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randomtangle · 8 months ago

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NextFest Demos General Review

I'm gonna write what I think of the demos I played this NextFest. Each title is a link to the Steam Page, be sure to grab yourself a demo if NextFest isn't over (June 10-17, 2024). If not, some of them might still have public demos, and some of them might be out by the time you read this!

NextFest has ended but demos still remain! Check them out or wishlist them if they’re in pre-release.

500 Caliber Contractz

Mario 64 but you have a high-caliber sniper rifle. It's honestly more often a movement tool than a weapon, and the movement tech in this game is quite interesting. I haven't gotten it quite down yet. I’ll write more about it later.

Aero GPX

Reminds me of Kirby Air Ride.

Airborne Empire

This game is seriously addictive. I meant to give it 30 minutes (around the minimum time I’ve been giving there games), and it took 3 hours. The whole conceit of the game is that you are building an airborne city. All sorts of things matter, such as the tilt (you can’t just pile it all onto one side), the lift (you need to add fans, which need to be manned by citizens, to allow for enough lift to build more stuff), and propulsion (buildings will slow you down, so you can build propellers and stuff to help you move faster), as well as food and water and coal) to keep everything running) and various building resources which you gather by deploying workers to deposits on the land using a hangar. Light is also important to stop accidents at night… there’s all the little systems you need to manage. I really love it. Usually in city builders I get really stressed about strategic placement and how me not leaving space next to that big useless rock turns out to be a mistake when I advance in the tech tree and learn the rock is actually the most useful and I trapped it under an underpass. Airborne Empires can have the “I didn’t know how big this building is so I didn’t leave enough space here” problem (I really wish I could preview buildings before I had the resources to build them), but it’s mostly fine. The tilt and lighting systems lead to making a spread-out base. You recruit more citizens by hiring them from settlements below, but you’ll have to feed them all, and at least where I am in the game, you can only gather food and water, not generate it.it’s visually very cute, all the people are birds, and the talking sounds are birdcalls. It’s pretty chill most of the time, even the occasional pirate attack isn’t that bad, especially if you get defense towers, since you can repair pretty quickly. I could play the game for days on end, honestly. I love it.

Akimbot

A very fun 3D platformer, reminds me of Ratchet & Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Skylanders, etc. The whole game looks really nice and stylized. I played with the Acid Sprayer and found it to be very fun. The voice acting and dialogue were a smidge lacking at times (Exe feels compelled to go "Tch" every time Shipset talks, and Shipset cannot shut up, but it didn't annoy me.) Overall I'm excited to see how the full game turns out!

Aloft

I didn’t find Aloft interesting. It’s not that I don’t like survival games, per se, it’s that my patience with survival games is really low. (300 hours of DST has changed me.) They need to be really interesting for me to stick, because if not, I sink untold hours into them getting progressively more and more annoyed. Aloft is probably someone’s cup of tea, but it ain’t mine. Sorry.

Beyond These Stars

Coming Soon!

Dice & Fold

A very fun roguelike deckbuilder game that's more about rolling dice than drawing cards. Enemies have slots you must fill to defeat them. Some enemies require exact rolls (say, a 3), and some just have numbers that have to be reduced (say, a 5, and you could put a 2 and a 3 in it to complete the slot). And there's more like doubles slots, slots that only accept odd or even numbers, etc. Your hero has an ability that you can earn by filling in the required slot on your hero card, there's all sorts of items and companions that alter the game in little ways... it's really fun and I'd love to play more of it in the future!

Dimhaven Enigmas

I love the graphics, just to get that out of the way. Pixilated textures are to die for, I’m a huge sucker for PSX or DS/3DS-style textures. It’s an interesting puzzle game, it’s pretty intriguing, but dangit if I’m not bad at puzzles, lmao. It’s tough! It really makes you work for the answer, I like that, but I can’t really write review of a completed demo because of it. Try it out!

