- Usual June Dev Diary: All About the Sound Design! - 9 September 2026
Social Media & Community Director Aster Wright had a chat with Usual June Audio Designer Adam Hay! They talk about his process for creating the voices in Usual June, inspirations for the music in the game, and more!ASTER: Can you walk us through the process of creating the voices in Usual June? What inspired you? How did you make them come to life? What challenges did you face? ADAM: Making the voices for Usual June has been an incredibly complicated process! When I started on the project, one of my first tasks was to figure out how to represent the characters with sound, as we weren’t planning to do voice recordings. After some initial experimentation I started using vowel sounds made with synthesisers, which eventually became samples of actual voices, which then spiraled into making an entire real time voice synthesiser!! Whoops! A big early inspiration was Puppycat, from Bee and Pupp…
- Usual June mixes Hades-esque action, crystal crabs and ghosts to make for a game that'll do well in your Halloween rotation - 29 August 2026
I've been hungry for an action adventure game recently. In this modern era of live service and infinite roguelikes and deckbuilders (seriously, I know they're popular genres, maybe try a different highly replayable genre), the humble action adventure game has fallen by the wayside a tad. So I've been quite curious about Usual June , a quite classic one of those that might end up being a Halloween regular (quick disclaimer: Cara Ellison, who many moons ago did some writing for RPS, is a writer on this one). Read more
- Usual June ✨ Launch Date Announcement - 28 August 2026
Usual June is launching on October 28th, 2026! It's going to be out, like, really soon. Get ready to join June and her pals (alive & dead) as they explore secret labs, buried tunnels, haunted observatories, abandoned train stations, fight weird crab-like things, chat with loads of ghosts, and meet eccentric Fen Harbor townies! Don't forget you can still try out the new demo, too! Come talk with our kind community on the Finji Discord anytime! Stayed tuned here, on Discord, or on socials as we ramp into launch.
- Play the FREE, brand new Usual June demo! - 26 August 2026
OPE! June, Sunny, Max, and Frankie got themselves trapped in a mausoleum. Well, technically not Frankie because she can phase through walls on account of being a dead ghost who can do that sort of thing and -- Oh, you just want to try the demo?Play the brand new Usual June demo right now!Why don't ya go play it? Right now maybe? Later's fine too but not TOO much later because it's not going to be around forever. And unlike the ghosts in this game, it may not return someday...🪦🥀😈You're welcome to come talk about the demo on the Finji Discord anytime! And hey, stayed tuned here, on Discord, or on socials because there's even MORE cool news coming like really soon.
- Brand new demo OUT NOW! Watch the Lead Writer play! - 26 August 2026
Check out the brand new Usual June demo with Lead Writer David Pinckney! This is a previously recorded broadcast.
- Usual June is bringing a BRAND NEW DEMO to Gamescom! - 18 August 2026
Get ready to help June and her friends out of a dodgy situation! There will be a brand new Usual June demo coming to the show floor at Gamescom and on Steam starting next week, once Gamescom officially kicks off. Explore a never before seen dungeon, fight mysterious enemies, and try to make sense of what might be going on in Fen Harbor. Huge thanks to the hardworking folks at Indie Arena Booth for helping us make this possible. If you plan to be at Gamescom, find us at Indie Arena Booth in hall 10, floor 2! Keep an eye out for the new demo, and tell your friends it's coming. Wishlist and follow Usual June to stay updated on what's coming up! 👻
- Usual June Dev Diary: Meet Max! - 31 July 2026
Meet Max!If you've been paying close attention, you've probably seen Max before: he's been in the key art since we announced the game! 🔎 Max is one of the main characters in Usual June, and he's besties with June and Sunny. You'll get to know him really well in your adventures! We thought you might like to hear a bit about how we've gone about creating him, so we asked Laura Beach, 3D Character Artist, and David Pinckney, Lead Writer, to talk about their work developing the Usual June character with the biggest delts (this might not be true, but please don't tell him that).Designing MaxLaura Beach, 3D Character ArtistIn the concepts, Max comes across as a friendly, slightly goofy looking beefcake. I felt he needed to look strong, but not like someone who spends all their time in the gym. The concepts showed him with a bit of a gut which, I think, adds more interest to his otherwise mus…
- ✨Usual June Dev Diary✨ Designing the weirder places - 30 June 2026
Some of you may have seen the, well, weirder areas of Usual June in our early demo, but the team has been working on them a lot since then! Part of that work was bringing on the incredibly talented Concept and 3D Environmental Artist Beatriz de Abreu. Social Media & Community Director Aster Wright had a chat with Bea about her work on Usual June:ASTER: Since joining Finji, you’ve been working on both concept art and level design for the weirder areas of Usual June. Can you talk about what first drew you to the project and how your work has evolved since your earliest sketches?BEA: On a personal level, I always wanted to work with an indie studio. Most of my past work was in AAA, but I mostly play indie games these days, and have worked on little indie projects and game jams in my free time. I was also always a big fan of Finji’s games as well, so being able to contribute to a Finji proj…
