The Steam Next Fest, a celebration of upcoming games, is here and hence, I wanna feature more games today. I managed to resist the urge to play APICO yet again… for plenty of hours… How much fun can you squeeze out of a demo? I don’t know but I’m incredibly happy about having gotten to know that game and I’m looking forward to playing that game again soon… but first I need to cover more games and well,… here’s the next batch!
Motor Town: Behind The Wheel
Motor Town is quite literally a trip and a half. I haven’t played too many driving games yet (unless you count Lake, which is also about driving… but more about everything else?). I don’t know… I never got the drift. But today, I decided to give this game a go and after starting my engine, I kind of fell in love with how tedious the game is. I know this doesn’t sound as if I car a lot about this game but RV really gonna ignore the fact that simplicity is sometimes where the wheel fun is at? Okay, I’ll stop the car puns but seriously, Motor Town is a lot of fun. You essentially drive cars from point A to point B, deliver passengers and cargo, collect experience, and then upgrade your car. The police keep an eye out in case you do something unlawful but overall it’s pretty chill and enough to fuel a good time. Just tell the cops something along the lines of “Ride never do it again” and they won’t be Holden you for too long. You won’t be lorry for playing this one. Okay, I’ll stop now.
JUSTICE SUCKS: RECHARGED
I thought I’ve seen this one before but it’s actually the demo for the sequel to Roombo: First Blood! For anyone that isn’t in the know, Samurai Punk are not only responsible for interesting games like Feather and Screencheat but they also created this little prototype about Roombo, a little Roomba that has tasted blood and who is now killing people! Well, that was just a prototype but hey, here we are now with a demo for a game that feels a lot more fleshed out, I guess? Play the tutorial and the first level out of many in a story of revenge, rescue and murder… Armed with the ability to hack smart devices and equipped with special blood-powered quirks like the “SexyPunch”, you’re setting out to stalk your prey and unleash your fury onto them before you eventually save your family. The stealth feels incredibly good, actually, although the first level felt also incredibly easy. I hope that the full release is as much fun though with a bit more of a challenge. That’d be lovely!
Blind Fate: Edo no Yami
This one’s a “cinematic action-sidescroller with brutally challenging combat” where you play as a blind cyber-samurai named Yami whose blade and sensors are the only ways for him to see the world around him. In a dystopian Edo period ruled by machines born from the darkest Japanese folktales, you need to survive, strike, dodge, block, and carry out your revenge… In Blind Fate, you take control of Yami who only perceives his surroundings through sensors – and of course through the uploaded and outdated data that he has to refresh to proceed. Because that data is outdated, some things don’t exactly match up, but regardless you can use your heat, smell and sound senses to find exists, hidden passages, and enemies on your journey. Since you’re blind, enemies are invisible to you as well. Hence, you need to extract data about them using your katana and you need to strike them to make them visible again. To detect them, you use your senses and essentially you have to try to spot their weaknesses to unleash more damage on them. The concept is incredibly cool and I love how it’s executed but I found the demo incredibly frustrating. The issue with Blind Fate is not that it’s hard… rather, the boss that you encounter at the end of an area makes you wait for so long after its first phase and the second phase and stuff… It just feels tedious. Meanwhile, it’s less about your combat skills and more about timing a dodge to evade a big energy ball of sorts… and that has less to do with the game and souls-likes and whatever and more with your hand-eye coordination and sense of rhythm (and well, the former ain’t working properly for me), making this incredibly frustrating. On top of that, I had a lot of heal packages before but then used them because the tutorial made it seem as if you could gain many… but then you fight the boss and you get reset to the checkpoint, again, and again, and again… but it’s always exactly where the boss is and not somewhere else which is also annoying. I basically had to wing it with only one charge of my medkits and only two shots of my gun. So,… overall great game but that fight there is just super annoying and you cannot save anywhere, so just pray that the full release will actually let you enjoy the challenge instead of placing you in front of a boring fight that is frustrating to deal with.
The Bookwalker
In this game, you’re a thief with the ability to dive into books. Using that ability, you’re tasked with stealing items from books, such as an invulnerability potion, for instance. At its core, The Bookwalker plays like a Puzzle-game of sorts with some exploration mechanics and a lot of Pointing and Clicking. You’re either crafting items and exploring the First-Person 3D environment of your apartment/building to help you on your journey… Or you dive into stories in an isometric point-n-click style environment where you fight monsters, solve puzzles, combine items, and try to reach the artefact that you need to complete your order. The amazing part about The Bookwalker is that it draws you in, quite literally, like a good book. I like the idea of it and the universe seems to be thought of quite well. There’s the main character, for instance, who’s a shapeshifter of sorts… and there’s something about them and their brother and the other writers… Everything is so very mysterious and interesting and I want to know more! The demo is fairly long as well, so you get even more pieces of information on potential clues about the actual game’s story and lore and everything, and I just really enjoyed that aspect of it. Looking forward to the full release! Promising title here!
Sadly, that’s about it for today’s post, though. I’ve been quite busy today and ended up spending a lot of time in a lot of these demos instead of just investing a little time in a lot more. I also ended up writing a lot more about these four games, so… hopefully, you enjoy them? Tomorrow, I’ll try covering more but since I’m running out of time, for now, I’ll wish you a phenomenal day and I hope that you have a nice time with the Steam Next Fest while it’s still here!
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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