Dustborn

It seemed… interesting. The graphics look good, the fight mechanics seem to have a bit of meat, but are sorta unseasoned. (They don’t feel like they flow that easily into each other but that might just be a personal skill issue.) The humor and writing isn’t really my cup of tea, it feels sorta like they’re always talking, and the lines in combat seem to overlap sometimes but I’m sure that’s unintended. Idk if I personally will be buying the full game, I’d rather wait for a review of the full game to see if I wanna buy it, but I don’t hate it.

Gladio Mori

Gladio Mori explores an interesting concept of a physics-based medieval weapon fighting game that oftentimes feels a bit like TABS if you were in complete control of a unit. It's definitely interesting. Right now there's only 3 weapons and no move editor, but I feel like the simple existence of a move editor means that in the future, there's untold levels of complexity to be found in this game. Has multiplayer!

Goblin Cleanup

It’s fun. There’s not much to say about it, as it’s just a simpler Viscera Cleanup Detail, but it’s cute, honestly. There’s some interesting quirks and level progression things, such as being able to light slimes on fire to be semi-infinite, faster mops, and you can do a lot with traps and stuff. Sorta simple as-is, unless I just missed the really cool stuff. (I haven’t played all of the demo yet, only the first two levels.)

I Am Your Beast

This game is amazing. The presentation of cutscenes is phenomenal; I really love the big bold letters and colored background. It's simple but it does its job. The voice acting is great, too. And the gameplay is just amazing. The amount of speed and precision you can move and attack with is on point. I'd suggest everyone

Kaiserpunk

Coming Soon!

KILL KNIGHT

Kill Knight has some wicked graphics. They look like they’re crackling with an unchained energy, power so great it corrodes the world. The gameplay is tough, I can barely survive a few waves, but the combat is promisingly meaty. Sword kills fuel the heavy weapon, and enemy drops can fuel the bfg thing (forgot its name). I’m not used to twin-stick shooters so I don’t know how much is innovative and interesting and how much is in every twin-stick shooter, but I certainly found the game really interesting. Really tough, but really interesting.

MACHI KORO With Everyone

Only the offline tutorial as of now, which is kinda annoying since i can't even try to run an offline hotseat game. But, it teaches Machi Koro pretty well. I like Machi Koro I like this game. It is nothing more or less than being just Machi Koro.

Metal Slug Tactics

Coming Soon!

Once Human

Open-World Survival Horror MMO. I’m only into survival horror, really, and was playing alone (I’m not that into MMOs except with friends). The systems seem okay, the combat is about what you would expect with heavy and light attacks and simple chains… the character creator is pretty good. (And I love myself a good character creator.) Not my cup of tea.

One Btn Bosses

It’s a bullet hell but you only need one button. Your “ship” moves on a ring outside the boss, and you use the button to change directions. The faster you’re moving (you gain more speed the longer you travel in a given direction), the faster you shoot. That’s about it for the systems (that I could see, at least. I haven’t beat it.) it’s fun, I’d recommend it to anyone. After all, you only need to press one button!

SCHiM

A very cute puzzle game where you play as the shadow of this one guy. You jump from shadow to shadow to navigate the levels. The art is beautiful accented neutrals, the music and sound design is really cute and musical, reminiscent of Untitled Goose Game. It’s really cute!

Screw Drivers

It’s Lego Technic as a racing game. To be completely honest, it just didn’t click well with me. The building aspect of it felt like every Lego Technic I’ve ever built, plus actual engineering. You need to connect the engine to the axel to the drive wheels, and set those to steerable… I know that’s simple, but it’s a bit too complicated for me to play that much. I’m a simple woman. Seemed fun to drive the cars, tho.

SWORN

It’s Hades but with Arthurian Legend. I don’t really know what more to say. It controls like Hades (well, I played Hades on the Switch, so maybe keybinds are different than I expect) it’s got similar systems of boons, in-level currency and cumulative secondary currencies, et cetera, et cetera. This isn’t a slight against it, I really like it! I can’t really speak for its writing since I can’t find much and I’m sure not all of it is in as of yet, but what I could find in-game was interesting. I don’t quite understand the world and how the Holy Grail and pagan deities and King Arthur all feed into why these monsters are about, but I’m assuming that’s elaborated on as you go through. I’d be willing to get the full game.