- ✨Usual June Dev Diary✨ Making Usual June feel realistically midwestern - 27 March 2026
Last month we mentioned that the Usual June team has been focusing a lot on building Fen Harbor, the fictional town where the game takes place, and that means it’s time for you to meet Cameron Bragg, Level Artist for Usual June! Social Media & Community Director Aster Wright had a chat with Cameron about his work bringing Fen Harbor to life.Aster: Fen Harbor is a fictional midwest city. What kinds of things go into making the town feel realistically midwestern?Cameron: Other than the wacky stuff, Usual June is really meant to capture life in a Midwestern, Michigan, Everytown. A big part of that is featuring not just big, historic buildings, but the local flavor of mundane structures and spaces. Like a small, rundown apartment or an outdated university basement. When we do make those fancier locations, though, we try to find a historical precedent for the area and era. The observatory in…
- ✨ Usual June 💜s Dames 4 Games ✨ - 11 March 2026
We were given the opportunity to participate in this year's Dames 4 Games showcase, and we were excited to feature just some of the extremely talented women involved in making Usual June! We even premiered a new enemy and showed off some environment art concepts. You can check out our Developer Spotlight right here, but there are so many cool games in the show. You should really check out the whole thing! This event is happening in tandem with the Women's Day Sale, where hundreds of incredible games are on sale and showing off their demos. You can check our the Usual June demo for the duration of the sale, as well! We're sure you'll find something you love. As always, thanks for your support while our team works hard on the game. We've got so much more to show you. Don't forget to wishlist, follow, and tell your friends! 💜 👻 ✨
- ✨Usual June Dev Diary✨ Creating a Fictional Midwest Town - 27 February 2026
Lately, the Usual June team has been focusing a lot on building Fen Harbor, the fictional town where the game takes place. Fen Harbor is heavily inspired by the midwest, so we asked Finji Co-founders Bekah and Adam Saltsman to tell us why they wanted to place Usual June in a midwest town. Bekah: I wanted to tell a story about my home and the people who live here. So many of the movies and books in the US take place on the coasts, in cities like Los Angeles or New York, and the culture and stories of the flyover states is largely unrepresented. Our towns, though, have layered histories that were (and still are) colored by hundreds of years of government intervention, capitalist oligarchs, industrialization, and the migration waves of both large international immigrant populations and the resettlement of the freed slaves post-civil war. The midwest is fascinating! Why did they change the…
- Usual June Dev Diary: Creating Ghost VFX! - 3 December 2025
Now that we've shown off our newest ghost character, Frankie, let’s dive into one of the most striking features of ghosts in Usual June: their hair plumes! That means it’s time to talk about the work of our talented VFX Artist, Eduardo Noé.When crafting effects for various ghost characters, Eduardo faces the challenge of making them look cohesive, yet distinct from other effects in the game. For example, the team largely avoids using transparent effects in Usual June, so it is ghost characters alone that utilize a low-opacity material to achieve an ominous and smooth appearance. “For the hair plumes,” Eduardo says, “we aimed for a blend of smoky and fiery look. We wanted to make it look volumetric, with some sort of ‘flowing’ movement.”Fun fact: these ghost plumes are basically cylinders and math!Eduardo and the rest of the team have been hard at work bringing Usual June to life, and we…
- Usual June Update: Meet Frankie! - 12 November 2025
We recently introduced a new Usual June character in our newsletter and our socials! Frankie is a ghost, and she’s an important part of June’s adventures. Read on to learn more about her design!Now that you’ve met Frankie, we can finally talk a bit about how we’ve been making ghosts for Usual June! Without saying too much, ghosts in Usual June serve as key historical resources, so making Frankie appear believably from another time was very important to us! We also wanted her to look really really cool.Art Director Amelia Herman did a lot of research to make Frankie’s design historically accurate: “Design-wise, the goal was to tease apart the greaser stereotype and find the actual people and cultural groups behind it, not just designing around the decades-old 1980s rehash of a 1950s stereotype. So this led to a bit of a dive on fashion and the pre-Chicano movements of the 1940s– Frankie’…
- 🗣️ Try out the Usual June demo and scream at your friends about it! - 27 October 2025
Steam Scream Fest is upon us once again and so is the Usual June demo! Now is the perfect time to be talking to ghosts and June knows it! You can try out our Usual June demo now through November 3rd. Don't forget to try out some of the other scary games in this year's fest. They're all bound to get you in the Halloween Spirit! 👻If you like what you see, wishlist Usual June today! We're so thankful to everyone who has done it already. 💜 You're helping our small team tremendously. We're working on some creepy cool stuff and we can't wait to show you more! LOOKING FOR CREEPY ACCESSORIES?Check out our Limited Edition Usual June Pin! This little guy 🌟glows in the dark🌟! He was designed by Usual June's Art Director Amelia Herman for PAX!
