Hi! I'm doing a series of STREAMS on TWITCH where I play as MANY STEAM NEXT FEST DEMOS AS POSSIBLE to find the ones that are the most interesting, fun or just kinda weird! You can watch that on my twitch channel if you want (Link here, i'll be playing more soon)[https://www.twitch.tv/junipertheory], but if you don't have time to explore yourself, I'm also doing a short review of EVERY DEMO I PLAYED on cohost each day!
I'll be talking about what the demo is, if it's interesting, and what sort of person might want to check it out, so read through and see if any appeal to you specifically! Note that I don't know much context for a lot of these; some i've heard of, but most are just random demos that seemed interesting. And if you're curious, here's a link to the 13 games I played yesterday as well.
Yesterday's games were WitchHand, Jusant, Wagon, GoblinAmerica, Maiden Cops, Par For The Dungeon, Detective Dotson, The Last Exterminator, The Elephant Collection, Motordoom, Asbury Pines, Pecker, Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Collection, A Webbing Journey, and The Talos Principle 2.
So without further ado, lets get started with CUTE WITCH GIRLS
WitchHand
First off, we got a stacklands! And it's a stacklands with cute witch girls, too! If you don't know what that means, it's a sorta card based citybuilder/enginebuilder/incremental game. You discover more cards as you play, build bigger machines, all your standard resource and upgrading stuff but in the form of cards. Stacklands is a real compelling game, and this promises to be so as well! I will say, it's a bit light on stuff in the demo. I've never played a demo before that i wish cut me off faster, but by the end I was completely out of interesting things to do. Hopefully this is just a function of it being a demo, I'm excited and curious about the full game's promise of multiple characters.
Jusant
A climbing game, and an absolutely beautiful one! The climbing mechanic is interesting, asking you to choose every ledge you grab onto more manually then most games but without the miserable dexterity of games that turn that into a joke. A bit of thought can get you to most places you see, and how great they are to see in this! It's also got a real compelling world that promises a backstory i'm eager to hear about, combining ocean aesthetics with a bone-dry desert. Exploration-focused games live and die based on the world you explore, and this one really delivers; absolutely check it out if you can. I just wish it ran better on my computer (unreal engine whyyy).
WAGON
WAGON wears its influence on it's sleeve, standing right in the middle of the setting of Oregon Trail, the gameplay of Stacklands, and the card game + first person horror of Inscryption. It finds it's own identity, however, in it's fantastic 1 bit art style and how horrific it's willing to get; killing and eating your own crew is an obvious answer to half your problems and somehow the card game nature of it all makes it more visceral then ever. Be warned that this game is uninterested in explaining itself to you. I didn't figure out how to do basic tasks in the game for most of my playthrough and there's STILL stuff I don't understand about it. Still, if you like horror games and don't mind stumbling through difficult mechanics, this is a top demo I'd say.
GoblinAmerica
Are YOU the sort of person who has looked at every demo posted so far and gone "this feels too normal for me"? Do YOU love cruelty squad with all your being? Do YOU wish that every single game felt like you were being slowly dipped in the ooze from The Toxic Avenger and dissolving into a strange sludge you'll never recover from? God, I feel you. Wanna get drinks sometime? Lets hang out and make things out of clay
Oh also you should play the demo for GoblinAmerica, a first person speedrunning game that looks like nothing i've ever seen. I'll say that once you realize the game is basically a "go as fast as you can" speedrunning game full of baffling secrets, the game plays a lot more straightforwardly then the trailer and aesthetics would make you think.
Maiden Cops
I still can't believe this one wasn't a porn game. This FEELS like a porn game. It has "go online and download the patch that puts the hentai scenes back in" written all over it. Yet it's actually a pretty straightforward and basic beat em up. I can't really recommend this to anyone on account of it being the trashiest thing i played so far, but like... if you want to be a cowgirl who punches other cute girls with your hooves bad enough to play Extreme Trash, this is the fuckin game for you, baby. Otherwise... yeah skip this one. The beat em up gameplay isn't compelling enough to make the trash worthwhile, and you gotta play as cops. (I do think more games should let me be a girl who hits people with her big lizard tail, tho.)
Par For The Dungeon
A simple "feels like a mobile port" golf puzzle game that has the problem that most "feels like a mobile port" games have: too many levels that just aren't that interesting. Puzzle games like this live and die based on how much i'm going "ooo, i'm not sure how to approach this" and this one just didn't have interesting enough golf to compel the golf game fan in me or interesting enough puzzles for the puzzle game fan in me. If you want something chill and casual like that, maybe check it out, but otherwise i can't recommend it.
Detective Dotson
This one's ambitious. It wants to be a platformer, a mystery game, an adventure game, and also a massive bollywood musical. Not all of them work, the game has a lot of weird jank to it's mechanics and the voice acting is questionable at best, but the fact that they work on any level is enough to make this compelling as hell. I can see the foundation of a janky cult classic here and i'm extremely excited to see where it could go. Also, I've very rarely seen a game promise musical numbers. Overall, if you can handle mechanics not quite working the way you want them to, I absolutely think this is worth a check out.