Tactical Breach Wizards

I adore this game. The graphics are really cute, the combat puzzles are really interesting and fun (I like this genre of games, I’m totally blanking on the name tho) and the writing… oh the writing. The writing is so good. The jokes are right up my alley, the story is really interesting, the world is the right amount of absurd that the characters can be deadpan about always having newt bones on their person that you can tell that it’s just as much of a half-joke in-universe as you’d expect. It’s really fun and I’m hoping to play the full game upon release.

Tavern Talk

I loved this game. The sound design is so peaceful and soothing, the writing I really like, there’s a lot of good jokes and just tender moments. I love Fable, the main other character in the game. They’re an anxious ranger who wants to get out into the world and go on adventures, they’re so cute. The other character, Caerlin, is nice too. The art is beautiful, I’m really invested in it now! I need to get the full game!

Tiny Glade

Cute game where you can do a bit of finely-controlled procedural generation of a little landscape, and take photos of it. I played game last NextFest called Dystopika that was like this but with a cyberpunk city. Tiny Glade is cute, simple, and allows you to make little houses and landscapes. It’s cute, I’m sure people will like it, but it just ain’t my genre.

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videogaems · 7 months ago

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Steam Next Fest - June 2024

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers It feels easy to say 'Balatro Clone'. BUT if you say that about this game, you are openly admitting that you only see playing cards and have no nuance, just like everyone said. Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers (Or D&DG as I'm going to refer to it, to save my little fingies the typing) is a roguelike blackjack battler. Those words feel confusing to stitch together but just follow me.

You choose your suit (different suits have different abilities, and the game equates this to difficulty) and begin playing blackjack against an opponent. You are always able to see their cards, unlike regular blackjack, and whoever of the two players wins does damage to the other players health pool, amounting to the difference between your final hands. Going over 21 results in your hand value being reduced to zero, in which case be prepared to take 17 full points of damage to the face.

As you win against opponents, you will acquire new cards for your deck, much like Balatro. Your opponents will also be acquiring these cards, much unlike Balatro.

There is also a mechanic of some cards being manually 'Exploited' (Read as: Activated), but in order to Exploit a Card, you must have Advantage (Read as: Points). This isn't explained well in the game *at all* in my opinion, but as you can see I figured it out using my brain and eyes, much to my chagrin.

I don't think I'll be Wishlisting D&DG, but it does the thing I like: It's a weird spin on a concept you know. And it works! I'll be curious to see if this catches on with the Balatro crowd, but I will certainly recommend it to roguelike and deckbuilding fans.

Dungeon Clawler I won't lie, when I saw that this was a dungeon crawler where you play a crane game to fight people, I automatically assumed this was my shit. I will say that it's kind of my shit, but it's not as 'my shit' as I originally thought it would be. Gameplay is cool and straightforward, you get two chances per turn to drop a claw into a claw machine and pull out symbols. The symbols you pull out will have some kind of effect (swords do damage, shields block damage, etc). By winning fights, you amass coins and new symbols to add to your crain machine that have varying effects.

By and large, the game is a cool idea but I'm not wild about execution. Now, Baron Mind® that this game is still in development so the following critiques may not apply someday BUT:

The art style is that kind cel-drawn images squash and stretch to imply movement, but it ends up kind of looking chinsey. It was the first thing I noticed, but maybe that's just because of how offput I am by that artistic choice.

Second, a banger of a soundtrack, even if it is just a remix of the Type B song from Game Boy Tetris, it's pretty good. But, zero sound effects. None at all, which filled me with discontent. I'm seeing attacks, I'm getting shields, I need noise.

Again, probably not a Wishlist for me but good execution on a great idea.

Tactical Breach Wizards

This was probably the breakout hit for me this Next Fest, and I will absolutely buy this day one (And hope the demo works after the fest is over). The third in the Defenestration Trilogy by Tom Francis - Which also includes Heat Signature (maybe one of my favorite games of all time) and Gunpoint (A game that, years after it came out, I found out I have a friend whose brother did the music - small world).

