EDIT: Played two dungeons. This genuinely plays like a Mythic+ dungeon simulator, minus the elitism, gatekeeping and overall bullshittery you'd expect from the WoW community. I am watching this...
EDIT: Played two dungeons. This genuinely plays like a Mythic+ dungeon simulator, minus the elitism, gatekeeping and overall bullshittery you'd expect from the WoW community. I am watching this game with great interest.
Holy crap. I always thought that a multiplayer co-op/online dungeon crawler with WoW-like action bar based combat and minus the massively multiplayer bullshit would be a billion dollar idea that would basically kill the modern MMORPG. Nice to see someone finally executing this idea.
Sorry to assume the worst, but when the game releases and grows a larger community surely there's still risk of this right? Or what aspects of the game design might exist that prevent this from...
This genuinely plays like a Mythic+ dungeon simulator, minus the elitism, gatekeeping and overall bullshittery you'd expect from the WoW community. I am watching this game with great interest.
Sorry to assume the worst, but when the game releases and grows a larger community surely there's still risk of this right? Or what aspects of the game design might exist that prevent this from happening? I hear a lot of the issue with M+ in WoW has to do with losing progression in the keys system upon failure.
I intended to try out the game during this next fest, but as more of a FFXIV player whos friends aren't really talking about this game, I wish I knew a few WoW players or something to jump into this with.
Also, even with the understanding that there's not a whole ass MMO with all the other mainstays of the genre built around this dungeon-game, I still think being hero based is going to cause this game major problems in having staying power. People get attached to their characters. Even if you wanna laser-focus in a single aspect of modern MMOs and make a standalone game out of it, it's going to be so hard to get people to let go of making their own characters. I genuinely have a small part of me that looks at this aspect and expects it to be the game's downfall no matter how good it could be otherwise.
Edit: I also wish they would've gone with an art direction further apart from WoW but it is what it is.
It won't because Mythic+ and progression raids don't have a solo queue of their own in WoW. You're reliant on in-game and third-party tools to form premade groups. I also assume that unlike M+ you...
It won't because Mythic+ and progression raids don't have a solo queue of their own in WoW. You're reliant on in-game and third-party tools to form premade groups. I also assume that unlike M+ you can jump in at any difficulty level you've unlocked in Fellowship rather than risking having to deplete and weaken keys. I may be wrong...
Some other things I like about Fellowship:
DPS and healing meters are baked into the baseline game, no addons required.
Mouseover spell targeting is enabled by default. For Retail WoW you have to go into the settings menu, for Classic you need third party addons or dedicated macro buttons for each of your spells to achieve the same effect.
The tutorial does a far better job at explaining the game's core mechanics than the Proving Grounds scenario did. But it DOES seem to pigeonhole players into playing tank.
I do hope that the choice of heroes and dungeons evolves a lot by the next open beta period, or by launch.
I played a pair of dungeons. I had to play DPS cause I jumped in with some guys who were already playing the two support roles. I tried both of the DPS heroes but wasn't a big fan of either one,...
I played a pair of dungeons. I had to play DPS cause I jumped in with some guys who were already playing the two support roles. I tried both of the DPS heroes but wasn't a big fan of either one, which pushes me to wanting to play tank or healer, next time I play. From what I'm hearing the reverse of the typical mmo problem is happening, queues are genuinely waiting for DPS players for some reason.
Tanks are perpetually scarce no matter the MMO so this is not a bad thing per se. Plus all the furries seem to flock to the healer to the point there's an overrepresentation of the healer class....
Tanks are perpetually scarce no matter the MMO so this is not a bad thing per se.
Plus all the furries seem to flock to the healer to the point there's an overrepresentation of the healer class. Specifically Sylvia.
Not having enough DPS is a good problem to have.
And having group targeting, zone targeting, and interrupt targets under quick hotkeys is a quality of life feature and then some. It just makes it handle better. I highly recommend binding the last button in the input section too, so you can quickly set an interrupt targets and execute the interrupt.
The only thing I'm actively missing is threat meters. Between all those built in meters, threat is sorely missing and the difference between losing and lost threat is razor thin.
As a did with kids, Erenshor is super exciting. I'm hoping that I can pick it up after it releases. I've been checking in on the development occasionally and it looks great.
As a did with kids, Erenshor is super exciting. I'm hoping that I can pick it up after it releases.
I've been checking in on the development occasionally and it looks great.
Steam Next Fest is here! I'm probably gonna try Solarpunk and Wanderstop (the next game by the Davey Wryden, the guy who made Stanley Parable). Anyone have any recs?
Steam Next Fest is here! I'm probably gonna try Solarpunk and Wanderstop (the next game by the Davey Wryden, the guy who made Stanley Parable). Anyone have any recs?
A quick writeup for some of the games I've played so far before bed: Wanderstop by far is the most memorable demo I've played so far, I wrote about it here. Maybe I'm a bit biased though because...
A quick writeup for some of the games I've played so far before bed:
Wanderstop by far is the most memorable demo I've played so far, I wrote about it here. Maybe I'm a bit biased though because I'm pretty in love with The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide.
I really wanted to like SolarPunk because I like the themes of the genre a lot, but also it feels pretty uninspired? I've played a LOT of survival games and it felt really long and not too exciting.
Afterblast is a roguelike doom-like game that feels fast and oddly slow at the same time. The default weapons that they give you are really slow to kill most of the enemies compared to Doom's shotguns, and the execution mechanic they built into the game feels really slow too. The first boss takes forever to kill unless I'm missing something, and I bounced off of it super fast.
I kinda like Streetdog BMX but it feels like a worse version of Session, Skate, or even Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It's alright, I think I'm just not great at the genre.
I'm not even gonna link Human Fast Food, it's not great. It feels like an asset flip and not too inspired.
I played Fellowship with some friends the other day and really enjoyed it, we have an active thread above for it! I enjoyed it a lot.
I'm a bit of a sucker for deckbuilders and I have a passing enjoyment of basketball, so Clutchtime: Basketball Deckbuilder was pretty fun! It took a second for it to click, but once it did I made a run or two and enjoyed it for what it was. It kinda plays a bit more like an autobattler to be honest, but I enjoyed it. Would recommend if you like deckbuilders, it's definitely unique.
I'm still gonna try and hit the Monaco 2 Demo and some other ones with friends, but Monster Hunter Wilds is upon us so I might not get to them!
Wanderstop is the main one for me. Davey Wreden + music by C418 instantly piques my interest, and playing the demo it seems like it's going to be great. The Talos Principle: Reawakened probably...
Wanderstop is the main one for me. Davey Wreden + music by C418 instantly piques my interest, and playing the demo it seems like it's going to be great.
The Talos Principle: Reawakened probably didn't need to happen, but I appreciate some of the little things from The Talos Principle 2 coming to the original. If you find all the stars in the demo and play the extra level you'll discover probably the biggest quality-of-life feature of them all.
