In Too Deep
The Steam Next Fest is upon us once again! That means it’s time to dive into the deep-end of the pool of upcoming indies and see what I can get. We’re showing you the good, the bad, the ugly (BIG said “Get your money, ain’t no tellin’ they gon’ love me).
Some quick pool rules:
These are demos, I understand they’re works in progress, so my feedback reflects this. I am judging these as potential products.
Given the time constraints I can’t get ultra-in depth with a lot of these. If a demo has some stuff that needed more digging to get to, I apologize for not finding it, but at the same time, it’s a demo. It’s a game’s first impression, and I think you should put the game’s strongest selling points on display first and easily accessible.
This might get mean, so if you’ve ever uttered the phrase “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”, now’s your chance to exit the vehicle. Wait, this is supposed to be an extended pool analogy. What vehicle?
No running.
With that out of the way, it’s time to dive in.
The Good
Arashi Gaiden
Remember those slide puzzles in games? The ones where you move in one direction and don’t stop until you hit a wall? Well, Arashi Gaiden is that, but with ninjas and enemies. It’s turn-based, so enemies move when you do. Sliding into an enemy kills them, and landing next to an enemy lets them hit you, so mind your landings.
It’s a unique premise. It takes some getting used to at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s interesting. Each level is laid out like a puzzle, which means there’s an optimal way to solve them. To encourage faster play, there’s a combo meter, which ticks down in real time. If you’re skilled, and can think fast, you can chain together impressive combos.
There are also bosses, which switch things up. They move around at random, meaning there’s no set solution to their levels. Every time they get hit, they’re invulnerable for one turn, meaning you can’t lure them into a corner and spam them down.
This being a ninja game, you of course have shuriken to throw. These are ranged attacks that are used to kill enemies or activate switches. They’re limited by ammo, which can be picked up from fallen enemies. They’re necessary for some puzzles, but their limited quantities had me awkwardly redoing puzzles because I ran out of shuriken halfway through the sequence.
The graphics are great. Sharp, colorful pixel art, everything is readable at a glance. The animations are well done, too. Smooth and surprisingly detailed, violent animations of the enemies getting mutilated.
It’s worth checking out if you like puzzles or want to see something new. It’s fun, difficult and will make you think. Note: It’s from the same devs who made Pocket Bravery.
GearGrit
Have you played Jak 2? This is Jak 2. Similar movement, same open world city hub with rideable cars and guards that get on you if you get too silly, similar visual aesthetic, similar techniques and the color-coded guns are taken straight from Jak 2. Not even sugar coated, they just copy and pasted the red energy shotgun and put it in this game. Even the build name is a reference to Jak 2 (Praxis, as in Baron Praxis). They did show restraint by not adding a furry little sidekick character. Because that would have been crossing the line, right? Gotta keep some subtlety.
How’s the game? Well, it’s a fun action platformer with rudimentary shooting that manages to succeed thanks to its level design and fun characters. Wait, I was talking about Jak 2 again. GearGrit is pretty fun. The mechanics and controls are there, since this is Jak 2 again, and that game felt good to play, but the level design could do with a bit of work.
The objectives in the demo were vague “find this place” type objectives, where you just have to wander until you find where to go. Not great for a demo. I would have preferred a more streamlined experience to show the core of the game and hook the player in quickly, but this game’s whole thing seems to be more about exploratory platforming. In that sense it works. It’s just that most of the time I would jump up to somewhere then pause to look around, wondering where it is I’m supposed to go next. Jump up on a box, hop on to a roof, then scan. Jump over a small gap, then pause again. Probably my fault for having the sense of direction of a dry sponge, but the levels didn’t help much.
There was one part where I had to push a lever to raise a bridge. I raised it and tried to jump off it onto a gap. I tried for about five minutes until, by sheer coincidence, I fell right next to another section of the bridge, where there was another lever. I activated it and the second half of the bridge came up and then I could cross. Even though the gap looked like I could clear it.
