We watched over 200 game trailers across five showcases — here’s what stood out

polygon.com:

It’s not E3 week — it’s better. It’s fake E3. Although the Electronic Entertainment Experience (what E3 stands for, as of 2021) didn’t formally happen this year, indie games still found their way to shine this week. There were so many directs we could have done a direct of directs. But enough of repeating that joke; cue the boilerplate language for this week.

We have lots of Es and more in Cool WIP, Polygon’s weekly roundup of eye-catching clips and screenshots of works in progress. Each week, the Polygon staff scours the internet for the most interesting games still under construction to give you a sampler of the coolest up-and-coming projects.

This week, we’re doing something a little fun. We picked five indie streams from the past week — Wholesome Games, Day of the Devs, Future of Play, Guerrilla Collective, and the PC Gaming Show — and pulled a few games from each to highlight. I did the math and there’s, like, over 200 games included between the five. So let’s get to it.

Wholesome Games traces its not-so-humble origins to a mega-popular Twitter account that highlights cute, cozy, and beautiful games. Since then, it’s grown into a bona fide brand within the gaming sphere. The showcase shared over 90 games, and while what “wholesome” means can be hard to pin down — it’s one of those terms that iykyk — it’s become a vehicle to show off some of the most dazzling work in the game development pipeline. Polygon already rounded up some of the biggest announcements, which include the lo-fi puzzle game Spirit Swapand a kaiju dating sim called Kaichu.

Somehow, the best thing about Future of Play isn’t the fact that it’s hosted by a Vtuber. The direct, put on by a games ecosystem called Glitch, puts on a veritable variety