Steam Game Festival Thread

Games Video Games
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I’ll do my best to keep this post not-too-long but, y’all, I played some bangers.

First off I want to mention Kabaret. It’s a visual novel about serving tea to various creatures from Southeast Asian myths and folklore from a Malaysian developer. The art is fantastic, the writing is super intriguing, the actual tea ceremony parts of interesting and didn’t get repetitive despite doing it a few times. Strong recommendation from me.

Fans of retro shooters should check out ENCHAIN. You play as a skeleton (maybe/probably?) with a lantern on a chain that you use as a whip/grappling hook and it’s awesome. I’m not very good at these sorts of shooters so some of the fast movement and inputs the demo was asking for made it pretty difficult but even if this isn’t for me I’m sure there’s plenty of people that’d like to check it out.

Wanna solve some murder? Maybe try out Murder Mystery Machine. It’s an investigation/deduction game where you have to find the clues, connect pieces of evidence together so they support one another and then answer who/what/where/when/how/why for each case. It’s cool but I found it pretty tricky.

I feel like “fake computer hacking/detective game” has become its own mini-genre in the past few years and Cyber Warrior is looking to be a pretty good one-of-those. It takes place in a fake computer desktop and you use various apps to hack into and explore other people’s computers in an effort to take down some kind of shady crime syndicate.

Omno rules!! This game rules!! It feels really good to move around in and is a very nice and chill platformer/exploration game. If you finish the demo it ‘rewards’ you with a little section of desert to ride your magic staff around like it’s a hoverboard and it absolutely rules, this game is extremely cool.

Across is a walking sim where you play as a lioness cub following the path that a family took while fleeing a country that is about to become embroiled in a war. Very cool aesthetic and a very cute lil lion cub.

I know some people around these parts are into immersive sims so I have to give HEXCRAFT: Harlequin Fair a shoutout. I’m not sure I understand how the game works or what I was supposed to be doing but demo was definitely cool. I walked into a room, a triad guy shot me, so I shot back, and then used his corpse to raise a zombie to fight for me and it immediately ate my brains and I died. Video games.

I think The Signal State has been getting a fair amount of attention but I still want to mention it because it’s really fun. It’s a Zachtronics-like where you’re using rackmounted equipment inspired by actual synthesizers to transform signals from a source to a specified output. Running cables from one bit to the next feels surprisingly good. And the hint system works really well, too, so if you’re like me and get stuck a lot it helps you through one step at a time while still letting you try and solve the rest of it yourself.

I’ve gone through about 35 demos so far and have about 20 more that I’d like to try out before the event ends on Tuesday, so I expect I’ll be posting to shout about things one more time, hope y’all don’t mind.

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Severed Steel
This game is trying to go for a superhot vibe in terms of precise FPS action and a clean aesthetic. It also reminded me of Lithium City, which Patrick recommended on his top ten list last year, in how it basically has you moving through a building clearing rooms of enemies in slick style. I found it had a steep learning curve, but I powered through the demo to the end. It involves a lot of kicking in doors, wall running, knee sliding and jumping through glass windows all guns blazing. At any moment, you can activate the slow motion feature to land those headshots. It’s not as clean as Superhot, but I liked what I played of it.

Super Magbot
If you liked super meat boy or celeste, I’d recommend Super Magbot. You play a pixel dude who has to navigate levels solely by attracting and repelling different magnets placed around the level and attached to your feet. Like meat boy and celeste, you’ll die alot but respawns are instant. It takes a lot to wrap your head around the two buttons you have to press in regards to which magnet your facing but it definitely got it’s hooks into me.

They Always Run
You play a three-armed bounty hunter in some dark Western Cyberpunk future in this side scrolling action game. Quite rough around the edges, but impressive none the less. There’s an interesting take on combat here, where it’s more about the tenchu style kill with one hit. Your hero has a third arm and they do a lot with that mechanically. Demo stops just before you get three pistols…

Tiny Thor
16 bit throwback in which you play a child version of Thor. It’s perfectly fine, and they implement the whole mjolnir comes back to you quite nicely.

