Every few months, Valve hosts the so-called Steam Next Fest, a celebration of upcoming games, where developers present you their work to get you excited for what’s to come sooner or later… and just like the many times before this one, I’ve downloaded a ton of demos that seemed interesting so that I could then recommend a variety of games to various folks out there.
The event always feels very overwhelming to me due to the sheer amount of demos available, and the FOMO of not playing a demo that might get taken down after the one-week-long event is pretty big… but I’m happy to say that all of the demos that I’m showcasing in this post are still up to play.
So, go try them out if you haven’t yet, and perhaps add the full releases to your wishlist!
On a side note, the titles link to the Steam Page and before each game, you can find a video of me playing the demos and gathering my first impressions of it. I figured I might as well do embed those into this post if you wanna see some gameplay and whatnot.
- Deck of Haunts
- Maze Mice
- Squirreled Away
- Roots Devour
- Winnie’s Hole
- Is This Seat Taken?
- Solarpunk
- Reignbreaker
- Mother Machine
- Dino Path Trail
- Wildkeepers Rising
- Locomoto
- Liftlands
- The King Is Watching
- Steel Judgement
- Bugtopia
- He is Coming
- On another note
Deck of Haunts
In Deck of Haunts, the player steps into the role of a malevolent Haunted House, luring in unsuspecting visitors before eventually harvesting their essence by either draining their sanity or killing them outright.
To do so, you build up a deck of cards and customize your layout of rooms that visitors will have to explore, all so that you can then take turns to attack or influence the various visitors and explorers. But the visitors themselves won’t just take it… Many of them come with specific traits that increase the difficulty substantially. Some units will take fewer hits to their sanity or health, others will go straight for your heart and damage it, and further units might even enter through a side entrance.
As such, you’ll have to play your cards right to deal with these traits, plan ahead, and eventually succeed in reducing them to husks of their former selves. If, however, a visitor manages to escape, subsequent nights will become harder and harder to survive for you since more information about your inner workings will leak outside.
What really hooked me in this is that it’s not simply “yet another roguelike deckbuilder” but rather one where you literally build up a mansion with corridors, various rooms, traps and altars… and the way that the game handles that is really intriguing, in my opinion. I highly recommend checking out this demo!
Maze Mice
Maze Mice is the new game by Luck be a Landlord developer TrampolineTales who managed to fuse Pac-Man with a little bit of Snake, a bit of Bullet Heaven gameplay, and the “time only moves when you move” mechanic from SUPERHOT… and I love it. It’s very easy to get into, very quick, and just so darn addicting!
You play as a mouse that is getting chased by a bunch of cats, and you navigate a maze that is made out of cardboard. To score points, you collect these little orbs and when you collect a big one, a new line of orbs spawns elsewhere in the maze. Collect enough orbs and you’ll level up, granting you the ability to choose one perk from a selection of three. You can pick up to four passive perks and four weapon perks. And as you go, you become stronger and stronger, level up your perks, and try to survive for as long as possible… perhaps even beating the almost impossible ten-minute mark.
What surprised me about Maze Mice so much is how much depth there is with various stats and how they are influenced by your passives… and how hectic yet relaxing it is.
I know, I’m contradicting myself here but while it is sort of fast-paced in the same way Snake and Pac-Man are hectic, you can literally pause at any given point in time by simply not moving which allows you some time to breathe and think and plan ahead if you want to… or you can just grab something to drink, go to the toilet, take your meds, take care of yourself, and all that stuff… and then just return back, easy-peasy. It’s just that chill.
And even when you fail, death’s not really all that much of a deal since runs are very short and getting back into the game is super quick. Not to mention that your points unlock new characters, passives and weapons, resulting in just more fun.
The best part about this demo is honestly the soundtrack. Such a vibe fr. The game is set to release in Early Access “soon” but you can still check the demo out if you’re into whatever I just described.
