Ran through a bunch of them last night, my current standouts: Iron Nest - PVKK before PVKK. You're locked in this giant dieselpunk walking turret with barely any view of the outside, and have to...
Ran through a bunch of them last night, my current standouts:
Iron Nest - PVKK before PVKK. You're locked in this giant dieselpunk walking turret with barely any view of the outside, and have to plan out, calculate, and take your artillery shots from the diegetic tools the game gives you. Compared to most "plot things on a map and fire" games like the sub simulation genre, the game actually does the bulk of the calculating for you but make you do the task of entering it in the calculator. The quality of life highlight here is the diegetic notepad for taking important numbers like bearing and range from one station to another so you don't have to scramble back and forth while getting shot at by counter-battery fire. I could see someone modding a Warhammer 40K Titan into this game. And while it's singleplayer, what's there would make for an amazing base for co-op since the interior is quite roomy. I for one welcome this new sub-genre of artillery cannon simulators.
Drone Sector - So you liked the AC130 missions in Call of Duty? Here's an entire game of that. You get to equip a futuristic drone with weapons of your choice, and they take a while to aim so you can't just point and shoot at things at where you're looking immediately. To add to the multitasking, also have to switch up directing forces on the ground in between shooting at targets. Slight downside is how very chatty your drone operators are commenting on nearly every action and it can get grating.
Dust Front - Significantly polished than most Next Fest demos and takes a lot of things from the golden age of RTS, especially from Command & Conquer. Sounds have oomph and promising longevity wise with the procedural maps and non-linear campaigns. Pet peeve of mine is large-scale RTS games set to cooking show camera zoom, kept trying to zoom it out to AoE2 levels to see more of the battlefield because you control a lot of units and the map is quite big. Also had to cut my own playtime short due to the UI contrast. Everything is light grey, dark grey with red accents making it hard to see your own units against the background once you get enough of them.
End of Friday log. Been working my way downward in terms of game size for the sake of my harddrive (reached the 3.5GB game size zone now). Not many standouts to me, but I've also been ignoring...
End of Friday log. Been working my way downward in terms of game size for the sake of my harddrive (reached the 3.5GB game size zone now). Not many standouts to me, but I've also been ignoring anything with a Gen AI disclaimer on the basis that my steam library and backlog is large enough that I can completely go along my life without playing those.
Vibing
Kusan: City of Wolves: Like Hotline Miami gameplay-wise (top-down view, fast and bloody one-hit kills), but everyone is animal people and the protag has a powerfist, a reusable throwing knife that auto-targets the nearest enemy, and a firearm as a backup to counter gun enemies. In between missions is a shop to manage upgrades with an inventory grid-system. Definitely stylish with its soundtrack and the comic page cutscenes.
Keeping track of
Empire in Decay: Roguelike turn-based energy-deckbuilder chess, but the units have stats, autoattacks, and special effects and spell cards. The pieces can still capture normally unless a unit is armored in which case, it either needs to be captured multiple times or have enough damage to get rid of it. Won a run with the bleed faction by having the King be specced along the "heal units and deal damage whenever a bleed card is used" and a card that doubled its bleeding effect each time it was used in that combat.
AKIBA LOST: VN that reminded me of 428: Shibuya Scramble insofar as the live action shots and rotating between protagonists and making the right decision between them so everyone can make it through the time period (or I have a small reference pool). The demo only gets through the first time chunk (Day 1 8-12AM), so I'm admittingly putting my hope into it based on wanting something like 428 again.
Lou's Lagoon: It's an island exploring game where the MC basically gets a vacuum cleaner to suck up supplies and then repair things with it. Pretty chill time to just clean stuff up and do sidequests for vacuum upgrades.
Echoes of Mystralia: Isometric action roguelike with spell modifers as the powerup drops. Had a pretty good run where I had a bunch of fireballs with upgraded burn stacks tacked onto the boomerang, but I got too greedy in sacrificing HP for more modifiers which preemptively ended my run.
