#also an extra for pota because i felt like it

[xtoomanytimelinesx]

👍 for Pota?

Thematic Headcanons | Accepting

👍 for a headcanon about things they like

Pota absolutely adores really cheap ramen, any kind of it too. It doesn't matter if he's out eating or buying food for home, he loves the stuff. He's generally a fan of cheap food but his literal favorite food is off-brand spicy ramen. He doesn't really like super flavorful food and most cheaper ramen doesn't have a strong taste so he loves it. He also loves playing any video games he can get a hold of, he's no good at them but they're still fun nonetheless. Most of the games he plays are first person shooters because he doesn't have the attention span for much else.

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Oct 2024 Edition - Day 7

Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5/Day 6

Today's the last day, but I may spend some time tomorrow checking out a couple demos that aren't taken down. Or not. Turns out doing 38 demos in 7 days is kinda exhausting. Anyways...

Threefold Recital

This may be the best game I've played this Next Fest.

First thing that charmed me was music. The game was using what felt like a track fit for an exciting emotional climax during the simple tutorial, and as the game went on, it kept that quality consistent.

Second was the lore and setting. Like the recent Nine Sols, it's mixing Chinese mythology with sci-fi in a really interesting way, even if this game is more directly mystical.

I even like the appropriately mythic sounding lore reason for furry characters. "In the distant past two hermits, an enlightened bhudhist monk and daoist priest, lived side by side, and would spend their time having vigorous debates. The nearby animals would listen in, and through osmosis grew enlightened enough to take human shape." It feels more thought out than just "for reasons of because."

Gameplay started a bit disappointing. The beginning was just a puzzle platformer, where you swapped between three characters that had different abilities. It felt less like solving puzzles and more just following directions. Use X character in Y slot. But that was just the prologue.

Once it moved to chapter 1 the game turned on its head. You played as only the wolf monk, who has the ability to "see lines of karma." On one hand he's basically Tsukihime Shiki, where if he cuts the lines of karma things break. On the other hand it also makes him basically a detective, instinctively seeing how people and objects relate to each other. And the game suddenly shifts to escaping a false charge and solving a robbery case.

It even has horrible ace attorney pun names. The case involves the To family, and the two brothers:

Toma To and Pota To.

Main complaints are technical. For some reason the edges of the screen were cut off, while items were sometimes hidden in those edges. Speech bubbles were also consistently misaligned.

Karate Survivor

Jackie Chan Vampire Survivor.

No Bones about this. This is better than the genre originator. Better than a lot of what I've played in this space.

Part of the appeal of Vampire Survivors is also part of its core design problem. At the start, you need to keep aim and spacing in mind, but after a certain point, you get enough firepower that you don't need to worry about it.

Here's not the case. You never stop worrying about spacing and enemy positioning. Because Its all melee weapon and hand to hand, you always need to keep people close to you to keep up your DPS.

Your upgrades include different moves that aim in different directions. If I put back to back a front kick and a downward crescent kick, I need to micro-position myself so both moves connect. In other words, I'm playin footsies!!! It's got real hitbox beat-em up energy!

My main issue is that the game puts things that should be part of the core kit as unlocks. Why do I need to throw X number of items to be able to kick small environmental hazards. Why do I need to do enough kicks to roll over tables?

Fear The Timeloop

Not Sure How To Feel About This One!

Resi 2 remake style over-the-shoulder survival horror. You play as a cop on the chase of a serial killer. You end up in a long abandoned hospital, and find yourself locked in a 15 minute time loop.

There's some interesting ideas here! Adding a strict time limit on roundabout survival horror mapping adds another layer of tension. The game also uses a limited save system, and says both that the saving may change the layout of the hospital and make enemies stronger, active disincentivizing.

the main problem is…I completed the demo in one loop. Partially due to the timer not ticking in menus and partially due to an item that gives you extra time.

I legitimately do not know how the titular time looping actually effects the game.

They never put the shifting map or harder enemies into practice. I only ran into one enemy.

The protag has no reason to suspect monsters at that point. So he just yells at this guy to freeze, unloads, and then says "GODDAMNIT WHY DIDN'T HE FREEZE"

Accurate.

voice acting is kind of all over the place. Protag is… servicable. There's a woman's voice in the hospital who… inserts a silly accent halfway through her speech. And your radio contact is just flat affect.

The accent woman might be a demon so her not showing any sense of tension about this whole situation is probably on purpose.

Morgan: Metal Detective

A girl goes out to her grandpa's small town after he dies, to attend the funeral and help clear out his house. While there, she is given his old metal detector. Thus starts a relaxing adventure about reuniting people with lost things and reviving a dying town.

Presentation felt weird but that might be because of my monitor. Another demo that, when told to go to superwide, ends up putting stuff offscreen. had to mess with the resolution and may have have squashed things.

The core gameplay of metal detecting seems… fine. It didn't really go deep. A lot of the map was blocked off and the demo had only one real quest. There was plenty of side junk to find though, and I can see this being relaxing.

The voice actors have a peppa-pig-ish "incredibly low energy british childrens show" delivery that makes me wonder if children are the primary demographic for this. I guess it works if so.

ReSetna

Scifi metroidvania set in a post-human world, inhabited by robots and ruled by the APEX AI system. Said world is falling into ruin because of a mysterious signal that turns 80% of robots hearing it mindlessly violent. You were created to find and destroy it.

I'm gonna be honest. Right now this is sauceless.

Lore wise we get nothing but "there are robots and things are fucked." not much of a sense of specificity so far.

Gameplay wise everything is functional but lacks juice. Compared to the gold standard of nine sols, the parry and dodge in this game feel… limp. Same with the hits.

The demo only had one upgrade and it wasn't gotten by beating a boss. you just go to a corner of the map and find it on the floor. At the end of the demo you fight a boss with a health bar twice as long as it should be and get nothing out of it.

Travel On, Pigeon!

Tyrhm game about a pigeon going out to see the world, a world that operates on Billie Jean rules.

The world is a grid, you move on the beat. Explore the level, find the souveneirs, and avoid the humans making their way downtown. It's as if crypt of the necrodancer was not a roguelite but something more simple and pac-man feeling.

It feels like it's on the edge of good but not there yet. But it might be my fault. The game asks you to calibrate it at the start, tapping on the beat. When things started to get desynched I couldn't tell if it was the fault of me losing the beat, or a fault of me poorly calibrating. recalibrating made things more confusing.

In other words, it needs a beat visualizer.

It feels like the game really came alive when it introduced spaces where you're supposed to tap on half notes, but it made the lack of the beat visualizer even more apparent.