I'ts not all roses, I still dislike the graphical sidegrade from switching to Unreal.
TAA plus upscaling (doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off?) leads to blurry artifacts while moving, which you do a lot of in a puzzle platformer.
Reflections are screen-space, which is incredibly obvious when you have trees in-between you and water.
BLOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM
That said, I'm still going to play it. Talos will always have a special place in my heart. Its story has no right being that good for the team that built it, and I hope that this remaster brings it to a wider audience.
I am shocked at the amount of hentai, asset flips and blatant uses of AI slop. Obviously not going to be linking any of those games here, but here are a few that have caught my eye: Streetdog BMX...
I am shocked at the amount of hentai, asset flips and blatant uses of AI slop. Obviously not going to be linking any of those games here, but here are a few that have caught my eye:
Streetdog BMX may tide me over until the next Tony Hawk's game announcement pops up. I am willing to give any competently made extreme sports game that scratches the THPS or Skate itch a shot.
Finnish Pub Simulator is a weird one. I've never been to Finland let alone any of their bars, but this looks like a shady diner you'd find in a small US town, not in the Finnish countryside. All that really seems Finnish about this game are some of the beer names and the use of the Markka as a currency (it's set in the early 90's, before Finland adopted the Euro.) The game deliberately looks low-poly and like complete ass.
Genokids seems to be a Devil May Cry style action-adventure game where you play as a musical band that has to fight off an alien invasion. Absolutely love the aesthetic and character designs. Easily a standout game from Next Fest, but I do worry that it's going to bring nothing new to the table.
I feel like Lone Soul is trying way too hard to be Hades, but with a lack of polish, lower-quality cutscenes and generally just looking like one of those shitty MOBAs you'd see released in the early 2010's.
Bad Cheese seems like one of those elaborate creepypasta-inspired shitpost horror games that only came into existence because Steamboat Willie was about to enter the public domain and people just really like to stick the middle-finger to Disney. This is actually one of those games that I'm very surprised Disney haven't gone after (just because Steamboat Willie is public domain doesn't mean that the Mickey Mouse trademark is free use), because there are elements that are very blatantly inspired by more modern Mickey designs.
Microvania may just be the most blatant low-res Metroid knock-off I've ever seen (bounty hunter, alien world, morph ball power-up.) It graphically looks like it was built for the Pico-8, yet is obviously bigger in scope than that imaginary console would allow.
Lilac 0 gives me serious Ikaruga/Radiant Silvergun vibes, and despite bullet-hell shooters being nothing new, it may just be the most interesting game of this year's Next Fest.
I saw ManlyBadassHero play the "Bad Cheese" demo. That one seems to have a lot more thought and effort put into it compared to most such games trying to make a quick/cheap buck off some big name...
I saw ManlyBadassHero play the "Bad Cheese" demo. That one seems to have a lot more thought and effort put into it compared to most such games trying to make a quick/cheap buck off some big name IP going public domain. It has pretty strong themes of living in an abusive household, and the overall game design is pretty good. I think the game could stand on its own even if the character design wasn't derived from Mickey Mouse.
I was pretty dismayed opening that link, seems like all good things must come to an end. I really hope steam starts regulating this slop before it loses credibility as a store. I can't think of...
I was pretty dismayed opening that link, seems like all good things must come to an end. I really hope steam starts regulating this slop before it loses credibility as a store. I can't think of the last time i checked out the new releases section because its almost pointless with all the asset flips these days.
Genokids and Street Dogs look great, thanks for sifting through those lists.
My friend and I (almost, one level left) finished the RoadCraft demo. It's a new game by the Mud/Snowrunner developers (top tier games imo). We had a great time, couple of minor desync issues, but...
My friend and I (almost, one level left) finished the RoadCraft demo.
It's a new game by the Mud/Snowrunner developers (top tier games imo).
We had a great time, couple of minor desync issues, but the game was really fresh and a novel experience. I'm really excited to see the full game!
I really enjoyed this one too. I am a huge snow runners fan, though I will say that I haven't finished many of the maps in snow runners as they do start to feel tedious after a while. I just like...
I really enjoyed this one too. I am a huge snow runners fan, though I will say that I haven't finished many of the maps in snow runners as they do start to feel tedious after a while. I just like how different a game it feels from anything else out there.
I had SOME hesitation on first load into the game. No fuel felt like something less to manage. In snowrunners you'd have to manage how you are using awd or diff lock to preserve fuel mileage, and I liked the having to create support fuel drops around maps, especially ones with no gas stations on it. I liked the thought of dynamic 'missions' as you run out of fuel with a cargo load etc. But the more I thought about it, in snowrunners I would so stuff like go to trailer drop offs, get a new tanker, fill up, trade it off for the flatbed. I also didn't finish a lot of maps that were low fuel at all, as in practice, doing all that stuff started to get very tedious and didn't offer a lot of gameplay. With it out of your mind in roadcraft I was like, hrm, I miss thinking about it but I am feeling happier to not worry about it. One of those things that in my head seems to add a lot but once it's gone I don't miss it, so really good decision.
Another thing I was thinking about was missing truck attachments. I really did enjoy slapping different parts on the truck to customize it for the current mission to do. And this became another HOWEVER, in practice, you'd pick the most stable high HP truck that could carry your needed attachment and just take that. It was often a game of figuring out that your truck you were driving is to tippy with whatever crane you might have put on it and you can't use them together. I also imagine from a design point of view this was a nightmare to balance out the physics of different trucks to support all the different configurations.
So this was another in the end, I think this is the right design choice, now instead of the same truck and different attachments, they can have more different trucks that support different missions instead, and I think it'll get you into more trucks and have more variety without the system.
Controls felt pretty good, I like the changes to the winching system, where you right-click and aim at distinct winch points rather than playing spider man barreling down the road too fast to keep on balance. Crane commands feel much better, they are stronger on the controller, but mouse was pretty good after a little practice not making idle movements. I think they could make a touch of improvement there by letting you rotate and go up/down with engaging the mouse movement for crane arm, maybe. Overall a good feel to it.
This game looks to have a stronger emphasis on using more varied trucks and doing more 'stuff' with the trucks. Building the road was very fun, drop sand with a dump truck, flatten sand with plow, drop asphalt with asphalt layer, steamroll to finish off the road. Laying down cable with a huge cable machine that leaves a nice lump behind it for where the cable is.
The ability to build bridges and roads feels like it will be really fun and while I was like oh no fuel logistics, I think it's more fun to cut down trees and make your own roads and bridges for logistics instead.
Snowrunners still exists with a ton of DLC and looks and plays great, so I really that this game has a new direction and feels like it will fit nicely alongside snowrunners. I think that I will get a lot more done in this game when I end up getting it than I did in snowrunners as well.
For networking, I had no problem for a 2 or 3 hour session with just one other person once we were connected. I had to reset my game when we first started to detect one another, but was fine after that. Feels very similar to how snowrunners was, I know people had major issues at 3 to 4 players in that, but I was always good with 2 player co op on it.
