I’ve been hungry for an action adventure game recently. In this modern era of live services and roguelikes and infinite deckbuilders (seriously, I know these are popular genres, maybe try a different highly replayable genre), the humble action adventure game has fallen a bit by the wayside. So I was pretty curious about Usual June, a pretty classic one that might end up being a Halloween regular (quick disclaimer: Cara Ellison, who wrote many moons ago for RPS, is the author of this one).
Regular June, you won’t be surprised to hear, follows the titular June, a young woman in college who doesn’t know what to do with her life. It begins during a quiet summer break that is quickly interrupted by strange crystal crabs attacking the local graveyard, with ghosts now appearing as well. So it’s up to June and her friends, one of whom is one of those aforementioned ghosts, to figure out what’s going on.
A demo of the game arrived earlier this week, offering a glimpse of how it works, and it’s pretty neat! There’s no game I can compare it to, although it has a similar snap and crunch to what you might find in Kingdom Hearts, with some Hades-like moves. As far as I’ve played, there’s no blocking to speak of, it’s all about keeping an eye on your surroundings and dodging and parrying at the right time while trying to string together combos with your trusty morphable wrench.
One thing to note is that the genre stops at action-adventure, there’s no platforming to speak of here, and while the environments aren’t designed to accommodate that, there’s a discomfort in not being able to jump. Like an itch on your back you can’t reach, kind of thing. This is something I’ve felt before in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and I adapted to it pretty quickly, but sometimes it felt like it interrupted the flow.
The game isn’t quite ready yet, so perhaps a little tweaking can alleviate these pains. It will be released soon, as it now also has a release date of October 28, positioning itself quite well for the Halloween season. The vibe is also perfect for the time of year, there’s a warm quality that fits well for fall. Not comfortable in the comfortable gaming sense to be clear, more in the Over the Garden Wall kind of way, where there’s also the underbelly of something else going on. If any of this sounds like your vibe, you can add the game to my wishlist on Steam before its release.