Squirreled Away
Squirreled Away is an open-world sandbox survival game where you play as a squirrel with up to three squirrel buddies. I had a wonderful time exploring the very vibrant and lush park, helping the locals out on quests, crafting tools and building up my own house in a tree!
When it comes to games where you play as an animal, you can either try to be really realistic or you can try to be over-the-top and weird and funny. This game’s definitely part of the latter category. You literally collect twigs and stones to then craft an axe to fell branches and use the resources to build not a nest or anything of the sorts, but a literal house with walls, crafting stations, doors, roofs and windows. It’s very uncanny in a great way. There are almond no limits. (eh?)
You also get to meditate on resources to unlock new crafting recipes. You also have something called “Squirrel Vision” which highlights resources nearby… but above all, it’s just plain fun to climb up trees and run around while mining stones, collecting resin and scaring away seagulls.
For what it’s worth, I really like games like this one… Titles where you get creative and build houses or bases, explore the world, gather resources, et cetera – especially when they’ve got a bit of that weirdness going on… squirrels wielding tools to mine resources and floating in the air while meditating and stuff. My cup of tea, for sure. I don’t have nut puns for this section.
What is also pretty great is that the developers are keeping up the demo until even after the next Steam Next Fest, so, feel free to take your time and hop (does that count as a pun?) right into the game. It is incredibly cute with very chill music, a nice aesthetic, and just a lot to do, even if I was lowkey upset at the fact that the demo cuts us off from exploring more at a certain point. I can’t wait to play the full release!
Roots Devour
While we’re on the topic of nature, Roots Devour lets you inhabit an eldritch being in a forest. You ARE the nature… and you’re spreading your roots and devouring what lies in your path as you explore the darkness and bring suffering to all that stumbles across you.
You spawn into the forest and around you, there are corpses, rats, brambles, rocks and cultists just waiting to be explored. You need blood to grow stronger, and as such, you start sprouting your roots and spreading them from one living being to another, draining rats and humans alike, digesting deer and corroding nature in your way. Eventually, you’ll reach new areas that you can spawn into later on, unlock more powerful combinations of cards and solve a variety of quests and mysteries.
The game even has choices, in a way. There was a rat I stumbled upon that begged me to let it live so that it can guide us to the other rats, so naturally I trusted it. After all, I can still suck it dry later if I want to. That was a fun interaction that I’m not gonna spoil. At other points, you may find doors requiring you to find codes… There are cultists trying to unleash a different, separate eldritch being other than you… Heretics.
And all of this is accompanied by a very atmospheric soundtrack that is incredibly fitting for a game that features writing as mysterious and horrifying as this one. I felt reminded of authors such as Chambers and Lovecraft. I had goosebumps at times.
It genuinely is a good game and it has a fair bit of resource management and depth even if it is easy to get into.
Winnie’s Hole
From one disturbing roguelike to another, Winnie’s Hole is a new roguelike strategy game by Twice Different, the developers of Ring of Pain, and while I very much suck at it, I absolutely loved the time I spent with Winnie’s Hole.
Alright, so, first things first… nothing lewd going on here. You’re a virus inside of Winnie the Pooh’s body and you manifest yourself in the form of a literal gaping hole inside of Winnie’s stomach.
As you move through his body, you find cells and other resources, allowing you to grow stronger, mutate new limbs and evolve further. And believe, you’ll want to do that given that the various animals of the forest are very much trying to “help” you in ways that I find rather disturbing.
Gameplay consists of the sort-of puzzly sections where you place these Tetris blocks into the crevices and veins inside of Winnie’s body before eventually heading to Event stages where you get to evolve mutations and then fight the denizens of the Forest. It’s a turn-based combat system that has some rather interesting mechanics to it.
Bleeding stacks, for instance, will deal damage to the target when unblocked physical damage is applied. There are enemies whose power gets reduced when you deal damage to them, and enemies that might grow stronger if you do that. Similarly, you can also create many weird and whacky builds… and I just love the variety of it all.
