Steam Next Fest February 2024 ranked

1 to 3 are day 1
4-12 are looks good wishlisted
13-26 not fully convinced/wait for big sale
27-30 you would have to pay me

Other fest lists
February 2023
June 2023
October 2023

Various miscellaneous demos

I loved everything about it. Very excited to play more of this.
A very solid top-down metroidvania. I think I liked every part of it, but I really loved how I found some cursed shrine to give a negative effect until I killed x enemies and then got a reward. I hope there are more like this in the full game. I hope I have the time to play their other games first.
I should really play post void. This might be a bit too simple since I didn't really feel the 10 second timer at all, and I just kept going forward. Hardcore makes you feel it a bit more, but I only did 10 floors at that difficulty. I wish they figured out a way to make bosses keep the timer too, since it feels awkward now with how easy they are.
It is extremely short, but you can get a good idea of what the game will be like. I was expecting more open deductions but it seems like a nice time, if even a bit simple.
Cheating a little bit because I played the demo before next fest but the gist is the same. It really is good and we need less StS-likes. I'm just not sure when I'll be in a huge roguelike mood and poor timing with release date.
It plays like a mix of what I imagine Gunvolt is like and a Mega Man game. It's very fun to try and keep your combo up for the entire stage, and it looks like there are 4 other forms to experiment with. I am excited to see how it turns out.

7

Yeah, this one is weird. I loved how the XP system to get skills is your healing items, and it looked like there were some interesting skills. I stopped playing pretty quickly to save it for the full game. The only nitpick I had was that each time you got a new item your default changed.

8

I initially thought this would be a miss, but it ended up working for me. Combat is nothing special, especially before you get your stick, but nearly everything else was great. Maybe it's just nostalgia carrying it for me, but I stopped exploring in Chapter 1 pretty quickly since I wanted to save it for the full game.
Nice little game where you're trapped in a circle and forced to hit back bullets while enemies continuously circle you. You can't just spam attacks because there is a cost, and it really works in making you want to try one more run. Has a leaderboard too if you want to go hard. I tried out some trials, which are kind of like a specific challenge for each character, which seems to be 8. Otherwise, there really isn't much to this, so it relies entirely on you wanting to go again, and it seems like a great game to play in between others..
Very short demo, and they even incentivize going for better times. Zooming to corners is great, but I'm still a bit wary of how far they can take it.
In the end, it's really just more toree. I liked the more recent ones over how 1 and 2 were like, and this follows in the same vein. 
I am not nearly good enough to finish this in a reasonable time. I got to three phases of increasingly harder bullet patterns and amount on screen. I wish I could play with controller, but it's just a small complaint.
It's for sure interesting, and I'm going to wait to see how it turns out. Sadly I had a big issue with the demo. Even after setting up the controller configuration, it would still say wildly different controls, so it was hard to understand what they did before inevitably dying and losing that life.
The performance is pretty bad, and it seemed like no matter what setting you use, there will be stutters and fps drops. I liked the two forms with their own abilities, and liked launching enemies into spikes, but I didn't get to a boss since I dropped it quickly after getting the freeze ability (way more stutters). Hopefully they can iron everything out because it's releasing so soon...
A few things look a bit rough, but they do say its heavily in production. I will say it feels weird how useless sprint is for platforming. At first, I tried to explore the entire island with no abilities and 1 jump, where sprint let me get to a couple of areas, but then I got walled by things that obviously needed more. I talked to some NPC that apparently I should have gone to first and got sent along the way to get a ground-pound jump and a second jump. After that, sprint was entirely useless and honestly the spear latch mechanic didn't see much use either. Maybe the new island in the full game will be better at that?
Yes, it looks and probably steals some stuff from Hollow Knight.
It's a very short demo, and there's barely anything to explore here. The combat is pretty great, and I liked going for better times with the boss challenge. The translation is very rough, which makes it a bit harder to understand the mechanics. Honestly, everything else felt lacking so it's really going to hinge on the boss fights. Hopefully they actually put more effort into the rest, but it could be good down the line.
There's multiple characters with seemingly different playstyles, which was cool, but I still don't really understand driver fusion. I kind of got annoyed when they showed two skill trees to update at the end of each run, though at least you don't need to grind for every character. Other than that, just a little bit of translations being off and my computer stutters a bit when something new happens.
It's pretty basic and maybe a bit too reliant on the upgrade system. Hooking to enemies doesn't seem to work for me sometimes, and dashing will cause you to overshoot some orbs. It feels like an incremental game with progression but decently enjoyable gameplay in between.
Decent enough boss rush, and I liked it because of the concept that it kind of forces you to live longer and just focus on dodging their attacks correctly. It might be a bit awkward to use dash + defend as a reflect, but it works. Hopefully they lean more into endurance fights.
There was a lot more humour than I expected, with most of it not landing for me. The weapons feel like clown versions, which I guess is what they're going for, but not exactly what I want. It's just one level and probably early but all the extra objectives they have for you are really nothing (walk up press E).
Obviously, it was very inspired by death's door. It's ok, just missing a lot of polish because I imagine it's early. Probably would have been better if they waited for another demo time.
It's just a personal issue, but I couldn't get into it. It's pretty cool how you can use a cheat die to change the values of nearly ANYTHING, and it looks great.
I got baited in by the trailer and music, call it my "The Bookwalker moment". It's a decent concept, and maybe I'll change my mind later, but it just didn't hook me in the game at all. 
A pretty standard action roguelite. The skills feel boring so far, and it's really just down to using your cds, dodge roll, and auto attack otherwise. Maybe if I'm ever in the mood, but it reminds me too much of Dead Cells without the level structure (I did not like Dead Cells). 
It was just disappointing after having high hopes for it. I don't really like the map or what most of the rooms look like. It seems to have big bugs, like no npc would ever talk to me, even though I saw the same one twice and then in the place called "hub." Sound effects still seem missing, and the music was either very quiet or I didn't hear anything. It needs some work, but it has potential if the other combat elements end up working well with the current fire. 
It's kind of like a rhythm game. I couldn't get too into it, but it could be nice as a spur-of-the moment pickup.
I suck real bad at doing the wall saplings. These games don't interest me too much unless I compete with some friends on scores. Going solo is kind of boring.

28

Amp

One short level that was shockingly easy. Maybe rail shooters aren't for me because I was pretty bored.
A very short tech demo. I figured they would show off a lot of climbing huge monsters, but you really just grab onto one to get to a higher area once. Kind of disappointing.

30

Not for me; press 1 or 2 the game.

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