Wholesome Direct 2024 featured an hour of delightful-looking games, cosy and otherwise
Many with playable demos
The advertising bonanza formerly known as E3 continues into its second day with another set of streams. The Wholesome Direct was today's highlight, in my mind. The yearly collection of games that may or may not be cosy, but which definitely do not involve stabbing men in the neck, always contains some games worth keeping an eye on. This year was no different, and you'll find the archived stream below.
It's a full hour and hot damn it includes a lot of games:
I like the dark edge of Discounty, which takes the familiar shop simulation loop of stocking shelves and serving customers and puts it to work in service of creating a sprawling - and potentially exploiting and polluting - supermarket. The Steam page warns that not everyone wants you to succeed, which seems only sensible.
I also liked Littlelands, a cute action-adventure game about catching bugs, exploring caves, and searching for treasure. It's Zelda by way of Boku no Natsuyasumi, maybe? The announcement during the Wholesome Direct above included mention of a demo that would be playable today, although sadly it seems the developers have decided to delay it at the last moment.
Lastly, I loved the look of Spilled!. It's a relaxing game about cleaning up oil spills in your little tugboat, then upgrading the boat, and it has had a playable demo for a while. The announcement here was that its getting a graphics upgrade later this summer, following its successful Kickstarter earlier this year.
The flurry of summer games events are now underway! Hit up our Summer Game Fest 2024 hub and our Day Of The Devs roundup for all the news worth caring about from the shows so far.