More than anything, though, I loved the atmosphere, the wonderfully eerie music, the weird and creepy animations, as well as the signature Twice Different art style that might just haunt my dreams tonight.
Is This Seat Taken?
Another highlight of mine this time around, and one that has also fascinated many other bloggers in my bubble, was Poti Poti Studio’s “Is This Seat Taken?”, a logic puzzle game about playing matchmaker for hilariously particular people.
The game is pretty simple! You see a bunch of seats in a bus, a restaurant, the cinema or other places and you’ll have to seat the various guests correctly. How you do it is completely up to you but just remember that some of them have specific needs.
From preferring aisle or window seats to wanting to sit next to specific people to absolutely hating strong odors, there’s a plethora of needs to be met. As such, it’s upon you to figure out the most optimal solution. In a way, this is essentially Orgynizer but with an overarching story and much more SFW.
What is very unique about this game in particular, however, is how your seating arrangements from one “round” affect the other, meaning that in the same level that you’ve seated a first set of guests, you might create issues for yourself that you need to plan around in the next set. People might spill popcorn onto their seats resulting in seats being dirtied – and nobody likes sitting on a dirty seat. I can’t wait to see what other mechanics the game will introduce besides that!
I really adore the art style of this game with its cartoony shapes and animations, the cute character designs, and the overall flair that the game oozes out of every square and triangle hole. On top of that, I love that there is an overarching story about an actor and about various other people, with the full release making you head towards Brussels in the second chapter. It’s interesting.
I like puzzle games that let you play at your own pace, figure things out, and also indulge in some light story beats. Furthermore, there are secret levels that you unlock if you get perfect scores! This one’s pretty great!
Solarpunk
From one cozy game to another, Solarpunk is another Open World Survival Crafting type of game but it seems rather promising in that it presents you with floating islands to explore, advanced green energies and other technologies to research, many decorations to place, animals and farms to tend to, and even some degrees of automation, all playable alone or in co-op with your friends.
Right from the get-go, I have to say that the game looks stunning. It’s a very pretty title, in my opinion, especially with the light effects and the vibrant, warmer colour palette. On top of that, while the game does seem somewhat ambitious, the demo is rather polished and offers a fair bit of content.
Now, for a game that is all about green energy and all that, I do wish that I could have just skipped the rock-and-tree-punching stage that every single survival game has. It took me around an hour to get to the point where I could build an airship, at which point in time, the developers just handed over some technologies to work with, such as a miner, a sprinkler, some solar panels, connectors and even a wind turbine. Cool stuff.
But like… I would have loved to play around with that more than just at the end of an hour-long play session if that makes sense.
That said, I can see how this could possibly very much appeal to people looking for a cozier experience with some survival elements, some farming elements and even some light automation. Flying around in your airship is a ton of fun, btw. But the trailers also showcase a fair few features that just look really enjoyable to play around with.
Overall, I’m looking forward to this one but I do hope the devs work on the pacing a little bit in the full release.
Reignbreaker
From the developers behind The Inner World and Minute of Island comes a… Hades-like?! The German Indie Dev, Studio Fizbin, is known for their point-n-click games primarily, so it was more than surprising to see them release an action-roguelike like Reignbreaker. In this very punk and anti-establishment roguelike, you play as Clef, a knight that decided to go against the tyranny of her former liege and who now wields a motorized gunlance to fight off robots and get ever closer to the tyrant known as the Queen of Keys.
I first heard about Reignbreaker at last year’s Gamescom but sadly didn’t get to talk to the devs too much. From what I could tell the game looks awesome. I now got to finally play the demo (the booth back then was practically always full with folks trying the game out), and I must say that I actually like it more than Hades II. And that’s surprising. You can see the influence on the art style, the perspective, and even the power ups, to a degree, but despite the inspirations being so clear, Reignbreaker manages to be its very own unique thing.
