KT’s List – State of Play June 2026

As a lover of Dave the Diver and Cooking Mama-esque games, I’m super excited to see this! The bold and colorful 3D art style is a departure from the pixel style of Dave the Diver, but it looks sick as hell. I don’t know if the game’s Japanese setting is influencing this thought, but seeing the goofy cutscenes mixed into this trailer reminded me a little of the oddball moments in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. There’s no planned release date for this one, but it was an immediate wish list for me.

While I have been playing PlayStation technically since I was nine years old, I didn’t get a PS3 until about 2013, so trophies were new to me. In all that time, I have only gotten a platinum trophy in five games. Control is one of those games. I could not get enough of the setting and combat, and once I realized the platinum was achievable for me, I didn’t mind staying in this world just a little longer to grind out that final trophy.* The visuals in the Control Resonant trailer were as gargantuan and cosmically horrific as ever, which I found delightful. I’m curious to see how much of the iconic retrofuturism aesthetic we saw in The Oldest House seeps out into Manhattan when it releases later this year on September 24th.

_{* For the record, it was “Astral Tactician – Complete 25 Board Countermeasures” and if you’re going for the plat, I would recommend doing that one early, because post-game it was a SLOG.}

Laufey‘s 24 minute gameplay trailer really pulled me in immediately and really took me by surprise! Kratos’ deceased wife Laufey awakens in the afterlife for gods, coined The Everywhen. Laufey, finding her magic on the fritz, fights her way through ruins until she’s taken captive by two terrifying and towering figures: Begtse (the Tibetan & Mongolian God of War) and Sekmet (the Egyptian Goddess of War). Who doesn’t love a good crossover? Talking cube Frank reveals himself and his magic sword companion Ru (technically the ribbons of the sword) and the gang begins to hatch their escape plan. Early lines from Frank point to this being a potential tearjerker:

It’s like you’re holding something back…

Faye, you need to accept it. All of it. You’re dead.

There’s no release date yet, but I look forward to seeing Laufey’s mission complete once it’s available for purchase.

“Choices matter” games (or for me, “Choose Your Own Consequences”) are a nostalgic genre for me. I played a lot of episodic Telltale games in my early 20s, like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. More recently, I was blasting through Dispatch before deciding I needed to pace myself. I love the replay value of the genre and always look forward to reviewing the end-of-chapter worldwide stats to see where I went against the grain. When I think Until Dawn, I think of a spooky cabin full of trope-stricken horror movie teens, so the beach setting in this trailer didn’t really flag to me as “Until Dawn” immediately. At 30 seconds, I said “Is this… Until Dawn…?” At 1:48 I said matter-of-factly “I’m jumping alone,” and at 1:55 said to myself smugly, “See? That’s why. He could have jumped himself.” I’m already pondering the “__% of players pushed Luke” stat and patting myself on the back for not killing him, so I’ll probably pick this one up when it drops in 2027.

I’m sold on the concept and the aesthetic, and yo-kai are sick as hell, so I’m interested to see more on this one. I love to see it is co-op as well. At 1:32, our player gets chomped and the screen flashes DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING. I assume that means this is a run-based game where you fight, you die, you fight again, you die again, you get better, you fight again, you win. The way my brain works though, this trailer was a little fast-paced for me to make a complete judgement on it. I’ll need to see a little more about the structure of the game and how it works before deciding when to buy. It’s not slated for release until 2027, so I have some time to decide.