape. —MP

I’m probably going to refer to Shadow Labyrinth as “grimdark Pac-Man” even after it gets released, because that’s what it is, even if its forgettable title doesn’t make that clear. And yet we must not forget Bandai Namco’s upcoming twist on one of the oldest and best-known IPs in the world. Inspired by the mega-twisted Secret Level episode “Circle,” itself a grimdark take on Pac-Man, Shadow Labyrinth is a Metroidvania starring a cloaked, sword-wielding figure who explores 2D side-scrolling levels alongside a small floating yellow sphere. Shadow Labyrinth has some typical contemporary Metroidvania mechanics — a double jump, a grappling hook, an air dash — but the best part is its take on morph ball mode. You inhabit Pac-Man — or, uh, sorry, he’s called “Puck” in this game — and roll across specific walls and surfaces to eat up tiny dots. I got 20 minutes with this game and loved every single one of them; I now can’t wait for the full release of this bizarre yet very welcome addition to Pac-Man lore. —MM

Release date: July 18, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2

Grounded 2 was not the only micro-sized adventure game on display at this year’s Summer Game Fest. Players who enjoy running around as a tiny guy need to check out Infinitesimals, which the folks at Cubit Studios have been toiling over in some shape and form for over a decade, beginning as a pet project for veteran game designer James McWilliams. At first glance, the game looks a bit like A Bug’s Life with guns, but in action it’s closer to the ideal Avatar experience that we didn’t quite get in Frontiers of Pandora. Players strap in as the leader of an alien military squad that crash-lands on Earth — but he’s only the size of an insect, forcing him to both outrun curious ants and a robot population that currently resides in the overgrowth. Built on top of third-person military shooter tactics is a number of other intriguing mechanics that open up the play, from a variety of weapon modifiers to a stealth path that finds you hacking intricately built electricity systems. Infinitesimals feels deceptively complex and vast for a pitch as simple as “Honey I Shrunk the Kids with aliens and guns.” —MP

Tentative release date: 2026 for PC on Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S

These days, there are about as many retro-inspired side-scrollers as there ever were actual of-the-era side-scrollers in the 1990s. Still, there are people out there making awe-inspiring new entries — and Zenovia Interactive’s Neon Inferno looked like one of them. Inspired by franchises like Contra and Metal Slug, with a 32-bit cyberpunk art direction that completely overdelivers, Neon Inferno is a shooter bursting with action from the first seconds. Russ Frushtick and I suited up as assassins Angelo Morano and Mariana Vitti to play co-op in various stages that showed off a number of the mechanics threaded into the typical run-and-gun gameplay. As you take out waves of cyber gangsters, Neon Inferno pits you against foreground and gallery-shooter-style background enemies, allows you to parry projectile gunfire, and throws in a few vehicle stages for good measure. It’s retro chaos that could still only be done with modern tech. —MP

Release date: Oct. 2 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC, with a demo out now.

“Overcooked, but it’s on a spaceship” was the pitch that Sol Mates’ developers gave me and Matt Patches when we stepped up to play the game at their Summer Game Fest booth. That’s mostly true, although Sol Mates feels a bit less frantic; whenever I play Overcooked, my partners and I end up shouting at each other like we’re in an episode of The Bear. In Sol Mates, we moved like a well-oiled machine before too long; recharging the ship’s batteries, reloading its cannons, and repositioning its shields to protect from enemy spaceships all happened pretty seamlessly, but I can tell that with the right balance, Sol Mates could be just as gloriously chaotic and ultimately satisfying. This was definitely a game concept with strong potential and one I’ll be checking out when it gets a full release. —MM

Tentative release date: Early Access on Steam in 2025 on PC.

This upcoming game — the debut title from nascent indie studio Soft Rains — is probably going to be the only game that both revolves around a water gun mechanic and is designed to make me cry. In Ambrosia Sky, the player steps into the space boots of Dalia, an intergalactic explorer who’s revisiting her home planet after it’s been overrun by a hostile fungus that’s killed everyone. She uses a high-tech power washer to clean the fungal overgrowth from her former home, and it’s a very satisfying cleanup job, except that’s not Dalia’s real mission: She’s primarily here to rediscover the corpses of her friends and perform their funeral rites for them. What little I saw of the writing in my 20-minute demo already impressed me, and the music was the perfect haunting accompaniment to it all. —MM

Tentative release date: TBD to PC on Steam

It’s been a while since Ninja Gaiden players have had a new one, and now, they’ve got two on the way: Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, a 2D throwback to the spirit of the 8-bit Ninja Gaiden era coming to consoles this summer (which we also really dug for his high-speed revival of the classic style), and Ninja Gaiden 4, which represents an unlikely studio team-up between PlatinumGames and Team Ninja.

The former is known for splashy, button-mashing-friendly action games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, while the latter is known for mega-difficult hack-and-slash gameplay (in addition to Ninja Gaiden, Team Ninja makes the Nioh games, which I would describe as being for people who think FromSoftware’s Soulslikes are too easy). Because of that combination, most players and I weren’t really sure what to expect of Ninja Gaiden 4, but the results really worked for me, a person who loves both a methodical Soulslike and a splashy Bayonetta-style action game. It’s a marriage of two methodologies that still totally works; it plays a bit like a 3D fighting game, with big fancy special moves to perform but still a necessity to learn specific combos and pay careful attention to enemies and their abilities. I spent all 20 minutes of my time with Ninja Gaiden 4 learning as much as I could just so I could keep up, and the results were very rewarding. —MM

Release date: Oct. 21, 2025 to Xbox (and GamePass), Playstation 5, and PC

Blumhouse Games took over a corner of SGF to preview a few new titles, including an extremely cheeky, bloody farm sim/horror mash-up called Grave Seasons and Crisol, the first game from the Madrid-based Vermila Studios. The latter gave me the willies in a classic Doom, Quake, and Hexen did for me back in the day. Crisol says its first-person horror shooter was deeply inspired by the rush of playing Bioshock back in the day, the vibe of the demo — full of Spanish design elements and sparse-but-haunting encounters — felt like a refreshing AA twist. At the core of Crisol’s supernatural mystery is the blood gun, a deadly weapon that relies on the player’s own life well for ammunition. You can collect blood from corpses scattered around the map, but or often than not, I found myself draining my own life supply to survive fights with zombie puppets or straight-up fleeing from towering monsters who wanted to gobble me up. Like a great horror movie, Crisol forces you to ride the fine line between life and death and fear turning any corner. Mad by sickos for sickos. —MP

Tentative release date: 2026