Steam NextFest Rapid-fire Demo Thoughts (Feb 2024)

Every time Steam NextFest comes around (and I remember to do it), I scroll the big list and click "Install" on anything that catches my eye. Honestly, it's a lot of fun and I've found some cool games this way, including some gems like Amarantus. I made some quick scattershot listicles highlighting what I played during previous NextFests, and if you're here, well, this is another one.

Ultros

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2386310/Ultros/

Hell of an aesthetic - even though I'm 50/50 on if I personally like it or not - and some solid Metroidvania gameplay. The attacks feel nice and chunky, and the upgrade system tying directly into your stash of healing items is a cool idea that gels with the whole bio-sci-fi vibe. I'm definitely intrigued!

Caribbean Legend

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2230980/Caribbean_Legend/

I really want a cool sailing / seafaring RPG (the closest is probably... Pillars 2?), and this... isn't. Alas! That said, there's something undeniably fascinating about seeing a game with the exact aesthetic of an over-ambitious 2003 RPG. It's janky systems all the way down, from crew management to fencing techniques to tracking the political standing of the Caribbean, and absolutely none of it appears to cohere.

Vendir: Plague of Lies

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478850/Vendir_Plague_of_Lies/

Fantasy RPG that's trying to mix CRPG-like skill checks and dialogue with JRPG-like turn-based combat and not doing a great job of it. In seriousness, the mechanical bones don't seem too bad, but the writing reads like a 19-year-old's vision of a gritty, grim fantasy world where peasants wallow in mud and kill each other for copper pieces. I got an early quest to kill rats and the game pointed out how it was a cliche to kill rats and yet still sent me off to kill rats. Come on.

Breachway

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810/Breachway/

Roguelite deckbuilder taking cues from FTL. The genre isn't really my scene, but I thought this had some cool ideas, like allocating reactor power to choose which resources you're accruing each turn. There seems to be some kind of large-scale faction-based stuff going on (like currying favor with them based on who controls the sector), but I didn't get far enough in to see how it affected things. Honestly, not bad.

Guild Saga: Vanished Worlds

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2184350/Guild_Saga_Vanished_Worlds/

Grid-based pixel art CRPG with anime characters? Sign me the fuck up! If there's any real red flag here, it's that the gameplay is clearly inspired by Divinity: Original Sin 2 - the separate Armor and Magic Armor bars are a huge giveaway - and I'm really not the biggest fan of Larian's games (yeah, including Baldur's Gate 3, bite me). Still, definitely keeping an eye on this one, it's pitching pretty dang close to my strike zone despite the wonky-ass pixel art.

Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118120/Kind_Words_2_lofi_city_pop/

The first Kind Words was basically an asynchronous, anonymous advice column, and this looks like... more of that. There appears to now be a dedicated space for "recommendation" style asks and answers, as well as a way to directly chat with other players. Its twee aesthetics were tolerable in 2019, but after the advent of scare-quotes "Wholesome Games" it all feels a bit tiresome to me. There's certainly something to be said about how it's easier to be vulnerable in an anonymous setting, but I wonder if it ends up feeling more isolating in the end? I probably just need more friends.

Pacific Drive

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1458140/Pacific_Drive/

A survival/crafting game, but the twist is that you're driving around an irradiated zone in a clunky old car. So you aren't managing hunger and thirst; you're managing your gasoline and battery, siphoning from wrecks and scrounging up scrap so you can craft new doors and tires to keep yourself protected from the dangers along the road. Seems like a cool twist on the formula with enough friction to chew on.

Islands of Insight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2071500/Islands_of_Insight/

What if The Witness was multiplayer and had a AAA-like open world and leveling system, complete with skill tree, dailies, and a cosmetic battlepass? I just don't understand why you'd make it like this; you can't even meaningfully interact with other players (you can party up, which appears to give zero benefits). What an utterly confounding game.

Aden

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152740/ADEN/

A cute little beat-em-up type game with light rhythm mechanics. The aesthetic reminds me of Touhou (disclaimer: I know next to nothing about Touhou), and it all just gives me the vibes of an early GBA game or something.

DICEOMANCER

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2501600/DICEOMANCER/

Roguelite deckbuilder. Again. Pretty cute aesthetic, and it seems like there's some genuinely interesting mechanics once you really start digging (the card that lets you change any number on the screen is really clever), but showing me one of those progression screens is going to kill my interest nine times out of ten.

BattleJuice Alchemist

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384060/BattleJuice_Alchemist/

This appears to be some sort of isometric Diablo-type game with randomly generated loot and such, but all of your equipment consists of alchemical vials that are thrown like grenades. The wrinkle is that you assemble a deck of different vials that get randomly drawn as you use them, and you're constantly cycling these out as you find better ones.