The Elephant collection
My god, it's that guy! That little blue elephant guy!
Okay for real though, this is shockingly well put together collection of some of the best flash games of the era. Not only does it add a funny little metagame, but it makes them playable in 2023 while still preserving as much as possible of the original experience. There's even a bit of historical notes from the dev about how he developed each game! This is basically exactly what I want from a flash game collection. If you got nostalgia for these, check em out, and if you don't, check em out anyways so you can experience This Is The Only Level for the first time.
MOTORDOOM
Sometimes, I don't have to describe a game. Sometimes I can just write out the pitch and you'll immediately know if you want to try it or not. Ahem:
What if tony hawk's pro skater, but you had GUNS and you had to SHOOT WEIRD FLESH MONSTERS to get EXTRA POINTS and NOT DIE And the EXTRA POINTS gave you POWERS like FLAMETHROWERS WHEN YOU DID A GRIND and instead of ska METAL MUSIC PLAYED that screamed EVERYTHING FUCKIN SUCKS and you could be TWO SKELETONS called the BONER BROTHERS
You now know if you want to try it. Enjoy!
Asbury Pines
I... really wanted to like this one more then I did. I love idle games, and this promised an idle game by way of twin peaks, a show I adore. However playing it made me realize most idle games I've played are very, very careful about how they reveal their hand. They show you only the mechanics you need at first, adding new mechanics when you've mastered the previous ones and need a boost. In doing so, they also have the opportunity to make each mechanic mean something. You are exploring, you are sending guys on little missions, you understand what your mechanical actions are in relation to the world you're in.
This doesn't really do that. Perhaps because it's still in development, the game just throws Everything at you immediately and asks you to figure out how to manage it. Additionally, it uses People and Resources in ways that seem disconnected; why is the mayor working a gas station? Why does the money go to a random fund you have? Who even are you? I'm also worried about the writing; wow it's leans Hard on the "look at this insane schiziophrenic person who everyone hates".
Idk. I don't wanna be too harsh on a demo, but this really needs some more time to bake before it's something I dive on, I think.
Pecker
Hey, remember that one level from mario odyssey? The one where you got to be a bird and stick your beak into wooden walls and fling yourself around? Great news, someone made that into it's own game. The game is more charming then it seems, with lots of little reveals about how the game works, although it suffers dearly from being a 3d platformer demo where they expect you to be excited just from it being a 3d platformer with an interesting movement mechanic. I hope the full game can be a bit more then that, as otherwise I can't see this appealing to anyone except people who love 3d platformers.
But if you do love those, check this shit out.
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
God this game is pretty. While playing it I was just constantly impressed with how beautiful it was at every given moment. Beyond that tho, it's a pretty interesting stealth-adventure style game; easy as pie but mostly about the experience rather then the gameplay itself. I'm pretty sure you can tell from the trailer if this i for you, but the demo is short and worth checking out if only because of how it looks all the way through.
The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack
Fancy pants adventures is another classic flash game series, and I was excited for this demo just like I was for the elephant collection. And while i'm still real excited for the game itself, this demo is bafflingly terrible. It explains nothing, has no menus, and only barely contains 3 extra short levels from the actual games that are disconnected from each other. When you beat the third ones, it loops back to the first one with no explanation that you've beaten the demo or anything. I came away from this more confused then anything, why did such a good game get such a terrible demo? The game still plays well, so what happened?
A Webbing Journey
Finally, a bug game for me to give my expert bugpinions (bug opinions). And my opinions are that this is really charming and cute, but underbaked in the same way a ton of 3d platformer demos are. Please, devs, I know you have an interesting central mechanic, but I need an explanation of what's going in your game. Why is it interesting? Why do I care? This game offers flowers when you complete a sidequest with no explanation as to why you would want them or what they're for, and it grows tiring pretty quickly.
That being said, I had a great time running around as a little spider. God I love bugs. Great choice for any bug fans, although i'd also encourage you to check out Webbed, a cute spider game with a real challenging bite to it.
The Talos Principle 2
Tbh, I was prepared to be a bit of a debbie downer here. I don't like one of the big writers of the game (he's been weird to my friends online and is generally kinda a pretentious dick) and The Talos Principle isn't a game I ever got into. On booting it up, it shows you... a bible verse and a famous quote, both of which had me rolling my eyes.
And yet, I couldn't resist how fuckin cool this one is. The story builds on the original in a fascinating way: you spend the game interacting with people in the new society that was started at the end of the last game. There's a whole city to explore, characters to talk to, and weird stuff to find and think about. The puzzles are fantastic, interesting and compelling in fun ways. The world you explore is full of absolutely stunning landscapes, nothing like the knock-off serious sam stuff from the original. Everything works, although it still feels just as pretentious in it's philosophizing as the original which is absolutely gonna turn some people off.
I really gotta say, if you like first person puzzlers (or stories about ai and philosophy) check this one the fuck out. It's great.