Steam Next Fest June 2024 – My thoughts!

So, it happened again… I played a bunch of demos, gathered my thoughts, spent way too much time in a few of them… and originally, I didn’t want to write a post about it but some of these were genuinely so good that I felt compelled to spread the word! (Also I haven’t published all that many posts in a while, so I should perhaps get back into the groove before the Blogeckoning (otherwise known as Blaugust) happens…)

Anyhow, here are some of the demos I played and that I’m really excited about!

Dice & Fold

Developed by Tinymice Entertainment and published by Rogue Duck Interactive, Dice & Fold is a solitaire-inspired roguelike dungeon crawler where you make enemies “fold” by rolling your dice and filling their slots accordingly. Aesthetically pleasing and incredibly entertaining, Dice & Fold offers a plethora of opportunities for the player to show how good they are at strategizing and finding a silver lining in even the most dire situations.

There are a plethora of different classes to unlock and play, each with a unique ability that can change how you approach the game. At the same time, though, the items and the companion mechanic also add a lot of depth to your runs which I was fairly intrigued by.

The game is set to release on June 24th (which is pretty soon) and I’m honestly more than excited to play, not just given the amount of content that the demo already had and the game is going to have but also based on the atmosphere, the character and enemy design as well as the interesting and rather powerful builds you can create! Highly recommend it!

Tiny Bookshop

Tiny Bookshop (dev: neoludic games, pub: Skystone Games) is a hand-drawn and incredibly cute life sim/management game with some RPG-esque mechanics to it that really drew me in with its atmosphere and the amount of customizability it offers you. Leaving everything behind, you open up a tiny bookshop (roll credits) inside your caravan and sell all sorts of literary works to a diverse cast of characters to not just make money but also find purpose.

Your shelves house a range of genres from drama and crime books to fantastical works, classics and travel guides, and just like how your stock ranges in variety, so do your customers. Some like books for kids more than others, for instance, and as such, it is upon you to manage your funds, stock up on the good stuff, and figure out what sort of bookshop you want to create.

Aside from the shopkeeping and management mechanics, the game also lets you decorate your caravan which can even add little bonuses to your sales of specific genres (which reminded me of RPGs in a weird way), as well as fulfil quests for some of the named characters that will then help you in other ways. On top of all that, my personal highlight is the fact that some customers need book recommendations and as such, you’ll browse through your bookshelves to find the perfect fit for your book-hungry patrons… and I love it so much that it’s got actual book titles and works in there! Gasp.

Warden’s Will

Developed and published by ELYZIO, Warden’s Will could be best described as Risk of Rain 2 but vertical… which I mean as a compliment, a pretty huge compliment, at that. There haven’t been too many games that captured the essence of what makes Risk of Rain 2 as fun as it is, and Warden’s Will doesn’t just draw inspiration from it but evolves the formula with challenging enemies, interesting objectives, and a wide move set for each weapon and character.

This game is a third-person movement shooter with rogue-lite mechanics and bullet-hell-ish combat where you take control of a “Warden”, set to destroy evil robots while getting progressively stronger the more items and pickups you equip. With each passing minute, enemies become more and more overwhelming, and as such, you have to find the right balance between grinding them for resources, exploring for upgrades and going for the objective.

Overall, I found this game to be incredibly fun, not just because of its similarities to other games I love and enjoy but also because of the verticality and the ideas behind each warden and weapon. On top of that, you can also play it with friends which sounds like an incredibly chaotic yet enjoyable time. I’m so excited for this to be released soon!

Aloft

Aloft is an incredibly fun and serene survival sandbox experience set on floating islands that you pilot like a skyship. Over the past couple of years, I’ve played the demo numerous amounts of times, eagerly awaiting to see what’s getting added next to this incredible gem of a game, and I can with great confidence say that it just keeps on evolving, improving on existing mechanics, and adding on very fun and new interactions with the world.

