Another Next Fest is underway, so here’s my latest set of demo impressions. I’m adding a 👍 next to my favorites. I’ve found a lot of demos I plan to try this time around.
Lightyear Frontier
I’ve been looking forward to this mech farming game for a while. It’s a peaceful open-world farming game with a focus on harmonizing with the environment. It’s very pretty but overall a little more basic than I was expecting. I also love that you can trip your mech; it’ll just roll around on the ground and you have to exit to flip it upright.
Star Trucker 👍
I was honestly a little surprised with how much I enjoyed this one. It’s essentially a trucker game like Euro Truck Simulator, but with power management and EVAs for repairs. The docking reminds me of Kerbal Space Program. I honestly wish Star Citizen was more like this.
Summer House
A peaceful little game where you build houses. A lot like Townscaper.
Dystopika
A dystopian city-builder toy that’s even more like Townscaper. Could make some nice wallpapers.
Breachway 👍
A roguelike deckbuilding adventure game. Solid mechanics and looks good. I’m looking forward to trying the full game.
Synergy
An interesting city-builder with a focus on finding balance with the environment. I love the aesthetic, but find some of the controls a little annoying. I was struggling with figuring out how to “prune” plants (maybe it’s a mechanic that unlocks later?) when the demo crashed on me.
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown
There’s the core of a good city-builder here, but there are several mechanics that make things annoying to manage. For instance, wood is used for construction, firewood, and planks, but you can only have one logging camp, which limits the rate you can produce this vital resource. I also had a building burn down because it was outside the radius of a well, so my villagers just decided to let it burn. If things like that get cleaned up, this could be a pretty solid game.
Final Factory
A space factory and defense game.
Underspace 👍
Freelancer with some cosmic horror thrown in. I loved what little I played of the demo. I love the aesthetic, the atmosphere, and the gameplay. Some of the voice work could be cleaned up a bit, but I’ll definitely pick this up once it releases into early access.
Solar Expanse
A solar system exploration game. Seems pretty chill; I might try out the full game on release.
Shapez 2 👍
I loved the original Shapez, and the sequel brings the same gameplay into 3D. Looks great and plays great, at a scale that surprised me.
Ouros
Basically a puzzle game about Bézier curves. Pretty chill and easy to play.
Orc Warchief: Strategy City Builder
Seems like a pretty basic city builder at the moment. There’s apparently some sort of combat mechanic where you send your orcs to fight other armies (there’s a combat demo after finishing the demo), but it came down to numbers, which was a bit disappointing.
News Tower 👍
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect with this one, but I really enjoyed it. From building and managing the tower where all my employees work to managing which stories my reporters were working on, the entire experience is great. Well polished and a lot of fun. I think naming my newspaper “Print Is Dead” added to my enjoyment a bit.
Pacific Drive
A survival game where your car is the focus. There’s an interesting world that’s been built for the game, and the upgrade trees for the car look really deep. There are a lot of survival games that I hate, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.
Millenia
A Civilization-style game. The demo only lasts 60 turns, which only gets through the early eras in the game. Some of the concepts seem interesting, like special ages that have specific requirements and special effects. The “Age of Blood” requires killing 6 enemy armies and leads to an age where all nations are at war. I’ve always enjoyed the various Civ games, so I’d like to dig into this one at some point.
Reus 2
A planet-building god game. Similar to the first game. Cute and pretty easy to play.
Balatro 👍
A roguelike deckbuilding poker game. Empower your deck with jokers that provide special abilities, tarot cards that alter your deck, planet cards that improve hand values, and vouchers that provide passive bonuses. A really unique blend that works really well and is a lot of fun to play.
MULLET MAD JACK
This game looks amazing in motion, with a retro-cyberpunk anime style. A lot of fun to just run through levels killing everything as fast as possible. There’s also a lot of social commentary in here, too, from the robot billionaires that control the world to the livestream of your runs pumping dopamine into your system and extending your life. It’s not all that subtle.
Children of the Sun
Telekinetically bend your single rifle bullet to take out cult members. It’s a stylistic shooting puzzle game.
Harold Halibut 👍
An adventure game where you play as the titular Harold, unraveling a mystery aboard the Fedora 1, a spaceship crash-landed at the bottom of the ocean on an alien world. The art is amazing; the characters and environments are all hand-built and animated with stop motion. I might have to buy this one just to support the art.
TerraTech Worlds
I loved the original TerraTech, but based on the demo, I’m not sure how I feel about Worlds. It’s slower to start and some of the environmental effects are overly powerful early-game, like trees that shoot lightning and can instantly destroy your tech.
Tribes 3: Ascend
I want to like it, but the skiing feels too floaty and I find it practically impossible to hit anything that’s moving. Maybe it’s just latency, but with players (and the flag) jumping around so much, it’s difficult to have much fun.