There’s combat in here, too. More fleshed out than the one in Jak 2. You have a basic combo, a launcher and a slam attack. It’s competent enough. I found the lock-on to be a bit on the extreme side. Whenever you or an enemy attacks, you get locked onto each other and your attacks track harder than an IRS agent trying to get the $20 in back taxes I owe them. It feels playing the game with autocorrect on.
Other than the grievances aired previously, the game is fine. It functions well, feels good to play, looks great and it sounds nice. It’s a polished product, and there is an audience for this. I might sound a bit harsh, but this is still in the “good” section. It just needs a few things ironed out. I’ll be keeping an eye on the full release. Check this out if you’re in the mood for someone to give you that Jak 2-ah.
Bramble Royale
The game is labeled as “Bramble Royale: A Meteorfall Story”, but it shows up as “Meteorfall: Bramble Royale” in my Steam library, so I’ll meet them in the middle and call it Bramble Royale.
Bramble Royale is a party-based roguelike deckbuilder. Oh come on, don’t give me that look. It’s good. You build a party with three characters; a leader and two backups. The leader gives you special passive bonuses, which means there are a lot of significantly different configurations to try out. Each fight takes place between two sides in a grid of four squares each, where they attack each other. Each fighter has an attribute, such as strength, dexterity, intelligence or faith, and when they use cards of their same type, they get bonuses.
Then there’s the Wildcard system. At the start of the last round, a wildcard will be put into play, and this is a one-turn rule that affects all combatants, friendly and enemy. This could be something like “If a player uses an intelligence card, their opponent gains bonus damage”. This is like the judge system in Final Fantasy Tactics on the GBA, but instead of completely screwing you over at random for an entire fight, it only messes you up for a turn. The player can also use their own Wildcard, which can be activated once per match and has similar effects, such as one that heals every combatant who is under half health. Including enemies. This mixes things up in an unpredictable way, but it’s not so impactful as to completely make you completely change your strategy.
The art is great to look at, too. It has a bouncy, colorful art style that is like a grungier take on Adventure Time. Characters animate well with simple puppet animations, the effects on attacks looks great, the card art is nice and readable and the UI is clean and easy to understand.
Overall, a great time and I recommend it. This is one I’ll be keeping an eye on for sure.
Nitro Express!
Nitro Express! is a side-scrolling shooter. You get guns, you shoot robots.
It’s a fun time. The guns feel nice to use, they’re responsive and hitting enemies with them is satisfying. There’s a huge variety of guns to use, too. From rifles, to shotguns, grenade launchers, rocket launchers. It’s all there.
You can aim freely in all directions, roll to dodge and jump over projectiles. It has a simple, arcadey feel that’s nice to play.
The graphics are bright and colorful and the pixel art is adorable. The only gripe I have with the graphics is that enemies flash red before attacking, and the constant attack telegraphing starts to get a little overwhelming. Sensory overload.
I’ve had my eye on this one for a while, and I found the demo to be satisfying, if a little too short. Check it out if you like shooting stuff.
Paradox!
Paradox! Is a puzzle platformer where you work together with your past self to steal chips, without interacting with your past self and creating a time paradox. You play as both the young and old scientist, first in the past, then in the future. The past scientist does the platforming, while the future scientist deals with the buttons and levers. Your movements from the past are recorded and played in real time, which makes timing your actions very important so you don’t run into yourself in the future.
The game strikes a good balance between puzzle and platformer. The jumping sections are tight and reward quick movement, and the puzzles themselves can get tricky. My only complaint with these is that it’s not obvious what you’re supposed to do in them at first. Sure, it’s a puzzle, so you’d think you’d have to figure it out, but sometimes it feels like the first two or three attempts at a level are completely blind trial-and-error runs with no information. Jumping in random directions and off into the void because you don’t know the exact sequence of events to pull off. There are two buttons, a lever and a laser gun. Which interactable controls the laser gun? Which button does what? I don’t know. I guess I’ll jump into this pit, then. If you look closely, you’ll see that they’re color-coded, but that’s if you look closely. Very closely.