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Dodgeball Academia
Yeah, so I played a ton of Super Dodge Ball Advance as a kid, and I could never find anything else that quite filled that niche for me. I wouldn’t say Dodgeball Academia does either, but it makes up for that with a still fun dodge ball fight system (that’s only really let down by how chaotic it can be when you’ve got folks behind you and you lose your counter timing), a cute Saturday morning cartoon style/story, and a whole RPG system holding it all up. Altogether it seems really neat and I’m excited to mess around with it once it’s out!

My Time at Sandrock
My Time at Portia is a very good, very bizarre game that I greatly enjoyed in spite of how not good its UI is. God, I recently bought it again for Switch and I just don’t know if I can get back into that nightmare of a menu system again. Loading up its sequel, Sandrock, I already knew I’d be getting the full game; I just had to know if anything UI-related got fixed…AND IT DID! It’s actually so much better and more polished (e.g. decent inventory tracking, crafting trees now tell you what you need to build to make reagents, the materials I pick up don’t go immediately to my hot bar!!!) and the game itself also seems more streamlined (no more weird leveling trait system!). I’m honestly just impressed to see a game whose developers saw what did and didn’t work before, and actually iterated appropriately to make this new entry more user-friendly and inviting. I’m not super sure about the Sandrock setting versus Portia’s, but like with that one, I’m certain it’ll get real weird the more you go through it.

Death Trash
Death Trash rules.

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I played a couple of good ones.

Wartales is a fantasy/medieval mercenary sim by the same team that made Northguard, with a tactical system that feels heavily inspired by The Banner Saga. There’s a beautiful tilt-shift overworld to explore, contracts to fulfill, and what looks like a pretty deep system for advancing your troops. Locations have a lovely single screen interface that has an isometric view into ruins, taverns, markets, etc… and what’s really promising here is that locations can have surprisingly varied things to do in them beside the obvious “interact with merchant”.

Initiative is interleaved based on relative sizes of parties, and you choose who goes next anytime you get an initiative point. There’s an RPG like class system with stats and specializations, and equipment can add special actions, populating your action bar. Crafting professions can be discovered as you poke around the world and these also modify your stats.

The main weakness I noticed is that your party of mercs look pretty same-y, and I didn’t see anything indication of systems like Battle-Brothers where your characters can pick up quirks and injuries to give them flavour.

Severed Steel was the second good one I played, and I’m not sure there’s much more I can add to what was said here. It really sells the idea of being an insanely fast sci-fi anime cyberpunk protagonist without particularly needing you, the player, to be that fast (Ghostrunner’s main weakness). Some rough edges on the stunting system, but that doesn’t really hold back the tight experience the demo offers.

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Played Chernobyl Liquidators after reading a decent write up about it on PC Gamer (https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/this-heartbreaking-demo-puts-you-into-the-boots-of-a-chernobyl-firefighter/). The demo has you play a firefighter and first responder to the Chernobyl meltdown before the true extent of the disaster is realised. You go around the power plant that looks lifted from the TV show, putting out fires moving radioative rocks from your way. I’m torn on this one. On one hand I appreciate a video game having you revisit history this way, on the other hand I’m not sure how accurate the ‘video gameisms’ are at portraying the disaster, especially after having the TV show that showed everything in granular catastrophic detail. The demo has you go from putting out fires outside to scaling the building and doing running jumps to orange ledges that denote the pathway you must take. It sort of becomes a first person fire fighter with some platforming elements, and very light exploritary puzzle. Graphically, some have said they have had issues, but it looked good on my machine and captured the slowburning horror of it all. Again, I don’t know how accurate it is, seems like they may have had an engine (I think used on farming simulator games) and capitalised on the success of the TV show. I have no idea what the rest of the game will be. Will you be hunting down dogs in the wild? Will you be spectating from the bridge of death? Seems like a valiant attempt but it just made me want to watch the TV show again.

