GMTK Digest (June 2025)

Hello GMTK supporters!

Okay, I'm gonna level with you. My game is releasing in two weeks. I've been spending every spare moment fixing bugs, tweaking the balance, making trailers, and all the other stuff you have to do before a game comes out.

So this ain't gonna be the best GMTK Digest I've ever done. But I hope you dig it nonetheless! I'll hopefully be back on form for the next one!

New releases

Played: Mario Kart World

Oh yeah, we got a new video game console in June! Hello Switch 2! The big release is, of course, the latest Mario Kart game. This one is just as fun, silly and polished as the rest of the games. And it's packed with nostalgic nods (including a truly enormous soundtrack that references almost every Mario game you can name).

But it's also got an open world that is, for my money, kinda bad. Free roaming around this lifeless universe feels pointless. And the GP mode now features these long stretches of liminal, interstitial nothingness between the "actual" tracks. From my experience this adds nothing to the game... except for the fun knockout mode where you have to survive while racing across the entire island. That, I'll admit, is pretty fun.

Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4

Undertale developer Toby Fox continues the strangely staggered development of its semi-sequel Deltarune. After releasing the first two chapters separately and for free, these new instalments come packed together as a paid game. The reviews are glowing, with Cubed3 calling it a "subversive epic that defies conventions and keeps the laughs coming every minute of its lengthy runtime". Am I being silly waiting for the full thing? Should I just jump in and catch up before the fifth chapter in 2026?

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

I liked Death Stranding. I was in no rush to play a sequel, mind you. But I might have been swayed by an interview quote from director Hideo Kojima. He said that in early playtests of the game people liked it... too much. What would be a fantastic outcome for most game developers felt like a death sentence for Kojima. If the game wasn't polarising and sparking strong emotions - both positive and negative - then what's the point? Gotta say - that's intriguing.

Peak

The story of Peak is perhaps more interesting than the game itself (a chaotic co-op climbing game). Basically the developers were burnt out after making the massive and ambitious underwater Soulslike Another Crab's Treasure. So they decided to make something shorter and smaller - in just over a month of concentrated game dev. The result? Peak sold a million copies at launch and blew past the Crab game.

"We want to mostly make smaller projects moving forward, with clearer scopes and shorter development times", the developer says.

Also this month...

Dune Awakening is the latest open world survival and crafting game - but this time with spice, sandworms, and maybe Timothee Chalamet? Is he in this one?

The creators of sweaty, snappy, scrappy fighting game SIFU made Rematch - which is basically Rocket League without the cars. They're calling this wild new concoction "football".

Turns out I wasn't the only person to come up with the idea of mixing Balatro with a word game. So if you can't wait for Word Play, try Wordatro!

There's also FBC: Firebreak from Remedy. A new (and apparently awful) GTA-like in Mindseye. 11 Bit Studio's The Alters. And Splitgate 2 which is mostly famous for the lead dev wearing a dumb hat during a game event. Video games!

Headlines

Nintendo Switch 2 Sells Over 3.5 Million Units Worldwide in First Four Days - "This is the highest global sales level for any Nintendo hardware within the first four days," says the Big N. I'm a little surprised - I thought the high cost would scare people off. But it looks like the quality of the system and launch line-up has won people over.

Everything announced in the Summer Game Fest Opening Showcase 2025 - "Wildgate! Deadpool VR! Jurassic World Evolution 3! Code Vein 2!". But the biggest one is Resident Evil Requiem - aka RE9. It's out in February 2026, stars new(ish) protagonist Grace Ashcroft, and is set 30-odd years after the destruction of Raccoon City in RE3.

Everything announced in Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase - Most importantly in this one - not Super Meat Boy 3D (cool) or Call of Duty Black Ops 7 (yawn), but reassurance that Hollow Knight: Silksong is coming in 2025. Praise be.

ROG Xbox Ally Handhelds Revealed - Microsoft announced its "own" handheld - basically a ROG Ally with Game Pass built in. In other partnership news, the firm announced that the next generation of Xbox - whenever that is - will be made in partnership with AMD.

Reading List

Design

Watch (28 mins) - Roguelikes Are Getting Weird - "No game genre has gone through bigger changes in the last decade or so, but thanks to all the experimentation going on, we’ve been getting an unbelievable fountain of great game design".

