Release Radar – July 2022 – On My Wishlist

At this point, probably about a full third of my wish list is made of games that aren’t available for purchase. This wasn’t always the case: for most of my adult years, I subscribed to the “patient gaming” philosophy, and rarely bought games anywhere near their release date. Since I don’t play a lot of multiplayer focused titles, there’s no pressing need to make a day one purchase, and – generally speaking – waiting means that you get better prices, and better games, as bugs are squashed and additional content added.

However, as my tastes have shifted away from AAA titles, and towards more and more quirky indie games, I find I’m more interested in being an early adopter. I still don’t make many day one purchases, but it’s not uncommon for me to wait between a few days for the first reviews to trickle in, to a few months, when games are likely to receive their first significant discount.

Even now, just more than halfway through 2022, I only have picked up a handful of titles that have become available for purchase just this year (although I did own quite a few that made the transition from early access into full release), but there are several titles I’m very interested in that are becoming available to play later this month.

I played the Escape Academy demo during the most recent Steam Next Fest, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I did waffle a bit on whether or not I’d be picking it up, but now I don’t have to decide, as it’s also going to be a Day One Release on XBox Gamepass for PC in just a few days.

Clanfolk is another title I’m intrigued by that is dropping on July 14th. Although I haven’t played it myself, there is a demo available, but I may have a hard time resisting this one. I love the idea of a multi-generational colony builder, and I find that I don’t mind the quirks of early access in this type of game.

It’s been more than two years since I played the demo for The Final Earth 2, and a good 18 months since the initial expected release date has come and gone. The fact that I’m still looking forward to it after all this time means I’m going to have a hard time waiting to grab this one.

Although Stray isn’t actually a wish listed title for me, the hype around this particular game has been assaulting me from all directions. I wouldn’t have expected a cyberpunk cat adventure game to be the most wish listed title on Steam, but obviously there’s something about the combination that’s calling out to folks.

I played the demo for Beasties in October of last year, and found it charming. Although there’s been an early access build on itch.io for awhile, and it came out for Nintendo Switch earlier this month, I wanted to wait for a Steam release. I probably won’t pick this up until I know whether or not it play nice with the Steam Deck, as that’s how I would most like to play it.

Wrapping up the list of July releases on my radar is Bear & Breakfast. This is one I tried out during the June 2021 NextFest, and I remember spending a lot of time with the demo. I expect it’s going to be more story focused with a definitive ending than your average management game, so I’ll likely wait on some reviews before pulling the trigger.

Did I miss the July release that you’re most excited about? Tell me about it in the comments!