Steam Next Fest: what have you been playing?

Balatro Is the star of the show for me, and has done a pretty decent job of building thr hype train with time limited demos each with they own set of modifiers and power ups while still using the same poker based gameplay loop. I have a good feeling about this one.

I tried the very short demo for Pacific Drive and as a fan of survival/scavenging games as well as STALKER, this fits my tastes pretty well. Driving around in a half scrap-metal car, avoiding anomalies and radiation, scavenging materials from wrecks and abandoned shelters, and spending all that on repairs and upgrades to do it again, but better. The UI is a bit scattered all over with different bindings for various interactions but it probably wouldn't take more than a few hours to get comfortable with it.

8/10 demo, hopefully the game is even better as what's on offer right now is VERY limited.

I've been playing the Abiotic Factor demo. It's massive, like 4+ hours of content.

It's a single-player or co-op survival game where you (and your friends) play as legally distinct Half Life-esque scientists in a legally distinct Black Mesa facility on the day when everything goes wrong.

The facility is massive with lots of interior variety all done up in a "early PC gaming but with nicer shaders" style that's easy on the eyes. I usually bounce off of survival games but the mix of nostalgia, solid gameplay mechanics taken from all over the survival/action/RPG/sim gamut, and Nakatomi Space-style exploitation of pre-built interiors is really engaging. The demo also takes you down some really surprising paths that are worth it for the "am I still playing the same game?" factor.

Quite interested in Lightyear Frontier
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677110/Lightyear_Frontier/
Looks like its a 3D Stardew Valley on alien planet piloting big mech robot?
I have a soft spot for Stardew Valley inspired games, so I enjoying the demo (there some quirks, like there no clear explanation of game mechanics and games feels not quite polished), but so far it looks interesting and enjoyable. Also, I`m not sure why but vibes and graphics reminds me about Journey to Savage Planet that I finished year or two ago. Which I quite like.
Upd: I know that Stardew Valley was inspired by Harvest Moon.

Tribes 3

It's currently in public alpha until the 12th. Very unpolished as can be expected, but still very fun to play Tribes again... I haven't been so amped during a game session for a long time. It was one of my favorite games way back in the day playing on a Voodoo2 and I've put countless hours into every game in the franchise. I'm playing as much of the alpha as I can for now, and excited to see how it will develop later on.

Zet Zillions

This is a game that introduces itself by having you shoot a bunch of clones, labeled "Trash" in-game, out of your planet-ship cannon at other planets to break down their armor and overwhelm them at which point the demo deck's signature card is to destroy all the launched clones for massive damage. Your 3 lieutenants are the shark-toothed captain who is seen standing atop the cannon at all times during gameplay, a mad scientist dinosaur who gathers all sorts of hilariously dangerous fauna and flora to add to the deck, and what I assume to be a cheerful telepath who's in charge of brainwashing any resistance that they can't outright kill.

The game's style just speaks to me, enough that I'm convinced to grab the dev's previous game Wolfstride.

Well this is a 3-energy deckbuilding roguelite so what are the differences in gameplay?

• The galaxy map is FTL style, with all the nodes and their connecting paths visible when hovering over and a powerful enemy force that steadily covers the map and prevents backtracking.
• In addition to the HP bar, there's a stun meter represented by filling the enemy's population number with Trash. Naturally some cards interact with it, some enemies (the Planets) can be won against by filling their stun meter to gain bonus rewards, and some enemies don't have a stun meter at all which necessitates the need to determine the focus and balance of your deck.
• Draw 5 per turn, no hand discard on turn end, hand limit 7. Card draw can be severely limited from not being able to play your cards or not having the right scenario for the hand so discard effects are important and there's a fusion mechanic that allows for combining cards in hand together though learning what happens or what's possible needs some experimentation though it's thankfully recorded in the in-game encyclopedia.

Meta-Ghost: The Breaking Show

Isometric action roguelite with light attack, heavy attack, defensive skill, and ultimate skill. It's a cyberpunk gameshow where contestants are sent in to fight robots for cash money while obviously shady sponsers manipulate things behind the scenes and blah blah blah we've all seen this.

What sets this apart from the rest is that perks and relics drop like candy. Almost every room guarantees some sort of boost which can be built upon and synergized with right from the get-go; no useless filler rooms, no meekly wandering around with crap damage for the entire run's start. Even the money-only rooms can be cashed-in in the shops en-masse with a few shop refresh tokens.

There are 2 meta-currencies for a global skill tree and per-character customization, but thankfully they're rewarded just for playing instead of like other games that would force you to pick between meta-currency or empowering your run.