Hell yeah. I agree very much so with a lot of what you said. I know why people on steam are getting upset, but they aren't really thinking about it like you clearly have here. Especially with the...
Hell yeah. I agree very much so with a lot of what you said.
I know why people on steam are getting upset, but they aren't really thinking about it like you clearly have here.
Especially with the fuel and gear box stuff, it's not the focus of the game even. I can see how it might add to the core gameplay, and hell they might add something to hard mode (but I suspect it'll be more like making recovery more difficult, removing automation etc) but yeah, really it just adds padding to the core gameplay.
What I really like about this format is that it is clearly a multiplayer first format. The runner games were fun coop but like in reality you'd see each other once every 30 mins and maybe come rescue the other guy if they got stuck.
This format you can EASILY have 4 players working towards a common goal, doing multiple jobs. Even my buddy and I had a great time tag teaming the road building and commented on how cool it would be to have a 4 man squad to basically do the whole process in one go.
So yeah, I expect good things here. If they give us enough meaty missions on good maps (which they have done before) then I am gonna have a lot of fun.
Im surprised at the speed at which theyre pumping games/dlc out! I know its mostly because they are squeezing every dollar out of their sim tech but still impressive
Im surprised at the speed at which theyre pumping games/dlc out! I know its mostly because they are squeezing every dollar out of their sim tech but still impressive
If you're referring to the other Mudrunner game (Expeditions) my guess is that it's another team doing that game. It feels to me like Team A moved from Snowrunner to move to RoadCraft as the new...
If you're referring to the other Mudrunner game (Expeditions) my guess is that it's another team doing that game.
It feels to me like Team A moved from Snowrunner to move to RoadCraft as the new big project. There's a lot of ambition here and the tech is pretty impressive.
Expeditions has a few new toys but it's mostly a re-use of the Snowrunner assets/engine. I suspect it's a new team and product wanted to see if they could sell something more arcadey reasonably cheaply.
As for the DLC. They are mostly content and they have dedicated content team (making maps, models, missions, etc) so they do get them out quickly. The quality has always been really good IMO on the DLC (well ok I think a couple of the early Snowrunner DLC tried a few different things like one huge map or a bunch of tiny maps to experiment and some experiments failed, but it's great to see a company try rather than just pump out copy pasted shit).
So I hope they keep it up with this game.
FWIW they don't read steam or anything as far as I remember. They only really gather feedback from their ingame tool and discuss regularly on their own forums for feedback.
Anyone else noticing a bunch of Next Fest demos with very obviously AI generated store assets (banners, trailers) or sometimes even AI generated game assets? It's been sucking out a lot of the fun...
Anyone else noticing a bunch of Next Fest demos with very obviously AI generated store assets (banners, trailers) or sometimes even AI generated game assets?
It's been sucking out a lot of the fun I find in browsing the event.
I'm somewhat curious if this is a widespread pattern, or if it's just something going on with my recommendation algorithm that I can filter out.
So far this time I've played: Deck of Haunts - Interesting twist on the deckbuilder, where you play as a haunted house trying to grow yourself and kill/drive mad people who come to explore you....
So far this time I've played:
Deck of Haunts - Interesting twist on the deckbuilder, where you play as a haunted house trying to grow yourself and kill/drive mad people who come to explore you. There's not as much there yet as I'd like, it needs more card and room variety, but if they add that I think this could be one I'd buy.
River Towns - Very cool tile placement game with a town builder theme. Starts pretty simple and quickly gets pretty tough. You're trying to maximize contiguous districts while not running out of space to place your little tetromino-ish tiles, and snag map bonuses on the way. This is probably my favorite demo I've played so far, it's definitely going on the wishlist.
Other's that I'm watching but haven't played the demo for yet are:
Monster Train 2
Asgard's Fall
Wordatro!
DEMON DUST Found out about it in the underground GARDEN discord because a friend of the dev posted about it. That post also drew me to look at this Next Fest a little more. It's a survival...
Found out about it in the underground GARDEN discord because a friend of the dev posted about it. That post also drew me to look at this Next Fest a little more.
It's a survival horror/dungeon crawler with a weird FPS/point-and-click interface: you move yourself and the camera with wasd (plus qe for strafing), while the mouse is exclusively for interacting with whatever's currently in sight.
Enemies are built with this in mind, they're... vaguely humanoid unconnected slabs of flesh, some of it's static instead. Shoot all of those bits off to kill them, AFAIK hitting them anywhere else does nothing.
You also can't just have your gun out at all times since you're slowed to a crawl whenever you're using an item.
Between the control scheme and the atmosphere (it's very low-res, and dark. you do have a flashlight. it's not big, and strictly around your cursor), it's a great game, but probably one I won't buy (mainly 'cause I just don't handle horror well, and by that I mean collecting currency that was hidden basically jumpscared me).
The first game I played of this Fest, it's a basic district builder with a minimalist-ish Cyberpunk aesthetic. Also very cubic.
Place a block during the day, collect cash from your buildings each night, try to make to cash than the taxes you've gotta pay each week (that's all the cash is used for).
Things get interesting when effects and perks get involved, some things want to be connected in one way or another, others don't want to be near each other, some stuff wants to be above a certain layer, etc.
It's in the same vein as Dorfrokantik, basically. Just, y'know, cubes.
A Tabletop-styled tactics game, and by tabletop I mean it genuinely could be made as a boardgame, they already made it look like one, and the rules could be bought over with minimal change: gameplay alternates between you and the enemy, you get 6 AP to spend between 5 main actions (+ an action built up by defeating enemies), those actions can build off each-other (or the environment), for example:
The second level has cars as an hazard, and a couple of your actions stops enemies from moving, this coupled with the basic enemy "AI" can lead to some funny (and awesome feeling) moments.
An action moves you 3 spaces, dealing 2 damage to enemies in the way, but gives 1 AP back on KO, so if you have 2 enemies with 2 HP lined up, you get a free move, meanwhile enemies with 3/4 HP get dealt with for 2 AP instead of 4.
Meanwhile, the enemy AI seems to be simple (move as close as possible, if adjacent hit), not an issue for 1-on-1, but you'll often be outnumbered 5/10(/15) to... 1, so, y'know, get ready to fight in tight spaces if only because you're being swarmed.
Now, the twist: it's an autoscroller! I promise it's better than I make it sound: once about every 2 turns part of the stage will be marked (and a part that's out of bound will be marked green), after the enemy's turn the level "mutates" (their words) instantly knocking out anyone left behind on the red part of the stage (and making you lose if you were on it) and adding whatever section was colored green. Keep in mind, enemies will spawn wherever there's space, including that new bit of stage.
Now remember: you have 6 AP, and are very mobile (I think even the biggest the map's gotten can be crossed with 3 AP worth of movement), so it's more akin to a GM revealing the battlemap bit by bit while slowly (but steadily) forcing you to move forward.