Edge of Memories: 3D action RPG. Character expressions feel a little jank to me, the demo has a lot of dead walking space, and the story so far is... basic? But I do like Soul Whisperer/therapist angle and Ysoris as a character, so I'm interested in seeing the rest of the game's spirit.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
False Hero: Soulslike, but learned enemy skills are assigned to your loadout and there's a focus on chaining them together to keep up the stagger tempo while gaining back the MP spent. Ended after a few attempts on the last(?) boss before deciding to move on to other demos.
Five More Minutes: Roguelike deckbuilder with cards using 4 energy types and decks based off of different retro game genres (read: Link, Leon S. Kennedy). Pretty interested in the aesthetic and there are opportunities to mix in cards from another deck type.
WILD Tactics: XCOM, but animal people and it's hero-based with the team having people they like and dislike working with. Only 3 people on a mission though.
PengPong: Survivorlike/Bullet Heaven, but it's toned down with the main weapon being a hockey stick that shoots out a bouncing puck and needing to wait for the puck to return to fire another shot. Won the run with a combination of crit-based, crits applying to status effects, and multiply shots with on-hit effects.
Songs of Glimmerwick: I only went up to the flutemaker from rushing through demos, but I really did feel the urge to just slow down with this one. Hoping the demo remains after the Next Fest is done.
The Severed Gods: Yeah this is basically in the style of Bravely Default except with a height zone system and Slay the Spire's map. Only played for a few minutes, but I guess I'm amazed at the audacity of it.
End of Saturday log, worked my way down to 1.3GB games. Honestly, it would've been better working my way up seeing how the smaller sized games are generally (but not guaranteed to be) well...
End of Saturday log, worked my way down to 1.3GB games. Honestly, it would've been better working my way up seeing how the smaller sized games are generally (but not guaranteed to be) well optimized.
Keeping track of
BREKEKEKEX: Plays like an anime arena fighter BUT with an over-the-shoulder camera and manually aiming attacks. Still suck at fighters, but I liked how it played and the vibe of the dialogue though I got skill-checked at the 3rd fight.
Takeover 2: Beat-em-up that feels old school and definitely took influence from Streets of Rage. Had a quick run to Stage 3, but I'm definitely interested if the demo remains.
Sojourn Past: 2D top-down adventure with bullet hell elements and a mysterious exploring vibe to it. The main attack is a 3-hit sword combo, but there's also the stunning smartbombs and a throwing dagger to teleport to. There's a lot of hidden passages with the rewards being either doors or keys for said doors. Didn't fully finish though since autosave caught me at low health which put me in a no-hit deathloop from a lack of any nearby flowers to heal form.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
Witch the Showdown: It's described as a parry-heavy action game and generating mana to cast spell cards, but the vibe I get is Punch Out. Learn the enemy pattern and parry/dodge/counterattack, then build up the element meters to get buffs and unleash spell combos.
Ringash: Stylish Action ala DMC or Bayonetta but more zoomed out and the occasional old camera angle.
Demon Bluff: Single player social deduction game. Each card is a player role and you have to logic out who's lying while avoiding innocent kills.
Might keep an eye on, might not
STUNTBOOST: Speedrun game, but on a finger skateboard in a big room. Turn, dive, build up speed, repeat.
TANUKI: Pon's Summer: It's a bike-riding delivery service game but with optional(?) stunts and minigames with the town residents. The demo has a very slow start though between the initial bike tutorial and the actual post office delivering.
Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!: Kinda like Crazy Taxi with a timer running down after starting a run and spawning on the map and packages to deliver instead of taxi service. Of course, the game is having fun laughing at the trunk-kun isekai service: Carissa was accidentally truck-kun'd, so she's demanding the driver run over more people to reincarnate into monsters for her to powerfarm so she can get back home. Yeah.
SNAP JAW: First-Person Roguelike Fishing where quota needs to be met each day and delivered lest the ship gets eaten by some mechanical abomination. Drive the boat over oil spills to refill fuel, use the cannon to take out drones and mines, and do the QTEs to get the fish before the area runs out. Leans on the horror side with a flooded world.