In Tactical Breach Wizards, it is the modern world, but magic exists. You are a team of magic users who are also a SWAT team. And when I say SWAT, I want you to imagine all the straight-to-DVD action movies that are marketed to the people who are military nerds, but never actually joined the military - It's that. I mean, one character is effectively Gandalf in Desert Camo with an M14 that has a staff sticking out of it, another has a wand with a laser sight and a silencer. It whips ass.

Gameplay is a lot like XCom, with one cool feature being that your wizard can see one second into the future, so after finishing your turns, you can forsee how the enemy will react, and rewind your turn as far back as you like, as many times as you want in order to achieve your desired outcome.

Honestly, I could rave about this game for a while. The gameplay, the style, the writing, everything is just aces, and this immediately breached the door to my Steam wishlist and killed everyone inside. Can't wait for August.

Caravan Sandwitch

I was unsure how to feel about Caravan Sandwitch. You play a girl who is returning to her hometown after a long time away, and reuniting with friends while driving a van.

The art style? Fantastic. Really just an absolute dream to look at and play. The setting? Eh... Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of games that don't hold your hand to explain the world lore, and just kind of let you figure it out through context. Caravan Sandwitch does try to do that, but it falls short, and you end up feeling like a third wheel to these characters, rather than being in the shoes of the character you're playing.

While you explore, the game will have pillows sitting about in hard-to-reach places that effectively serve as collectible lookout points, where your character will just chill and observe the surroundings. These moments are peaceful, and personally I'd love to see more games do something like this, in an effort to make the player really observe the effort put into the environment (A thing I fail to do often)

However, other than that, Caravan Sandwitch didn't really grip me and I probably won't keep up on it.

Dustborn

Another entry in forgettable-single-name-game-titles-that-are-portmanteaus. Dustborn has you follow a group of characters in a band, traveling across the country on a tour in an effort to get to Nova Scotia, which seems to be some kind of safe haven in a military-state America.

Again, the Art style in this game is fantastic, everything is very comic book stylized, even the button prompts, but the demo jumps between moments in the first couple hours of the game without giving you a lot of info as to what is going on. I was surprised when combat was introduced, and thrilled when it included a baseball bat that you can throw and retrieve like the Leviathan Axe in God of War. Well, not quite like the Leviathan Axe... it's posited that way, but ultimately ends up being a ranged attack that just automatically returns to you. Combat was very floaty and just didn't have that je-ne-sais-quois that makes combat feel good.

The game also contained a rhythm action sequence that was reminiscent of Gitaroo Man, another fave of mine, but that wasn't enough to make me want to follow up.

BUS: Bro U Survived

I dislike this game on name alone, and playing it didn't really help much. Points to it for having customization options to let me have a handlebar mustache, but this game just kind of boils down to a co-op zombie survival game in a cartoony style where you have to drive a bus sometimes. I only clocked 26 minutes in this game, and to be fair, I was playing solo (What, I'm supposed to make friends?), but this game didn't hold me for very long. Even as I write this I'm trying to remember much about it, and it just ended up being very forgettable.

Wizard of Legend 2

Hell yeah. HELL YEAH. I forget how I even found out about the original Wizard of Legend, but it's a fun roguelike that I recommend. I was unaware that a sequel was even in the works, so this was a delight to find out about, and an even bigger delight to play.

Players will play the role of a wizard attempting to complete a legendary challenge, with the idea that each run is a new wizard's attempt, since the last one died. Choose spells of different elements, speed, and power, and try to find combinations that mesh well together. I had a lot of fun using a wind vortex to pull all enemies to me, and then hitting the lot of them with chain lightning. Even for a demo, I could see myself sinking a lot of time into this (and I'm hoping it's still playable after Next Fest). This one makes the Wishlist for sure, and I'm looking forward to the release.