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I played about 50 demos, so I’ve decided to write a Top 10 list.

  1. Death Trash, what can I say? I love Fallout 1/2.
  2. Potion Craft, a fantastic mix of aesthetic and interesting puzzles.
  3. Sable, an exploration game with a world that feels worth exploring.
  4. Norco, a fantastic setting with the same vibes as KRZ and Disco Elysium.
  5. Len’s Island, gorgeous base building with solid mining and combat to support it.
  6. Little Witch in the Woods, very reminiscent of Little Witch Academia, but with cool alchemy!
  7. Wolfstride, #aesthetic as hell, with some slick mech-RPG combat. ZZ… heart eyes.
  8. Bear and Breakfast, a hotel builder that uses crafting/gathering to give you something to do.
  9. Unsighted, a Metroidvania with pets!!! Combat encourages aggressive moves, which is neat.
  10. Terra Nil, while the core puzzle is quite tricky, the visuals bring the premise to life.

Honorable mentions: Common’hood needs polish but it has enormous potential, TOEM feels sweet if simple, and Lake seems like a good game to relax to (but I hope they add new radio stations).

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Now that’s a great idea! I’ll go ahead and share my favorites from the event too, I played about 39 demos and downloaded at least 45. In no particular order:

  • UNSIGHTED
  • Ochitsubaki
  • Endlight, which has the sort of irreverent old-school arcade game energy of a Llamasoft game combined with high-velocity geometric space horror.
  • Renaine
  • Time Bandit,about the drudgery of corporate labor that occurs in real-time synced to your machine. Heavily inspired by Metal Gear Solid, of all things.
  • Glyph
  • Sephonie
  • Novena Diabolos
  • SATORI, a very clean looking first-person platformer. The demo was essentially a dev room where you can test out the various movement abilities and collect stuff.
  • Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, which had extremely sick combat that made me begin to consider if I should get really into the Ys series.

Some games I am unsure of/mixed on: BLACK★ACADEMY, a horizontal bullet hell shooter roguelite. Demo was kinda boring but I’d be into a game that fleshed out that basic concept. Project Beril, vertical bullet hell shooter where you lead and develop an AI that does the shooting and dodging. Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum, a 2D immersive sim with a very internet-influenced style of writing. By which I mean, it casually drops in full-width text emojis and uwu smol bean adjacent stuff in the dialogue. The demo didn’t work for me for most of Next Fest but all the mechanics, of which there are many, seem super neat!

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I haven’t been able to play more demos so I don’t have anything more to shout our right but it looks like a lot of the demos are still up. So if you didn’t get around to things or wanted to try something someone mentioned, they’re still available! Of the ~15 I already had installed only one was unavailable now, so it seems like it might be the majority of them that are still available.

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Played a couple of demos.

Terra Nil
Interesting premise of restoring biodiversity to areas. Cool that they force you to clean all your shit up before leaving. Unclear of how the full version will build on the elements introduced here. Will map layouts change to force you into different strategies? Or more tools introduced as you move on?

Sable
Feels good, looks great, promises an exploratory adventure. Depending on how they balance the adventuring elements this could be fantastic.

Sephonie
Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka at it again with a 3D adventure emphasizing cohabitation with new landscapes. I love how they use 3D to emphasize the feeling of being somewhere unknown and slightly scary. The light puzzle elements to uncover information about new species is alright, but I’ll admit that while the platforming largely works it’s a bit stiff and unpredictable to me. Too often I’ll aim at a wall to climb it and instead initiate a wallrun along it. Still, looks to be very a very good time.

Lake
It’s the postman game set in the 80’s! I’ve been looking forward to trying this out. Unfortunately, the demo isn’t really vibing with me. The writing is a bit stiff and most characters very stereotypical. The premise of returning to your past life as a new person is good, but lots of games and movies deal with that in more interesting ways.

