It’s that time of the year again and while I knew that the Steam Next Fest will happen in June, I wasn’t aware of the fact that it’s happening… well… now. I was hoping for next week but it’s whatever. Today, I wanted to talk about demos that I will play. This time around, I’ll play a lot less and I plan on doing less blog coverage on the topic for now and more overall coverage if that makes sense. The issue here is that I don’t want and I frankly can’t post multiple times per day but with only one week to work with, it’s nigh impossible to cover all if not even most of the demos in detail. Instead, you’ll see three posts on the Steam Next Fest this week, as follows:
- Part 1: My To-Play List (this post, hence no link here!)
- Here I explain what my battle plan for June’s Next Fest is… see above/here… and I also talk about the games that piqued my interest immediately and that I downloaded. I talk briefly about what these games are about and why I’m interested but I haven’t played most of these yet.
- I’ll also record videos on these and upload them to YouTube in the next few days so that people can see some gameplay & commentary, even when the demos are gone.
- Part 2: My Highlights
- Here I talk about the most memorable or the most enjoyable demos. The list above features a lot more demos by name but with fewer details. This post will feature the ones I had the most fun with, which means that there will be fewer entries here but more details on my experience (after having played the demo(s)). You could say that this is the “actual” coverage for the Steam Next Fest.
- Part 3: Recap
- The goal of this final post is to talk about my experience with this “celebration of upcoming games”. The number of demos is huge but they added some improvements this time around that help narrow down the list a lot, including recommendations. I also will talk about how this whole “battle plan” worked out for me.
Without further ado, here are the demos I downloaded this time around! Just to clarify here, the format goes as follows: Game Title (Developer; Publisher). On another note, none of these are in any particular order. Also, I only added three trailers to this because I couldn’t find any on YouTube to embed here for a lot of the other games and figured I might just go with my favourite three trailers in the list – or rather the most enjoyable ones and you can just click on the links in the title of each game and check out the steam page yourself.
Lone Ruin (Cuddle Monster Games; Super Rare Originals)
This game’s an interesting one, especially because of how fluid combat seems. Lone Ruin is an Action-Roguelike Twin-Stick Shooter where you defeat enemies with spells and I’m excited to try it out, especially as I loved the dev studio’s previous title “Hell is Other Demons”!
Nine Sols (RedCandleGames)
Nine Souls is a Hand-Drawn Sekiro-inspired deflection-focused Action-Platformer in an Eastern fantasy setting where you embark on a journey to slay “the 9 Sols”! I’ve had this title on my wishlist for quite some time, even if I’m not incredibly good at platformers and I’m really looking forward to some fluid combat, nice lore, and great fights!
GOODBYE WORLD (YO FUJII; Flyhigh Works)
GOODBYE WORLD is a narrative adventure game about a harsh reality, a lost passion and two creators that just wanted to develop Indie games together. While one tries to somehow make it, the other makes a different decision. Honestly, it looks adorable but the title and description make it seem somewhat dark… So, I’m intrigued.
Roadwarden (Moral Anxiety Studio; Assemble Entertainment)
Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG where you risk your life to make a difference in a grim fantasy world. It looks stunning and while I’m not much of a text-based RPG person, this one has me genuinely interested already!
Under The Moon (Bamya Games; The Pack Studios)
Under the Moon is a stylized Puzzle-Platformer with a lot of exploration. As the developers got in touch with me, I wanted to cover this one even if it didn’t seem to be quite my cup of tea. I’m looking forward to being positively surprised!
Astro Colony (Terad Games)
Astro Colony is another game that was sent my way by the devs. It kind of looks and sounds like Satisfactory but in space and I’m all for it, to be fair… but it also dives into colony management and as I’m a big fan of that, I’m looking forward to playing this demo!
Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monsters; Devolver Digital)
We talked about Cult of the Lamb a lot in the past but in case you didn’t know yet… this game is an Action-Roguelike-Dungeon-Crawler where you take care and grow a cult in-between runs and where you utilize demonic powers to defeat those that planned on sacrificing you! If you wanna check out the first half-hour of gameplay, you can do so right here on my channel!
dotAGE (CKC Games)
dotAGE has been on my wishlist for way too long now and I was about to give up on any sort of release dates but hey, here we are with a “2022” and a demo, even. Here you build up a village, fight off events, and strive to survive in a time-based city-building rogue-lite game that is a lot of fun!
