Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?
(store.steampowered.com)
Interesting fret design
Day 4 was all black cats
Everdeep Aurora — Exploration-heavy platformer
- Really well-executed limited palette art. It swaps palettes between different areas for mood. Maybe that's why the playable character is a black cat.
- This demo is really short. I saw a bit of lore and played some hide and seek, then went through the scary door. The cat has a drill but I don't even get to use it!
- Didn't get a chance to see any interesting action except for the very last few seconds of the demo
- The camera feels unpolished. It always freely drifts behind you, so quickly changing directions often will make the camera jiggle unpleasantly. It would be nice if the camera would stay still or lock to an axis sometimes. That would especially help with aiming jumps, since the camera always jerks upward a bit every time you jump.
- The controls feel great. Super responsive movement with no sliding and little momentum buildup. Jump height is also quick to respond to letting go of the jump key.
Soft wishlist. This demo just wasn't long enough to be totally sell me on the full game.
Project Arrow — Puzzle platformer with archery
- I found this demo to be good but not great. I'm struggling to identify why it didn't appeal to me more.
- Maybe the selection of levels wasn't impressive enough. There were a handful of puzzle ones, but some just felt like repeats with not much new each time. There seemed to be a lot of autoscrollers.
- Platforming movement mechanics were simple and straightforward, which is appropriate for a puzzle platformer, but then there are levels with precision platforming and not much puzzle
- Cool series of boss levels at the end
- Maybe the demo didn't do enough to hint at the possibilities for the whole bow and arrow mechanic for puzzles, so I'm just not getting hyped enough
- Maybe I just don't get the presentation of the game? Electronic music and high-tech UI but playing as a cat with a bow in the forest
Pass
Swoosh Cat — Precision platformer
- Celeste but with 360° dash
- Cool mechanic: dash into spikes to bounce off of them
- Slow motion while aiming, but the aim indicator isn't very accurate. Also, unlimited slow motion
- Hard to tell when I have dash or not
- Something feels off about the air control. I often overshoot or undershoot when trying to land on a small platform
- What a long demo! This is a substantial amount of game to give out.
Pass. I had fun, but I'm currently not in the mood for Celeste-style precision platforming.
I want to shout out Left 4 Dead's game instructor for smoothly teaching new players the game even while they're playing with others. Get more ammo here. Use adrenaline to do stuff faster. Give Nick your pills. Rescue is coming - defend yourself! Then, once you've played enough, the help messages gradually become less frequent.
I'll also shout it out for being my favourite implementation of HUD markers in any game. The icon pulses into view close to your crosshair, then flies over to the thing it's pointing at. If it goes off-screen, the marker returns next to your crosshair, with an arrow indicating which direction to look in to see it again. A lot of other games have marker icons just suddenly appear at the spot and they crawl along the edge of the screen if the item is off-screen. The way L4D does it really draws my eyes.
Day 3
Bloodthief — First-person parkour/speedrunning
- Crusty brown gothic look, like Quake
- Gameplay really grabbed me. Sometimes, I was leaning forward and holding my breath!
- More and deeper movement mechanics, compared to other first-person parkour games, like SEUM or Neon White. Building up and preserving speed is a big deal
- Challenging levels, with actual enemies to fight and a quickly-rising difficulty level. Levels are usually 1-5 minutes long — lengthy compared to Neon White's 10-30 seconds
- I managed to wall jump off of a deadly spike wall, and I'm still not sure if that was intended
Soft wishlist. I definitely enjoyed this demo, but I currently don't have an appetite for this type of game.
Dice Gambit — Tactical RPG with dice
- First thing after the intro cutscene: a detailed character creation screen. That's pretty overwhelming.
- I like the art style except for the subdued 3D character models
- Throwing the dice and watching them settle is satisfying, as it is in Armello
- Gameplay is clearly focused on battle grid combat, since the "dungeon crawling" is just clicking on a map, like Slay the Spire
- Do team management and watch the plot in the downtime between jobs
- There is an appreciable amount of role-playing in this RPG
Wishlisted
Day 2 of Next Fest is over! Here's what I tried.
Good Luck — An absurdly dangerous walk to work
- Just walk to work
- Slowly walk through streets full of deadly things, like exploding garbage bins, loose signpoles, and falling signs
- No checkpoints! No dodging! This is a rage game.
- There's online co-op, apparently. Have Fun with friends!
- This demo is silly fun, but I don't need to play more of this
Pass
Öoo — Puzzle platformer with bombs
- This guy also made Elec Head, another charming puzzle platformer
- Puzzle platforming with exploration
- Cute pixel art
- Wordless teaching. Actually, the only words in the game are the credits!