Ochitsubaki
Can’t remember when I wishlisted this, but it’s a very stylish visual novel working in the style of those cool screenshots you see from Japanese-only games released in the 90’s. It’s written in a heavy poetic style – I’ll admit that I don’t feel literate enough to grasp it. English isn’t my native tongue and I haven’t read much poetry overall. Could be that the demo throws you in the deep end and the game opens a bit slower to introduce the cast, but the nature of the game seems to lean into the difficulty. This could be amazing for those ready for that challenge, I’m just not sure that I am. I’ll give it an attempt, though.

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Attention esteemed forum-goers and demo-enjoyers of discourse.zone, the next Next Fest is slated to begin next week October 1st and will end on October 7th!

The landing page for the event is already up but there isn’t really anything there except a little teaser video. Although, just like last time, if you look at the list of the latest demos that have been added on Steam you can already start playing some of the games that’ll be featured such as Inscryption, the new game from the developer of Pony Island and The Hex, which is featured in the teaser on the page!

Also, it’s a completely different altogether but I recommend you folks give a look at the Steam page for Game Devs of Color Expo’s Gradient Convergence if you haven’t already!

They’ve got a grip of demos too and a Nintendo Direct-style presentation with some cool-looking games in it!

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Neat! Downloaded and tried the demo for She Dreams Elsewhere.

Amazing soundtrack, great visuals, and a bit of an Earthbound-y combat system. Definitely dig it, but I might wait to pick up the full version until other people have played it to see what kind of content is in the game, content warning-wise. Even the demo has some pretty heavy themes.

Happy to hear some recommendations for others to check out. :eyes: I’ve downloaded Spirit Swap, Ochitsubaki, and Keylocker.

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Took me a few days to get back to this, but I’ve played a couple more games!

Spirit Swap’s demo is mostly just the gameplay, which is very solid Match-3’ing, but the glimpses of the setting and characters are pretty stunning. The character designs I’ve seen have a lot of bright colours and cool looks, honestly up there with Paradise Killer in terms of just how #aesthetic it is.

Plus, I like a Match-3 game I can just pay for and chill and not have to watch a million ads or not be able to play without paying for a bucket of microtransaction currency.

Keylocker is a game I am going to Kickstarter if I get money in time to based on the 15 minutes I played before I said, “oh, this is stellar, I don’t need to play more because I already know I adore it.”

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The October Edition of Next Fest has begun!

I’ll be digging deeper into the genre tags later but for the first day I decided to start by checking out a handful of games that were already on my wishlist before the event started!

Dread Delusion - An open world RPG in a 3D visual style of the PlayStation era. I believe I saw this game float across my twitter timeline and wishlisted it instantly because it totally nails the PSX look, vibrating polygons and all! Gameplay wise it feels like King’s Field game by way of a Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Although admittedly, I didn’t get very far in the demo because I ran into a whole host of technical issues. Including: the camera locking onto characters after talking to them when using a controller, not being able to advance dialogue when using a controller and dialogue advancing way too fast when using the mouse. Bit of a bummer, but I’ll definitely hop back in if they decide to update the demo later.

Transiruby - A search action game about a cyborg girl stranded on an alien planet. Apart from the very cute pixel art, I really love this game’s very simple and enjoyable gameplay design. It’s less combat focused than most of these games tend to be as you mostly use your abilities to platform around, solve puzzles and collect stuff. One of the central mechanics is that you can turn enemies into platforms which in turn allows you to do all of that stuff I mentioned. Just a very low-intensity and very chill experience!

Bun - An exploration focused 3D platformer. Movement is everything in these sorts of games and I think I’d best describe the way Bun plays as floaty, but in a positive way! Your character (Bun, presumably) animates in a very fluid, wispy and noodly fashion so when you move around it feels like you’re just floating about but still in complete control. This game also has some sort of creature raising aspect to it but I never actually found any creatures in the demo. Just an area that looks like the sort of place where you’d engage with those mechanics that kinda reminded me of the Chao Garden from the Sonic Adventure games.