Audio is fine, music is good if kinda generic (I admitedly don't know much about TMNT so it could fit with what the franchise does), sound effects are good, the "thock" of pieces landing and moving, repeated "twacks" for attacks, special mentions to the KO sound, extremely satisfying to hear trigger a lot in a few seconds.
So far I've only done 2/5 level in the demo, so there's probably more interesting stuff to use/deal with in there still.
Decided to actually play some demos this time. So far I've played through one, LocoMoto. Cozy game about managing a train with animals. My conclusion: I probably would've been all over this game...
Decided to actually play some demos this time. So far I've played through one, LocoMoto. Cozy game about managing a train with animals. My conclusion: I probably would've been all over this game as a kid. As an adult... I'm lukewarm to it. The gameplay seems mostly solid, I have some minor nitpicks (trying to pick up specific items can be tricky, which I found when I had to constantly reorient my character while trying to pick up narrow wallpaper rolls) but it feels polished compared to some similar games I've played. The customization in particular feels detailed. You build furniture for the train and it actually has specific types of wood which impacts the final appearance, which is pretty rare in my experience!
One of my main gripes: Maybe because it's the demo and I only had a maximum load of four passengers, but there's not much to do while waiting for the train to reach the destination. I could make hot cocoa for each passenger once, and that was it. I couldn't even talk to them after a couple times, they'd say they were tired. And I had one guy on my train for three whole stops as I carried out quests...
It seems like it'll be a good game, but a bit too low-key and slow for my own tastes as an adult. Again, if I were younger, I think the customization would have me hooked. As an adult, I just need a touch more substance, particularly with characters.
Played a second game! Monsterest, about running an inn for monsters. I played about an hour before stopping because I already decided I wanted it, and the release date is TBA so I didn't want to...
Played a second game! Monsterest, about running an inn for monsters. I played about an hour before stopping because I already decided I wanted it, and the release date is TBA so I didn't want to get too sucked into it. Which is funny because I spent most of the time just chopping wood and mining stone for crafting, and can tell I'll be spending a LOT of time just farming materials. I think part of it might be I like pixel art aesthetics a lot? It just feels charming.
My biggest problem was that the controls were a bit wonky because I'm playing on Steam Deck. I had to remap the left/right triggers because it would scroll through the inventory in the opposite directions. Also, using tools has you automatically swing it in the direction of the mouse cursor regardless of what direction you're facing, so I had to move the mouse cursor in that general direction. That got annoying pretty fast, but hey, it's a demo clearly made with a mouse in mind.
The one weird control that I think will also apply for PC players is that I interact with the A/"E" button, but when going to bed, I had to press B/"space" to select the sleep choice. I think I had to do that for a few choices, which is just odd to me.
One more for good measure tonight! Whisper of the House, a cozy pixel art game about decorating houses. I had to relaunch the first time because it got stuck on an eternal loading screen, but this...
One more for good measure tonight! Whisper of the House, a cozy pixel art game about decorating houses. I had to relaunch the first time because it got stuck on an eternal loading screen, but this demo has me hooked. The art style is nice, the furniture placement is pretty sensible, and the opening cut scene alone shows a lot of care by the developers.
One funny thing though, the reviews mentioned that they changed the first house. It has a secret that was originally MUCH darker, so some early reviews of the demo were negative since there was no content warning. They changed it to something a lot lighter, but... I actually kinda wish it was still there?? Look, I like dark and creepy twists, I can't play most horror games but the spooky locations in Pokemon and the like are my favorite. There's a reporter NPC who shows up at the house afterwards, too, which hints to me that they had (have?) plans for a darker underlying story for players to discover.
My ideal final version would be for them to include a toggle for a "dark mode" for more secrets like that one.
Have been browsing and looking for demos via Steam DB, they have a way to filter out those tagged as AI generative games: https://steamdb.info/sales/event/714486390316859705/?tagid=-1368160 Here...
Here are the ones that either looked up my alley or tried the demo and enjoyed.
Emissary Zero - Looks like a Lethal Company adjacent SCP type game that might be fun with some pals
The King is Watching - Roguelike with tower defense, colony building/management(?), haven't tried it yet but looks like something I'd end up replaying a lot
HASTE Broken Worlds - Had a lot of fun with this one. Takes a bit to get used to but very pretty game. Just the right amount of difficulty for me to want to retry and not just burnout. Satisfying to go fast and clear the harder levels.
Ruffy and the Riverside - Absolutely love the style of this one. Fairly Mario/banjo kazooie type gameplay with a mechanic twist. The character design, art, and music are dope, excited for the full version!
I didn't feel like there were that many standouts this Next Fest, or at least not in the kickstarter/day one purchase zone to me. At least some things still made my vibes list: Hypogea: 3D...
I didn't feel like there were that many standouts this Next Fest, or at least not in the kickstarter/day one purchase zone to me. At least some things still made my vibes list:
Hypogea: 3D Platformer. Its main gameplay draw is having a pole to use in conjunction with jumping which makes for a smooth rhythm, just working your thumb between square and X to pole-vault, grab ledges, and pseudo-double jump with the pole. There wasn't any dialogue, but I felt drawn in by its atmosphere.
Contract Rush DX: 2D Run and Gun. Has a Newgrounds feel to it, and it just felt good to chain slides and jumps together for momentum.
Skin Deep: FPS Immersive Sim. Not usually a genre I seek out, but this feels like it has its style put together, what with the boxy cats co-workers, dumping immortal enemy merc heads into the toliet/trash to dispose of them after knocking them out by jockeying them into the environment, and spacing yourself to get to other parts of the ship.
Inkborn: 3-energy Roguelike Deckbuilder. This one has a consistent paper theme to it, combo moves from playing card types in order, and the character sword relic gets upgrades every few battles. Just a nice package to it.
Reignbreaker: Hades-like, but with a self-described medievalpunk theme. Plays well enough, and some banter plays out before fights for that sense of character dialogue and development.
Keeping track of
Monster Train 2: 3-Energy Roguelike Deckbuilder. Yep, there's a sequel, the angels fell and have to team up with hell to fight against a new threat that's taken over heaven. Managed to win my first run here by virtue of Fury stacking.
Might keep an eye on
Cultivation Story: Infinite Sword Realm: 3-Energy Roguelike Deckbuilder. Some cards are very obviously lifted from Slay the Spire I feel, but it's going for the Cultivation feel, so why not? Let it have its fun. Some key differences though:
The boss relic equivalents are gained after leveling up from gaining EXP (hence the Cultivation part).
There's a lifespan number which is game over if it hits 0, but can be exchanged for other benefits. Basically another currency that has to be maintained.
The campsite equivalents have the option to remove a card instead of upgrading them. The towns/shops have the upgrade option, but it costs 100 currency per card upgrade.
No random events, or none I remember running into anyways.
Star Fire: Action roguelike. Form a build, numbers go up, mash skills on cooldowns and perfect dodge. It looks aesthetically cool even if it's not winning fine art awards.