Aloft

I found Aloft very disappointing. Yet another first person crafting survival game with the hook being that eventually you make a glider that you can use to zip around the world.

The demo is in Alpha, as the devs will make known quickly, and the game made known to me quickly, since I encountered a bug early on that I had to visit the steam forums to make sense of. While going through the tutorial prompts, after collecting leaves and wood and shit like that, I was prompted to craft a Glider at the Glider station. Oh boy, it's finally my time to fly! But wait, I don't have a Glider Station. What's more, I can't build a Glider Station. Where is the Glider Station? Is this 'Glider Station' in the room with us right now?

Eventually I learned that this is a bug - the game is supposed to give you more prompts to guide you up the mountain in the game, where you will learn how to make the Glider station, and THEN you are supposed to get the prompt to build your glider. To drive that point forward: The. Tutorial. Is. Bugged. The thing that teaches you how to play the game does not work correctly. I know it's Alpha, and I know I don't make games, but this seems like such an oversight.

Finally, I made my Glider, and took off. It was... fine. The camera cuts to third person when this happens, but your character is so stiff and rigid flying around. It felt cool to zip around, but it didn't feel good if that makes any sense.

Maybe I'll circle back around on Aloft when it's in Beta or 1.0, but this just wasn't it for me.

Goblin Cleanup

But this was!!! Play as a goblin henchman whose job it is to clean up and reset all the traps in the dungeon before the next group of heroes arrive! For some reason, gamified mundane shit always gets me, and this game was no exception.

Goblin cleanup is almost beat-for-beat a reproduction of Viscera Cleanup Detail. Instead of a mop, you stab a slime and poke bloodstains with it until it soaks them all up (and dies?!). Instead of washing the mop, you feed the slime to a mimic, so on and so forth. Some improvements include:

Structure. You're given a list of tasks to complete, and they are checked off as you complete them. As a person with ADHD Inattentive Type, lists are key for me, so this was a big improvement over Viscera Cleanup Details approach of 'Clean until you're done and we'll tell you if you did good'. I'm neurodivergent with a praise kink, you've gotta tell me I'm doing good while I'm doing good.

Scanning. Hitting Q at any given point will highlight on your HUD where there are still items to be cleaned up. Massive improvement over Viscera Cleanup Detail, where you just have to kind of eyeball it.

I liked this! A lot! I could see myself buying this, or even just going back and trying to finish the level proper before NextFest is over.

Pawn Planet

I'm a massive mark for shop-owning games, and even more so if the game has a mechanic for haggling. Pawn planet has both, and by and large, I enjoyed it. The premise is simple, you run a pawn shop on a remote planet. Aliens come in an buy the stuff you have, or try to sell you things. When they approach the register you are given stats on the customer, like Anger, Knowledge, and Greediness. Using this, as well as the condition of the item you are buying or selling, you haggle on a price until one of you coughs up the cash. After the day is over, you can buy supplies to repair the items to make your money back.

Some days, there will be an auction at a storage planet where you roll the bones and bid on a Storage Locker of random items, storage wars style. Not going to lie, this had me hyped until I got fleeced on a board game I paid way too much for.

Other days, you will travel through a portal and ostensibly raid an alien base in order to murder civilians and take their stuff to sell. Okay, so the game doesn't say that, but the game also doesn't explain who these people are or why you are shooting them in the face. This section was underwhelming - The shooting isn't super tight, and you just sort of strafe and click on the aliens until they blow up. Not to mention there was some confusing placement of items in the alien base; Why are you putting what is obviously a safe in this room if it is not intended that I should try to crack it open and steal the rest of whatever was left in these creature's will?

Other bugbears included the fact that when you buy an item, only that item will come to your shipping bay, and you must remove it before you can buy another item. So in a situation where I needed three separate items, I needed to leave the computer, go to the shipping bay, retrieve it, and return to the computer... three separate times. Also, when traveling to the storage planet, I had to click where I wanted to go on my computer inside, then go outside to the spaceship to leave. These are small grievances, but the question and the sometimes vowel remains: Why?