Necrosmith 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2277320/Necrosmith_2/

A base / army-building roguelite where you assemble a skeleton army to gather resources and build up your defenses for waves of enemies. The loop is fun enough (seems like it's kinda taking cues from auto-shooters [in the parlance of today, Vampire Survivors likes]), and I liked jerry-rigging together weird monsters to accomplish different tasks, but it feels like I'm spending most of my time just sitting and staring at the map without anything actually happening. I'd rather play an RTS.

Harold Halibut

https://store.steampowered.com/app/924750/Harold_Halibut/

Incredible aesthetic on this one, imitating stop-motion with care and aplomb. Movement's a bit slow and clunky, but the point of the experience seems to just be moving around this environment and talking to wacky characters, and it nails that too with some fantastic comedic writing. The commercial in the sportswear shop was a standout of what I played. Great stuff.

Dungeon Inn

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2552310/Dungeon_Inn/

From the title, I thought this would be a bog-standard "small business" type game, but it really isn't. It's closer to being some kind of block-falling puzzle game, where you're trying to shift two rival tracks of adventurers towards your inn, but if they see each other they start fighting. Really cute, and I can see how it might ramp up in complexity over time.

Cyber Manhunt: New World

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2421410/Cyber_Manhunt_New_World/

A detective game where you play as an AI executive assistant and trawl the internet for people's private information so you can report them to your bosses and law enforcement. Hunting down and connecting details is a fun mechanic, but the game is also literally having you send people phishing links and hacking their accounts to spy on them. Kinda fucked up.

Magical Delicacy

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2231190/Magical_Delicacy/

Crafting / small-business game, the type that one might perhaps refer to as "wholesome" or perhaps "cozy". Seems cute enough, if you're into the kind of plate-spinning and timer management these games tend to be about (grow crops, grind crops into ingredients, cook ingredients, but make sure you're keeping all of these bars going at all times and make sure nothing boils over!!!). What really bugged me is that the camera is so zoomed-in as to be borderline claustrophobic; please let me actually see where I'm going.

Crypt Custodian

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2394650/Crypt_Custodian/

Clearly cribbing off Hyper Light Drifter, but with a cartoon animal aesthetic. It seems fine. Movement and combat feel good, but I didn't play far enough to discover a way to heal yourself between checkpoints, so it's slightly more punishing than the art style may imply.

Synergy

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989070/Synergy/

Citybuilder, plain and simple... but with a Mœbius aesthetic. If you're gonna steal, might as well steal from the best, right? Seems cool enough, even though a couple of the resource harvesting situations felt a little opaque. Nothing felt bad, so I might keep an eye on this one.

Death of the Reprobate

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739900/Death_of_the_Reprobate/

A point-and-click adventure game making use of Renaissance paintings for extreme comedic effect; think the "animated" sequences from Monty Python. Major shitpost energy from this one, and I had some genuinely solid laughs from the writing. The combination of "highbrow" old paintings and totally "lowbrow" humor really works.

Children of the Sun

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309950/Children_of_the_Sun/

A sniping puzzle game. Your bullet halts in midair with each kill, allowing you to re-aim, and you have to figure out a path that lets you hit all the baddies in a single shot. It also adds new wrinkles and ways for you to manipulate your shot's path over time. Quite an impressive concept, honestly. Cool shit.

Mullet Mad Jack

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111190/MULLET_MAD_JACK/

Not my speed! It's a sort of boomer-shooter / roguelite where you want to zoom forward as quickly as possible while murdering guys to extend your life timer. Granted I was playing on easy mode, but there doesn't seem to be point to doing anything other than mashing the dash/kick button over and over. The faux-anime aesthetic is also a little too twee and self aware for my tastes.

Until Then

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574820/Until_Then/

Holy shit, I am incredibly impressed. This snagged me almost immediately and left me enthralled for the demo's entire hour-ish runtime, and I'm not even sure there's an easy "hook" to point to other than the fascinating not-quite-mundanity of the main character's life. It's simply a narrative game with great dialogue, great animation, and great vibes.

Terra Memoria

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1912750/Terra_Memoria/

A JRPG with a cute tilt-shift-y, cartoon-animals aesthetic. No real downsides here, other than that it's comically easy; across the hour-or-so of the demo, there wasn't a single fight where I had to do anything other than mindlessly spam the lowest tier attacks. There are some cool turn-delay mechanics to the battles, but it's a shame that I didn't have to engage with them whatsoever.

Arco

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2366970/Arco/

Demo didn't give me much to go on story-wise, but I like the aesthetic and the tactical battles are a lot of fun. You can see what the enemy has planned like in Into the Breach or Phantom Brigade, so you're setting up your moves to dodge theirs and hit back with your own, with every action each turn happening simultaneously. I only fiddled a bit in the Arena mode, but it seems like there could be a good bit of depth to the combat.