The game has a Fairly Odd Parents/Dexter’s Lab inspired look to it. Flat, cool colors, a lot of straight angles and thick outlines. They even do that thing Butch Hartman likes to do where he draws cylinders with a flat base.
It looks good, plays well (if a bit slippery) and it has an interesting concept. Each level has an optional speedrun time, which are incredibly quick and require a lot more speed and precision than I would have imagined from a game like this. If you like quick, bite-sized platforming levels with some fun puzzle elements, then you should give Paradox! A chance.
Genokids
A third person hack ‘n slash, character action, spectacle fighter whatever it is we’re calling this genre this week. The one where you punch enemies with style. Looks to be inspired by The World Ends With You, Devil May Cry and Soul Eater.
It has the standard melee sword combo, a launcher and flow attacks, which give you powerful options during fights. Some are gap-closers, launchers and there are also special super-damaging finishing moves. They’re done by pressing the right trigger and a face button, and you need to use your flow bar to activate them. You get flow by beating on enemies. I’m glad this system works like this, and not with cooldowns. Cooldown-based design, especially in single player games, is a blight that must be eliminated. There’s nothing worse than having your options limited by some arbitrary timer. The flow bar here fills up fast enough to let you use your special moves often, but they’re not unlimited, so you can’t abuse them. It’s a good system that rewards smart play and on-the-fly thinking.
The demo lets you play as two characters: Blue, who uses quick sword slashes and Vergil-like sword projectiles, and Red, who uses rocked powered gauntlets that can be charged. They have their unique attacks, but a lot of the difference is visual, since they both have a basic combo, a launcher, a projectile special, a launcher special, a chase and a finisher. Switching between each character is a lot like switching styles in Devil May Cry. With a press of the D-pad, you can tag your buddy in seamlessly in the middle of a combo.
When you’re not fighting, you’re doing some basic platforming and traversal. This game falls into the “pacing” trap, where it feels it needs to have some non-combat sections for “variety”. These platforming sections are quick and painless, but in my personal opinion, I’d prefer if the game switched the balance from 50/50 fighting and platforming, to 20/80 in favor of fighting. If I choose to play the combo-crazy action game, I want to do the big combos and fight the vast majority of the time.
The combat is fun and functional, if a little basic. Stringing together attacks is quick and responsive, and things flow into each other well. There are some nuances with which attacks connect with which, but it’s very free-flowing and forgiving. This could be a positive for some, but those looking for more technical combat might be disappointed. During my playtime with the game I couldn’t find any neat little tricks or tech to pull off; no jump cancels or things like that. It also suffers from the same problem that DMC does with its training dummy enemies.
With all that said, it’s still a fun time. The gameplay is smooth, the combos are intuitive and satisfying to pull off and the game’s world looks interesting. This is one I’ll be keeping an eye on, and if you want some character-action hack and slash to play, give this one a try. It might get more technical in the full release.
Haste: Broken Worlds
Haste is a momentum-based 3D runner. Go insanely fast and control your jumps so you land on a slope, thus gaining more speed. Your goal is to run to the end of the level. It does the 3D Sonic thing better than any 3D Sonic game. Controlling the angle of your descent to gain more speed is a lot of fun, a more interactive than zooming forward and boosting.
It’s a roguelike, so you’ll be planning routes and going through a little map screen to choose the next challenge. Along the way you’ll also encounter rest spots where you can recover health and interact with other characters, shops to buy new gear and bonus challenges.
The sense of speed in the game is incredible, and it feels even better when you land perfectly and gain a boost. This simple loop of speeding and dodging is satisfying, but it needs a little something more. In the demo levels, you run forward and avoid some rocks and structures. There’s not much else to it. It could benefit from some different terrain types or a scoring system. It would be great if you got points for squeezing through narrow gaps or keeping your speed above a certain point. There are other biomes available, but not playable, and I think those might be different challenges. I hope so. There’s also an issue with the map, where shop nodes and rest nodes can appear twice in a row.