Nocturne: Rhythm RPG with notes falling down. The digital upload afterlife got corrupted and the MC has the ability to purify it while on a quest to find his brother. Combat feels passive though: scoring notes just lets the AP and HP bar generate (whereas missing a note pauses them) and the only attack bonus is counter-hitting the enemy when they're about to strike. I also felt the same problem as when I played the Everhood 2 demo where I just wanted to run from enemy encounters on the field.
Chained Beasts: Top-down gladiator action where you're graded on variety and speed for kills to spend on the merchant later. What sticks out is how the healer offers dubious health potions that give a permanent debuff like swapping attack keys around, throwing things slightly to the left, adding slight input delay, etc.
VHOLUME: FPS Parkour with no HUD. Did run into pathing issues where I wasn't sure which way to go, but parkour is parkour.
Virtue and a Sledgehammer: Artsy narrative, dealing with loss game about using a sledgehammer and slamming it into mental memories and the digital robots that everyone has apparently uploaded their minds to. Despite the premise, there's still things that can't be sledgehammered apart and there's a fair bit of wandering around.
Not!Balatro
Dicevaders: Balatro, but with 6 columns to put units and artifacts on and dice rolls to determine which column of units attacks. Spinoff of StarVaders (which I should play).
Fame Or Folly: Balatro, but blackjack-ish in risking whether the next draw will completely piss off the audience and balancing scoring with income gain to buy more cards hire more people.
Pegs X Stickers: Balatro, but Peggle and buying pegs to set up the board and dealing with the occasional board hazard.
End of Sunday log, somehow I managed to skim through the rest of the game demos I've downloaded. Keeping track of Maximum Thunderness: This is basically one of those horizontal shump segments that...
End of Sunday log, somehow I managed to skim through the rest of the game demos I've downloaded.
Keeping track of
Maximum Thunderness: This is basically one of those horizontal shump segments that gets tacked onto other games, except as a roguelike game. It's got the basic StS map and pick one of three upgrades, but it's also got a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe to it and I swear the opening notes of its normal battle theme is based off of Sewer Surfin'.
Signy & Mino: Against All Gods: It's an RPG with action commands, but the main feature is juggling the enemy by swapping back and forth between Signy and Mino as each of them land a skill for the other to follow up on and pretty much using the full arsenal to completely whale on a foe.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
Magical Blush: Top-down Metroidvania as a spellcaster with the UI foretelling lots of loadout customization and elemental counters/interactions. There's a surprising amount of hidden exits, though the game itself points out that the map shows all.
Nimbit Frontier: Mon-raising, dungeon roguelite exploring, town revitalizing. Just seems interesting to me and the game makes a point that the endgoal is to release the mons after they're revived and fully raised.
Entropy: Turn-based RPG, but the game rolls D100s in the combat log, permadeath is advertised as possible for party members besides the MC, and it looks like PS1 graphics.
The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths: VN about a counselor for chuuni teens. I liked the theme, but there's also an action points per day system to get all the clues from the client, and the Translation mechanic is a fill-in-the-blank segment which felt vague because of its translation?
Slayblade: Beyblades as a chill roguelike going around town and battling, picking up dropped cash, and blowing all that money on the shop/gacha/tournament entry fees.
Fallosophy: One of those fall and lose all your progress games with precise controls, except the controls are just pinball flippers.
Might keep an eye on, might not
Wiseman: No More Breakups: Seems like a short boss rush game where the main mechanic is just pressing the arrows that pop up and hitting space with the right timing, but it's just got a vibe to it.
Moldwasher: Calm cleaning game, but with pixel art and playing as a piece of sushi whose mission is to clean the room up.
GrassChopper: Walk right, cut grass, pick up loot, walk left, sell loot, upgrade skills, repeat. Kinda calming, kinda curious about the grass being so overgrown and actively resisting being cut down.
Haven't had a moment to try much of anything yet, but did go through and download ten demos. I started to download a couple of others, then saw their size. 50GB for a demo is insane and while I...