Day of the Shell: Roguelike with X-Com cover and % chance to hit. Just one PC to control though and normal enemies attack every 3 turns.
Snowman Mo: Isometric adventure? I don't think the gameplay is that smooth so far, but Mo's dialogue options are pretty on point which is enough to get my attention despite that.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: Strategy RPG. From the Danganronpa & Zero Escape crew, though instead of murder mystery killing games, it's highschoolers getting press-ganged into fighting against demonic forces which is where the strategy RPG part comes in. I've only just finished the first team battle, so I can't judge it fully yet though the Danganronpa DNA is pretty clear.
Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo: Escape Room/Visual Novel. Amnesic teens, puzzle rooms based on their past/trauma, mystery, etc etc. Kinda wanna pay attention from the escape room angle, but I don't think it's really captured my attention properly.
Human Fast Food looks really good! I definitely have an fear and a bit of an ick about cannibalism in media in general so it might be a good exposure therapy thing for me
Human Fast Food looks really good! I definitely have an fear and a bit of an ick about cannibalism in media in general so it might be a good exposure therapy thing for me
I really enjoyed the first Monaco from a long time ago, so I’m excited to hear there’s progress on the sequel! Wishlisted already but not sure if I’ll have time to play it this week
I really enjoyed the first Monaco from a long time ago, so I’m excited to hear there’s progress on the sequel! Wishlisted already but not sure if I’ll have time to play it this week
First demo I grabbed and the only one I've yet played to completion is FUMES: oldschool car combat with an endless open world and roguelite progression. Loud, silly, crunchy car dogfights, a...
First demo I grabbed and the only one I've yet played to completion is FUMES: oldschool car combat with an endless open world and roguelite progression. Loud, silly, crunchy car dogfights, a decent variety of weapons and parts to loot from encounters, and a really good paintjob editor to boot.
Spoilers
Something the game didn't tell me is that once you lose a car, you lose all the parts, weapons and upgrades that you put into it, permanently. The game's difficulty curve does not really account for this, so even grinding back up to where you were is overly hard. I found a workaround for the later enemy waves and bosses by strapping 3 minethrowers onto a truck and playing tailgunner while they died in my wake, but I wish I could have got to the late stage of the game with the machine gun interceptor I was leveling up before it got blown to bits. Maybe that's just a demo thing, or something they'll figure out later on in development. Still fun, though. A simple yet engrossing system to play around in, and it seems like the devs know what they're doing.
Excited about Fellowship - basically WoW/MMO dungeon crawling without the MMO.
Fellowship link here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352620/Fellowship/
And trailer, courtesy of Tildes, for those who might be curious.
EDIT: Played two dungeons. This genuinely plays like a Mythic+ dungeon simulator, minus the elitism, gatekeeping and overall bullshittery you'd expect from the WoW community. I am watching this game with great interest.
Holy crap. I always thought that a multiplayer co-op/online dungeon crawler with WoW-like action bar based combat and minus the massively multiplayer bullshit would be a billion dollar idea that would basically kill the modern MMORPG. Nice to see someone finally executing this idea.
This is going on my wishlist!
Sorry to assume the worst, but when the game releases and grows a larger community surely there's still risk of this right? Or what aspects of the game design might exist that prevent this from happening? I hear a lot of the issue with M+ in WoW has to do with losing progression in the keys system upon failure.
I intended to try out the game during this next fest, but as more of a FFXIV player whos friends aren't really talking about this game, I wish I knew a few WoW players or something to jump into this with.
Also, even with the understanding that there's not a whole ass MMO with all the other mainstays of the genre built around this dungeon-game, I still think being hero based is going to cause this game major problems in having staying power. People get attached to their characters. Even if you wanna laser-focus in a single aspect of modern MMOs and make a standalone game out of it, it's going to be so hard to get people to let go of making their own characters. I genuinely have a small part of me that looks at this aspect and expects it to be the game's downfall no matter how good it could be otherwise.
Edit: I also wish they would've gone with an art direction further apart from WoW but it is what it is.
It won't because Mythic+ and progression raids don't have a solo queue of their own in WoW. You're reliant on in-game and third-party tools to form premade groups. I also assume that unlike M+ you can jump in at any difficulty level you've unlocked in Fellowship rather than risking having to deplete and weaken keys. I may be wrong...
Some other things I like about Fellowship:
DPS and healing meters are baked into the baseline game, no addons required.
Mouseover spell targeting is enabled by default. For Retail WoW you have to go into the settings menu, for Classic you need third party addons or dedicated macro buttons for each of your spells to achieve the same effect.
The tutorial does a far better job at explaining the game's core mechanics than the Proving Grounds scenario did. But it DOES seem to pigeonhole players into playing tank.
I do hope that the choice of heroes and dungeons evolves a lot by the next open beta period, or by launch.
I played a pair of dungeons. I had to play DPS cause I jumped in with some guys who were already playing the two support roles. I tried both of the DPS heroes but wasn't a big fan of either one, which pushes me to wanting to play tank or healer, next time I play. From what I'm hearing the reverse of the typical mmo problem is happening, queues are genuinely waiting for DPS players for some reason.
Tanks are perpetually scarce no matter the MMO so this is not a bad thing per se.
Plus all the furries seem to flock to the healer to the point there's an overrepresentation of the healer class. Specifically Sylvia.
Not having enough DPS is a good problem to have.
And having group targeting, zone targeting, and interrupt targets under quick hotkeys is a quality of life feature and then some. It just makes it handle better. I highly recommend binding the last button in the input section too, so you can quickly set an interrupt targets and execute the interrupt.
The only thing I'm actively missing is threat meters. Between all those built in meters, threat is sorely missing and the difference between losing and lost threat is razor thin.
Not quite the same thing, but reminds me of Erenshor which I've been following for a bit.
As a did with kids, Erenshor is super exciting. I'm hoping that I can pick it up after it releases.
I've been checking in on the development occasionally and it looks great.
I played some of it with my friends today, it's really fun! Would recommend if you have a group of 4. :)
Steam Next Fest is here! I'm probably gonna try Solarpunk and Wanderstop (the next game by the Davey Wryden, the guy who made Stanley Parable). Anyone have any recs?
A quick writeup for some of the games I've played so far before bed:
Wanderstop by far is the most memorable demo I've played so far, I wrote about it here. Maybe I'm a bit biased though because I'm pretty in love with The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide.
I really wanted to like SolarPunk because I like the themes of the genre a lot, but also it feels pretty uninspired? I've played a LOT of survival games and it felt really long and not too exciting.
Afterblast is a roguelike doom-like game that feels fast and oddly slow at the same time. The default weapons that they give you are really slow to kill most of the enemies compared to Doom's shotguns, and the execution mechanic they built into the game feels really slow too. The first boss takes forever to kill unless I'm missing something, and I bounced off of it super fast.
