Time for another Next Fest! Like before, I’ll be updating this as I try out more demos.
Galacticare
It’s Two Point Hospital in space.
Gord
A narrative-heavy adventure game with survival city-building elements. An interesting mix. Pretty dark.
Quilts and Cats of Calico
It’s just like the board game, except the cats will wander around, walking and laying on your quilt, which is adorable.
Mind Over Magic
You manage a magic school, training young mages to go out and fight back the Dread, a dark fog that is slowly consuming everything. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but I thoroughly enjoyed the short demo. You get to build your little school, harvest resources, grow and cook food; all while summoning and training students to train and send into the Underschool to fight enemies in auto-battles. A great mix of genres that works far better than I expected.
Wizard With A Gun
I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since the trailer a while back. It’s essentially an adventure shooter where you create a cute little wizard who runs around and shoots things with magic bullets. You get a “home base” to build up over time as well, which you return to after each short “expedition” to gather resources.
Dust Fleet
A decent little tactical strategy game. The combat is definitely inspired by Homeworld. Not sure how much depth the final game will have; the demo is pretty simple.
Viewfinder
A first-person puzzle game with some really interesting mechanics. You use pictures to build out the world – bridging gaps, building ramps, duplicating objects, etc. There are some great visual effects as well. Looking forward to playing the full release.
ARC SEED
A tactical mech combat game using actions drawn from a deck. Gives off Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Pretty simple, but has decent pixel art.
The Invincible
A retro sci-fi adventure played entirely from first-person. The demo takes place a bit after the start of the game, with some mild spoilers. The visuals are fantastic, and the story seems interesting, so I’m definitely going to find some time to play it after release.
Jumplight Odyssey
Thus far, this is my sleeper hit from this Next Fest. It’s essentially FTL with the base building of something like Evil Genius, all wrapped in an 80s anime aesthetic. It even has an animated intro that establishes the feel. The graphics are great as well, and it looks like the final game will have multiple scenarios (maybe with different ship layouts?). It hooked me right away. I’ll definitely be picking this one up.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom
A city-builder where you’re constructing your towns on a mountaintop. The demo introduces the basic production chains and shows off an avalanche. Seems like it’s more about building the most efficient production chains than about resource management.
Station to Station
A pleasant little railroad-building puzzle game.
Axon TD: Uprising
I like a good tower defense game. This one has a lot of nice quality-of-life features like ways to manipulate the map and a free sell-and-replace each wave.
Thronefall
A roguelike city builder where you build up your castle and defenses to fight back waves of enemies. I’m annoyed that the demo locks progression behind completing all challenge modes for each level.
Cataclismo
Another defend-your-castle city builder. Has a heavier RTS element than Thronefall, where you build units and order them around individually. The wall building is very similar to Castle Story, and some structures can stack like Timberborn. I enjoyed the short demo, so this will definitely be in my library at some point.
Primitive Society Simulator
Stone-age Clanfolk. The UI needs some work, but the foundation seems pretty solid.
Norland
Medieval Clanfolk. Rule a small kingdom, building up your production and trying to keep everyone happy while fending off invading armies and bandits.
Stellaris Nexus
A turn-based 4X game. It’s very different from Stellaris, but has some nice twists on the standard 4X formula; mostly making things far simpler and more accessible, but also a bit more boring. I’m not sure how much I liked what I played in the demo. (And the Stellaris name is definitely just there for the name recognition.)
Starship Simulator
This one is just a tech demo, and it’s essentially just Space Engine with a Star Trek-style starship you can fully explore. Most of the ship is still a work-in-progress, but it was fun to fly around our solar system. There’s a fun “Disco Mode” test of the ship lighting, but unfortunately the life support systems aren’t fully implemented so I couldn’t disable life support and suffocate to death.
Ebenezer and the Invisible World
A Metroidvania where you play as Ebenezer Scrooge, post-Christmas Carol, teaming up with sprits to help the people of London. Neat idea with a nice hand-drawn style. Didn’t click with me, but it looks great.
Next Fest Complete
That’s the end of this Fest. There are several here I’m looking forward to, but Jumplight Odyssey most of all because of how well it combines some great styles (I love that Evil Genius base-building). Mind Over Magic was also more fun than I expected. I already knew about Viewfinder and The Invincible, and they both lived up to my expectations. I still love all the demos these events bring out and the opportunity to try a lot of things I’d have completely ignored otherwise.