Haven't had a moment to try much of anything yet, but did go through and download ten demos. I started to download a couple of others, then saw their size. 50GB for a demo is insane and while I have the space and I know that some demos on Steam are the full game, but with a 2 hour time limit (not sure if that is the case here), it's still ridiculous. One of the 50GB games was a top down shooter, how/why it of all things needs that much space is utterly lost on me when much high end games are significantly smaller. Sounds unoptimized to the extreme.
I want to explore this, I really do, but the UI is unusable for me on a steamdeck-ish[0]. Normally it's a bit to large in some places, but this "event" does something so it becomes almost...
I want to explore this, I really do, but the UI is unusable for me on a steamdeck-ish[0]. Normally it's a bit to large in some places, but this "event" does something so it becomes almost impossible to scroll around.
Kind of last minute looked into a few. Had some fun with antigravity racer AGX GP. It's a pretty arcade-y approach, which I like. I kind of sucked at it, squeaking by with bronze medals as I went....
Kind of last minute looked into a few. Had some fun with antigravity racer AGX GP. It's a pretty arcade-y approach, which I like. I kind of sucked at it, squeaking by with bronze medals as I went. Probably would take me a while to master.
Just tried out Burn-9. It's a stealth game, but instead of controlling the asset in the field, you're the operator acting as eyes and ears and, to some extent, brain for the agent. Plays like a...
Just tried out Burn-9. It's a stealth game, but instead of controlling the asset in the field, you're the operator acting as eyes and ears and, to some extent, brain for the agent. Plays like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" visual novel where choices absolutely matter. I game over'd because I made the wrong choice. Game has a quaint old-school CRT and 8- or 16-bit aesthetic.
Ran through a bunch of them last night, my current standouts:
If anyone likes Jackbox Games like I do, they have a demo of Trivia Murder Party 3 here! It's definitely not polished yet but it's still pretty fun.
End of Friday log. Been working my way downward in terms of game size for the sake of my harddrive (reached the 3.5GB game size zone now). Not many standouts to me, but I've also been ignoring anything with a Gen AI disclaimer on the basis that my steam library and backlog is large enough that I can completely go along my life without playing those.
Vibing
Keeping track of
Empire in Decay: Roguelike turn-based energy-deckbuilder chess, but the units have stats, autoattacks, and special effects and spell cards. The pieces can still capture normally unless a unit is armored in which case, it either needs to be captured multiple times or have enough damage to get rid of it. Won a run with the bleed faction by having the King be specced along the "heal units and deal damage whenever a bleed card is used" and a card that doubled its bleeding effect each time it was used in that combat.
AKIBA LOST: VN that reminded me of 428: Shibuya Scramble insofar as the live action shots and rotating between protagonists and making the right decision between them so everyone can make it through the time period (or I have a small reference pool). The demo only gets through the first time chunk (Day 1 8-12AM), so I'm admittingly putting my hope into it based on wanting something like 428 again.
Lou's Lagoon: It's an island exploring game where the MC basically gets a vacuum cleaner to suck up supplies and then repair things with it. Pretty chill time to just clean stuff up and do sidequests for vacuum upgrades.
Echoes of Mystralia: Isometric action roguelike with spell modifers as the powerup drops. Had a pretty good run where I had a bunch of fireballs with upgraded burn stacks tacked onto the boomerang, but I got too greedy in sacrificing HP for more modifiers which preemptively ended my run.
Edge of Memories: 3D action RPG. Character expressions feel a little jank to me, the demo has a lot of dead walking space, and the story so far is... basic? But I do like Soul Whisperer/therapist angle and Ysoris as a character, so I'm interested in seeing the rest of the game's spirit.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
False Hero: Soulslike, but learned enemy skills are assigned to your loadout and there's a focus on chaining them together to keep up the stagger tempo while gaining back the MP spent. Ended after a few attempts on the last(?) boss before deciding to move on to other demos.
Five More Minutes: Roguelike deckbuilder with cards using 4 energy types and decks based off of different retro game genres (read: Link, Leon S. Kennedy). Pretty interested in the aesthetic and there are opportunities to mix in cards from another deck type.
WILD Tactics: XCOM, but animal people and it's hero-based with the team having people they like and dislike working with. Only 3 people on a mission though.