I kinda like Streetdog BMX but it feels like a worse version of Session, Skate, or even Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It's alright, I think I'm just not great at the genre.
I'm not even gonna link Human Fast Food, it's not great. It feels like an asset flip and not too inspired.
I played Fellowship with some friends the other day and really enjoyed it, we have an active thread above for it! I enjoyed it a lot.
I'm a bit of a sucker for deckbuilders and I have a passing enjoyment of basketball, so Clutchtime: Basketball Deckbuilder was pretty fun! It took a second for it to click, but once it did I made a run or two and enjoyed it for what it was. It kinda plays a bit more like an autobattler to be honest, but I enjoyed it. Would recommend if you like deckbuilders, it's definitely unique.
I'm still gonna try and hit the Monaco 2 Demo and some other ones with friends, but Monster Hunter Wilds is upon us so I might not get to them!
Wanderstop is the main one for me. Davey Wreden + music by C418 instantly piques my interest, and playing the demo it seems like it's going to be great.
The Talos Principle: Reawakened probably didn't need to happen, but I appreciate some of the little things from The Talos Principle 2 coming to the original. If you find all the stars in the demo and play the extra level you'll discover probably the biggest quality-of-life feature of them all.
I'ts not all roses, I still dislike the graphical sidegrade from switching to Unreal.
That said, I'm still going to play it. Talos will always have a special place in my heart. Its story has no right being that good for the team that built it, and I hope that this remaster brings it to a wider audience.
I am shocked at the amount of hentai, asset flips and blatant uses of AI slop. Obviously not going to be linking any of those games here, but here are a few that have caught my eye:
Streetdog BMX may tide me over until the next Tony Hawk's game announcement pops up. I am willing to give any competently made extreme sports game that scratches the THPS or Skate itch a shot.
Finnish Pub Simulator is a weird one. I've never been to Finland let alone any of their bars, but this looks like a shady diner you'd find in a small US town, not in the Finnish countryside. All that really seems Finnish about this game are some of the beer names and the use of the Markka as a currency (it's set in the early 90's, before Finland adopted the Euro.) The game deliberately looks low-poly and like complete ass.
Genokids seems to be a Devil May Cry style action-adventure game where you play as a musical band that has to fight off an alien invasion. Absolutely love the aesthetic and character designs. Easily a standout game from Next Fest, but I do worry that it's going to bring nothing new to the table.
I feel like Lone Soul is trying way too hard to be Hades, but with a lack of polish, lower-quality cutscenes and generally just looking like one of those shitty MOBAs you'd see released in the early 2010's.
Bad Cheese seems like one of those elaborate creepypasta-inspired shitpost horror games that only came into existence because Steamboat Willie was about to enter the public domain and people just really like to stick the middle-finger to Disney. This is actually one of those games that I'm very surprised Disney haven't gone after (just because Steamboat Willie is public domain doesn't mean that the Mickey Mouse trademark is free use), because there are elements that are very blatantly inspired by more modern Mickey designs.
Microvania may just be the most blatant low-res Metroid knock-off I've ever seen (bounty hunter, alien world, morph ball power-up.) It graphically looks like it was built for the Pico-8, yet is obviously bigger in scope than that imaginary console would allow.
Lilac 0 gives me serious Ikaruga/Radiant Silvergun vibes, and despite bullet-hell shooters being nothing new, it may just be the most interesting game of this year's Next Fest.
I saw ManlyBadassHero play the "Bad Cheese" demo. That one seems to have a lot more thought and effort put into it compared to most such games trying to make a quick/cheap buck off some big name IP going public domain. It has pretty strong themes of living in an abusive household, and the overall game design is pretty good. I think the game could stand on its own even if the character design wasn't derived from Mickey Mouse.
Genokids and Bad Cheese look like they're both right up my alley!
I was pretty dismayed opening that link, seems like all good things must come to an end. I really hope steam starts regulating this slop before it loses credibility as a store. I can't think of the last time i checked out the new releases section because its almost pointless with all the asset flips these days.
Genokids and Street Dogs look great, thanks for sifting through those lists.
My friend and I (almost, one level left) finished the RoadCraft demo.
It's a new game by the Mud/Snowrunner developers (top tier games imo).
We had a great time, couple of minor desync issues, but the game was really fresh and a novel experience. I'm really excited to see the full game!
I really enjoyed this one too. I am a huge snow runners fan, though I will say that I haven't finished many of the maps in snow runners as they do start to feel tedious after a while. I just like how different a game it feels from anything else out there.
I had SOME hesitation on first load into the game. No fuel felt like something less to manage. In snowrunners you'd have to manage how you are using awd or diff lock to preserve fuel mileage, and I liked the having to create support fuel drops around maps, especially ones with no gas stations on it. I liked the thought of dynamic 'missions' as you run out of fuel with a cargo load etc. But the more I thought about it, in snowrunners I would so stuff like go to trailer drop offs, get a new tanker, fill up, trade it off for the flatbed. I also didn't finish a lot of maps that were low fuel at all, as in practice, doing all that stuff started to get very tedious and didn't offer a lot of gameplay. With it out of your mind in roadcraft I was like, hrm, I miss thinking about it but I am feeling happier to not worry about it. One of those things that in my head seems to add a lot but once it's gone I don't miss it, so really good decision.
Another thing I was thinking about was missing truck attachments. I really did enjoy slapping different parts on the truck to customize it for the current mission to do. And this became another HOWEVER, in practice, you'd pick the most stable high HP truck that could carry your needed attachment and just take that. It was often a game of figuring out that your truck you were driving is to tippy with whatever crane you might have put on it and you can't use them together. I also imagine from a design point of view this was a nightmare to balance out the physics of different trucks to support all the different configurations.
So this was another in the end, I think this is the right design choice, now instead of the same truck and different attachments, they can have more different trucks that support different missions instead, and I think it'll get you into more trucks and have more variety without the system.
Controls felt pretty good, I like the changes to the winching system, where you right-click and aim at distinct winch points rather than playing spider man barreling down the road too fast to keep on balance. Crane commands feel much better, they are stronger on the controller, but mouse was pretty good after a little practice not making idle movements. I think they could make a touch of improvement there by letting you rotate and go up/down with engaging the mouse movement for crane arm, maybe. Overall a good feel to it.
This game looks to have a stronger emphasis on using more varied trucks and doing more 'stuff' with the trucks. Building the road was very fun, drop sand with a dump truck, flatten sand with plow, drop asphalt with asphalt layer, steamroll to finish off the road. Laying down cable with a huge cable machine that leaves a nice lump behind it for where the cable is.
The ability to build bridges and roads feels like it will be really fun and while I was like oh no fuel logistics, I think it's more fun to cut down trees and make your own roads and bridges for logistics instead.
Snowrunners still exists with a ton of DLC and looks and plays great, so I really that this game has a new direction and feels like it will fit nicely alongside snowrunners. I think that I will get a lot more done in this game when I end up getting it than I did in snowrunners as well.
