The first time Rebekah Saltsman showed me Usual June was back in 2024. We had met to discuss another Finji project, but she decided to show me an early prototype of this strange little ghost story. Back then, it felt closer to an exploration-driven detective adventure, with much of the experience revolving around wandering through locations, meeting characters, and trying to understand what was happening. Two years later, I was back with Finji at Gamescom 2026, and June had apparently found more urgent things to do than investigate mysteries, including beating up monsters with a enchanted wrench.
This time, I met with Rebekah, Finji’s CEO and co-founder, and David Pinckney, the game’s lead writer, who guided us through a section of the latest build. I had also played a demo at home in August, which gave me an opportunity to compare the current version with what I’d seen previously. And there was plenty to compare: the story had changed direction, combat had become a much more substantial part of the experience, and June’s supernatural adventure was finally approaching release. With Usual June launching on October 28, 2026, let’s take a closer look at how the game has evolved since our first meeting.
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The Same Ghosts, a Different Direction
Rebekah was open about the revisions.
“We have taken the story in a slightly different direction since then.”
She explained that much of the game would still feel familiar to someone who had seen the earlier version, even though the story had shifted. The section David demonstrated began roughly 25–30 minutes into the game, after June and her friends had become trapped in a mausoleum. Their search for an exit takes them through what appear to be mining tunnels and into the astral plane, a place that shouldn’t exist beneath their town. Even Frankie, their ghostly companion, knows very little about it. She recognizes the name and understands that something is wrong, but she cannot explain why the group has ended up there. As David pointed out, the town doesn’t even have a cavern system underneath it, making the environment itself part of the mystery.
Another important change concerns June’s ability to see ghosts. In the earlier version, this created an interesting dynamic between her and her friends. Imagine having a perfectly normal conversation when someone suddenly asks, “Who are you talking to?” or “Wait, you can actually see someone there?” Those moments added a certain charm to the experience, but they also created a problem: June’s companions were often left on the sidelines, unable to properly participate in the supernatural side of the story. In the revised version, her friends can see ghosts as well, allowing them to become more actively involved in the mystery. Rebekah explained that the reasons behind this change are woven into the revised story, so players will discover how and why June’s friends gained this ability as the mystery unfolds.
Despite the increased emphasis on action, investigation remains central to the experience. Players explore buildings, examine objects, and talk to residents and ghosts to discover what happened in the town. Rebekah described this process as “rummaging,” although it isn’t a conventional system of collecting clues and combining them in a detective notebook. Instead, the information becomes part of what June and her friends know. Different characters offer different perspectives, and their accounts may reveal only a portion of the truth. The player gradually develops an understanding of the town’s history alongside the characters.
I rather like this approach. It gives exploration a purpose without turning every mysterious object into another inventory item. The challenge, of course, is making those discoveries interesting enough to justify all the conversations surrounding them.
Growing Up Is Complicated Enough Without Ghosts
One detail that helps explain the game’s tone is the age of its protagonists. June and her friends aren’t teenagers, even if some of their conversations occasionally sound that way. They’re university students, roughly 21 or 22 years old, approaching their final year. They should be thinking about internships, future jobs, and what they’re going to do after graduation. Instead, they’re talking to ghosts, and fighting things that would make an ordinary job interview seem rather appealing.
This contrast between everyday worries and supernatural events is clearly important to the story. The characters have relationships and personal concerns that continue to exist even when the world around them becomes increasingly strange. The game’s quest system reinforces June’s personality through her phone, where objectives appear as notifications in a to-do app, written in her own voice rather than presented as neutral instructions. Rebekah mentioned that June’s cracked phone has survived through the entire development process, which is a small but fitting detail for a character who has considerably more pressing problems than replacing her screen.
The dialogue also offers choices, although David was careful to explain what those decisions actually change. Usual June has one ending, and selecting a different response won’t send the player down an entirely separate campaign. Some choices provide flavor, while others reveal additional information about characters, relationships, or the town itself. On subsequent playthroughs, different conversations may help players discover details they missed the first time. I appreciate that distinction. Usual June seems more interested in the journey than the destination, letting players uncover different sides of its characters and mysteries without promising a dozen alternative endings.
