Saturday’s Wholesome Direct featured dozens of (yes, wholesome) games, including four that were surprisingly released alongside the event. Four games! These games are Kamaeru: A refuge for frogs, SWIMMING POOL, The palace on the hillAnd Traces of thought. All are available on Windows PC Steam, but you can also find Kamaeru on itch.io and Nintendo Switch; The palace on the hill on Android, Apple iOS, Xbox One and Xbox Series X; and Traces of thought on Windows PC via the Epic Games Store.
Camera is basically a frog breeding simulator where you essentially set up a habitat for your frogs while SWIMMING POOL is a physics puzzle game that resembles a twisted Suika game. In the meantime, The palace on the hill is a slice-of-life game about life in rural India in the 90s and Traces of thought is a map-based puzzle tour. They couldn’t be more different, but they all look wonderfully healing nonetheless.
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Image: Humble Reeds/Armor Game Studios
In addition to the four surprise releases, the Wholesome Direct also featured many exciting games. Some of them that I am looking forward to, Squeakross: Home Squeak Homethis is mouse Picross; Summera watercolor painting simulator; Sopa: The story of the stolen potatoan adventure game about getting a potato for your grandmother’s soup; While waitinga silly game that makes you wait; Small bookstorefor which a new demo is available; and Wax headswhere you run a record store.
There were too many incredible looking games shown off during the Wholesome Direct to list here, so if you missed the show I recommend checking it out for yourself, there’s a lot to look forward to over the next few years.
