Another Next Fest with a host of playable demo’s to check out. I really love the fact that Steam has brough back the good old demo with these Next Fests.
Post the demo’s that you’ve played and enjoyed, or at least are keen to check out.
This was the first demo I played, even before the Next Fest began. Oltman and I hopped into a game and did a few missions. It’s pretty cool, more of a serious vibe than “Sea of Thieves in Space”. The transition between crewing the ship and going offboard is indeed seamless. The game has good potential.
If you played the Desert Strike, Jungle Strike games, you’ll enjoy this reimagining of the genre. The controls feel a bit more arcadey than the games it takes inspiration from but the rope mechanic is a lot of fun in that you can pick up and throw around all sorts of items. No gun? No worries as you drag a shipping container along the ground to smash the enemy soldiers to a pulp.
Not going to link all the demos I played, as some are not that great and some have already been posted above.
TurretGirls.
Someone had to, and I would suggest not playing this at all, the camera setting is really bad, the enemy is way too much for just you, and by the time I reached the boss, on like day 3 or 4 I just died as no matter how much I shot it I had no idea how close to dying it was and it just ended up killing me. DO NOT PLAY.
Cleared Hot.
Really fun arcade chopper shooter, however for some reason the first level ran really bad for me, it was barely using any resources yet had massive FPS drops, very strange
Dead as Disco.
Fun rhythm fighting game, uses combat like the batman games, also has the ability to add your own music to fight to, I like the art style. Recommend giving it a shot.
Voyagers of Nera.
Interesting survival game, focuses on islands and water travel, has cool little spirits that can follow you and seems like they get abilities eventually, I did not play too much as my PC is a bit under powered for this game. I do think the release date of august is a bit too soon, I think it does need some work, combat is very basic, building, and skills, honestly other that the spirits and island living, pretty basic survival game, I am a sucker for good water in games that’s why I gave it a shot.
Dispatch.
Now this was very fun, basically a dispatcher for a bunch of misfit superheroes, some of the devs are people from the telltale games so between the main gameplay loop of dispatching heroes to crimes there are these story scenes where you can pick dialog options, and the humor is on point, at least for me. Highly recommend playing.
Truxton Extreme.
Throwback to old shoot em up games, reminded me heavily of Tyrian 2000 if anyone remembers that game, pretty decent, I could not beat the boss though as my talent was lacking, and my shoot em up skills are a bit rusty, definitely would like to see how the main game pans out. Recommended.
Ball x Pit.
Rogue lite(like) brickbreaker style game, with base building aspects, does not yet seem to have any good meta progression in the demo, seems to be just a “demo” of the main mechanics, looking forward to full release. Recommended
TerraTech Legion.
Vampire survivor style game, but you have a lego block style vehicle which you can mount weapons to and customize how you want, with the blocks you pickup whilst playing. Sounds a bit bland when I say it, but give it a shot I had some really good fun, and the graphics look really nice. No meta progression as of yet though. Recommended.
Jump Ship.
Played with my brothers in a 3 man team, really fun, does still need some work, as we experienced enemies that clipped through terain as well as an issue I had where I could not use my “interact key” so I could no longer do anything really on the ship, could not even pickup a fire extinguisher, would also be nice to be able to walk through the ship whilst in the “hub” area, so you can get a better idea of what you actually just upgraded on the ship, but that’s just a bit of nit-picking, all in all. Highly recommended.
Phantom Squad.
Top down “ready or not” or should I say its multiplayer “door kickers” had no one to play with and would definitely recommend having a squad to play this, however from what I did experience, it was ok, it has potential, another one I would like to see on full release.
Some nice ones there Greg, I love me some trains so I’ll definitely check out Heat Death.
I’ve been playing Eriksholm which piqued my interest in the Summer Game Fest trailer
The demo gives you a generous portion of the game to play. The story pulls you in from the start and I was impressed at the detail and expressiveness of the characters faces in the cut scenes. The setting looks great, there’s just something about the isometric view that makes everything look so picturesque. The stealth starts off fairly basic but ramps up in intensity at one point. There are new mechanics that get introduced that give me assurance that despite controlling one character, there will still be a degree of the strategic aspect that you find in gems such as Desperados III and Shadow Tactics.
