Getting ready for Steam Next Fest...
with a Rambling Reviews Demo Fest of my own.
So I might have done A Thing™. 😬
Steam Next Fest is coming up, starting on the 9th of June and ending on the 16th. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t seen it before: Next Fest is basically a week-long event on Steam where gamers can try out demos of upcoming games, watch live streams from developers, and chat with them about their projects. It's a great opportunity to try out games before they are released and to discover new titles that might interest you.
But I also know that there is a lot of pressure on smaller indie devs to get their demo ready by a certain date and to a certain standard, and that a lot of them miss the deadline due to unforeseen circumstances, and thus miss out on a lot of crucial publicity while gamers miss out on their wonderful games.
With my big bleeding indie gamer heart, I made a Reddit post, asking indie devs to share their demos, offering them a try, a Steam review and optionally a mention in a future blog post.
I had hoped a handful of devs would be giddy to share their lovely projects with me and I could hype them up and maybe discover some good games myself… but I didn’t expect to get over a 100 replies in the first 8 hours alone, effectively adding over 60 demos to my Steam library and my to do list within a day. If I stick to my usual spiel of 5 games per blog post and one blog post per week, that’ll keep me occupied for the next twelve weeks, and that’s maybe a bit much?
So what I'll be doing is looking at all the games I’ve been sent, play the demos, give the devs feedback, and then pick out my ten favourite ones, the ones that jump at my heart of hearts the most, and list them here for you.
How’s that? Right. Strap in, get ready, let’s go!
The Royal Writ
Okay, The Royal Writ is one of those games, for me. The kind of game you take one glance at and just know you’re going to love it! You are the king and command your troops to defeat enemies and bring home the spoils. It offers an interesting spin on the cards x roguelike combo by adding royal writs (what’s in a name) to the deck, effectively applying bonuses (or debuffs, depending on how you look at it) that could change the course of your game entirely. It tops it off with a good sense of humour and adorably gorgeous graphics, making this a top tier game all around - and that was just the demo.
Retro Relics
Retro Relics went straight to my heart.
I fell in love with this game the moment I saw a screenshot on Reddit, and after playing the demo, I’m completely sold. The charm is undeniable, from its repetitive walking around, swinging your detector back and forth to the tactile joy of digging up treasures (and junk) with a shovel, it nails the cozy-core collecting vibe.
The core loop of detecting, digging, and displaying finds in your museum is already wonderfully satisfying, and I’m genuinely excited to see how the game evolves. The turtles? Instant love. Adorable. The ability to pet them? Game of the year.
I’ll be buying it the moment it’s released.
Dachs Hunter
Dachs Hunter features an adorable little sausage dog in a wizard hat, and that alone is enough reason to fall in love with this game instantly.
When firing up the demo, I was immediately intriguied by a gorgeously designed base with lots of pretty, shiny things I wasn’t allowed to touch yet. Safe to say I now need to see more of this game simply to satisfy that curiosity.
I normally don’t like bullet hell action roguelike games, because they tend to be too fast-paced and flashy for me, but this game has none of that, and I find that I actually quite like the dodging; collecting gems and bones (I guess they’re not for necromancy but will make for a juicy snack later, right? Right?) and SETTING EVERYTHING ON FIRE LEAVING A WAKE OF DESTRUCTION BEHIND ME AS THE CORPSES OF MY ENEMIES BURN TO ASHES MUAHAHA!
I’m fairly certain this game is perfectly safe and healthy for me to play.
Guard Break
Guard Break is an unexpected addition to this list.
I’m not sure what exactly it reminds me of, but it hits me in the nostalgic core dead centre. The atmosphere of the game feels like my teenage years, the dry humour and the overconfident protagonist remind of old action hero films and everything about this game just makes me want to play it more.
Wishlisted it, looking forward to seeing more of Finn’s story!
Lone Survivors
I’m starting to think that I don’t hate bullet hells as much as I thought, I just can’t handle the super bright, flashy ones.
Lone Survivors is one of those good ones. It gives off an incredibly cosy vibe, which is weird considering the very chaotic nature of the genre, but it works.
I love the gorgeous pixel graphics, the medieval vibe, the weapons and buffs you get - everything fits so well together, I can’t get enough of this demo!
I sense a “cosy bullet hell” blog post in the near future, stay tuned.
Brownie's Adventure: The Final Resolution
Oh. My. God. This game.
