Steam Next Fest February 2024
Just a way to keep track of the demos I played and a few thoughts on them.
16 Games
Really solid 2D platformer with some super clear Inti Creates inspiration. Stages and the hub are structured just like the Zero games, and the default ability of the main character works a lot like a mix of Gunvolt and Copen's movesets from the Gunvolt games. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.
A neat low-poly soulslike with a focus on directional attacks and parries. Had fun until the game crashed due to a "known critical error with no known fix in the demo". Considering how ambitious this game seems to be (it's marketed with things like online co-op, procedural areas in a full 3D title, an MMO feel, etc), that's not super promising, but considering it's also set to release into early access, that stuff will hopefully be fixed. I'll keep an eye on it, but probably won't pick it up until a 1.0 release.
A neat turn-based puzzle-rpg kind of thing, but the presentation really put me off. The art is nice but the animations felt kind of jumpy, the music was really grating, and the writing was basically just "haha what if the cute anime girl cursed?" Granted the first line used in the trailer is "Dicks up you little cunts" so I knew what to expect. Could be improved in terms of animation and music but it's set to launch this quarter so I kind of doubt it.
Surprisingly good for a rhythm spin-off of the Gunvolt series. I find it funny that the MVs for the songs are either just kind of low-res MMD dances of the three muses, or clips of Japanese gameplay from the first game. It is worth noting that the full game will only have 15 tracks in it, but that might be alleviated by the DLC a bit even if there aren't all that many Gunvolt songs to work with.
The idea of controlling a living hat is cool, and being able to yoshi jump off of your possessed corpse is fun, but the actual platforming just felt stiff and nothing turns me off of a game more than resource-based base building in a game that isn't centered around its building mechanics. It can work sometimes but it's just one of those things that I generally don't like.
I like games that base themselves around one central gimmick, and a giant portable drill is about as fun as you can get.
Another game that seems like it could be good with time, but is releasing super soon. The idea of a top-down stealth game that switches to a 3D brawler when you're caught is neat, but almost nothing felt right. Attacks lacked impact and the dodge and parry function almost identically, only one lets you more easily counterattack if you do it properly. The demo says it's an alpha so maybe it'll be an early access release, but everything on the Steam page suggests that its full release is in March, and if that's the case I just can't see it being improved substantially by then.
Seems like a cool 2D action platformer with some exploration, but the translation is rough, to say the least. Based on some of the names in game, I'm guessing this is a Chinese dev that's just machine translating their script, which would definitely explain the weirdness. Hopefully it'll be at least a little more understandable by release.
Touhou and Age of Empires seems like a weird combination, but it works surprisngly well. The 2D art and voice acting for the actual Touhou characters is also really nice. I do hope that the full release has some more graphics settings since I was getting some pretty bad screen tearing, though.
A Touhou fangame in the vein of Enter The Gungeon makes a lot of sense, and this seems like it'll do a pretty good job of capturing what makes that game fun. Granted your attacks are tied to the character you're playing instead of your weapon, but it looks like there will be a pretty large cast to choose from. Other than that my only complaints are about how almost all the rewards from rooms are stat boosts (the demo is only like five fights and a boss, though so maybe there are more items later on in a run) and how sometimes your character disappears for a second while firing, but neither of those put me off at all.
Also for some reason Rumia of all people is one of the playable characters in the demo. She's fun and all, just a really weird pick for a demo character alongside Reimu, Marisa, Cirno, and Youmu.
Also for some reason Rumia of all people is one of the playable characters in the demo. She's fun and all, just a really weird pick for a demo character alongside Reimu, Marisa, Cirno, and Youmu.
I don't know if I'd call this a good game, but it's super charming. It's a beat-em-up where you use the power of dance and your ability to ram face first into things without getting hurt to fight and where the bosses are bullet hell duels against other girls in which you win by making them join you in your embarrassing dance moves. Some things definitely felt like placeholder assets (the random NPCs are all just blank boxes with text in them), but it seems like it could be a pretty neat experience once the full game comes out.
A cute side-scrolling platformer/bakery management sim hybrid. It's pretty similar to games like Recettear in its core loop of going out to fight stuff so you have things to sell. The combat seems kind of basic but it should be decent enough to carry a 10-20 hour game, and the presentation is all super cute and charming. The pixel art is great, the enemy designs are fun, and the music has that kind of comfy adventure feeling of games like MapleStory. Definitely worth keeping an eye on, even if I wish it had controller support.
A SRPG that's closer to Shining Force than Fire Emblem, but still kind of unique since it focuses on small skirmishes on an explorable map and is using a card system for each turn's actions. It's a neat combination that may or may not work over the course of a full game depending on how many cards there end up being.
A minesweeper dungeon crawler is a cool idea, but it doesn't really lean enough into the dungeon crawling aspects. Might be good with some more work, though.
I think this is the first Captain-Toadlike that I've come across. The level design has that same charm of unraveling a puzzle box, but a lot of other parts of the game like the stiff platforming and generic soundtrack could really use some work before release.
The art is really good and the music was nice, but the gameplay and the writing both need a lot of polish. Your melee combo felt fine but the jump was oddly restrictive, there was very little to interact with in the arena which was strange considering how the trailer seemed to emphasize that kind of stuff, and the script was really inconsistent with stuff like character names on top of having some pretty roughly translated sections. Doesn't have a release date yet so hopefully the final product will be better.