Clef can punch foes, slash them with her gunlance, toss the lance into enemies, unleash a flurry of shots, and even manages to sabotage traps to her advantage. At the same time, you manage a heat mechanic and try to get to higher and higher combo levels whilst dodging bullets, punches and rockets. It’s very fast-paced and beautifully designed yet the developers didn’t shy away from also including a variety of accessibility options.
The medievalpunk aesthetic, the great rock-y soundtrack and just everything else about this game fits so well together… and on top of that, you can very much see how the game about the former child soldier turned liberator is a direct response to the “rise in right-wing authoritarianism all around the world” (as community manager Ian Steward told RockPaperShotgun’s James Archer) amongst other issues. And I love that.
Reignbreaker is super fucking cool and it’s such a shame that it will be the last of Studio Fizbin’s games. Truly. That said, the game is coming out soon if you wanna support the developers and/or if you’re as excited about it as me.
Mother Machine
While we’re on the topic of German indie dev studios, Maschinen-Mensch, the developers of Curious Expedition 1 and 2, also really went out of their usual range with Mother Machine which is more of a mission-based 2D Action Platformer where you play as little mutated gremlins running around, collecting things, beating up enemies and powering machines… for your mother, of course… who is also a machine.
The game is designed to be played in co-op with friends (or other people) in local split-screen or online multiplayer but can very much be played alone. So, don’t let that bother you. You can even host private lobbies or create a new one for other people to join in randomly as you gather energy together to customize your gremlins further.
Mother Machine is for the most part an atmospheric platformer with some action elements to it where you get an ability that you can use to defeat enemies, navigate levels or perhaps help allies, all so that you can then unlock cosmetics and new abilities. It’s also a very weird game in a way where you climb everywhere, throw up bombs and fruits, eat little critters and embrace radioactivity… I wonder what inspired it.
The levels vary in difficulty and there’s something for everyone in there, I’ve noticed, from defeating enemies to sort of puzzle-y platforming sections.
Overall, it’s a really fun time and I felt reminded of Deep Rock Galactic in a very weird way, and I can’t wait to see what the game has in store for us starting March 26th!
Dino Path Trail
So, gremlins that puke out explosives are pretty wild already… but nothing’s wilder than the Wild West… (see what I did there?) and Dino Path Trail is a game set in the Wild West but in a world where dinosaurs didn’t go extinct… and your sister got kidnapped, so it’s upon you to rescue her in this survival-action-roguelike game with shoot ’em up mechanics and a lot of bite.
Dino Path Trail combines survival gameplay with roguelike action, in a way reminding me of The Flame In The Flood but with less of a focus on Survival. Gather resources, hunt dinosaurs, take on bandits and upgrade your equipment while moving on with your mobile base and chasing after the villains who kidnapped your sister! Huzzah or whatever cowboys say!
What’s worse about the situation is that there’s a bounty on your head, so you’ll face periodic raids from hunters – on top of the hostile prehistoric wildlife – and with every raid that you survive, the bounty increases, hence increasing the difficulty over time.
To survive, you’ll have to kite enemies and dodge at the right times to avoid taking hits but if you do it well enough, you also can deal damage to them, reload your weaponry or receive buffs depending on your weapon.
Similarly, there are perfect shots that deal more damage, perfect reloads that will get the job done quicker, and even resource gathering awards you for doing it very well in that hitting skill checks nets you bonus resources that will then aid you in your journey onwards.
It’s a really odd combination, of course… Western and Dinosaurs in the same setting, Survival and Roguelike gameplay in the same title… but it sort of works and I find it pretty unique and fun.
Wildkeepers Rising
While Dino Path Trail features the lone wolf protagonist, Wildkeepers Rising has a big focus on teamwork and being stronger together, I guess. It’s a Bullet Heaven (or Vampire Survivors like) game where you tame monsters and use them to fulfil various missions, developed by two guys from Italy who go by Lioncode Games online. Neat.
