Summer Game Fest 2026 is set to kick off on June 5, and Xbox has revealed the nine games it’ll be bringing to the Play Days portion of the event. The lineup spans developers from Sacramento to Kraków to Hangzhou, with demos ranging from 15 minutes to a full hour. Here’s a rundown of what Xbox has lined up for press and influencers in downtown Los Angeles this June.
Headlining the lineup is Grounded 2 from Obsidian Entertainment and Eidos-Montréal. The Play Days demo is a 30-minute four-player co-op battle against King Dozer, the new lizard boss from the recent “Beat the Heat” Spring Update. In our Grounded 2 first impressions, we came away really impressed with the Early Access build, especially with how the addition of rideable Buggies fundamentally changes how you explore and fight in the new park setting. Players helped shape the game by repeatedly requesting Buggies as the most-wanted feature from the original Grounded, and seeing the team listen to that feedback has been great to watch.
Coming from Pawprint Studio in Hangzhou, China is Aniimo, a creature-catching open-world game where players can explore the world of Idyll as a human Pathfinder or transform into any of the original creatures by twining with them. The 15 to 30 minute demo lets players collect Aniimo, twine with them, and unleash their powers in battle. Aniimo was also previously shown off at Gamescom 2025, so this is another opportunity for Pawprint Studio to put the game in front of more eyes.
A globally distributed team called Perfect Garbage, in collaboration with Blumhouse Games, brings Grave Seasons, a farming sim with horror undertones. The roughly hour-long demo lets players experience an in-game week in the town of Ashenridge, with farming, fishing, foraging, breaking and entering, and the option to prevent a murder from taking place. The team describes the tone as cozy with an undercurrent of horror, which sounds like a really interesting twist on the genre. Each week can play out differently depending on how players spend their time and who they decide to investigate.
South Korean developer Iggymob is bringing Gungrave Gore: Blood Heat, the next evolution of the stylish Gungrave Gore action series. The 20 to 30 minute demo highlights the game’s combat rhythm, where players build a gauge through parries, executions, and combos to unleash the powerful Demolition Shot. The team’s goal is to make players feel like the protagonist of an action film, with seamless transitions between every move.
The team behind the Ghostrunner series is back with Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike from Kraków-based developer One More Level. The 30-minute demo puts players in the shoes of a former soldier of Napoleon’s army, risen from the dead and wielding supernatural powers against horrifying monsters. One More Level is blending precise sword dueling combat with parkour platforming level design, all from a first-person perspective. The Napoleonic-era setting is a fresh angle for the soulslike genre.
Also from Kraków is Erosion, an ambitious roguelike from Plot Twist where every death costs a decade. Players have to save their kidnapped daughter, but every attempt skips time forward, which means the world erodes around them. Buildings fall apart, townsfolk get older, and the daughter ages as well. The 30-minute demo features 100+ weapons and abilities, destructible voxel dungeons, and an open overworld filled with sidequests, secrets, and what the team calls a voxel neon-West. Sounds like an ambitious twist on the roguelike formula.
Sacramento-based Scary Kid Studios brings the most unusual concept of the lineup with Don’t Fret, a first-person survival horror game where players control Fret, a sentient guitar trapped inside a twisted music school. The 40-minute demo features stealth and combat encounters, music-based puzzles, and dimension-hopping exploration. The team describes the aesthetic as something out of a Tim Burton nightmare, which feels like a perfect description for “sentient guitar in a haunted music school.”
From Melbourne developer onepixel.dog comes Way to the Woods, a 20-minute glimpse at the cinematic third-person adventure that’s been on a lot of radars for years. Players control a Deer and Fawn navigating a strange world, collecting and absorbing light to charge up old machines and wash away oil. The team describes it as having flavors of old RPGs and adventures wrapped in a cinematic package, which is a fitting description from what’s been shown so far.
Closing out the lineup is My Arms Are Longer Now from another Melbourne studio, Toot Games. The hour-long demo is the game’s first level, where players control “an extremely long arm” and must sneak, rob, and slap their way through a train carriage. A hard-boiled detective is on your tail, and the goal is to pull off the perfect crime as a very long and yucky arm. It’s the kind of absurd premise that could either be brilliantly weird or fall flat, and we’ll find out which when the demo gets hands-on time at Play Days.
It’s a pretty eclectic lineup overall, with Grounded 2 being the biggest known quantity but plenty of unfamiliar names worth keeping an eye on. Summer Game Fest 2026 runs from June 5 to 8, with the main showcase taking place on June 5 and Play Days running across the weekend in downtown Los Angeles.