PengPong: Survivorlike/Bullet Heaven, but it's toned down with the main weapon being a hockey stick that shoots out a bouncing puck and needing to wait for the puck to return to fire another shot. Won the run with a combination of crit-based, crits applying to status effects, and multiply shots with on-hit effects.
Songs of Glimmerwick: I only went up to the flutemaker from rushing through demos, but I really did feel the urge to just slow down with this one. Hoping the demo remains after the Next Fest is done.
The Severed Gods: Yeah this is basically in the style of Bravely Default except with a height zone system and Slay the Spire's map. Only played for a few minutes, but I guess I'm amazed at the audacity of it.
End of Saturday log, worked my way down to 1.3GB games. Honestly, it would've been better working my way up seeing how the smaller sized games are generally (but not guaranteed to be) well optimized.
Keeping track of
BREKEKEKEX: Plays like an anime arena fighter BUT with an over-the-shoulder camera and manually aiming attacks. Still suck at fighters, but I liked how it played and the vibe of the dialogue though I got skill-checked at the 3rd fight.
Takeover 2: Beat-em-up that feels old school and definitely took influence from Streets of Rage. Had a quick run to Stage 3, but I'm definitely interested if the demo remains.
Sojourn Past: 2D top-down adventure with bullet hell elements and a mysterious exploring vibe to it. The main attack is a 3-hit sword combo, but there's also the stunning smartbombs and a throwing dagger to teleport to. There's a lot of hidden passages with the rewards being either doors or keys for said doors. Didn't fully finish though since autosave caught me at low health which put me in a no-hit deathloop from a lack of any nearby flowers to heal form.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
Witch the Showdown: It's described as a parry-heavy action game and generating mana to cast spell cards, but the vibe I get is Punch Out. Learn the enemy pattern and parry/dodge/counterattack, then build up the element meters to get buffs and unleash spell combos.
Ringash: Stylish Action ala DMC or Bayonetta but more zoomed out and the occasional old camera angle.
Demon Bluff: Single player social deduction game. Each card is a player role and you have to logic out who's lying while avoiding innocent kills.
Might keep an eye on, might not
STUNTBOOST: Speedrun game, but on a finger skateboard in a big room. Turn, dive, build up speed, repeat.
TANUKI: Pon's Summer: It's a bike-riding delivery service game but with optional(?) stunts and minigames with the town residents. The demo has a very slow start though between the initial bike tutorial and the actual post office delivering.
Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!: Kinda like Crazy Taxi with a timer running down after starting a run and spawning on the map and packages to deliver instead of taxi service. Of course, the game is having fun laughing at the trunk-kun isekai service: Carissa was accidentally truck-kun'd, so she's demanding the driver run over more people to reincarnate into monsters for her to powerfarm so she can get back home. Yeah.
SNAP JAW: First-Person Roguelike Fishing where quota needs to be met each day and delivered lest the ship gets eaten by some mechanical abomination. Drive the boat over oil spills to refill fuel, use the cannon to take out drones and mines, and do the QTEs to get the fish before the area runs out. Leans on the horror side with a flooded world.
Nocturne: Rhythm RPG with notes falling down. The digital upload afterlife got corrupted and the MC has the ability to purify it while on a quest to find his brother. Combat feels passive though: scoring notes just lets the AP and HP bar generate (whereas missing a note pauses them) and the only attack bonus is counter-hitting the enemy when they're about to strike. I also felt the same problem as when I played the Everhood 2 demo where I just wanted to run from enemy encounters on the field.
Chained Beasts: Top-down gladiator action where you're graded on variety and speed for kills to spend on the merchant later. What sticks out is how the healer offers dubious health potions that give a permanent debuff like swapping attack keys around, throwing things slightly to the left, adding slight input delay, etc.
VHOLUME: FPS Parkour with no HUD. Did run into pathing issues where I wasn't sure which way to go, but parkour is parkour.
Virtue and a Sledgehammer: Artsy narrative, dealing with loss game about using a sledgehammer and slamming it into mental memories and the digital robots that everyone has apparently uploaded their minds to. Despite the premise, there's still things that can't be sledgehammered apart and there's a fair bit of wandering around.
