The Future Games Show 2022 was yet another showcase of video games in the march to replace E3 with video game debuts. We saw a good number of trailers — many of which admittedly showed games we’ve seen before. That doesn’t mean the trailers were any less exciting, of course, but we decided to parse down the total number to a more manageable slice. Here are our five favorite trailers from the Future Games Show 2022 (along with some thoughts on each game) for you to look over and enjoy for yourself!
In case you missed the livestream, you can watch every trailer from the Future Games Show on the GamesRadar YouTube channel.
Nightingale – Future Games Show 2022
This wasn’t the first time Nightingale appeared at a summer games showcase this year. Yet it does feel like the first time we got a really good look at what’s going on under the hood.
I previously compared the footage to both No Man’s Sky and Fallout 4. That is to say, it looks like a survival sim in which you build bases while hopping from one type of zone to the next. Unlike Fallout 4, however, each new area is procedurally generated. And unlike No Man’s Sky, you can influence the nature of each region by crafting “Realm Cards.”
I still like the Fallout comparison simply because the monsters seem so hand-crafted; each looks like a half-thought-out abomination of evolution. This remains one of the best parts of Fallout games even as they’ve gotten progressively more disappointing under Bethesda stewardship. I’m also curious what kind of story the game has, and if there is a story at all. Plot is becoming an increasingly important part of survival games that drives players like me forward through the otherwise endless grind of eating, sleeping, and building.
The Entropy Centre – Future Games Show 2022
The Entropy Centre appears to be a first-person “shooter” where you wield a gun that rewinds time. This allows you to complete puzzles by reversing the damage inflicted upon an abandoned facility — like raising fallen bridges to land on as you jump through the air.
It’s certainly not the first game of this type — just look at The Talos Principle, The Turing Test, or even Outer Wilds for more mind-bending first-person puzzles. Yet it’s a unique enough take on the subgenre to get our attention, especially when the central objective seems to be “rewinding” an overcooked planet Earth into a habitable state.
Sunday Gold – Future Games Show 2022
This is my personal “game of the show” from the little weekend showcase. If you said the words “Disco Elysium meets Persona,” you wouldn’t be far off in my estimation. Sunday Gold sports turn-based RPG combat with some of the camerawork and mannerisms of the Atlus juggernaut; however, it also features the grimy “damn the man” energy found in certain parts of Disco Elysium. The character portraits look nearly pulled straight out of that game, too.
The game centers around three small-time criminals (at least by the standards of this dystopian future world). There’s an activist, an ex-con, and a former employee of some kind of evil billionaire who appears to profit on… dog racing? It’s really tough to pin down precisely what the game is about at the moment, but the classic combat and point-and-click adventure exploration have me hooked.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is being published (though not developed) by Team17, one of the many game publishers with a reputation for poor working conditions that came to light earlier this year.
Phonopolis – Future Games Show 2022
I fell off the train for Amanita Design, the adventure game developer behind Samorost, Botanicula, and Machinarium, some years back. They just started to get a bit “same-y” after a while.
Yet the studio has quietly continued to pump out more well-received point-and-click games over the last decade. The latest, Phonopolis, also looks genuinely different and somehow even livelier than some of the past Amanita Design releases despite the fact that everything appears to be made of cardboard.
The game appears to be about a man trying to stop an authoritarian regime. In that way, it’s actually a bit more down-to-earth than the studio’s past releases (which focus on things like robot cities and sentient fungus). At the same time, there’s still a lot of that intricate location and character design that made me originally fall in love with this sort of thing in the first place.
Serial Cleaners – Future Games Show 2022
I never actually played much of the original Serial Cleaner, though I know a few people who absolutely adored it. Maybe I should finally make the time for it, too, since Serial Cleaners really caught my attention at the Future Games Show 2022. We don’t get a lot of video games about relatively straightforward crime stories set in the real world. And while both games are very stylized, that’s more or less what this is about. You play as “cleaners” for the mob who cover up murders — all while trying not to get caught, of course.
This plays out in the form of top-down stealth segments with just a touch of House Flipper, PowerWash Simulator, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker — games that are basically about meticulous satisfaction. Serial Cleaners then trades in the first game’s 70s aesthetic for a VHS-styled 90s crime thriller.
This coverage of the Future Games Show is part of Fanbyte’s Hot Game Summer 2022. That’s where we bring you recaps, commentary, and just our general opinions on this summer’s game presentations — such as the Xbox & Bethesda showcase, the PC Gaming Show, and the all-encompassing Summer Game Fest hosted by Geoff Keighley. If you’re interested in seeing all of Fanbyte’s coverage, check out our Hot Game Summer 2022 hub! And while it wasn’t included in this list, you can also find our writeup of Tray Racers from Fanbyte manager merritt k, which was also shown during the livestream.