- Puzzles all revolve around clever use of bombs: launch yourself like a rocket jump, blow up one bomb to push another
Wishlisted
PANIK — Chess-like grid puzzles
- Has that Flash game feel, but in a good way. Quirky idea, simple design. It's built to quickly get you in and playing.
- The puzzles are like connecting circuits. The figures can only move if they're connected to a crown-wearing figure.
- An interesting take on grid-based puzzles. Like a fusion of Sokoban, chess puzzles, and "Chinese" checkers.
- PANIK's cute demo trick: just have a quick line of super-simple levels to show off mechanics in the rest of the game!
- I'd actually love to play this on my phone instead
Wishlisted
SourceWorld — Dungeon crawling FPS in the Half-Life universe
- Deus Ex-like cutscenes for a story set after the Combine invasion! You join a company that raids the multiverse
- Doom screen melt transition, holy crap
- The familiarity and comfort of Source engine physics, movement, and weapons
- Game crashed a bunch for me, so I'll have to stop early
Soft wishlist (I'll keep an eye on this) ::: spoiler !mrak — Super stylish immersive sim
- BTW, "mrak" is Russian for "darkness"
- Super rough, gritty introduction to a setting drowning in crusty old tech
- Unfortunately crashes early in the game
Soft wishlist
This is the real web
It was surprising to see that it's rated mixed on the store page. It looks like a lot of the complaining is about how it's not like Patapon?
That's a really cool art style! Maybe it could be of interest to [email protected]
My report from day 1
Orbyss — 3D puzzles with spheres
Thoughts before playing: Pretty, abstract 3D puzzle game. But what's the killer feature? Like the portal gun from Portal or the camera from Viewfinder?
This is what it would be like to play the PlayStation 2 boot sequence as a puzzle game, with floating cubes and coloured sparks whizzing around in an abstract void. You get to control some balls, rolling them around the level to press buttons and zoom through pipes.
This demo shows some early levels, featuring some fairly stimulating puzzles, but it failed to really grab me. The slow pacing and pure abstractness of the game's setting aren't getting me excited to play more. I just never got to that "aha" point where I realized what made the game special. In comparison, another puzzle game demo I played in a past Next Fest, The Art of Reflection, didn't waste any time showing off its key feature of jumping through mirrors.
I'm going to pass on this game, but I know someone is going to like it.
Panta Rhei — Atmospheric top-down adventure with time manipulation
The game produced an error when launching it, which I fixed by forcing Steam to run it with Proton Experimental.
2D animated cutscenes? Hell yeah, I love that kind of effort. The in-game 3D art also does a good job capturing that illustrative feel of the cutscenes. Atmospheric top-down adventure with cool art and light RPG elements? I liked Bastion and Tunic, so maybe this could be up my alley, too. The game's premise and worldbuilding interest me. You play as a young guardian of time and use your time powers to fight the monsters ravaging the world.
But gameplay-wise, this demo is rough. I found the melee combat to be unsatisfyingly sluggish. There's a bug where falling off the world makes you permanently faster when you respawn, and I was definitely running way too fast by the end of the demo. The game is tagged as a roguelike (aka "choose some randomly drawn upgrades") on its store page, but there wasn't much time in the demo to really appreciate any of those upgrades in action.
I'll pass. It's really unfortunate that this demo disappointed me, since this game still might grab me if it gets in better shape.
Wander Stars — Turn-based combat anime
The key selling points for Wander Stars are its loud inspiration by anime and its word-slinging combat mechanic, the latter of which got me to try this demo. I thought it was an interesting take on turn-based combat to line up words that customize an attack, and that old anime style presentation is indeed charming.
Wander Stars is also very heavy on the visual novel-style dialogue and cinematics, which is probably necessary to evoke that anime feel. It felt more like a visual novel in disguise than the more mechanically involved turn-based RPG that I was hoping for. I'm just lacking the patience to read so much between active gameplay, though the gameplay near the end of the demo does show potential for depth in the turn-based combat.
I'll pass.
I spent a good long time browsing through the piles of thumbnails to make myself a tall list. It's a mix of games I'm excited for, games that look interesting to me, and weird games. Since I spent so much time today browsing for games, I haven't actually played much today on day 1.
Some thoughts on my list
- Bits & Bops has already had a demo for months now, but for Next Fest, there's a new minigame to play. Also, I backed this game on Kickstarter, so I'm obviously interested in seeing this game be good. And I think it is.
- SourceWorld is a Half-Life 2 mod participating in Next Fest! It's an FPS dungeon crawler! The Source engine isn't dying anytime soon.