For networking, I had no problem for a 2 or 3 hour session with just one other person once we were connected. I had to reset my game when we first started to detect one another, but was fine after that. Feels very similar to how snowrunners was, I know people had major issues at 3 to 4 players in that, but I was always good with 2 player co op on it.
Hell yeah. I agree very much so with a lot of what you said.
I know why people on steam are getting upset, but they aren't really thinking about it like you clearly have here.
Especially with the fuel and gear box stuff, it's not the focus of the game even. I can see how it might add to the core gameplay, and hell they might add something to hard mode (but I suspect it'll be more like making recovery more difficult, removing automation etc) but yeah, really it just adds padding to the core gameplay.
What I really like about this format is that it is clearly a multiplayer first format. The runner games were fun coop but like in reality you'd see each other once every 30 mins and maybe come rescue the other guy if they got stuck.
This format you can EASILY have 4 players working towards a common goal, doing multiple jobs. Even my buddy and I had a great time tag teaming the road building and commented on how cool it would be to have a 4 man squad to basically do the whole process in one go.
So yeah, I expect good things here. If they give us enough meaty missions on good maps (which they have done before) then I am gonna have a lot of fun.
Im surprised at the speed at which theyre pumping games/dlc out! I know its mostly because they are squeezing every dollar out of their sim tech but still impressive
If you're referring to the other Mudrunner game (Expeditions) my guess is that it's another team doing that game.
It feels to me like Team A moved from Snowrunner to move to RoadCraft as the new big project. There's a lot of ambition here and the tech is pretty impressive.
Expeditions has a few new toys but it's mostly a re-use of the Snowrunner assets/engine. I suspect it's a new team and product wanted to see if they could sell something more arcadey reasonably cheaply.
As for the DLC. They are mostly content and they have dedicated content team (making maps, models, missions, etc) so they do get them out quickly. The quality has always been really good IMO on the DLC (well ok I think a couple of the early Snowrunner DLC tried a few different things like one huge map or a bunch of tiny maps to experiment and some experiments failed, but it's great to see a company try rather than just pump out copy pasted shit).
So I hope they keep it up with this game.
FWIW they don't read steam or anything as far as I remember. They only really gather feedback from their ingame tool and discuss regularly on their own forums for feedback.
Anyone else noticing a bunch of Next Fest demos with very obviously AI generated store assets (banners, trailers) or sometimes even AI generated game assets?
It's been sucking out a lot of the fun I find in browsing the event.
I'm somewhat curious if this is a widespread pattern, or if it's just something going on with my recommendation algorithm that I can filter out.
I generally block adult only games to help a bit with it, but it seems to get past that too unfortunately :(
So far this time I've played:
Deck of Haunts - Interesting twist on the deckbuilder, where you play as a haunted house trying to grow yourself and kill/drive mad people who come to explore you. There's not as much there yet as I'd like, it needs more card and room variety, but if they add that I think this could be one I'd buy.
River Towns - Very cool tile placement game with a town builder theme. Starts pretty simple and quickly gets pretty tough. You're trying to maximize contiguous districts while not running out of space to place your little tetromino-ish tiles, and snag map bonuses on the way. This is probably my favorite demo I've played so far, it's definitely going on the wishlist.
Other's that I'm watching but haven't played the demo for yet are:
Monster Train 2
Asgard's Fall
Wordatro!
DEMON DUST
Found out about it in the underground GARDEN discord because a friend of the dev posted about it. That post also drew me to look at this Next Fest a little more.
It's a survival horror/dungeon crawler with a weird FPS/point-and-click interface: you move yourself and the camera with wasd (plus qe for strafing), while the mouse is exclusively for interacting with whatever's currently in sight.
Enemies are built with this in mind, they're... vaguely humanoid unconnected slabs of flesh, some of it's static instead. Shoot all of those bits off to kill them, AFAIK hitting them anywhere else does nothing.
You also can't just have your gun out at all times since you're slowed to a crawl whenever you're using an item.
Between the control scheme and the atmosphere (it's very low-res, and dark. you do have a flashlight. it's not big, and strictly around your cursor), it's a great game, but probably one I won't buy (mainly 'cause I just don't handle horror well, and by that I mean collecting currency that was hidden basically jumpscared me).
Neongarten
The first game I played of this Fest, it's a basic district builder with a minimalist-ish Cyberpunk aesthetic. Also very cubic.
Place a block during the day, collect cash from your buildings each night, try to make to cash than the taxes you've gotta pay each week (that's all the cash is used for).
Things get interesting when effects and perks get involved, some things want to be connected in one way or another, others don't want to be near each other, some stuff wants to be above a certain layer, etc.
It's in the same vein as Dorfrokantik, basically. Just, y'know, cubes.
TMNT Tactical Takedown
A Tabletop-styled tactics game, and by tabletop I mean it genuinely could be made as a boardgame, they already made it look like one, and the rules could be bought over with minimal change: gameplay alternates between you and the enemy, you get 6 AP to spend between 5 main actions (+ an action built up by defeating enemies), those actions can build off each-other (or the environment), for example:
Meanwhile, the enemy AI seems to be simple (move as close as possible, if adjacent hit), not an issue for 1-on-1, but you'll often be outnumbered 5/10(/15) to... 1, so, y'know, get ready to fight in tight spaces if only because you're being swarmed.
Now, the twist: it's an autoscroller! I promise it's better than I make it sound: once about every 2 turns part of the stage will be marked (and a part that's out of bound will be marked green), after the enemy's turn the level "mutates" (their words) instantly knocking out anyone left behind on the red part of the stage (and making you lose if you were on it) and adding whatever section was colored green. Keep in mind, enemies will spawn wherever there's space, including that new bit of stage.
Now remember: you have 6 AP, and are very mobile (I think even the biggest the map's gotten can be crossed with 3 AP worth of movement), so it's more akin to a GM revealing the battlemap bit by bit while slowly (but steadily) forcing you to move forward.
Audio is fine, music is good if kinda generic (I admitedly don't know much about TMNT so it could fit with what the franchise does), sound effects are good, the "thock" of pieces landing and moving, repeated "twacks" for attacks, special mentions to the KO sound, extremely satisfying to hear trigger a lot in a few seconds.
So far I've only done 2/5 level in the demo, so there's probably more interesting stuff to use/deal with in there still.
Neongarten was cool, I really enjoyed the demo and added it to my wishlist for sure.
Decided to actually play some demos this time. So far I've played through one, LocoMoto. Cozy game about managing a train with animals. My conclusion: I probably would've been all over this game as a kid. As an adult... I'm lukewarm to it. The gameplay seems mostly solid, I have some minor nitpicks (trying to pick up specific items can be tricky, which I found when I had to constantly reorient my character while trying to pick up narrow wallpaper rolls) but it feels polished compared to some similar games I've played. The customization in particular feels detailed. You build furniture for the train and it actually has specific types of wood which impacts the final appearance, which is pretty rare in my experience!
