Now, even though I was aware of most of the games Annapurna Interactive was going to allow us to see and/or play, there were two games I wasn’t expecting. The first was The Lost Wild and the second was D-topia. I’d at least heard of The Lost Wild prior to Summer Game Fest, but D-topia was completely new for me. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised by my time with it.

D-topia centers around an alternate world where life is completely run by artificial intelligence, with the goal being to maximize the health and happiness of everyone living within the titular D-topia, an obvious play on the notion of a utopia. You play as the newest Facilitator (similar to a factory mechanic), and it’s your job to keep the residential facility running smoothly. Sometimes this involves fixing broken equipment and systems, other times it will involve helping the residents solve personal problems.

Nothing like a perfectly bland, sterile plaza to make you feel right at home.

When attempting to fix something that’s broken, or even just reporting to your shift for the day, you’ll need to solve a series of puzzles. These puzzles aren’t overly complicated or insanely difficult, but they do start ramping up in difficulty before too long. During my hands-on time, I got to experience two different types of puzzles: math block puzzles and sliding block puzzles.

The math block puzzles I saw were pretty straightforward. Either I had try to move the numbered blocks into slots that achieved the same equal number for all, or try to move the blocks in ways that amounted up to the necessary target for each section. These were the only two types of numbered block math puzzles I got to experience, but, as I’ve already mentioned, they did increase in difficulty after each successful attempt.

Don’t let the minimalistic look fool you – these puzzles are surprisingly addictive.

I also got to see some block sliding puzzles. These involved some stationary blocks that acted as barricades for certain pathways, while other blocks were free to move. As is the case for many of these types of puzzles, some target slots are behind barriers you can’t access unless you press a switch to deactivate the obstacle. So this means you have to come up with strategies on which blocks to move first, where to leave them, and in what order you need to deactivate switches in order to get every block into its place.

These might sound fairly simple, and they are by design, as D-topia is meant to be casually paced puzzle adventure. Don’t mistake the simplicity of the puzzles as being boring either. I quickly found myself getting hooked by each new puzzle presented, to the point that I almost started a new work shift as my Facilitator just so I could keep solving them.

Let’s see what’s really going on here.

There also seems to be more lurking under the surface than the happy, ideal D-topia wants its citizens to see. Even though I didn’t experience anything sinister during my demo, I have trouble believing that a society entirely run by an AI doesn’t have something fishy going on beneath the surface. I also got to enter into a mode called the “Block Side”, where I could essentially see things normal residents can’t, due to my role as a Facilitator. I entered this mode to discover what was affecting a cashier robot and making it malfunction, only to discover that there are hidden puzzle elements and even rodents you can’t see under normal circumstances. There’s something strange afoot in D-topia, and I can’t wait to find out what it is when it releases July 14th, 2026.

*All assets provided by the publisher.