Castle of Shikigami 2 - A new PC port of a nearly two decades-old arcade shooter. I will readily admit that the primary reason I downloaded this was to see if this version of the game was going to use the infamous English dub. (If you haven’t, please please take a moment to listen to a bit of the dub because it really is something else.) I am here to report that sadly, it does not but it does seem to be a nice port of the game! Plays and runs super well and it looks nice too! The demo is mostly in Japanese though but it shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate the menus if you don’t know the language and you want to give it a shot.

Marmoreal - A bullet-hell twin-stick shooter/Action RPG. Although the this game very much looks like someone’s first attempt at making a game (please know that I mean this in the most endearing way possible), I was sincerely caught off guard by how awesome this game is. Even where it’s at right now the gameplay feels super tight on a basic level. There’s six characters in the game (two pairs of a warrior, mage and archer) and each of their individual abilities, as well as just their basic shot types, are completely distinct from each other and super fun to play with.

The most surprising thing about Marmoreal to me was the cutscene direction. The action scenes have an unexpected level of kinetic movement and flow to them and the comedic scenes have a great sense of timing to them. Like, it’s already a surprise there are cutscenes in the first place but that they’re as fun to watch as they are is a real treat. Just an extremely endearing demo all around!

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I played Into the Pit, I thought it was pretty fun. It’s an FPS Roguelite with a hub area you go back to and talk to people and stuff. FPS part feels kinda quake-y (there’s no rocket jumping though :frowning: ) and the powers/guns are pretty good. There’s no ammo? Maybe that’ll be added later or something but it’s still pretty fun, I wishlisted it.

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Played through another handful of demos pulled from games on my wishlist that I didn’t see on the main page and the various “Recommended for You” hoppers that are on the genre pages!

Please, Touch The Artwork - a puzzle game visually and thematically based around the early 1900s Dutch art movement De Stijl. There are actually 3 different modes in this game and they’re all pretty neat! The first is ‘The Style’, where you have to recreate a painting using lines and colors in as few moves as possible. The second is ‘Boogie Woogie’ where you complete paintings by sending down twisting pathways and the final mode is ‘New York’ where you navigate from one painting to the next as if it were a maze. Each mode is presented as an exhibit in an art gallery and each completed puzzle is represented as a painting in the gallery which is a super cool visual touch!

Wytchwood - an adventure game about an ancient witch who finds herself approached by a possessed goat. This game’s described as a “crafting adventure” game which essentially means it’s got the crafting elements and menu systems of a survival game plus the puzzle solving, charming writing and amicable characters of an adventure game. As someone who can only vibe with certain specific games in both genres this game pulls from, I really love what this game’s going for! Love the look and the love the vibes too!

Zoeti - a fantasy RPG by way of the oft seen decklike roguebuilder but with poker! As strange as the premise may be, mechanically this game is really awesome. The way it works is instead of drawing cards that have abilities like you usually do in these games you draw playing cards. Your abilities that use to attack and defend are governed by the kinds of poker hands you can make with your current hand. You can play a single card for a basic attack or defend and more powerful effects come with pairs, straights and flushes. To make things easier and more strategic you only draw cards with values from 1-7, you always retain cards you don’t play and you can see the first three cards you’ll draw so you can better plan your turns.

After each battle you get one new ability and you can switch those out between battle. The character in the demo is your standard warrior so I’m incredibly curious to see what other sorts of characters will be in the full game. Big fan of the character designs and artwork in general!

GB Rober - a retro-style action platformer about a lil’ robot that fights corrupt landlords. Very much derived from the Mega Man games in that you fight through a stage, defeat a boss and then collect their weapon afterwards. I’m not too well versed in this kinda game but I think it’s extraordinarily difficult in that the margin of error is extremely low when it comes to dodging enemies and one-hit kill hazards. There’s also a handful of movement and attack mechanics in this game that seem like they’d be fun to master. Definitely peep the in-game manual before you try this one to know every technique at your disposal.