One of my main gripes: Maybe because it's the demo and I only had a maximum load of four passengers, but there's not much to do while waiting for the train to reach the destination. I could make hot cocoa for each passenger once, and that was it. I couldn't even talk to them after a couple times, they'd say they were tired. And I had one guy on my train for three whole stops as I carried out quests...
It seems like it'll be a good game, but a bit too low-key and slow for my own tastes as an adult. Again, if I were younger, I think the customization would have me hooked. As an adult, I just need a touch more substance, particularly with characters.
Played a second game! Monsterest, about running an inn for monsters. I played about an hour before stopping because I already decided I wanted it, and the release date is TBA so I didn't want to get too sucked into it. Which is funny because I spent most of the time just chopping wood and mining stone for crafting, and can tell I'll be spending a LOT of time just farming materials. I think part of it might be I like pixel art aesthetics a lot? It just feels charming.
My biggest problem was that the controls were a bit wonky because I'm playing on Steam Deck. I had to remap the left/right triggers because it would scroll through the inventory in the opposite directions. Also, using tools has you automatically swing it in the direction of the mouse cursor regardless of what direction you're facing, so I had to move the mouse cursor in that general direction. That got annoying pretty fast, but hey, it's a demo clearly made with a mouse in mind.
The one weird control that I think will also apply for PC players is that I interact with the A/"E" button, but when going to bed, I had to press B/"space" to select the sleep choice. I think I had to do that for a few choices, which is just odd to me.
One more for good measure tonight! Whisper of the House, a cozy pixel art game about decorating houses. I had to relaunch the first time because it got stuck on an eternal loading screen, but this demo has me hooked. The art style is nice, the furniture placement is pretty sensible, and the opening cut scene alone shows a lot of care by the developers.
One funny thing though, the reviews mentioned that they changed the first house. It has a secret that was originally MUCH darker, so some early reviews of the demo were negative since there was no content warning. They changed it to something a lot lighter, but... I actually kinda wish it was still there?? Look, I like dark and creepy twists, I can't play most horror games but the spooky locations in Pokemon and the like are my favorite. There's a reporter NPC who shows up at the house afterwards, too, which hints to me that they had (have?) plans for a darker underlying story for players to discover.
My ideal final version would be for them to include a toggle for a "dark mode" for more secrets like that one.
Have been browsing and looking for demos via Steam DB, they have a way to filter out those tagged as AI generative games: https://steamdb.info/sales/event/714486390316859705/?tagid=-1368160
Here are the ones that either looked up my alley or tried the demo and enjoyed.
Emissary Zero - Looks like a Lethal Company adjacent SCP type game that might be fun with some pals
The King is Watching - Roguelike with tower defense, colony building/management(?), haven't tried it yet but looks like something I'd end up replaying a lot
HASTE Broken Worlds - Had a lot of fun with this one. Takes a bit to get used to but very pretty game. Just the right amount of difficulty for me to want to retry and not just burnout. Satisfying to go fast and clear the harder levels.
Ruffy and the Riverside - Absolutely love the style of this one. Fairly Mario/banjo kazooie type gameplay with a mechanic twist. The character design, art, and music are dope, excited for the full version!
I didn't feel like there were that many standouts this Next Fest, or at least not in the kickstarter/day one purchase zone to me. At least some things still made my vibes list:
Hypogea: 3D Platformer. Its main gameplay draw is having a pole to use in conjunction with jumping which makes for a smooth rhythm, just working your thumb between square and X to pole-vault, grab ledges, and pseudo-double jump with the pole. There wasn't any dialogue, but I felt drawn in by its atmosphere.
Contract Rush DX: 2D Run and Gun. Has a Newgrounds feel to it, and it just felt good to chain slides and jumps together for momentum.
Skin Deep: FPS Immersive Sim. Not usually a genre I seek out, but this feels like it has its style put together, what with the boxy cats co-workers, dumping immortal enemy merc heads into the toliet/trash to dispose of them after knocking them out by jockeying them into the environment, and spacing yourself to get to other parts of the ship.
Inkborn: 3-energy Roguelike Deckbuilder. This one has a consistent paper theme to it, combo moves from playing card types in order, and the character sword relic gets upgrades every few battles. Just a nice package to it.
Reignbreaker: Hades-like, but with a self-described medievalpunk theme. Plays well enough, and some banter plays out before fights for that sense of character dialogue and development.
Keeping track of
Might keep an eye on
Cultivation Story: Infinite Sword Realm: 3-Energy Roguelike Deckbuilder. Some cards are very obviously lifted from Slay the Spire I feel, but it's going for the Cultivation feel, so why not? Let it have its fun. Some key differences though:
Star Fire: Action roguelike. Form a build, numbers go up, mash skills on cooldowns and perfect dodge. It looks aesthetically cool even if it's not winning fine art awards.
Day of the Shell: Roguelike with X-Com cover and % chance to hit. Just one PC to control though and normal enemies attack every 3 turns.
Snowman Mo: Isometric adventure? I don't think the gameplay is that smooth so far, but Mo's dialogue options are pretty on point which is enough to get my attention despite that.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: Strategy RPG. From the Danganronpa & Zero Escape crew, though instead of murder mystery killing games, it's highschoolers getting press-ganged into fighting against demonic forces which is where the strategy RPG part comes in. I've only just finished the first team battle, so I can't judge it fully yet though the Danganronpa DNA is pretty clear.
Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo: Escape Room/Visual Novel. Amnesic teens, puzzle rooms based on their past/trauma, mystery, etc etc. Kinda wanna pay attention from the escape room angle, but I don't think it's really captured my attention properly.
Havent tried any demos but looking at
Human Fast Food
Variable Puzzle
Urban Jungle
Human Fast Food looks really good! I definitely have an fear and a bit of an ick about cannibalism in media in general so it might be a good exposure therapy thing for me
I really enjoyed the first Monaco from a long time ago, so I’m excited to hear there’s progress on the sequel! Wishlisted already but not sure if I’ll have time to play it this week
I'm really wanting to try Monaco, I really enjoyed the first one!
First demo I grabbed and the only one I've yet played to completion is FUMES: oldschool car combat with an endless open world and roguelite progression. Loud, silly, crunchy car dogfights, a decent variety of weapons and parts to loot from encounters, and a really good paintjob editor to boot.
Spoilers
Something the game didn't tell me is that once you lose a car, you lose all the parts, weapons and upgrades that you put into it, permanently. The game's difficulty curve does not really account for this, so even grinding back up to where you were is overly hard. I found a workaround for the later enemy waves and bosses by strapping 3 minethrowers onto a truck and playing tailgunner while they died in my wake, but I wish I could have got to the late stage of the game with the machine gun interceptor I was leveling up before it got blown to bits. Maybe that's just a demo thing, or something they'll figure out later on in development. Still fun, though. A simple yet engrossing system to play around in, and it seems like the devs know what they're doing.