And I know, there’s so many Bullet Heaven games out there, and Steam Next Fest alone showcases so many… but this one feels pretty interesting in the ways that it innovates the formula, so I really wanted to highlight it because of how much fun I had with it.
Wildkeepers Rising is set in a world where ancient guardians of the lands have vanished and corruption has settled in. Now, after a lot of time has passed, you’re to set out there and bring back the Guardians, use their powers to deal with the corrupted foes, and defend humanity against the onslaught of enemies.
To do that, you walk around collecting the various shrines to build a team of four Guardian beasts and then complete whatever mission you have, ranging from destroying barricades and hives to defeating certain enemies or collecting certain objectives.
The game is very charming, actually, with a 2.5D art style, hand-drawn art, and a big focus on interesting builds that you create. I had this cat at one point that explodes when you use its ability which literally does so much damage to the whole screen but also kills the cat until it comes back ten seconds later.
And then I gave it a relic on level-up that made it take all damage for me. It also had a perk that would make the explosion deal a lot of damage when it was below 75% health… and I also gave it a relic that would create a copy of it that shares its health. Another level-up gave it the ability to heal all teammates by a certain amount per explosion… so… yeah, I cleared screens of enemies and borderline broke the game in that run.
I like weird shenanigans like that in games and Wildkeepers Rising, which is set to come to Early Access starting March 31st, has A LOT of fun interactions like that. I really enjoyed my time with and do recommend checking it out if you haven’t yet.
Locomoto
With all that action going on during Steam Next Fest, I do think it’s important to take a break from time to time… introducing Locomoto, a Life Sim that is set on a train. It’s very chill and calming, has lots of decorations and cool touches, and I really adore the characters in this game!
I love trains. I hate how late they are in Germany, though… and I made people in Locomoto feel that wraith themselves by starting up my train way too late because I literally spent too much time decorating the insides… again… Luckily, the game doesn’t have a timer or any other pressuring elements to it.
Locomoto is a life sim. You gather resources. You craft furniture. You pick up packages and passengers. You deliver them. They’re happy. You’re happy. That’s essentially what the game amounts to but while it does not sound like a lot, it certainly gave me that Animal Crossing feeling… you know? Like, “time spent here is time spent well”, essentially.
And as someone who absolutely loved the side missions for deliveries and whatnot in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, I was super excited to check out this demo. It literally was the first one I wishlisted during Steam Next Fest this time around because of just how cute and relaxing it is. Big vibes. Go check it out.
Liftlands
Similar to Life Sims, God Games and Colony Sims can be very relaxing and fun and Liftlands is both. The best way to describe it is “What if Black & White was 2D?” – you’re essentially a deity that gives uppies to these wildlings that happen to be in the area… and now they worship you for it. Understandably so. I’ve heard you’re pretty great.
So, then you gather resources by clicking about and throwing them into the altar or giving them to the people. You assign buildings to be build, jobs to be practiced, and over time manage a little of a cult or religion or whatever you wanna call it full of wild elves, humans or orcs that congregate at night to pray for you.
And that prayer turns into power. Hell yeah! So, you can then unlock divine gifts to bestow upon your people or various powers from instant crop growth and healing to plagues and lightning strikes. Huzzah!
This, alongside the ambitious roadmap, is sort of what reminds me of Black & White. The full release will feature a system where you can convert other Gods’ followers into your own… you can form alliances and trade or go to war and plunder. You can really customize your powers as you play the game. I played the demo a fair bit and really enjoyed it, so if you’re into some light colony sims or god games, this one might be up your alley.
The King Is Watching
While Liftlands has you watch over people as a God to increase your own power, The King Is Watching has you observe the kingdom and build up a bustling economy and mighty military over time to defend against goblins. Segways are hard, man.