Night Stones

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2300340/Night_Stones/

A cute little adventure game that gave me some of the same vibes as A Short Hike, though Night Stones is trying to be somewhat more ambitious with a greater variety of traversal locks and keys (including its eponymous gimmick that affects the day-night cycle). The Steam page advertises "no combat", but I feel like stealth-killing evil piranha plants that attack you on sight kinda does count as combat. Honestly, if this interests you and you haven't played A Short Hike, just go play that first.

Tales of Kenzera: ZAU

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316580/Tales_of_Kenzera_ZAU/

An action metroidvania based on Bantu folklore. The movement and combat feel good, with a solid stance-switch gimmick between projectile and melee modes. My only real complaint is that the game hitched whenever I used a new move (basic attack, special ability, etc) for the first time, but my graphics card is getting long in the tooth and I'm barely hitting the minimum requirements.

Cursed Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

A ship management roguelite with offbrand Don't Starve aesthetic. Already wasn't feeling it from the look, and once I finally got into some ship-to-ship combat it was incredibly slow and clunky. If your ship combat is somehow worse than Pillars 2 despite being apparently the main focus of the game, you're going to have trouble getting me interested.

Balatro

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

A poker roguelite, which is way better than it might sound. Poker hands are a kind of math that people already understand, so layering a bunch of wacky multipliers and effects is a lot of fun. I'm fucking sick of roguelites, but no notes here. It's fun, especially if you like gambling!

Raw Metal

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2279600/Raw_Metal/

A sort of combination stealth / brawling game. It's got some genuinely rewarding fast and frenetic score-based combat, despite how early it is. I do wish it wasn't a roguelite though; randomly generated loot and whatnot can be a real turnoff for me. Pretty impressive for how early it seems.

Scars of Mars

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2574460/Scars_of_Mars/

A cool battle system reminiscent of Mega Man Star Force, where you've got a team on your 3x3 grid shooting forward into the enemy's 3x3 grid... but there's friendly fire and you're trying to manage your entire team of four, so it's really fucking hard to not just get bodied. Meanwhile, the UI and the roguelite trappings are just so much and don't really care to onboard you in any reasonable manner. Please stop making roguelites.

Sword of Convallaria

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2526380/Sword_of_Convallaria/

Realized literally 30 seconds in - when it asked me to log in to a single player game - that this was a gacha game. Fuck that, no matter how many Hitoshi Sakimoto tracks you have for me. God dammit, I just want another Final Fantasy Tactics game, is that so much to ask? Fucking hell. We can't have nice things.

Death of a Wish

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2302080/Death_of_a_Wish/

Barring some issues getting my controller to work properly, this was great. The aesthetic is striking (albeit running up against my sensory overload threshold), and the combat feels like a good character action game where you're constantly zipping in and out while swapping out your weapons and approach from second to second. Cool shit.

Millennia

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268590/Millennia/

It's store-brand Civilization and does not appear to really be adding anything new to the formula, but hey, I suppose that means it's at a baseline level of competent.

The Posthumous Investigation

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2466900/The_Posthumous_Investigation

A noir detective game where you have only a single day to discover the killer, but... you have that single day over and over. That's right, it's the ol' time loop chestnut, which means every character has their scripted schedules that you need to keep in mind.. Otherwise has all the classics of the genre, like interrogating suspects and presenting every piece of evidence to every possible character to see what they might have to say.

Reus 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1875060/Reus_2/

"God game" (aren't these kinda citybuilders, when you get down to it?) where you're terraforming biomes and trying to place down resources with various adjacency bonuses for maximum benefit. The wrinkle is that everything you place down causes time to tick forward, and you naturally want to hit specific milestones that you may have screwed yourself out of earlier down the line. Make a single resource swap and your whole house of cards might topple.

Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2655470/Alruna_and_the_NecroIndustrialists/

The good: cool aesthetic specifically aping Game Boy Color games like Shantae. The bad: incredibly punishing platforming. Maybe it's a skill issue, but I kept getting stun-locked by enemies and some of those spike traps are just straight up unnecessary. Couple that with the high jump being kind of fiddly and my patience dropped off fast.

Crow Country

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1996010/Crow_Country/

A survival horror / puzzle game with faux-PS1 and "creepy theme park" aesthetics. It's a good thing there's an "exploration" mode, because the enemies take frankly ridiculous amounts of bullets to take down (not that you should be trying to kill every enemy in a survival horror game, I guess). Seems fun enough.

Indika

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1373960/INDIKA/

Not sure what to call this other than some kind of bizarre, religious narrative game. Definitely intriguing - particularly the incongruous music and UI elements - with some solid writing and voice acting, but there's also some serious jank going on with the basic movement and gameplay. The instant-death chase scene towards the end of the demo really wore on my patience.