Demo-all

Played so far:

Pacific Drive: Immaculate vibes. This is one of the more hyped games in Nextfest and it's easy to see why. It has a very clear style and vision, and it's a great world to poke around in. That said, I feel like this game is really going to hinge on its ability to generate threats to the player, and the demo looks like it cuts off right before that ramps up. Still one to keep an eye on, but not necessarily a day one buy from the demo.

Monster Scout: neat idea, poor execution. You basically scout out players for monster soccer, only it's not clear what, if anything, any of the players are good at, and the whole thing's kind of a mess.

Breachway: I liked this despite my dislike of the deck-builder genre. It's probably a skip for me, but I suspect if that's your bag, then this one's really going to get you. Really solid art direction on this one. It's a Hooded Horse game, and I don't think I've seen them make a bad game yet.

Dough: I took a peak at this one and backed out after a few minutes. It looks pretty complicated and not in a fun way. I think it may also be loaded with AI art--I don't know that a human would have generated anything that muddy and indecipherable. The tutorial uncle character is a visual nightmare, a sort of outline with the suggestion of a face and maybe a shotgun? Honestly didn't play it long enough to give a solid judgement, but initial impressions were extremely bad.

#Drive Rally: Beautiful art style on this one. But man, I was not thrilled with the driving dynamics. The thing I find with a lot of arcade racers is that by simplifying controls they kind of deaden the driving experience. You need a bit of slip to be able to pull off a decent drift or to take a tight corner. Maybe I need to mess with the settings on this one, but it really feels too arcadey for me.

Immortals of Aveum: Really pushed my admittedly older machine to the limit and past it. I'm starting to understand why there are so many different opinions on the narrative in this game--it's wildly uneven. The early pacing is really weird, they go from nice little interactions between characters to stiff, forced lore dumps. I think the (excellent) voice acting is carrying a lot of the writing. I need to give it another go, as I haven't really gotten very deep into combat yet. The setting is kind of interesting, but also feels a bit like someone's D&D setting from the game they've been running since they were a teenager.

Lightyear Frontier: Beautiful survival crafter farming game. I'm not sure it's doing anything terribly new in the survival crafter space, but it's nice to have a survival crafter with an interesting theme and setting that doesn't look like shit. I love the giant tractor mech. I'm curious if you end up doing any kind of mech battles in this. I can see how the engine might support that.

Willow Guard - wanted to try it, but it keeps crashing on me before I get into the action part of it. It's somebody's take on Redwall. Seems cool from the previews.

Rogue Racer - Seems like an Outrun style racing game. Kind of mixed feelings. The driving feels good to alright. It does capture that Outrun flavor of racing game while still feeling like you're driving something like a real car. But the tracks aren't super interesting. One of the featured tracks is just a featureless brown plain with no obstacles. I think the appeal of this one is supposed to be the characters, but the little bit of character work they put in was beyond bland and anime tropey. Really put me off the whole game. A little bit of charm would have gone a long way here.

Space Trucker - European Truck Simulator---IN SPAAACE! I don't know that this is going to have the same meditative quality of ETS. I loved the design of it and the physicality of all the levers and buttons you're pulling and pressing. But the actual mechanics of the game replicate the fiddliness of docking a space shuttle to the ISS, and not in a super rewarding way.

Synergy - This is a ecological city builder. The theme with a lot of these demos is that they've got off the charts style, and Synergy is no exception. It has the look of Scavenger's Reign, or maybe Sable. The trick with Synergy is that you're working with the land to create your city, not just exploiting it. You research the plant life and learn to harvest it without destroying it, creating a, uh, what's the word? Oh well, I'll think of it later. I'm intrigued, but I'd like to hear how it plays once you've had more than a few hours with it. Do the mechanics stay deep or gain depth with more time and complexity? I could see this potentially becoming a real grind if it's not tuned right. Definitely one to keep an eye on though.

Stellar Settlers - Again, a lot of style with this one. But I think the demo is already pushing the depth of its complexity. It feels like it was developed as a really good mobile game, but unless there's a lot more to show in the finished product, there's just not much to it.

Cyber Manhunt: New World (2?) - I was kind of reluctant to boot this up based on the name alone. But it's my favorite of the Nextfest demos hands down. It's a hacking game, but less about surfing the black node, and more about finding out someone's birthday from their public Toothbook (they call Facebook Toothbook. yeah, I dunno) and using it to hack their email. It's a really delightful puzzle game in the vein of something like Obra Dinn, and I'm in for the full thing when it releases.

Think I'm done demoing for now
Sword of Convallaria - Kinda looked interesting and then--it's a gacha game. Basically it's gacha Fire Emblem. I was kind of digging it until the gacha showed up. IME, gacha mechanics undermine the integrity of a game so that it's no longer focused on gameplay or story, but on pushing you into buying more pulls. But if you're a gacha-head, this is probably worth a look.

Terra Memorium - this is an retro-RPG in the vein of Sea of Stars and a few other recent releases. tbh, the recent games in this genre have really underwhelmed me, and this wasn't doing anything any different for me. I'm in the minority on this, though, so I'm not sure I'm the one to pass judgement here. I did like the time-based conceit of the battle system. I could see that working well.