Technically speaking this demo has been out for ages now and I just never got around to writing about it, but hey, it’s a demo, and I might as well highlight this one because it’s a very fun and truly challenging roguelike citybuilder! And your city is full of slackers who will immediately stop working once you look in the other direction.
As such, you’ll have to carefully place your buildings around in a way that makes it easy for you to switch your gaze there to gather resources very efficiently. You’ll also use the oracle to get bonus rewards by tackling special waves of enemies. There are also spells, upgrades, relics and more to find, as you go from one run to another.
The King Is Watching is developed by Hypnohead and published by tinyBuild. There is no release date yet, but the art style is adorable, the gameplay is very well designed, the demo has been out for ages, and I do think many more people should check it out if they haven’t yet.
Steel Judgement
As someone who has played a fair few spectacle fighters with combo systems and all of the cool style mechanics and as someone who really enjoyed them despite being really bad at them, I just had to give Steel Judgement a try. And I love it. It’s a shame I absolutely suck at it and haven’t made it past the second boss at all so far. But I’ll get there!
Steel Judgement is a Roguelike FPS game with a whacky combo system where you taunt enemies to gain energy to perform various actions, like slides, dashes and punches… that when paired with a taunt get turned into enhanced moves that can be used to juggle enemies.
While you deal with all the combo-ing and fighting, you move around defeating enemies, clearing rooms and finding items which then help you create a build of sorts that lets you do more wild things.
For what it’s worth, it’s a really interesting albeit challenging experience, having to make sure you don’t spam the same few moves over and over while also taking care of enemies, managing your health and energy and eventually failing.
There are a lot of cool combos you can do and it genuinely feels like such an interesting mix of games like Risk of Rain and Ultrakill if that makes sense. And even if I fail repeatedly and even if I die yet again, it doesn’t really get too frustrating since runs are so fast-paced and short-lived that it never feels like you’ve lost any time… and before long, half an hour passes or an hour and oh, where did the time go.
Steel Judgement is, simply put, a very good time.
Bugtopia
Bugtopia is an incremental/idle bug-management game that I enjoyed a fair bit. It’s a cozy title sandwiched between two somewhat intense roguelikes in this post. In this game, you’ve got a terrarium with bugs in it that mature over time (or once you have fed them enough) which will generate money over time (or once sold for immediate profits). Using the money generated, you can then buy more (perhaps more expensive) bugs which will in turn result in more money.
It is very much an idle game, I think, but there is a sort of active component to it in that you can very much buy insects to then sell them off and afford bigger and more lucrative bugs.
But what I really like about it is that you don’t have to minmax it or anything. You can literally just leave it running and it will do its thing. You can buy and add decorations to it. You can do whatever you want with it. There is no pressure or anything associated with the title and the insects themselves are designed in a pretty adorable way that didn’t trigger any of my many phobias… but the screenshots on the store page also feature cute-ish spiders and I’m not sure how I feel about those.
I think the coolest part about Bugtopia is the fact that you’re creating an ecosystem within the terrarium and that the enclosure requires you to add different species to it so that you can then make more money – otherwise, there’s a debuff in place. On top of that, there is also a breeding mechanic in the game that lets you breed different insects to not just increase their numbers (for free) but also to receive rarer species of the same insect family – meaning you can have butterflies and other bugs in different colours flying and crawling around the enclosure.
So, to sum it up, this is an idle or incremental game with creature collection mechanics that lets you play the game however you want to play it. I hope that the full release will also feature a creative mode or something along those lines to just create your dream terrarium without the hassle of having to make money.
The demo is available on Steam and the full release is set to come out in Q2 of 2025.
He is Coming
Not gonna lie, my absolutely favourite demo this time around was He Is Coming by the devs at Chronocle. This is a roguelike RPG where you prepare yourself for the inevitable arrival of the demon king and his vassals. It gave me Loop Hero vibes for whatever reason but it doesn’t really have any similarities to it… but it did certainly scratch a similar itch for me, which is nice.