When Talking Gives Way to Fighting
The biggest change from my first impression is how much combat now matters. During our conversation, Rebekah described exploration, dialogue, and combat as the three central pillars of the game. She estimated that, depending on player skill, the balance might be around 70 percent narrative and exploration to 30 percent combat. Someone particularly good at fighting could spend proportionally less time in encounters, potentially bringing the balance closer to an even split.
Combat takes place in dedicated arenas rather than through random encounters while exploring. These spaces are designed so players can look inside before entering, identify potential threats, and prepare their equipment. You can access June’s loadout through her phone, allowing you to adjust her abilities before committing to a fight. David demonstrated a system built around basic attacks, dodging, and stronger moves powered by a resource represented by three diamonds beneath the health bar. Players can replenish this resource by breaking crystals or performing well-timed dodges, then spend it on more powerful attacks.
As June progresses, she gains new abilities while existing skills become stronger. Equippable charms provide additional customization, allowing players to adjust how certain abilities behave. Enemies also become more complicated. Some return later with shields, projectiles, or additional growths that change how they must be approached. The early section contains several enemy types, including ranged threats and more aggressive creatures, but David and Rebekah made it clear that these represent only a small portion of the full game’s encounters.
The combat certainly has more depth than I expected from my first look at Usual June. However, my time with the August demo exposed an awkward limitation: June cannot simply draw her weapon and practice in a quiet corner. Her weapons become available inside combat arenas and disappear again once the encounter ends. After surviving an early fight through some enthusiastic button-mashing, I wanted to experiment with the controls, test different attacks, and figure out what I had actually done. Instead, I found myself pressing practically every key on my keyboard, wondering why nothing happened.
This might sound like a minor complaint, but positioning and timing are important parts of the combat system. I prefer to understand how my character moves and attacks before being thrown into another encounter. Learning everything while something is actively trying to kill you can feel unnecessarily restrictive, particularly when you’re still trying to develop muscle memory. I brought this up during the interview, and Rebekah explained that the checkpoint system places players immediately outside an arena after death, allowing them to retry encounters without losing much progress. That’s useful for practicing a particular fight, but it doesn’t entirely address my concern. I wasn’t looking for an easier way to win; I wanted a chance to familiarize myself with June’s abilities without having to fight for my life at the same time.
Even the ability to swing a weapon at empty air would help. A complicated training mode isn’t necessary, but being able to experiment outside combat would make the transition between exploration and fighting feel more natural. Interestingly, Rebekah admitted that she struggles with the combat herself, despite having watched the game develop for years. She still dies in some of the early arenas, which at least reassured me that I wasn’t the only person having trouble.
A Voice System That My Brain Refuses to Decode
One of the more unusual creative decisions in Usual June concerns its voices. Rather than recording conventional spoken dialogue, Finji has developed a custom vocal system that uses sounds performed by professional actors. Rebekah explained that Adam Hay has spent roughly two additional years working on the system since its earlier implementation. The team recruited actors from the American Midwest, giving the characters voices with regionally appropriate accents. By Gamescom, the main characters’ final voices were already included in the demo, while recordings for additional NPCs were still being completed.
Rebekah also explained that full traditional voice acting would be far beyond the small team’s budget. She was particularly clear about another aspect of production: the game does not use AI-generated performances.
“There’s no AI anything in this game, we’re not touching it.”
The resulting vocal system is certainly distinctive, although I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Imagine hearing someone speaking a language you almost recognize. The rhythm sounds familiar, the structure of the sentences seems recognizable, and individual sounds occasionally resemble words you know. Yet your brain cannot quite decode what is being said. That’s how the voices in Usual June feel to me.
I understand the artistic intention, and I appreciate that the developers invested considerable effort into creating something distinctive rather than relying on generic vocal sounds. But there’s a strange disconnect between reading perfectly understandable English dialogue and hearing voices that constantly make me feel as though I should understand them, even though I can’t. Perhaps this is something players become accustomed to after several hours. During my time with the demo, however, I found it distracting. I wonder whether an alternative presentation, with more conventional vocalizations or a less prominent vocal system, might work better for players who have a similar reaction. That’s a personal preference rather than a judgment of the technical work behind it, but it remains one of the elements I’m least convinced by.
Exploring Places That Shouldn’t Exist
The supernatural environments are among the parts of Usual June that interest me most. The astral plane introduces a different atmosphere from the ordinary town, with unfamiliar structures, strange creatures, and locations that don’t appear to follow the rules of the physical world. During the demonstration, David took a relatively direct route through the area to reach the next combat encounter, explaining that players would normally have opportunities to explore alternative paths and investigate objects along the way.
