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What are your favorite demos from Steam Next Fest?
For those of you that have been trying out different demos, have any stood out to you, good or bad? What's been your general experience with Next Fest, and how does this stack up to years past?
Have been rather disappointed in most the ones I have tried, but these seemed very promising:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1270580/Mind_Over_Magic/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2005160/Naheulbeuks_Dungeon_Master/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1759350/Space_Trash_Scavenger/
~20 years ago, when I was like 15 or 16, my internet friends and I were listening to a French audio series. Its author, "Pen of Chaos", was doing silly voices of his various generic fantasy characters going on a stupid quest to find a statuette that had to wrapped in ham. It was ridiculously fun, spawned several similar series ("Reflets d'Acide", "Les Aventuriers du Survivaure"), and was definitely a niche nerd thing to do. Because, who else than nerds could be listening to high fantasy parodies?
Then, somehow, it got popular enough to have comics (actually "bandes dessinées") and a novel. And now 20 years later, it's a series of videogames featured on Steam.
It's a bit weird when I think about it, it's really one of those things that shouldn't exist and yet does.
May have to try Space Trash Scavenger. From the video and pictures it almost looks like a Lego version of Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
It is nothing like HS, it is constructing your ship and it is fun.
I'm pretty excited for Dungeon Master, looks fantastic!
Stray Gods: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1920780/Stray_Gods_The_Roleplaying_Musical/
I've been following this game for a while so I was stoked to have a demo. I played it the other night and have some conflicting thoughts. The musical components are incredible top-tier execution and the voice acting is great, but I think the visual presentation is lacking. I hope they iterate on it. As-is I think they'll have a hit on their hands, but if they can spend some time improving the visuals and maybe expanding some of the dialogue/narrative moments I think they'd have something truly special and long-lasting.
I have a few other games on my to-play list that I haven't made it to yet:
I didn't realize Stray Gods had a demo! Definitely gonna check it out.
Lies of P is great. Solid length for a demo too. If you're used to FromSoft games—Bloodborne especially—it might take a while for things to click. It's more of a mix of Bloodborne and Sekiro mechanics, and it has its own rhythm.
I'll check it out, but I can't get over the fact that someone had the idea to do a dark and gritty reboot of Pinocchio and that somehow got made as a soulslike. Strange.
Excellent, can't wait to try it out. I'm a big fan of FromSoft, especially Sekiro and Bloodborne.
I tried out Echo Point Nova, and I had mixed feelings about it. As an avid Titanfall 2 player, I'm a sucker for movement shooters (shoutout Funke's YouTube channel), so this game appealed to me. I think it has potential to be really good, but it's pretty underbaked at the moment. Menus are really buggy, and the game is in sore need of some polish, but at its core, flying around the map and shooting enemies feels fun. If the lack of Titanfall 3 is an itch you need to scratch, (don't set your expectations too high, but) check it out. I will say as a final note that I think a lot of indie movement FPS are just... too fast. GTTOD also has this issue. They struggle to find the balance that Titanfall did between movement and shooting, and ultimately one comes to the detriment of the other. But check Echo Point Nova out if you're interested in this little genre. It's pretty fun.
I played Warhaven for a bit as well. I got killed multiple times by a guy named "Chivalry2AtHome," and I think that about sums up my experience with the game. It was alright, certainly not lacking for polish, but I don't know if I'll come back to it.
Lastly, I played Bomb Sworders with a friend. The controls are kinda confusing (might have skipped past a tutorial, not sure), but once we both figured it out, this one was pretty fun. Similar vibes to Stick Fight: The Game, if you've played it. There isn't a whole lot there at the moment, so we moved on after 20 minutes or so (counting the learning period).
I really liked Station to Station! A fun puzzler about connecting different locations with bonuses for combos
Gamepass made me admit to myself that I like JRPG's. I've been following Sea of Stars for a while, and they finally released their demo on PC. I'm pretty happy with it so far: the game is gorgeous and the battle system seems pretty engaging.
I have a couple personal nitpicks that I'm sure most people wouldn't actually mind:
Still gonna play it, and probably really enjoy it.
A couple games were on my radar because they're being developed/published by YouTubers
I love Next Fest. It's such a low barrier to getting exposed to games, and getting a really good idea of whether you'll like it. My biggest gripe is that Next Fest is only a week long, and demos tend to get taken down afterwards.
I do feel like this next fest has been pretty weak though.
I've been playing a bit of Paleo Pines. It's a bit over the top on cuteness but the game mechanics are similar to Stardew Valley. It feels pretty well built and one of the very few games on the Next Fest list to actually have native SteamDeck/Linux support.
Station to Station seemed lame and made me want to just play OpenTTD. You couldn't edit tracks or stations once they had been laid down and the devs seem to think that is part of the "challenge."
The one I enjoyed the most is Thronefall: it's a simplified tower defense with a lot of charm.
I haven't seen a single demo that caught my interest. I found a ton of amazing ones last nextfest but this one has just been meh. IDK if i'm just getting old and jaded or if it's just a blah year for games.