Stranded on a floating island, you find these stones that teach you knowledge from the past which helps you craft your basic necessities like a glider, a workbench, sails, a helm, etc. which you then use to get your own gear, set up a base on top of a floating island, and perhaps even take an island with you on your great journey by attaching sails, rudders and the like to this big floating rock.

Aloft has multiplayer, interesting combat, some soft survival mechanics, and a lot of lore. It’s a beautiful and serene game that can be incredibly in-depth if that’s your cup of tea but it doesn’t have to be that which is something I appreciate a lot. My personal highlight, though, is the building. If you look at the trailers of the game, you’ll see what is planned for the Q3 2024 release and the future… but you can also see a lot of what is already possible.

With custom building blocks and a plethora of interesting and unique decorations, you can really get incredibly creative with your bases in this game… and I love that. Frankly, Aloft deserves its own post but the ones I’ve written (and never published) in the past got way too long because of how much I like this game.

Drill Core

From floating islands in the sky to the deep underground of alien planets, I wanted to talk about Drill Core, a strategic planet-mining game with roguelite and tower defence elements which is developed by Hungry Couch Games and published by tinyBuild. I really adore this game!

In Drill Core, you work for a company that essentially fixes planets for its inhabitants by exploding a so-called “Core” deep inside the planetary crust. How does that fix planets? No idea. Doesn’t matter! All that matters is that you get your job done… and that involves digging downwards, harvesting resources to build machinery and defensive turrets, and surviving the night which is when you get attacked by more and more dangerous waves of alien critters.

You can see how games like Dome Keeper and Wall World inspired Drill Core but it doesn’t just do the same thing again but rather takes it to a different level with both more intense and more relaxed aspects to it. I found the game to be an incredibly fun and very interesting little title that was quite hard to put down, honestly.

If you’re into that sort of thing with the strategy elements, procedural generation, a mission to fulfil for a company that doesn’t care about your safety, et cetera, Drill Core is perhaps a must-play while the demo is still up!

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Dungeons of Hinterberg is a title that I’ve been following for quite some time on the bird site formerly known as Twitter. It just looks so stellar and I really love the idea behind it. Armed with a sword and tourist guide, you explore a beautiful alpine village and relax… by dungeon-hunting and battling a plethora of alpine folklore-inspired monsters!

Developed by Microbird Games and published by Curve Games, Dungeons of Hinterberg mashes together some incredibly interesting genres and types of games. On the one hand, you’ve got Zelda-like exploration, puzzle solving and combat in the dungeons… of Hinterberg… and on the other hand, you get to pick and choose between a variety of daily activities to really relax (and also buff your dungeoneering activities) while also getting to know a diverse cast of characters and befriending new people as you explore the town.

More than anything, while the cute and cosy meets quick and flashy gameplay loop works pretty well for this title, I just adore the colours, the art style, the humour, the animations and just all the other things that really encaptured me whilst the demo. I had a great time and can’t wait for July 18th to come any sooner!

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers

Purple Moss Collectors’ Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a Blackjack-based Roguelike Adventure with an underlying mystery that hooked me pretty hard. I know… yet another roguelike on this list… but hey… I don’t have a problem. These games are just that great.

So, Blackjack is pretty simple. You hit the cards until you get as close to 21 as possible but never over it. The person with the higher score wins. In D&DG, there is a string attached. Busts equal zero points and the difference in scores determines how much damage the player or your foe takes. On top of that, you get to modify your deck… a lot.

Cut cards, duplicate cards, add cards, find whacky combos, and risk it all as you fight your way through a seedy tavern, all in the hopes of finding the person that runs this establishment and getting to the ground of whatever pulled you there in the first place. I really liked this game, not just because it’s a good game but also because there’s a reason why you keep coming back to it. There’s a story and narration in place, which I found rather appealing.

On top of that, though, the game also has a ton of different references to other games in the genre, including Slay the Spire. Just like in StS, I always take Claws. There are also other cards in the game, including Pokémon cards, Tarot cards, Credit cards, Business cards, Get-Well-Soon cards and other unexpected contenders for what can or cannot be considered a “card” for this card game… I’ve had some good laughs with this one.

