It's that time of the year again. I've been playing demos since last week, 36 played so far. I'll only share my highlights, but if you're curious about the ones I'm not talking about here, those were:
An Action Roguelite for when you have 20 minutes to spare, Another Crab's Treasure, Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, CaS-Puz: Camera Surface Puzzle, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Été, Europa, Looks Good, Lose Ctrl, Minigolf Blast, Mojito the Cat, PixelJunk™ Eden 2, Pogo3D, RETRIS, Rolling Fur - A Cat Puzzle Adventure, Rush On, The Last Flame, The Shape Killer, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
Mosa Lina
It’s described as a hostile interpretation of immersive sim. What it means is that everything is randomised and it’s up to you to use the tools you have to complete each level. It’s a platformer and you just need to collect 1 to 3 fruits per level, and then get back to the exit. Levels aren’t procedural, they’re all pre designed, but you get a random set of levels. You also get 3 random items, and that’s where it gets complicated.
The fruit can be higher than your jump, so if you have boxes you can stack them, or a mushroom can make you bounce up. But if you don’t you’ll have to think. Maybe you have a bomb and can use the knockback. Maybe you have an antigrav projectile that lets you ride pieces of the level. Or you might just be able to shoot the fruit and push it offscreen, this also works to complete levels.
Sometimes it can be really hard, some levels and setups can just be impossible (though in the hour I played I’d say failing was mostly due to incompetence), but completing a level can be so satisfying. Reminds me of the feeling of capturing a target in Heat Signature by somehow throwing them into space and collecting them with your ship.
Less than a day left in Next Fest, though I'll keep playing whatever is still available from my list. I've gone past 50 demos played, and here are the ones I played since last time that aren't included in the post:
ARTIFICIAL, Sandy's Great Escape, SLIPPY THE FROG 🐸💦, Pluto's Island, Sandwalkers, Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot, Temple of Revi, The Last Faith, Rubber Royale, You Have No Time, Exhausted Man (累趴侠), Mars Tactics, Toroa
goblinAmerica
FPS speedrunner where you play (goblin)american presidents. The speedrunning part just seems to be the surface level though, because levels feel huge and full of secrets. Some are accessible through doors that require a specific medal on a level, and they can open shortcuts or reveal entirely new sections of the levels that are even bigger than the initial level. Like, after killing John Wilkes Booth, you can open a secret below the theatre and access an underground world with a lake and a temple.
There are also stuff that looked like quests with NPCs but I couldn’t understand what to do. Really cool game overall, spent a while just exploring. The speedrunning part though seems very dependent on the kind of items and upgrades (creams??) you unlocked, so it’s more part of the progression.
Got to a total of 75 demos played, only 2 games got deactivated right as the fest ended, so that's nice. Anyways, here's more recs from demos played this week.
The ones I played but won't be mentioning here were:
The Thaumaturge, Sovereign Syndicate, Arcane Assembly, The Crust, Demeo Battles, Songs Of Silence, Sorceress, Three Minutes To Eight, Chrono Hunter, Jurassic Snap, Make Way, Toy Trains
Peripeteia
What a fucking cool game. It’s probably an immersive sim, you can drag stuff around with F, and the character can grab everything that looks like a ledge. You start by jumping out of a dump by climbing a ladder which is literally made by a bunch of ledges. Ladders in this game are freaking physical objects, you don’t climb them by pushing forward, but by jumping from step to step.
After that you select a perk (head augment, you’re a cyborg btw), there’s one that slows time, another that can make you invisible, and a third one I can’t recall. You also have to select a gun (I picked damage, I got a shotgun). You’re then told to get to the planetarium, with some vague directions and then.. You basically get lost.
It’s fascinating, it feels like there’s a whole city there, I wasn’t sure where I was going but I still ended up where I wanted. I’m pretty sure I picked the main path and it still felt like I was breaking the game. Once I got there, I finally got into combat and the zone had a crazy good soundtrack. Combat was really surprising. It also feels like weapons are physical things, like your character is really lifting them. And look, the game is janky and proud of it, but this works. I got a VSS and using the scope was hell. Sometimes I had to drag it towards where I wanted, and the character couldn’t stay still. If my target was moving it was basically a 50/50. But no matter the weapon (I found at least 6 different ones) when you land a headshot it’s so satisfying. First because you managed to aim your weapon but also because the enemies drop in a way that reminds me of Tarkov.
The inventory has some similarities too. There’s the classic inventory tetris, moving and rotating stuff around, but also unloading weapons, taking out clips of ammo (when relevant), combining them to make some room. I feel like I spent a third of my time on the inventory screen and I loved it (but I’m always slow with that). There aren’t a lot of bullets so you definitely have to pay attention and loot the enemies you kill.
I didn’t complete the demo but I took a freaking elevator and then a cable car!! It was all continuous and so cool. I was seeing some places I went before from up high, having a feeling everything was connected and that I’ve just seen one path. It’s like they built a space first and then created levels in it.
Like at one point looking for the planetarium I entered a building, it had infinite stairs going down, and probably as much going up, but I wanted a good view of the city (I was still relatively lost). So I climbed up at least 10 floors, met a lady that was sweeping in front of her door (got in and stole some vodka), crossed a weird space with destroyed rooms which barely felt like a path, and finally got to the roof. Any other game would have put maybe 3 floors here, and definitely not that last part.
