The Southeast Asian Games Showcase returned for Summer Game Fest 2026 with another lineup that proves the region is producing some of the most distinctive games being made anywhere. From a Malaysian dessert restaurant to a Vancouver studio asking hard questions about AI, here are five standouts.
Kooeh: A Timeless Delight
TL;DR
A Malaysian studio sends you back to a kampung dessert restaurant to salvage lost family recipes before the whole thing closes forever
Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR
- Release date: TBA
- Developer: Twilight Foundry Games
- Publisher: Twilight Foundry Games
- Platforms: Steam
Twilight Foundry Games is based in Penang, Malaysia, and the food culture is all over Kooeh. You play as someone who left the kampung for a city career and gets called back to help close the family dessert restaurant, only to end up with lost recipes and local wildlife, because the customers are endangered Southeast Asian animals.
That detail is ridiculous in the best possible way. A demo is already available.
Hoa 2
TL;DR
Skrollcat Studio returns to the hand-painted world of Hoa to explore, solve puzzles, and nurse a mysterious friend back to life
Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR
- Release date: TBA
- Developer: Skrollcat Studio
- Publisher: PM Studios
- Platforms: Steam
The original Hoa was a hand-painted puzzle platformer from Vietnamese studio Skrollcat that looked like an animated painting with all the plot removed. Hoa 2 does the same: a beautiful world, a small creature, puzzles, nature, and a special friend who needs to be brought back to life.
There is not much to go on yet. Sometimes a screenshot is enough to earn patience, and this one is.
Prove You’re Human
TL;DR
The 1000xRESIST developers split your consciousness in two and task the digital copy with convincing an AI named Mesa that she is not human
Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR
- Release date: TBA
- Developer: sunset visitor 斜陽過客
- Publisher: Black Tabby Publishing
- Platforms: Steam
sunset visitor 斜陽過客 made 1000xRESIST, a Peabody Award winner that spent 2024 ending arguments about whether games could be serious literature. Their next game is published by Black Tabby Publishing, which made Slay the Princess. You have been hired to convince an AI named Mesa that she is not human. You are also a digital copy of a person.
No release date, no demo, but I will wait as long as it takes.
Am I Nima
TL;DR
You come home to find your mother does not recognise you, and the only way to convince her is words you build inside your head
Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR
- Release date: October 8, 2026
- Developer: HO! Games
- Publisher: HO! Games, Outersloth
- Platforms: Steam
Am I Nima is about coming home and finding your mother does not recognise you, which is a weirdly recurring dream I had for most of my teenage years.
Anyway, in the game, you build sentences from words inside your head and use them to earn her trust. It is a clever and cruel way to play out having to prove you belong somewhere you are supposed to belong.
October 8 is the date, and I am already anxious about it!
Dungeon Hotpot
TL;DR
A cosy visual novel set in a dungeon where you feed exhausted adventurers rather than fight alongside them
Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR
- Release date: TBA
- Developer: Renala Games
- Publisher: Renala Games
- Platforms: Steam
Dungeon Hotpot is set in a torchlit dungeon where you are not the adventurer but the person at the hotpot stall, feeding weary warriors who have just finished fighting monsters. Renala Games built it as a visual novel, so the stories of whoever walks in are the whole point.
I have a soft spot for games that ask what happens after the fighting, and this is exactly that.
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