SCHiM

In Ewoud van der Werf’s and Nils Slijkerman’s 3D-Platformer SCHiM, you inhabit a person’s shadow as the soul and spirit of an object, thing or living being… a so-called schim. Sadly, though, you get separated from the person you’re attached to and they lose their groove, so to speak, and as such it is upon you to get back to them before anything bad happens!

So, as your shadowy self might suggest, you have to move through the shadows of objects, vehicles, animals, people and the like to traverse a variety of beautifully crafted and incredibly creative levels to reach your objective. Hop across a street using a streetlight’s shadow, swim through a tree’s shade, slither through a crowd of people and time jumps to hitch a ride with an incoming motorcycle. SCHiM lets you do all that and more which I find rather adorable.

But aside from that, SCHiM is also aesthetically pleasing with a unique style that directly ties into the gameplay, from the light and shadow of objects in the world to the movement and nature of objects, you get to interact with the game on a different level, one that should be explored more, in my opinion. The demo is still up and is incredibly cosy and fun to explore, even if you aren’t that great at (3D) platformers… I suck at them and I had a lovely time! SCHiM is also set to release on July 18th!

Dungeon Clawler

Brought to you by Stray Fawn Studio (who also made The Wandering Village), Dungeon Clawler is a roguelike deck builder based on a Claw Machine. The game is set to release in Early Access in Q3 this year which is also why the demo is currently very lacking in sound effects and some content… but I still wanted to highlight it because of how great it is based on the gameplay alone.

In Dungeon Clawler, you have two turns with each character to grab any items you can get inside your claw machine. Shields block damage and swords and other weaponry damage enemies. You’ve seen it in other games but Dungeon Clawler has a claw machine and it really changes how you perceive the turn-based combat. It’s less so about choosing the right move at the right time but rather about planning ahead, managing your deck and managing to be a god gamer and grab the item you need which proves rather difficult most of the time, just like with real-life claw machines.

There are a plethora of different characters, items, trinkets and enemies available already. Again, there may be no sound effects so far and only one track for the music but I really enjoyed the gameplay and it makes the game stand out a fair bit, in my opinion, especially with how much the different characters add and change from the core experience.

Aside from that, I just love how you can interact with your claw machine or how enemies screw with it to make your life worse. You can, for instance, add water to the machine, making wooden items float, which is fairly interesting, and enemies might just hex some of your items or add spikes and disease to your machine. It’s a really funny game!

Dog and Goblin

Last but not least, this one is a minimalist deck-building game developed by someone named Zony and set to release on October 28th 2024. This game is not part of the Steam Next Fest, technically, but I really wanted to highlight it in this round of demos!

So, Dog and Goblin is sort of an auto-battler where you siege the enemy castle while defending against the humans that stand between you and said castle. It is fairly simple in nature. You have an ability (based on your commander) that you can use to move units around or interact with them in other ways, you have hearts that take damage when the enemy board fills up with units, and you have a deck of units and other items that will randomly get shuffled onto your board, resulting in them activating their effects for you.

I guess the best way to describe this game is Luck be a Landlord but as a fantasy title with a different appeal to it. It feels more strategic and less gambling-like. There are a plethora of builds you can go for and it has a rather interesting aesthetic to it. More than anything, I just love the creativity in its systems with units buffing other units or possibly even fusing together.

There are a lot of commanders in the classes already as well as a plethora of ascension-style levels of difficulty and rulesets that you can change for even more variety in your experience… and this is just a demo, so the full release, set to come out on October 28th, 2024, is probably gonna be way more expansive. I’m excited!

The End

I played a plethora of other demos but don’t really have the time to write about all of them. If I do end up finding some time, I’ll of course showcase more, but university is pretty busy at the moment and I’m also preparing to visit my family this weekend again. As such, I hope you liked these ten demos over here and have a great time playing a couple of them, if you do find the time!

Please make sure to wishlist the games you like, too, to support the developers ahead of the release.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!