geminias

Geminias

@geminias

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posts from @geminias tagged #SteamFestFeb23

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geminias
@geminias

Steam Next Fest (February 2023) (20/20)

Darkest Dungeon II

Genre: Dark Fantasy Roguelike
This is gonna be pretty underwhelming but... Surprise, it's more Darkest Dungeon! It's a little bit more streamlined this time, incorporating a bunch of more standardized features from the genre (instead of exploring rooms, you're on a branching path this time, for example), but the battles still play out the same way.
Visually, it got an upgrade as well, trading the previous 2D sprites for 3D cel-shaded models, which allows the game to be a lot more flexible in presentation. There's also a bigger emphasis on light & shadows which also helps showcase the new models.

geminias
@geminias

Steam Next Fest (February 2023) (19/20)

System Shock Remaster

Genre: Sci-Fi Immersive Sim
The grandfather of immersive Sims, finally remastered for a new era! I played this with the controller just to see how they'd handle oldschool inventory management and... it's a little clunky, turning your right stick into a cursor while you're in the inventory. It's not great and I hope they adjust it for the final release.
Aside from that, even with a new, awesome coat of paint (I'm particularly a fan of the way the textures look intentionally just a little low-res to evoke the retro-future aesthetics and how every gadget has a small LCD screen on it, the kind where you can still see the pixels individually) the oldschool design still shines through, for better or worse. I couldn't find a gun for the longest time, having to awkwardly melee my way through, and there only seems to be one healing station right at the start. So overall, great atmosphere, so-and-so gameplay.

geminias
@geminias

Steam Next Fest (February 2023) (18/20)

Shadows Of Doubt

Genre: Noir Immersive Sim
The concept sounds amazing: An immersive sim that generates random crimes for you to figure out - and the whole city including its inhabitants as well! Anyone could be a culprit and it's up to you to figure it out!
And while that's nice on paper, unfortunately Immersive Sims rise and fall with their level design. The random generation is nice, but it's unclear if it's also fair. I've encountered at least 2 softlock opportunities where I could've gotten myself stuck in a room with no escape and eventually had to end the demo because I couldn't figure out a PC's password because there was no way to find it or if it even existed in the game world.

geminias
@geminias

Steam Next Fest (February 2023) (17/20)

Meet Your Maker

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Base Building & Infiltration
Don't look at me, it's difficult to actually pin a genre on this. Meet Your Maker, the latest game by Dead By Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive, is an asynchronous multiplayer game in which you build your own bases (read: trap-ridden dungeons) and infiltrate other players'. While you're infiltrating, you die in only one hit, but you do get to try again, and again, and again.... Dying in one hit turns the game into a surprisingly twitchy affair - once you trigger a trap you only have split-seconds to disable or evade it. I mostly joined the beta-demo to see how they're handling the user-generated content and turns out, raiding others' bases, trying to outsmart them and their traps, is surprisingly addicting.