Walk Hero (TERNOX)
This game is all about inventory management. You move on, kill foes, collect loot, get stronger, and so on but its roguelike mechanics focus entirely on choosing what equipment you choose, similarly to how Loop Hero lets you influence your runs by placing tiles as your character moves around. Incredibly interesting!
Just King (VISH)
Just King is an auto-battler/arena-shooter with roguelike elements, much in the vein of SNKRX, where you assemble a party of heroes, equip them with powerful items, and try to protect the king on your journey to beat them all. The art style is adorable – and I loved SNKRX way too much, so of course, I gotta play this, too!
NAIAD (HiWarp)
NAIAD is a minimalistic and relaxing exploration adventure where you flow in the water and interact with the flora and fauna of mysterious rivers, ponds, and other bodies of water. It seems wholesome and dreamy on top of being interesting as a concept, so I’m excited to try this out!
We Stay Behind (Backwoods Entertainment; Application Systems Heidelberg)
This is a title that I’ve been excited about for ages now (in fact, since the beginnings of this blog!). We Stay Behind (formerly known as Resort (link to an interview I did back then with the devs)) is an atmospheric Mystery-Adventure game where you attempt to find out why the people of Laburnum Creek refuse to leave the small town that is bound to be hit by a comet! Seriously so excited to finally get to play another demo of this!
Agent 64: Spies Never Die (Replicant D6)
Agent 64 is a retro FPS inspired by classic 90s console shooters, and it appears to even have the state-of-the-art 1997 enemy AI, so this… might be quite enjoyable? Honestly, I would have passed on this if it weren’t for everwake‘s and Blockade‘s recommendations, so looking forward to this.
Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip (Beautiful Glitch)
Truth to be told, I still wanna 100% Monster Prom 1 and I still haven’t got to Monster Prom 2 because I wanna do these things in order… But I think I can still be excited about Monster Prom 3, the competitive dating sim with the queer and incredibly cute cast of monster characters… ON A ROAD TRIP. It worked for Final Fantasy, so this one’s gonna be rad, too, right?!
Swordship (Digital Kingdom; Thunderful Publishing)
Swordship is a Shoot’Em Up without shooting. It’s fast-paced Action-Roguelike shenanigans where you master placement and dodging, and sharpen your skills! Honestly, it looks a lot of fun and I’ve been looking forward to this a lot ever since I first saw it floating around on Twitter.
Potion Permit (MassHive Media; PQube)
Moonbury’s residents need healing and you’re the best they have, so we make potions in this game. Diagnose symptoms, gather ingredients, brew potions, and cure ailments in this open-ended RPG/Potion Making Sim. I’m a sucker for this sort of gameplay loop, so I’m excited about this demo. Sims are great.
Power Chord (Big Blue Bubble)
Power Chord is a roguelike deck-building game where you assemble musicians and battle your way through legions of demons, fighting against them with the power of music. My first impression was “Darkest Dungeon with a much different soundtrack” but there’s more to it, of course.
Cats and the Other Lives (Cultic Games; Maple Whispering Limited)
We talked about Cats and the Other Lives over here and in one of my previous SteamNextFest posts but this new demo brings more story content and shows us more interesting gameplay, according to the devs, so I’m looking forward to that. Cats and the Other Lives lets you experience the reunion of a broken family from the perspective of their house cat, Aspen,… but you also see ghosts. It’s great. Give it a try!
Quit Today (YOHCAN Co. Ltd.)
This one’s a heavily stylized side-scrolling Action-Adventure where you beat up your colleagues as you try to quit your job. It looks like fun and I dig the art style, so happy to have found this demo!
SIGNALIS (rose-engine; Humble Games, PLAYISM)
SIGNALIS is a classic survival-horror experience set in a dystopian feature but with a cosmic-horror twist and an incredibly eye-catching trailer and art style. I’m a huge scaredy-cat and I hate horror generally speaking but this one might be quite interesting!
And of course, I’m also playing some other demos but these are the main ones I saw and if I find something interesting, I’ll upload it to YouTube. The SteamNextFest gets incredibly overwhelming incredibly fast, so I wanna take a step back with this new plan and essentially go for quality over quantity by playing fewer demos than before. Maybe I’ll play more if I have the time but generally speaking, time doesn’t grow on trees. Hope you enjoyed this post. Did you play any of these already? What did you think? Do you have other recommendations? Let me know!
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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