Final Factory - Factorio in space. I found this one a little more compelling than Factorio. Factorio always felt a tad aimless. There's an old cautionary tale about an AI who's directive was to produce paperclips and who converts all matter on the planet into paperclips, overcoming all obstacles in the way of its paperclip goal. Factorio always felt a bit like a simulation of that. Here the goals feel a bit more concrete, and I don't have to care as much about conveyer belt lengths.

Homeworld 3 - I played through the tutorial--I think they made the controls worse than the original? Surely I'm remembering this with rose-tinted glasses.

Didn't get to/Probably not going to get to:
The Darkest Star and United Penguin Kingdom. I poked at both of these, and having gone through a whole bunch of tutorials already, I didn't really want to jump into two more complicated rulesets. Neither one felt bad, I just couldn't be bothered after flash-reviewing a couple dozen demos. That said, United Penguin Kingdom is a city-builder where you are penguins. Like, not anthromorphasized at all, just penguins with little flipper wings building markets and such. So that's great.

Nextfest time again. You can really feel how investment has dropped out of the industry this year. Last year it felt like there were a ton of interesting concepts, even if they didn't always play out. This year, you start hitting the mud bottom awfully fast. Nevertheless:

The Alters. Really great concept-a man crash lands on a planet, then has to split his personal timeline(?) and create copies of himself from other life paths to help him get off the planet. It's a surprisingly beautiful game. It also bugged out for me halfway up a ladder and I had to quit out of it. I'll come back to it later, but I thought it was worth mentioning, even with demo bugs.

Beyond Galaxyland - kind of an RPG-ified Out of This World.

Beyond these Stars - City-builder on the back of a Space Whale! Great premise, but it doesn't really do anything different in the city-builder genre as far as I can tell.

Caravan Sandwitch - Sable with a bit more Zelda DNA. Actually, what this really reminds me of is Beyond Good and Evil. I don't know if there's any combat in the main game, but I really enjoyed the exploration and Zelda-esque puzzles. Really nice soundtrack. Recommended.

Golden Lap - From the developers of the excellent Art of Rally, it's a management sim for definitely-not-F1. I was really excited about this and...I'm a bit disappointed. It's got a nice race model, but I don't think it's as interesting or detailed as Motorsport Manager.

Haunted House Renovator - Listen, I can't tell you this was a great game, but I had fun with it. It's a first person game about cleaning up an exorcising a haunted house. Your character is never in any danger, and the ghost stuff is kind of crowded, but it's kind of charming. I don't think it's a buy for me, but it's worth taking a look.

Heart of the Machine - Great concept: sort of a city-builder/syndicate style game where you are a rogue AI trying to take over the city. I think it may be a little early in the dev cycle for a demo. The UI was difficult to understand, and it was hard to figure out what you were supposed to do from minute to minute. I do think there's a lot of potential here, and I'd like to see this once it's polished up a bit.

The Operator - X-files the Visual Novel. It's a mystery puzzle game clearly based on the X-Files. I really liked this, and it's going on the wish list for me.

Parcel Corps - Hey, you know how you've been looking for spiritual successors to Crazy Taxi, Tony Hawk, and Jet Set Radio. What if I told you that I had played a game that looked like it was all of those games wrapped up into one? Am I overpromising a bit? Maybe? I dunno, but check it out for yourself.

Sky Oceans - Finally, someone tries to make a successor to Skies of Arcadia and it's....pretty mid, honestly. I did find it pretty charming, but I'm not sure it's doing a whole lot other than appealing to my very specific nostalgia for Skies of Arcadia. It's not bad, but it kind of looks a PS2 or PS3 game, and the battle system isn't super-complicated. I do want to see more of this game, but I have a hard time recommending it right now.

Superspec Rally Cross - Rally Cross is a really great racing format, and makes for a really great game due to its short format and elbows out driving. This was a really fun little arcadey racer. Nothing too complicated, but the driving dynamics feel really good. Really reminds me a lot of the ancient Ivan "Ironman" Stewart Super-Offroad game if you're old enough to remember that.

Tactical Breach Wizards - Really well written Xcom-like that feels good to play in a way that a lot of other Xcom-likes don’t pull off. I’m also trying to figure out why, after decades of increasingly dire Whedonesque Marvel dialogue, the Whedonesque Marvel dialogue in this game actually comes off well? It’s really funny?

Tipston Salvage - Overcooked with forklifts. Pretty well-constructed with fun movement controls. It's clearly made to be played with other people, and without an MP session it's kind of hard to evaluate. That said, it looked a little too simple to me. Might be fun for an hour or two, but I doubt it has any real staying power.

Vampire Therapist - Absolutely brilliant premise that's let down by it's gameplay, IMO. It's a visual novel, but one without much in the way of gameplay elements. It's kind of neat in that it's making you learn real therapy concepts and applying them to your vampire patients, but there's no penalty for getting anything wrong, and the writing isn't good enough to propel the game on its own. It ends up feeling like sitting in on someone else's therapy session.

The Vigilante Diaries - Fun little visual novel with the thing that makes VN's work for me: stats! I thought it was going to be pretty bare bones, but at one point, the game pulls back and gives you a very stylishly 3D rendered apartment. I doubt you're going to get a lot of these environments, but there's more resources behind this game than you might initially think.