Video Games I Played in June 2026
Normally I’m more on the ball with these writeups but I just started a new job and pretty much spaced completely on the fact the month was over. It didn’t help that this was another month where I poured a massive amount of time into a small number of games, which causes time to bleed together a bit.
Final Fantasy VII – I’ve been playing this game off and on with a friend for several years, but May/June was when we started making some real progress in actually beating the game. It’s fascinating culturally how so many of the most interesting facets of the game’s story are completely ignored in the broader conception of the game. I’m not sure how much of that is people losing steam after the opening in Midgar (which is where we stopped years ago) and not seeing the game itself, and how much of that is the rest of the game being kind of ass. The materia system is interesting but leads to each party member feeling replaceable, ATB is indefensible as a combat rhythm, and every time the game starts to hit its stride they introduce a new mandatory minigame. But, this is the crucible that was necessary for Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts to exist, and if what it takes to reach those heights is Cid being an unmarried wifebeater, so be it.
Kingdoms of the Dump – I enjoyed Small Saga well enough a few years ago, and this looked like a similar game. What I did not anticipate was instead of being a dense 10-hour RPG, it’s a sprawling 40-hour mess. The good news is that playing FFVII alongside it reveals the intentionality and design ethos driving many of its decisions. The bad news is the result is pretty resoundingly mediocre. The world is filled with one-way cutscene triggers that can do anything from forcibly transition you to an entirely new map to changing party composition (locking the lost party member’s items in limbo until they rejoin). Colossal amounts of time are spent on characterization and worldbuilding despite the fact that three times in a row a major faction is introduced as allies, they are subject to defeat or betrayal, and their region is abandoned. For some of them they’re introduced and killed in the same cutscene. 30 hours into the game you get the airship and can start doing cleanup, but by that point your endgame equipment outclasses basically anything you can find. There’s earnestness and heart here and that was enough to get me to the end, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling like a waste of time.
Pokopia – As the only person below the age of 35 who hasn’t played Minecraft or Animal Crossing, I didn’t really know what to expect going into this game. I’d heard the comparisons to Dragon Quest Builders but haven’t played that either. The game is strange. If using a deliberately clunky interface to make a little house out of blocks and then invite pikachu to live there sounds charming to you, you’ll love the game. If that sounds kind of anemic you’re likely to be frustrated by the hand-holding quests that gate your progress through the areas, the lack of basic QoL tools for navigation and item storage, and the pace of play tied to real-time elapsed. I haven’t clicked with it the same way my girlfriend has, but it’s cute and it’s satisfying to build something even if it’s simple. Fuck game keycards though.
Blood West: Scavengers – I was shocked at the degree to which I enjoyed Blood West when I tried it earlier this year, and so I was eagerly awaiting this roguelike DLC that makes full use of the density and complexity of the maps. Objectives are simple enough; get the item in this location, kill this large enemy, clear out all the enemies in this zone. The trouble is resource scarcity, a strict time limit, and the unrelenting lethality where even basic enemies can two-shot you if you get caught out of position. This frequently frustrated me to the point I uninstalled, especially when items that were supposed to save you from death failed to work (they would trigger, revive you at 10HP, and then you’d die to staggered damage or a DoT). It didn’t help that I was also still playing DRG: Rogue Core which is a much more slapdash attempt to retrofit a roguelite mode onto an existing set of guns and tools. That being said, it feels truly phenomenal to shoot people in this game and I love looting shit. I spent more time in this mode than I did on the base game, and only stopped because once I hit critical mass I was essentially unkillable. There’s some cool stuff going on with items that scale in power for each in-game day that passes, but they also have the reverse like a rifle that starts with absurd damage but decays rapidly to the point of uselessness over the course of a week. The devs are apparently making a very similar game to Blood West already so I’ll likely get that on release.
Xanthiom 2 – I was looking forward to this for years. I loved the previous two games by this solo-dev as they’re both dense metroidvanias with fascinating designs, unique puzzles, and incredibly inventive mechanics. Sadly, a sequel lead to some stagnation, and this ends up being a bloated and meandering mess compared to Xanthiom. The gun modification is still fun and far better than Clockwork Ambrosia, but the map is directionless rather than being open with the result that I would be hard-gated in a region because I was missing a major upgrade in an unremarkable location on the other side of the map. Thankfully the map markers are some of the best I’ve ever seen, choosing label/shape/color and also having the photography system from The Lost Crown. That doesn’t make up for the fact that poor communication of objectives and mechanics is rampant, with little correlation between difficulty and reward. Part of me suspects the map was overcooked to allow for nonlinearity in the built-in randomizer, but it’s also possible that this is like a lot of sequels where it’s full of things that should’ve been left on the cutting-room floor for the first game.
Orb of Creation – I have a mixed relationship with idle games, as I tend to latch onto them only during the worst parts of my life. In that sense, I’m glad I played only an hour or so of Orb of Creation. It’s an exceptionally well-made active idle game. In many ways it feels more similar to a factory game where specializing in areas of development and actively curating production is more important than just waiting, especially as your abilities have short cooldowns and often want to be triggered in sequence. There’s a world where I spent a month just playing this and watching youtube, doing very little else. I’ve been in that world before. I hope not to be in that world again.
ROLLING STAR – I was extremely endeared to TOMOMI and so happily picked this soft-sequel up in the summer sale. Unfortunately it’s not quite as good, for similar reasons to Xanthiom 2. It’s a little bogged down in maximalism, the best version of these ideas were already used, and the gimmick is a bit stale. The attempt to broaden the map by filling the area between sections with zero-grav zones you fly around in a mech is interesting, but the currency used to scan for treasure is too rare and the mech is too slow for it to be satisfying, but the supplies that can only be found out there are vital for crafting equipment. I need to try the DLC that lets you play as the first game’s protag, I’m hoping that melee adds a bit more zip to the combat.