Not!Balatro
Dicevaders: Balatro, but with 6 columns to put units and artifacts on and dice rolls to determine which column of units attacks. Spinoff of StarVaders (which I should play).
Fame Or Folly: Balatro, but blackjack-ish in risking whether the next draw will completely piss off the audience and balancing scoring with income gain to
buy more cardshire more people.Pegs X Stickers: Balatro, but Peggle and buying pegs to set up the board and dealing with the occasional board hazard.
End of Sunday log, somehow I managed to skim through the rest of the game demos I've downloaded.
Keeping track of
Maximum Thunderness: This is basically one of those horizontal shump segments that gets tacked onto other games, except as a roguelike game. It's got the basic StS map and pick one of three upgrades, but it's also got a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe to it and I swear the opening notes of its normal battle theme is based off of Sewer Surfin'.
Signy & Mino: Against All Gods: It's an RPG with action commands, but the main feature is juggling the enemy by swapping back and forth between Signy and Mino as each of them land a skill for the other to follow up on and pretty much using the full arsenal to completely whale on a foe.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
Magical Blush: Top-down Metroidvania as a spellcaster with the UI foretelling lots of loadout customization and elemental counters/interactions. There's a surprising amount of hidden exits, though the game itself points out that the map shows all.
Nimbit Frontier: Mon-raising, dungeon roguelite exploring, town revitalizing. Just seems interesting to me and the game makes a point that the endgoal is to release the mons after they're revived and fully raised.
Entropy: Turn-based RPG, but the game rolls D100s in the combat log, permadeath is advertised as possible for party members besides the MC, and it looks like PS1 graphics.
The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths: VN about a counselor for chuuni teens. I liked the theme, but there's also an action points per day system to get all the clues from the client, and the Translation mechanic is a fill-in-the-blank segment which felt vague because of its translation?
Slayblade: Beyblades as a chill roguelike going around town and battling, picking up dropped cash, and blowing all that money on the shop/gacha/tournament entry fees.
Fallosophy: One of those fall and lose all your progress games with precise controls, except the controls are just pinball flippers.
Might keep an eye on, might not
Wiseman: No More Breakups: Seems like a short boss rush game where the main mechanic is just pressing the arrows that pop up and hitting space with the right timing, but it's just got a vibe to it.
Moldwasher: Calm cleaning game, but with pixel art and playing as a piece of sushi whose mission is to clean the room up.
GrassChopper: Walk right, cut grass, pick up loot, walk left, sell loot, upgrade skills, repeat. Kinda calming, kinda curious about the grass being so overgrown and actively resisting being cut down.
I highly recommend Rift Wizard 3 as a roguelike distilled into 1 hour. Very fun and very well made
Haven't had a moment to try much of anything yet, but did go through and download ten demos. I started to download a couple of others, then saw their size. 50GB for a demo is insane and while I have the space and I know that some demos on Steam are the full game, but with a 2 hour time limit (not sure if that is the case here), it's still ridiculous. One of the 50GB games was a top down shooter, how/why it of all things needs that much space is utterly lost on me when much high end games are significantly smaller. Sounds unoptimized to the extreme.
I want to explore this, I really do, but the UI is unusable for me on a steamdeck-ish[0]. Normally it's a bit to large in some places, but this "event" does something so it becomes almost impossible to scroll around.
I'm certain it's a user error, but still!
[0] its a ROG something with SteamOS
Kind of last minute looked into a few. Had some fun with antigravity racer AGX GP. It's a pretty arcade-y approach, which I like. I kind of sucked at it, squeaking by with bronze medals as I went. Probably would take me a while to master.
Just tried out Burn-9. It's a stealth game, but instead of controlling the asset in the field, you're the operator acting as eyes and ears and, to some extent, brain for the agent. Plays like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" visual novel where choices absolutely matter. I game over'd because I made the wrong choice. Game has a quaint old-school CRT and 8- or 16-bit aesthetic.
Added to the Wishlist!