This one gets a rec from me, I didn't spend too much time with it but I did enjoy it overall. Hoping that the finished product has a bit more polish.

The Alters

From the trailers I've seen of this game, it seems cool, but I didn't get far enough in the demo to really see the meat and bones. Which is to say I didn't get far enough to see any of the titular Alters. I, instead, ran headfirst into some radiation at some point, and lost about 10 minutes worth of progress that I just didn't have the nerve to redo, so I bailed. Luckily, these NextFest demos seem to not have expired, so maybe I'll go back and give it another shot.

In the meantime, there are a lot of Death Stranding vibes, a game I loved, and a base building mechanic similar to XCOM, yet another game I like. I think this has legs, and I enjoy the idea of alternate versions of the main character helping him out, but again - I didn't get there.

I dunno... seems neat.

Demonschool

This came at the recommendation of a friend, and I simply could not wrap my head around it. I'm a real sucker for teenagers at a weird school doing paranormal stuff, but the combat system felt very obtuse. One character only buffs, and two characters only attack. You choose the actions they will take but just kind of clicking around (not actually selecting the skills, just sort of running the character into targets), and then they play out those actions once your turn has concluded. Which I sort of get why, but it's still very disorienting. I only stuck around for two combats, so I can't say this is for me, but if you're into visual novelesque storytelling with Into the Breach Combat, this may be your cup of tea.

Reka

I think I remember seeing a trailer for this game during the Wholesome Direct or Cozy Direct or whatever the hell in 2023, but it seemed cool, and it is. This is effectively a base building game, except you're a young witch training under Baba Yaga and the base is a giant chicken house that you can drive around. It's pretty tight. Your character only looks like a haunted doll, regardless of what features you choose, and the controls are very floaty but I think this has a lot of potential. My first action once getting my Bird House was to see how big I could make the platform it sits upon, and the answer is 'pretty big'. This was one of a few demos that I actually saw through to the end, so I think that says quite a bit. Hoping the full release has some meat on these Chicken House Bones.

Thank Goodness You're Here!

I'm going to file this one under Biggest Disappointment of the Fest. I typically try to give games about 15 minutes at least so I can get a feel for what they're doing. This demo was 13 minutes long. It being by the creators of Untitled Goose Game had me excited, but ultimately you just kind of run around and slap things and everyone has a funny British accent. I was very un-wowed by the game, and very wowed when the demo ended so abruptly. Oh well, I suppose.

Tiny Glade

Not so much a game as it is a toy, but oh boy is it a fun one. Intuitively whip up little castles with no problem, and then walk around with them in the first person. I was so charmed by this that I called my artist wife in to sit down and take a look at it, and I didn't need to explain anything about it before she had build herself a little castle. You build little castles! What's not to love? I'm hoping there's more to it in the full release, or at the very point that the price point reflects what it is exactly.

Tiny Bookshop

Another one I saw in a cozy direct that I had my eye on that ended up kind of falling flat for me. This game boils down to a shop simulator, which I'm a huge fan of, obviously. But then there's the whole aspect of have percentages of book genres, and how many books you have affecting your likelihood to sell... it just didn't hook me in the way I hoped. The art style, however, was very good, and it's a delight to look at. This might be another one I take a stab at when I'm in the right headspace.

Wild Bastards

I heard Void Bastards was good, but I never actually played it. Wild Bastards seems pretty neat though... you are a couple of Wild West Robots (hell yeah) who are venturing across the galaxy and resurrecting your dead team members with a magic ship. Levels consist of beaming down to a planet and taking out enemies meticulously while not being killed yourself. You can only take down two team members at a time, but you can hotswap between them which is a neat mechanical way of changing weapons. Unfortunately, once I got my third team members, I was summarily shithoused by a bunch of plants and my run was ruined. Still, I had a lot of fun and I will be keeping a close eye on this one. Maybe not a day one buy, but certainly something to pick up.

That's my NextFest, folks. Love it or hate it, I love videogames and I like that demos are coming back in vogue. Til next time.

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