Steam Next Fest recommendations and game demos
Steam Next Fest is currently underway, lasting until March 2nd. Coincidentally, I had just been thinking a little while ago that I kinda miss game demos. About a month ago I came across a little twin-stick shooter called Minishoot' Adventures and ended up paying it more attention than any other random game I see that looks kinda cool, because they had a demo available. I installed it, played it for a couple hours, and instantly bought the full game once I was done. It's quite a good game, but they got my money primarily because the demo was able to hook me into making an impulse purchase, totally defeating my usual standard of decision-making about buying games.
For Next Fest, Steam is recommending me a deluge of indie 2D platformers and metroidvanias, and I'm not sure if that's because those are the games in development that tend to have demos or if Steam thinks that's all I'm interested in (spoiler - I'm not). So, have you discovered any truly noteworthy upcoming games in this year's Next Fest? Also, what was the last demo to win you over?
I was told to try out cursed words by a friend and I got hooked. It's satisfying to play, has a good number of systems it introduces as you unlock characters, and overall the game slots in perfectly with my need for something I can walk away from at any moment without issue.
I've done like 10 runs so far and I still have things in the demo to unlock along with some hinted-at secrets.
Steam keeps recommending me Survivor-likes because I like twin-stick shooters and roguelikes. I don't enjoy Survivor-likes (too much meta-grinding and luck manipulation for builds and weapon synergies and non-interactiveness in the actual gameplay and having to search some wiki for the stats and weapon paths and blah blah blah).
Haven't had a chance to do a deep dive into demos yet (plan to do that Saturday and update with another comment then), but currently I'd say Voidling Bound has my interest. Third-person shooter (controls like Risk of Rain 2?) with monster raising and a hub/mission format kinda like Warframe (speed loot everything for resources and complete the objective, then spend the loot on upgrades and unlocking new mons to level up too). Ended up with a fast-firing pyro DoT mon that melted things as long as I could tap reload before overheating, though I did decide to stop so I could test the other demos out.
Might keep an eye on, might not impressions
PRAGMATA: Capcom's Sci-Fi Third Person Shooter with hacking. Dodge enemies, hack them to expose their weakpoints, then fire away. The hacking system definitely feels made for controller. Regening ammo for the base pistol while the subweapon pickups are meant to be used ASAP. Liked the gameplay flow and completing the demo adds stuff like counterattacks so I'm intrigued in how the finished game feels. Demo's story is generic, but here's hoping they'll have something passable. Pretty short demo: Opening, get the 3 locks, boss fight.
People of Note: Music themed RPG with action commands and a BP recovery system. The skill customization seems to have potential, but the game kinda throws you into Chapter 2 which isn't exactly the best first impression for flow or pacing: lots of running around and gathering info from NPCs before getting to the dungeon.
The Eternal Life of Goldman: Metroidvania that is very beautifully animated with pogo-jumping being the main interaction. It's also kinda dark? Visually it's bright, but the opening sequence is a forest fire where 2 animals burn in agonizing pain before the action actually starts, all the children there are mentioned to have died in the fire after the level is over, the first 2 minibosses writhe in pain when they're struck; just kinda a overall vibe thing where I don't think I personally want to engage further. Had a few frame dips at times, control is stuck to control stick instead of d-pad, and the cane customization requires opening a mini-menu to swap between parts as obstacles come up. Still, it did leave an impression.