My favorite part of the demo though is the difficulty modifier screen which is an homage to old Amiga/PC demoscene intros & greets. It’s got all the scrolling text and cool music too!

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Played Into The Pit based on Twitter takes. It’s good, has a really good PSone aesthetic and gives me Hexen vibes, BUT there are so many quake throwbacks, as well as you know a definitive version of fukkin’ Quake, not to mention rogue likes with fast and slick combat, I feel as if I’d play it for an hour or two and never return to it.

Sounds like a me problem.

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Folks, it is time once again for game demos to descend upon us for the Steam Next Fest! It started earlier today (much to my surprise, if I’m being honest) and it ends next week!

I haven’t taken the time to look through everything yet but I have played exactly two demos and only one of them has me buzzing with excitement: Neon White!

I’ve been immensely curious about this one since it was announced in a Nintendo Direct a while back and playing the demo has revealed that this game is a lot cooler than it appears to be. It’s a first person platformer with an incredibly slick feeling to the movement. I tried it first one controller and wasn’t feeling it but it plays like a dream with mouse and keyboard. The trailer showed some combat and card mechanics and the way those work is pretty interesting. Some levels have enemies you have to defeat to proceed and you accomplish this with cards you pick up in the level. Your starting card is a melee attack and all the cards you pick up are ranged weapons that also double as consumable movement abilities if you choose to discard them.

The levels are short and clearly meant to be replayed for faster times and the way the game presents this is super neat too. For each medal you earn (bronze, silver, gold and ace) you earn Insight, which unlocks something new for that stage like a hint to complete it faster, the ghost of your fastest time, the global leaderboard and a hidden gift that you can collect in the stage to use in the hub. It certainly looked like there would be some sort of relationship stuff in this game and surely enough there is. I haven’t messed with that aspect of the game in the demo but it looks like giving gifts to the other characters gives you various things like more dialogue with them but also side quests, which seems interesting.

I’m actually not too hot on the writing or the characters from what I’ve seen of them (I did just start skipping all the dialogue at a certain point) but the game’s premise combined with the voice acting performances makes the whole thing feel a bit like watching an English dubbed anime. In ways both positive and negative. Still, definitely gonna mess with this demo some more and I’m looking forward to when this actually releases even more now!

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Already downloaded 50 demos, RIP to my week.

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IXION is essentially space Frostpunk but I’m okay with that. Hey, Frostpunk was fun. Picture that on a ring space station and you have the general idea.

What really won me over is how the demo ends. After the tech asshole CEO of the corporation you work for makes his insufferable speech on the virtues of pivately funded space exploration or some such drivel, the hyperdrive on the station activates and you somehow clip the moon. The demo ends with a shot from Earth as the debris hangs visible in the night sky and is probably going to come down and kill Earth, unbeknownst to the people on the space station. That’s what I’m guessing anyway.

Now, Crowz is probably going to be turn out to overreach and come up short on its goals of making a Battlefield clone that seems to hearken back to the better days of BF3 but also has the battle royale mode from 2042 and all the other fixins’ you would never imagine an indie studio would manage to include, all while never being aware of how much it’s glorifying military whatchamahaveyou. That all said, for the moment, consider me glad that someone is at least taking a shot at it after 2042 whiffed.

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Previous festivals really hit right when my mood for gaming was at its lowest. This time it’s just after that lowest point (barely played anything since December) so I’m really excited to dig in.

For now, I’ve bookmarked:

~ Night Cascades ~

A gay detective mystery game? I’m in.

~ Warm Snow ~

Heard good impressions for this action roguelite.

~ Neon White ~
Linked above, so I’ll give it a shot for sure. Lots of good impressions coming on for this on Twitter.

~ Mask of the Rose ~

Surprise! Another mystery game. Now from Fallen London developer Failbetter Games.

~ Hermitage: Strange Case Files ~

You already know it’s another mystery game. Got interested in this from a positive impression by Amr Al-Aaser.

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