For what it’s worth, the game is very simple and easy to get into. You spawn into the world and travel along paths to collect loot from chests, explore the map, defeat enemies for gold, and get stronger over time. The various stats are self-explanatory but there are tooltips around in case you have questions. The battles are automated and can be sped up. The game is pretty great.
Each run is sort of this battle against the clock as every tile you move and every action you take will bring the current cycle’s “big bad” closer and closer until they eventually attack you. So, it’s upon you to get stronger by utilizing various stats, equipment pieces, weapon oils and enchantments, as well as set effects to your advantage to create pretty silly builds that somehow work… or not.
And then, once you beat the boss, the world levels up, enemies get stronger, and the next cycle begins.
It’s a pretty great demo that you can sink an unbelievable amount of time into. A friend of mine has sunk 42 hours into it already, at the point of writing this, and I don’t fault her. It’s a really interesting title that is simple yet has depth. And I haven’t even talked about the asynchronous PvP mode where you face off against other people instead of the big bads whose builds were created in the same cycle as yours… Oh, boy. Go check it out.
On another note
I haven’t been writing much lately but I really wanted to cover the many awesome demos available during Steam Next Fest this time around, so I’m glad that I got this post out. I’ll try to publish more over time whenever I find some free time amidst exams. I hope you enjoyed reading this one.
Steam Next Fest is really overwhelming for me, btw, because my inbox gets flooded with lots and lots and lots of e-mails from many different developers – and I don’t fault them at all… it’s just that I’m only one person here and I need to figure out how to manage my e-mail inbox a bit better.
Beware of Scams
On a completely different note, I was pretty upset at the fact that there were so many AI games present during Steam Next Fest, many of which undisclosed, despite Valve’s stance on AI-generated content in games. I hope that they sort that out in the future.
One such game is the soon-to-be-released “Talk To Me Human”. It didn’t seem to have gained too much attention this time around, luckily, but I wanted to write about something that I felt was a little scummy.
The developers use AI-generated artwork for literally everything in this game, none of which is disclosed. The game itself has you chat with a Large Language Model (think ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever) to find your way out of awkward scenarios that the developer has written down.
The game will be available for purchase soon and what the developers don’t disclose anywhere on the Steam page is the fact that you can run out of “Gameplay Tokens”, hence rendering the game unplayable. If you run out of these gameplay tokens, you’ll have to message the developers who will then issue you more of them… The reason for this being in place is the fact that each conversation/playthrough/etc. costs the developers money. This in turn means that they have to limit the playability of the game although they assure others that it should never come to that. In theory.
In reality, though, if the game were to have a playerbase large enough to not be lucrative anymore for the developers, they could literally stop issuing these gameplay tokens – and hence the game is literally not gonna be playable anymore. At that point, you’ll pay for abandonware, essentially.
This is not just a very scummy business practice and incredibly intransparent but it also causes issues for other indie developers since the game will release in Early Access and having one such game amongst the many EA titles will quite probably damage the playerbase’s trust in Early Access titles further, possibly ruining other developers’ chances at finishing development.
So, just be aware that any game that lets you “talk to AI” will most likely not only be trained on stolen data but also quite probably shut down eventually, hence resulting in an unplayable mess.
I’m not a fan of AI. I think it’s bad. I don’t think it needs to be in games. Call me a ludipe if you want to but I’m not gonna cover anything that uses AI-generated assets without disclosing it and I will not talk kindly about games that are this untransparent. I know folks complain about games that require a connection to some server that might eventually shut down, but that’s nothing in comparison to a game that literally will be shut down once it loses too much money. Any LLM game will make the developers’ wallets bleed.
At the least, I haven’t seen any game yet that works ethically with AI. I’d be more than happy to see it happen but my expectations are pretty low about that.
Cheers.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.
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