I don’t often like to compare games to other games, but I am making an exception here because the only way I can put in human words how perfect this game is and how firmly I believe it was made specifically for me:
Brownie’s Adventure is what happens if you put King’s Quest III and Day of the Tentacle together in a badly lit bedroom with some funky music on.
For those who don’t know King’s Quest III and Day of the Tentacle: they are genuinely some of the BEST games I have ever played and some of the first games I have ever loved. The only way this game could have been a better nostalgia trip is if the wizard had pink hair and screamed yah-yah all the time.
I got so flooded with nostalgia and the visceral craving to play it through until the end, that I had to stop playing the demo after 15 minutes, in favour of preserving all that excitement for the full release (and to prevent it from turning into frustration when the demo ends, though that, too, would have made me nostalgic, looking at you, Tombi demo disc from my cereal box).
Please join me in wishlisting this and hyping about this oldschool vibe!
Vampire Rancher
Okay, some harsh truth: I generally love farming sims and I have played quite a few of them in my time, but lately I’ve been feeling like most of them end up being very similar: your uncle/grandmother died and left you their farm, you as a city girl now swoop in to revive the place, befriend the villagers, fall in love and forever live the bliss of working your fields and feeding your animals.
It isn’t a bad concept - it’s cliché for a reason - I’ve been craving something new, something refreshing, something with a novel concept and a good take on the farming simulator concept. Something with a little more bite.
Vampire Rancher delivers exactly that.
It breathes new life into my dimming farming simulator spark by treating the villagers as food, and the crops you grow as food for your food. The hilariously obvious hiding in plain sight is refreshing, and I no longer feel like the saviour of the town but rather an up and coming vampire lord laying the groundworks for their vampire empire.
Just like with Brownie’s Adventure above, I didn’t finish playing the demo. I just know I’ll get invested, addicted, fixated and then inevitably frustrated when the demo ends. This game is another instant buy for me on release day!
Ricave
First things first: the Ricave developer is NOT called Rick.
I know, I was disappointed too.
Other than that, nothing to be disappointed about in this game!
Quite the contrary. Rick (heh) has taken one of my favourite genres, roguelike dungeon crawlers, turned it 3D, added some quirky and hilariously funny worldbuilding, and created an absolute masterpiece.
One of the things I’m most fascinated by, is its use of “randomness”. For example, you crawl into a dungeon room, find some loot, and see a bed. Oh, you can rest in the bed to heal your HP, sweet! But there’s also a chance (and the percentage is displayed, so it isn’t blind gambling) that it’ll spawn a monster that will bite you in your sleep. Do you go for it? Of course you do, and now you’re dead, you greedy idiot. Look, please note that I’m not saying this happened to me, I’m just saying that it might happen to you. And also that it absolutely happened to me.
As I’m writing this post, I realise that Ricave will release on Steam tomorrow, so out of all the games I write about in this blog post, this should be your first stop after reading it through to the end!
Imaginytes
Imaginytes combines roguelike tower defeense deckbuilding with gorgeous, immersive worldbuilding and creature collecting with evolution, resulting in a wonderful game that captivates me like crazy. The little monsters (on both sides!) are cute, their skills and designs unique enough to set them apart, their evolutions putting the proverbial cherry on the equally proverbial cake.
Map Map - A Game About Maps
Map Map - A Game About Maps does what it says on the box: it’s a game about maps. You are going on an adventure with your friends to map islands and discover ruins, investigate them and uncover the truth about the raven people! By exploring the island, discovering landmarks, making notes on your map, putting stickers on the location of trees or drawing a line where a cliff goes, you map the islands. When you’re asked “where is the big pile of rocks?” you put a pin in your map and go, “oh, it’s here!” - and then the most satisfying gigantic map marker drops out of the sky, hopefully right on top of where you pointed, and you get all the points! And if that wasn’t enough, you get to find treasure maps and dig up treasure, and the treasure usually is another marker or pencil or stickers AND DO YOU FEEL HOW EXCITED THAT MAKES ME because you should feel it, it’s that much excited.
So, err, that was a lot. Fifty demos played, given feedback on, some wishlisted, some reviewed, and my favourite ten of them featured in this blog post.
Do check out my Steam page to see the other demos I liked, and don’t forget to check out Next Fest for even more demos to try out yourself. All these indie devs pour their heart and soul into these games, they deserve at the very least a good college try. ♥