Watch (14 mins) - The Curse of Needlessly Copying Dark Souls - Design Delve looks at "Lies of P to ask the question.. Did its devs really need to add Fromsofts worst aspects?".

Watch (13 mins) - How Mario Kart tracks are created - "I'll walk you through the 3 step process that Nintendo use when creating courses for games like Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart World".

Read - Blue Prince Doesn't Have A Satisfying Ending, But That's The Point - "It increasingly seems like there are puzzles that will never be solved in Blue Prince, an incredibly gutsy way to convey a powerful emotional impact".

Development

Watch (9 mins) - Surviving an indie game release - Developer WhyKev finally launched his charming papercraft platformer PaperKlay. Here's the final dev log on its development - rewind to the beginning to see the whole story.

Watch (21 mins) - Why Making a Game is Hard - "In this devlog I talk about all the challenges I'm hitting while making my first indie game, Bloodthief". I commented that this one really captures the heartaches and headaches of game dev for me.

Watch (15 mins) - Make Tiny Games. - "I took a college class that taught us game development with 8-bit engines, and these are all the games I made in my journey of learning PICO-8 and how I did it". Complete with Mark Brown shout-out jump-scare.

Read - 007 First Light devs felt it was the game they were always building towards - "During Summer Game Fest 2025, we had the opportunity to speak with IO Interactive Chief Technical Officer Ulas Karademir about the making of 007 First Light".

Business

Watch (23 mins) - Was Donkey Kong Bananza Started At... Activision? - "I address a theory that's cropped up online claiming that Donkey Kong Bananza started life at Activision's Vicarious Visions (now Blizzard Albany) as a project I previously investigated called 'Freedom'".

Watch (18 mins) - The Business of Making Physical Video Games In 2025 - "Recently I sat down with Ryan Brown, the head of Lost In Cult's new publishing label to find out what it's like working in this business in 2025".

Read - Even Nintendo Can’t Weather the Storm That’s Coming for the Video Game Industry - "The trouble is that the success of the Nintendo Switch 2 is likely not an indication of more boom years to come, but the last bit of open road before a steep cliff".

Culture

Watch (24 mins) - Why You Procrastinate Fighting The Final Boss - "Am I the only one that weirdly procrastinates finishing a game as soon as I unlock the final boss? Do you also pump the brakes right before the finale?".

Watch (47 mins) - Melee: The Quest for Sub 3:00 - Speed running anthropologist Summoning Salt looks at the target break mini-game in Smash Melee.

Read - Every Hideo Kojima Game Ranked - "With the release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, director Hideo Kojima enters his fourth decade in game development as a director".

Read - The Inescapable Intersection of SGF and ICE Protests - "My feelings covering Summer Game Fest, in LA, as the daughter of a Mexican immigrant".

Watch (1 hour) The end of Stop Killing Games - Ross from Accursed Farms talks about the seeming demise of his quest to rewrite the laws around sunsetting games - and how one prominent creator was largely responsible for the movement's death.

Critique

Watch (1 hour, 43 mins) - Do The New Dooms Make Sense As A Series? - "This is a video critique and retrospective about Doom: The Dark Ages, examining how it fits into the rest of the new Doom franchise".

Watch (27 mins) - Clair Obscur is an Endless Canvas of Grief - Jacob Geller takes on the most talked-about RPG of 2025.

Read - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 didn’t invent Final Frenchtasy or the J'RPG - "Sometimes all it takes to make a new subgenre is an apostrophe".

Artistry

Watch (22 mins) - How Games Are Made: SOUND DESIGN - NoClip's been following an indie game developer to get a close insight into various aspects of game making. Here's part one, on audio.

Beyond Games

Watch (30 mins) - "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI - The final part of a insightful YouTube series about how CGI is used in Hollywood - and how the movie industry talks about using CGI.

Watch (9 mins) - The Problem Solving of Filmmaking Part 2 - Film director David F. Sandberg has a great video about how limitations and circumstances led to a scene from the Shazam sequel. Big parallels to game development, naturally.

Read - Diabolus Ex Machina - "The following is a ‘conversation’ I had with Chat GPT. What ultimately transpired is the closest thing to a personal episode of Black Mirror I hope to experience in this lifetime.".

Read - AI is Here to Stay - "A very common thing I hear people say, both critics and advocates, is that AI is "here to stay", "well, it's not going anywhere" and so on".