- Usual June Update: New Enemy Creatures Incoming! - 21 October 2025
We've been designing all of the more "advanced" creatures that you'll encounter and fight as you progress further in Usual June. The design process has been challenging but fun, since we are trying to balance and include a lot of different considerations.First, the way these creatures have evolved has to make sense in the story and the background lore, and they need to fit into the game environments. We also wanted to find a balance between them looking new and exciting to the player, but also reminiscent of the more "basic" early-game creature from which they evolved. Finally, we wanted them to start creating a visual path toward the boss designs! We have been working with contract artist Audre Schutte, who created the thumbnails above early in the process to help us navigate this tricky balance. 🤔 Which of these approaches do you think best meets all these different needs?We include…
- 🪦 Check out the Usual June demo, if you DARE 👻🎃 (it's actually quite nice) - 6 October 2025
When we say we love indies, that extends to games AND films! Which is why we are so excited that Haunted House Fear Fest has chosen Usual June to be part of their line up this year! As part of the fest, you can play the Usual June demo through October! We highly suggest you also check out some of the other games included in the event, such as: And that's not even close to all the games in HHFF! We can't wait to dig into them! We'll also be spending our off time watching some of the indie films in the fest! If you like what you see and want to stay up to date on development, please add Usual June to your wishlist, and consider following Finji on social media or sign up for our newsletter!
- 👻 BOO! Play our FREE DEMO now! ✨ - 6 September 2025
We're so grateful to be included in the Hungry Ghost Festival this year! They have graciously decided to platform the Usual June demo from now until September 13th! However, this opportunity goes beyond Steam. For those that don't know, the Hungry Ghost Festival is a real life festival celebrated each year by Buddhist and Taoist people in order to honor the memories of the dead. Usually people will make offerings of food or other amenities to ghosts so that they will be able to use them in the afterlife. Some people even put on shows and leave the front row seats open for visitors that have passed on! Please enjoy the demo and consider pulling up an empty chair next to you while you play! You never know who might want to watch too. Follow the Finji publisher page!
- Usual June DEV UPDATE - 5 August 2025
We've got more ghosts, more mysteries, and horrifying new boss monsters getting ready to infest this unsuspecting college town. We're staying very busy creating new environments, using our new animation tools to beef up our NPCs, and diving deep into the weird realities and urban legends of midwestern cities. We all know truth is stranger than fiction, but it's extra strange in the flyover states. Above you can see our Animator Mike showing off Sunny's expressions! With this rig and our new animation tools, she can respond to every situation her adventure might throw at her. What do you think she's saying in that gif? We sent this update in our newsletter last week! Sign up for it today if you're interested in getting monthly (most of the time) news on this and our other award-winning games!
- Free Usual June Demo - Available Now! 👻 - 16 June 2025
Ah SHOOT!! Did we miss the Steam Next Fest? Well, if you're looking for something to fill the void from all those absolutely incredible free demos, you can play this one! Hop through the portal into Fen Harbor, where June, her friend Sunny (alive), and her new friend(?) Teddy (dead) are exploring an abandoned building. Who used to occupy this mysterious space? And why is there a portal into a dimension filled with monsters? And WHY does Teddy know where to go in there? AND WHAT'S ON HIS HEAD?Since this demo came out last summer, we've been working hard on more friends, more locations in June and Sunny's college town, and more glowy enemies! We can't wait to introduce you to everyone! Thank you to everyone who has wishlisted the game so far! Don't forget to follow Finji's publisher page. Not only do we have lots of other beautiful games for you to play, but we've got some pretty cool stu…
- Play the Usual June Demo for Free Until May 5th! - 1 May 2025
We couldn't be more excited that the folks at LudoNarraCon added Usual June to their brilliant line up of Official Selection games! That means our demo has returned from the dead, only until May 5th! Tell your friends to give it a try, too! There are 49 other games that are chock-full of hilarious/terrifying/emotional narrative in LudoNarraCon, too. We highly recommend that you set aside some time for every single one! Don't forget to wishlist them while you're at it! It's one of the most helpful things you can do for indie developers. And that's not all you can do at LudoNarraCon! They're also hosting discounts galore, plus panels and fireside chats with so many brilliant game developers! Check it out now! Let us know if you see any ghosts! 👻