And apparently you can even stick your sword in walls to climb it??? I want this game so much, idk why or how I wasn’t aware of it before this Next Fest.
American Arcadia
Cinematic platformer with some first person puzzly sections. The presentation is really cool and they obviously put a lot of effort in the narration and editing. But it’s also my issue, there’s a lot of dialogues, and either the game will stretch the level and make you walk / crawl long sections for it to fit the dialogue, or it’ll just take the controls away from you. The demo is only 20 minutes but it happened so often that it already felt like a problem. It’s a shame because it’s good otherwise.
SENTRY
FPS tower defence. You have a minute between wave to prepare and build some traps and turrets. There’s also a loadout screen where you select your weapons and tools, with a lot of options already for a demo. It’s really cool but I felt like I was missing something. I just played on normal, but I basically just used a single choke point on both maps. There are other points of interest though, like vents or a bridge you can pay to access and get the high ground.
I’m guessing the different entry points and bigger maps come into play for multiplayer, because playing solo means you can’t really risk wandering off and letting enemies escape. The traps are good but they can’t deal with everything (also enemies can destroy your turrets)
The Gap
Narrative / puzzle game about going into your memories. It ended suddenly (I got swallowed by darkness, maybe because of a timer, I was very confused) so I’m not completely sure what the overall structure is. It seems like you’re going through simple flashbacks to get clues that then let you go deeper into main memories. There’s a thing about needing two pieces to go back to a previous time.
The story was a little weird at first with a very obnoxious and rude main character, but I was pretty invested by the end. It’s about a couple that separated because of the man’s issues. There’s something about their daughter, maybe sick (she’s not dead though, that’s good), and the father trying to fix something. Also after playing so many demos with terrible machine translation, this one was refreshing. There are occasional small issues and errors, but otherwise it’s really good, using equivalent expressions and lingo.
(Also it's just released and the first reviews are all positive!)
The Hungry Fly
Weird vibes. You’re a fly that wants to eat dead things, but everything is alive. So you go inside a plant and meet a spider that you then control (still from the point of view of the fly). That spider then convinces a caterpillar to be.. cut into pieces to attract other flies in its webs. Honestly I like this, it’s very unnerving and the art style is perfect for this.
Classified: France '44
XCOM but the aliens are nazis. You don’t have a base but there’s still a (maybe) strategic layer on the map of France, where you can at least pick your missions. You also have a global timer: help prepare resistance before D Day. The battles are pretty stealth based, I’ve only seen the half stealth ones, where you start hidden and then get a few stealth kills before the enemy gets alerted (which gives you an extra turn to prepare so it’s still advantageous). There are also full stealth missions apparently, and classic ones where enemies are already alerted.
The combat itself is good, you have 12 AP but active skills end your character’s turn, so APs are only about how much you can move (some actions need more AP obviously). There are your classics, quick fire, aimed shot, grenade, melee and overwatch. Soldiers also have special skills (one had a 1 turn cooldown rock throw which was great for stealth) and a skill tree similar to XCOM’s.
The shot system is really interesting here: anyone getting shot at (even missed shots) will lose morale, which can make them lose APs or even skip their turn, plus it makes them take more damage if you flank them. There’s also bullet spread, which means bullets can hit characters standing around your target (even allied). I’ve had an overwatch kill three enemies at once, it was glorious. By the way, the game also lets you decide if you take a shot or not during overwatch, so you don’t have to rely on the arbitrary enemy turn order.
That’s where my only complaint is: characters are extremely slow. During the enemy turn you can make them run when they move, but you’re still spending a few seconds going through each enemy, and even those that don’t move will take the focus for a few seconds. As for your characters, they will move at the same low speed, and you can’t do anything else while they do. I definitely wouldn’t mind sacrificing some realism if that meant wasting less time on movement. But yeah overall really positive impressions.
Crossroad OS
Vibes-puzzles on a fake OS. Reminds me of Pony Island with the cursed computer thing. But the small maze puzzles it had were really cool too, you’re moving things with your cursor but everything is physical. So you need to “push” against the rolling crates, and you can’t pull a box if there’s no space for your hand. It’s just a really cool presentation. The demo is short and a bug softlocked me, so I watched the end on youtube (basically just a cutscene), but it’s really promising. I doubt it’ll be a big game, which is probably a positive thing here.
Stilt
Platforming VR game where your arms are your legs and your legs are wiggly pogo sticks. And you don’t have a body, just a head. It might be an impossible game to play for people prone to motion sickness, because you can basically bounce and fling yourself everywhere. The structure is similar to a collectathon, there’s a hub and a bunch of levels with different kinds of objectives. It’s very solid and well made, but moving around is just super fun. It feels exactly like what you’d expect, and somehow the jumps I got from different arm swing speeds were exactly what I wanted. You can also get some more precise movement by moving slowly, almost like Getting Over It.
The first level had a sub level that was a maze, which was pretty boring, and tight corridors aren’t the best for this game, but other than that everything I’ve seen seemed cool.
That's it, I'm DONE!
If you're curious about a game I didn't highlight in theses posts, here is a doc with impressions on every game, though it can be a lot less positive.
I'll be back with more demos in february. Doing it over three weeks was pretty good. A lot of devs (sadly not all) understood they should upload demos for the press preview, so hopefully I'll be able to start early again.