Silverchase
- 33 Posts
- 10 Comments
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksOPto Games@lemmy.world•Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?English1·12 hours agoIt was surprising to see that it’s rated mixed on the store page. It looks like a lot of the complaining is about how it’s not like Patapon?
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksOPto Games@lemmy.world•Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?English1·12 hours agoThat’s a really cool art style! Maybe it could be of interest to !shmups@lemmus.org
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksOPto Games@lemmy.world•Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?English1·12 hours agoMy report from day 1
Orbyss — 3D puzzles with spheres
Thoughts before playing: Pretty, abstract 3D puzzle game. But what’s the killer feature? Like the portal gun from Portal or the camera from Viewfinder?
This is what it would be like to play the PlayStation 2 boot sequence as a puzzle game, with floating cubes and coloured sparks whizzing around in an abstract void. You get to control some balls, rolling them around the level to press buttons and zoom through pipes.
This demo shows some early levels, featuring some fairly stimulating puzzles, but it failed to really grab me. The slow pacing and pure abstractness of the game’s setting aren’t getting me excited to play more. I just never got to that “aha” point where I realized what made the game special. In comparison, another puzzle game demo I played in a past Next Fest, The Art of Reflection, didn’t waste any time showing off its key feature of jumping through mirrors.
I’m going to pass on this game, but I know someone is going to like it.
Panta Rhei — Atmospheric top-down adventure with time manipulation
The game produced an error when launching it, which I fixed by forcing Steam to run it with Proton Experimental.
2D animated cutscenes? Hell yeah, I love that kind of effort. The in-game 3D art also does a good job capturing that illustrative feel of the cutscenes. Atmospheric top-down adventure with cool art and light RPG elements? I liked Bastion and Tunic, so maybe this could be up my alley, too. The game’s premise and worldbuilding interest me. You play as a young guardian of time and use your time powers to fight the monsters ravaging the world.
But gameplay-wise, this demo is rough. I found the melee combat to be unsatisfyingly sluggish. There’s a bug where falling off the world makes you permanently faster when you respawn, and I was definitely running way too fast by the end of the demo. The game is tagged as a roguelike (aka “choose some randomly drawn upgrades”) on its store page, but there wasn’t much time in the demo to really appreciate any of those upgrades in action.
I’ll pass. It’s really unfortunate that this demo disappointed me, since this game still might grab me if it gets in better shape.
Wander Stars — Turn-based combat anime
The key selling points for Wander Stars are its loud inspiration by anime and its word-slinging combat mechanic, the latter of which got me to try this demo. I thought it was an interesting take on turn-based combat to line up words that customize an attack, and that old anime style presentation is indeed charming.
Wander Stars is also very heavy on the visual novel-style dialogue and cinematics, which is probably necessary to evoke that anime feel. It felt more like a visual novel in disguise than the more mechanically involved turn-based RPG that I was hoping for. I’m just lacking the patience to read so much between active gameplay, though the gameplay near the end of the demo does show potential for depth in the turn-based combat.
I’ll pass.
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksOPto Games@lemmy.world•Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?English1·1 day agoDang, I didn’t even notice Star Birds was in Next Fest.
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksOPto Games@lemmy.world•Steam Next Fest has started once again. What good demos have you found?English18·1 day agoI spent a good long time browsing through the piles of thumbnails to make myself a tall list. It’s a mix of games I’m excited for, games that look interesting to me, and weird games. Since I spent so much time today browsing for games, I haven’t actually played much today on day 1.
Some thoughts on my list
- Bits & Bops has already had a demo for months now, but for Next Fest, there’s a new minigame to play. Also, I backed this game on Kickstarter, so I’m obviously interested in seeing this game be good. And I think it is.
- SourceWorld is a Half-Life 2 mod participating in Next Fest! It’s an FPS dungeon crawler! The Source engine isn’t dying anytime soon.
- Oddcore has a really flashy trailer. I actually first heard of it from seeing it get front page attention on Newgrounds. It could be the first game set in “liminal spaces” that isn’t utterly boring or crap.
- Funi Raccoon Game is on this list because the trailer is stupid and I want to see more of it. I have high hopes.
- Why, yes, those are three games featuring a black cat as playable character.
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksto Games@lemmy.world•MOUSE: P.I. For Hire | Summer Game Fest TrailerEnglish8·3 days agoI’m glad someone knocked some sense into these guys and convinced them to add a little bit to the name to make it searchable. Just “Mouse” would have just doomed them lol
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksto Casual Conversation@piefed.social•What's a great phone app or feature most people don't know about?8·4 days agoAll the greatest hits on desktop are here. Like uBlock Origin, of course.
Silverchase@sh.itjust.worksto Casual Conversation@piefed.social•What's a great phone app or feature most people don't know about?14·4 days agoFirefox on Android supports add-ons
Day 2 of Next Fest is over! Here’s what I tried.
Good Luck — An absurdly dangerous walk to work
Pass
Öoo — Puzzle platformer with bombs
Wishlisted
PANIK — Chess-like grid puzzles
Wishlisted
SourceWorld — Dungeon crawling FPS in the Half-Life universe
Soft wishlist (I’ll keep an eye on this)
!mrak — Super stylish immersive sim
Soft wishlist