Hey! there's a new steam next fest going on, and i've played a FUCKTON of demos! I'm here to post about some of the coolest/most interesting ones to show them to you. Maybe you'll find a new indie game to be excited about! Or maybe you'll just see me dunk on a company's logo (moire on that later). I'll be doing about 5-10 per post, and will give a brief description beforehand if you just want to scroll past. I'll also be sorting them into a few different genres for my different posts.
IN THIS EDITION: TACTICS GAMES, ROGUELIKES, CARD GAMES, AND PLATFORMERS
TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS
Arranger
Quick thoughts: MY SECOND BEST IN SHOW. What an awesome puzzle game
Holy fuck I love this one. The art (by David Hellman, of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible) isn't just great little drawings of guys, it's some beautiful ideas of how to tell story behind the puzzles themselves. The puzzles are also fantastic, an amazing mix of simple sokoban style stuff and larger "wait i didn't even realize i could TRY that" puzzles that had me smiling the whole time. I am absolutely picking this up as soon as it comes out.
On Your Tail
Quick thoughts: For ppl who really love mystery games... or just big ol furries.
There's a LOT of ideas at play in this demo. Adventure game mechanics, a 3d enviroment with tons of characters, a card based system for keeping track of stuff, lots of minigames that you can play with other characters in game, a dating-esque relationship system for that, and NONE of that is touching on the seeming central mystery-solving gameplay. It's exceedingly ambitious... which has me doubting how well it'll be able to deliver in the full game. Still, a cool demo, especially if you dont' mind some jank and wanna see a LOT of furries. Shout outs to the big cow lady in the pizzeria especially because during play our camera bugged out and, no joke, focused solely in on her tits.
Goblin Cleanup
Quick thoughts: Multiplayer Viscera Cleanup Detail, but you play as goblins in maid dresses.
A simple gimmick for the new genre of "cleaning" games, namely that you're cleaning up a dungeon full of traps... which can kill you in messy ways, thus making you clean the chunks of your old body as well. And you can do it with a friend, AND you can play as a goblin in a maid dress! It may not have like, any real hook to people who don't want to play a funny cleaning simulator for a long while, but for those people it's a pretty fun janky time. Should be GREAT streamer bait too.
Thank Goodness You're Here!
Quick thoughts: The most british game imaginable. Yet somehow, extremely funny.
There's a few ways to make a comedy game, but by far the hardest one is to fill your entire game with funny objects that do funny things when you interact with them. Not only does it require a massive amount of work to make sure the world is chock full of Stuff, it also requires your writing to be funny every single time. Somehow, this game managed to pull it off and keep me laughing the whole time.
Goblin Camp
Quick thoughts: Wants to be Finnish dwarf fortress. Succeeds more then I expected.
When I say this game wants to be finish dwarf fortress I don't just mean in the sense of it being the same sort of management game where you build a civ by assigning jobs and creating workplaces. I mean that it seems to be trying to simulate a baffling number of things, a number of which are currently only half-implemented. Will it succeed? I have my doubts, given how ambitious this project is; but i'll absolutely be paying attention to it. And it's got goblins to boot!
Quick thoughts: A must play for anyone with strong opinions about formula 1
Sports management sims almost always have 3 things in common: they look like boring spreadsheets, they've been made by one huge company for 50 years, and they're absolutely perfect if you're completely insane about that sport. Golden Lap is one of the only times i've ever seen an indie game not only compete in this space, but also look really pretty while doing so. It may not have much interest to non-racing fans, but it's REALLY cool if that at all interests you.
Trash Goblin
Quick thoughts: A cozy cleaning game that might be a bit too cozy
There's a lot of cute ideas in Trash Goblin. You puzzling through unearthing weird bits of trash in your treasure bag, selling them to random people, buying new materials to clean up your trash and make it look nicer... it just might be a bit too sweet? The game wants to be a stress-free cozy game, but it's SO nice to me that it doesn't really give me a good motivation to make sure I keep playing. Curious if the full game will improve on this, or stick to it's cute ideas.
Rise of the Golden Idol
Quick thoughts: More of one of my favorite games ever. Fuck yes
There's not many new ideas in Rise of the Golden Idol compared to the first game; you still look at scenes to get words and then use those words to figure out who murdered who and how. Great news: this still fucking rules. Figuring out how these mysteries fit together is still the coolest fucking thing and i'm so excited to see how the full story pans out.
Blue Prince
Quick thoughts: A roguelike-myst genre mashup that shouldn't work, and yet plays even better then the sum of it's parts
Blue prince is a combination of genres so disparate I didn't think they could possibly fit together. First, there's the room-placement board game, where you're putting down tiles to try and create a path to the ending room while managing resources along the way. Secondly, there's the repeated roguelike structure. And somehow fitting in perfectly to both of these is a myst-style first person adventure full of complex notepad requiring puzzles. It shouldn't work, but it really does; each run gives you a few more ideas for how to solve puzzles in the rooms you place. REALLY recommend this one, had me and my gf up till 1 am last night.
Elation for the Wonderbox 6000
Quick thoughts: "I think that guy should kill you!"
Please download this game and then boot it up to get slapped in the face with a perfect representation of what it was like to be a weird shithead on the something awful forums. It's awesome.