One particularly dark section prompted a discussion about the lighting. It turned out that the demo build was missing some baked lighting rather than deliberately plunging the characters into near-total darkness. Rebekah explained that the team had already identified the problem and was working on a fix. Frankie herself also acts as a light source, something the developers had to account for when designing and adjusting the environments. These are small production details, but they were interesting to hear because they reveal how much work goes into making an environment feel natural. When you’re playing, you rarely think about the technical decisions behind a ghost illuminating the surrounding area. You simply expect the light to behave convincingly.
The level design also gives players opportunities to look ahead. In one area, we could see a structure and an arena that the characters would eventually reach, creating a sense of direction without immediately revealing how to get there. I would have liked to spend more time exploring these spaces rather than moving directly toward the next fight. The strange geography and the questions surrounding the astral plane are precisely the elements that make me curious about the larger story.
Something else became increasingly apparent during the demonstration: June appears to have a rather convenient group of friends. She is the one entering combat arenas, fighting monsters, and clearing dangerous passages, while her companions generally remain outside the action. David explained that June is protective of her friends and has the equipment and abilities needed to confront these threats. Her companions may have other things to do during these sequences, but they won’t join her in combat. Quite a convenient arrangement for them: June gets to risk her life fighting monsters while everyone else waits for the all-clear.
The developers also confirmed that the game includes boss encounters, although they were reluctant to reveal how many. This wasn’t because the number was undecided. Rebekah explained that some encounters involve mechanics or story developments that would be difficult to discuss without revealing significant spoilers. Fair enough. I would rather discover an unusual boss mechanic while playing than have every surprise explained months before release.
An Interesting Story Doesn’t Always Mean Interesting Dialogue
I’m usually the person asking games to spend less time talking and more time letting me do something. Usual June is built around almost the opposite instinct: relationships, conversations, and a supernatural mystery that takes time to unfold. Surprisingly, I found myself interested in the story, particularly the strange spaces beneath the town, the mystery surrounding its ghosts, and the questions about June’s abilities.
The dialogue itself, however, hasn’t convinced me yet. Some exchanges in the sections I experienced felt unnecessarily drawn out, with characters repeatedly checking on one another or confirming things that were already clear. These conversations may be intended to establish relationships and make the group feel believable, but I occasionally found myself waiting for everyone to finish talking so we could get back to investigating. There’s a difference between taking time to develop characters and taking too much time to move a conversation forward.
I understand that these characters are young adults dealing with unfamiliar and frightening circumstances, and their relationships are clearly an important part of the story. Their conversations don’t need to be efficient exchanges of information all the time, they are not solders on coms. But when a game places this much emphasis on dialogue, the writing needs to make those moments rewarding in their own right. At least from what I’ve experienced so far, that balance isn’t always there. Still, the underlying mystery kept my attention. I wanted to know what was happening beneath the town, why the astral plane had appeared, and what June’s connection to the supernatural really meant. That’s probably the strongest compliment I can give a narrative game that doesn’t naturally align with my preferences: even when the conversations tested my patience, I still wanted to find out what happened next.
Two Years Later, June Is Still Finding Her Way
Watching Usual June evolve between 2024 and 2026 has been fascinating. The team hasn’t simply polished the same prototype. They’ve revised the story, expanded the role of combat, developed a distinctive voice system, and worked to connect exploration, character relationships, and supernatural encounters into one adventure.
Sure, I would welcome a way to practice combat outside arenas, and some of the dialogue could benefit from a tighter editorial pass. But despite all my grumbling, I find Usual June quite unusual, in a good way. It has its own personality, some genuinely interesting ideas, and a mystery I’m increasingly curious to unravel. There’s plenty here worth exploring, and I’m glad I had the chance to see how far the game has come since 2024. Much like Cosmo Tales, which I interviewed the developers about previously, this is one of those projects that reminds me why I enjoy being a games journalist. Getting to follow a game over several years, seeing how its ideas evolve, and meeting the people behind it along the way is a privilege I genuinely appreciate.
With Usual June launching on October 28, 2026, we won’t have to wait much longer to discover how all these pieces fit together. In the meantime, you can check out Usual June on Steam and add it to your wishlist if June’s supernatural adventures have caught your interest.
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