- Oddcore has a really flashy trailer. I actually first heard of it from seeing it get front page attention on Newgrounds. It could be the first game set in "liminal spaces" that isn't utterly boring or crap.
- Funi Raccoon Game is on this list because the trailer is stupid and I want to see more of it. I have high hopes.
- Why, yes, those are three games featuring a black cat as playable character.
30
What I'm playing 🪱🪐 WORMHOLE | Next-level Snake
(files.catbox.moe)
First, a little announcement. At this point, I've made plenty of articles in this "what I'm playing" series, and this is the eighth.
So now I'm gathering them onto my extremely barebones website, under the "gamelog" tag!
Not your father's Nokia Snake game
WORMHOLE, like all Snake-style games, has the usual formula. Eat stuff, get longer, and don't hit the walls or yourself. I found this game from a Steam Next Fest last year, where I was drawn in by the enigmatic trailer. I was really surprised by how intense and hypnotic the demo's gameplay was.
Snake Arcade (Snarkade)
But WORMHOLE is also a natural advancement of the Snake formula, bringing in arcadey additions. You get a choice of three classes of worm each with their own unique ability and wind your way around the galaxy through craptons of levels, full of planets to eat. You occasionally get a break to choose which set of levels to go to and get an upgrade on the way.
There are side objectives to eat, like the skulls that show up to steal your snacks, costing you points. UFOs fly by, worth big points if you catch them. Eat an entire trail of stars and you trigger a supernova, clearing the whole screen.
Obviously, there are wormholes as well! That's why this game is called WORMHOLE. You go in one and come out another. They make it easy to reach faraway parts of the level and can be handy escape routes if you trap yourself with your long body.
It also mimics old-school arcade games in its presentation. The game uses monochrome pixel graphics with the usual set of filters to make the game feel like it's on a worn, ghosty CRT display, but you can turn those effects off if they bother you. The extremely restricted palette of WORMHOLE's graphics reminds me of Downwell, which does the same thing. And likewise, you get to unlock alternate palettes as a minor reward for playing the game. I've been deliberately switching palettes to show them off in this article.
You can also choose from a range of corny background art that's like what you might see on the panels of an arcade cabinet, including some that write game instructions into the art.
Snake turned up to 11
A game of WORMHOLE starts off looking and feeling pretty mild, but that contrasts with the much more intense late game. This game hypnotizes like the Polybius arcade machine from urban legends. It's full of very juicy effects to dazzle you, with plenty of particles, screen shake, and hitpause. It's especially apparent in the bonus levels, which are packed with UFOs to eat.
Early on, the music sounds chipper and friendly, but gets more and more panicked and aggressive near the end. The game gets faster and faster. Your worm gets longer and longer. The levels get increasingly intricate or cramped. You'll need to react quickly to navigate the levels. Thankfully, the game helps you a bit here: you get a brief warning period if you're about to die, with the game slowing down and the screen dimming. And if you don't save yourself in time…
With a longer worm and smaller levels, you'll start moving in dense squiggle patterns to fit, but that comes with its own risks. If you're not careful, you'll make a closed loop and trap yourself.
This wormhole was made for me
I've been playing this game a lot in the past few weeks. A full run doesn't take too long but it's definitely satisfying to get into a flow state and mentally sink into the wormhole.
Early on, I was really struggling to control the worm properly, especially as the game speeds up. But once I synchronized with the vibe of the game, I started to figure it out. Knowing which wormholes are connected. Always keeping track of where the head is to steer accurately. Always keeping in mind the tail length so I don't trap myself. Developing a strategy for which upgrades to take.
Of the three classes of worm in the game, I found a fave in Yeehaw, a cowboy hat-wearing worm that shoots bullets. Lately, though, I've been focusing on playing Dash because of its strong high score potential. I've found that the Dash worm's high-speed charge can finish levels very quickly, which leads to big score bonuses.
WORMHOLE is a hidden gem
WORMHOLE is a proper hidden gem. The game is small in scope but very polished for its purpose. Currently, it has only 35 reviews on Steam. If you merely finish the game, you'll be guaranteed a top 10 spot on the leaderboard, since only the top 9 have even gotten to the kill screen!
You want to make it to the kill screen?
EAT EM ALL.
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silverchase
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joined 1 year ago
Day 5
Look Mum No Computer — Twin-stick shooter adventure
Pass
Morsels — Action roguelike (Isaaclike?) with creature collecting
Pass. I liked the demo a lot, but I'm already playing a lot of roguelikes and my wishlist already has ones I'm more excited for
ODDCORE — Surreal boomer shooter
Wishlisted