QUIT TODAY

Beat-em-up about an company worker whose robot co-workers are trying to kill him because they think he's quitting so he decides to quit for real after working his way through each department. The interesting part is how the result of each room offers a choice between 2 upgrades. Air combos or ground combat? Eat faster or heal more from food? Even the intro scene offers a hidden choice of button mashing out of bed to get a 40% movement boost or hitting snooze and sleeping in to get an additional point of max HP.

Balatro was more of the same - new Jokers, Bosses, a new booster deck - which isn't an issue since the base it's on is just that good.

#DRIVE Rally... is a arcade rally game which completely failed to grab me both due to the lack of a damage model (or system) and the do-driver just... not really doing his job? I swear he spent more time whining about me hitting stuff than calling corners.

Extreme Formula is a cool game, seems pretty difficult, UI is kind of dispersed and small so I can't tell if my boost stopped for no reason or because I'd run out and when I look I had some back, but I'm fairly sure from this point on everything I'm playing is gonna feel worse just because it's too much for the Deck. Low preset does give a fairly stable 60 FPS. I'll have to try more later.
Edit: yeah, seems like it's one tap = one part of the boost, also while lowest usually gives a stable 40 FPS, one of the tracks has a off-road segment with dust kicking all over the place, drops FPS down to 12, so it bought back that playing BL2 at near single-digit framerate playstyle. Actually unrelated to the framerate issue is that difficulty seems... random? Now, I did like 4/5 races so sample size of lol, but Normal had me at abouth 20th, while Extreme had a 1st, and a 12th. that doesn't seems like how it should be.

William and Sly is fairly close to what I'd expect of bringing the flash game into 3D, big issue being the controls basically being Racing Tank Controls if it makes sense?
Like, left stick is forward/backwards, going slightly to the sides act as you expect- FW/BW a little to the left/right- but going I'd say about 45° away from up/down stops you and turn in that direction. But then right stick is free camera control.
It works here if you're in the zone, using Sly's sheer speed and jump (you straight up can scale mountains by jumping up them like 5 times in the demo area, I think the full game area has a BIG mountain in it if it's not actually out of bounds) you can rush through the world incredibly quickly and if you need a sharper turn you can always turn the camera and it does work I swear it does, it's just hard to explain well.
Also like I said above, it does poorly on Deck, only two performance levels, on Low at 30 FPS it holds a fairly stable framerate, more than good enough for what it is.
With all this said I'm still getting on Deck, but if it comes to PS5 I might buy it there too...

Synthalgia seems to be a Outrun clone with boost and slowmo, and a one hit wonder, looks nice, doesn't run that well on Deck it seems, but not my style so take all of that with a grain of salt.

Last game in this initial lineup is Pacific Drive. The game is fun (having to care for a car instead of a bunch of gauges is definitively a great twist on survival crafting on its own, nevermind adding extraction mechanic) and even the horribly mangled Steam Deck experience was fun.
And I mean mangled, this is an atmospheric game, so things like rain not actually getting on the windshield and tree spawning in right in front of you are an issue.
With everything on low (including some options which didn't move with the gamepad, had to use touchscreen), it goes back and forth between 20 and 30 while driving, and 30 in the auto shop (from what I've seen in the trailers- and my first gateway escape- it can get hectic, and it's been a while since I played BL2 at a strictly sub 30 framerate). Do note that since some of the important things to read and understand are affected by Texture Quality, it's hard to read both the roadmap and the minimap, car status, the research station screen, etc.
On top of all this, it went through 70% of the battery in nearly the whole drive.
I do like what I've seen, so I'm getting it on PS5.

I’ve been enjoying TerraTech Worlds. It’s a spiritual successor to TerraTech, which itself seems mostly a sandbox proof of concept (although I’ve never played it).

It’s an open world crafting sandbox type game where you build your vehicle from parts. You can either print parts at your base from raw resources that are collected from nodes scattered across the map, or attack other bots and collect their parts to modify your own vehicle.

This demo feels like there are still a few areas where it could do with a polish. I think interacting with the UI, I’ve made a few assumptions about how to do something, or I haven’t been able to quickly do some action that I wanted to. Definitely feels a little clunky, but overall it’s most of the way there.

The harvesting and combat and driving around are very polished and I’m having a great time! I’m hoping that there are ways in future to upgrade the reactor, because at the moment it feels slightly too much of a limit, but then again with some parts reducing the reactor costs of attached items, maybe it’s going to be less of a problem down the line.

I’m also a fan of the automation that’s in place, but there’s very little fine control over the automation, so I don’t think I see myself using it other than for bulk processing of resources.