I don’t have a problem with the map system itself, since it can provide some downtime between runs, but I think it could be replaced with an Outrun-style branching path system. It would be the same as it is now, but instead of going to a separate map screen to pick your next stage, you’d run either left or right to pick the next path. It might be too much to pay attention to while running, but it would fit the game well, and Outrun proves you can do the whole branching path while going fast system.
What is in the demo is a fantastic proof of concept. A fun loop to build on and make something great. The graphics are nice, too. Very sunny and colorful, and it all runs smoothly even when going at the speed of light.
If you like going fast and physics-based gameplay, then give Haste: Broken Worlds a try. I enjoyed it, but still think it could do with a few more goals to make it feel more cohesive.
City of Rampage
City of Rampage is a side-scrolling beat-em-up. It doesn’t have up-down movement like Streets of Rage or Final Fight, it’s a linear one like Ninja Saviors or Comix Zone (which is one of this game’s inspirations).
You have a punch combo which ends in a knock down, invincible desperation moves, jump attacks and a block/parry. There are no throws, which I find a bit weird, since I’m used to a throw move in these kinds of games. Your punches have a good amount of hit stun, so you can manage enemies adequately and the rest of your toolkit feels useful.
Enemies are complete psychopaths and will do anything and everything in their power to kill you. They keep beating you even after death. You can hear them using your character as a punching bag during the continue screen, which you’ll be seeing a lot.
The enemy’s attacks have a ridiculous amount of stun. Not regular hit stun, but actual stun. Whenever they hit you, you get a concussion and stand there for a second. Then every other enemy on screen combos you to death. This is one of those “don’t get hit” games.
The part I liked most about this game, and a part I hope isn’t removed, is the ample dodge-cancelling. You can cancel a string into a dodge then cancel the dodge into an attack, leading to long combos that let you kill any enemy in one go. You can also get around the screen faster by repeatedly cancelling a dodge into a jab and then back into a dodge to do a janky looking wave dash.
The ultra blood-thirsty enemies combined with the freedom of the dodge cancelling system makes this game a blast to play. Even with the fact that you can kill anyone in one well-placed juggle, the game is still brutal. Enemies will stunlock you to death, you’ll get blindsided by hazards, you’ll get smacked by everything and everyone. Even then, it’s fair, since you can cancel into a dodge from anything, if you have some foresight. It feels like an old school beat-em-up with its high difficulty and janky tech. This one’s going in the wishlist, no doubt about it.
The Bad
Break Arts III
More like Break Wind III. This is a mech racing game. The way it handles and the UI reminds me a lot of Armored Core: For Answer, but it plays nothing like it. You see, Armored Core is a good game. This isn’t.
You race mechs and there are weapons. The weapons never seem to hit anything. For one, they’re inaccurate and go wherever. The other half of the equation is that there’s nothing to shoot at. The other racers fall behind instantly and the rest of the race is just a straight shot with no resistance.
I’m judging this solely on the content in the demo, and the content in the demo is nonexistent. You’re supposed to put your best foot forward and give players a good idea of what your game is. Here, they give you a very easy track that’s just a giant oval with wide turns and lots of straights. It doesn’t do the game any favors.
I got first place in one try on both normal and hard, and I am terrible at racing games. There doesn’t seem to be any real challenge to the controls and the one and only track to play on was boring.
The gimmick of this being racing but with mechs is underused. I don’t know what separates this from any other racing game, except that it’s bad. There’s mech customization but I couldn’t be bothered with that. I didn’t want to build a mech. What for? To race it in the oval? Wow, I just designed a state of the art robot! Now I can push its limits by making it go straight and take a right turn every 30 seconds.
I don’t know what this is trying to do, and I don’t want to find out. It’s off the Wishlist.
Castle V Castle
I’m a sucker for mech games, and for card games. I got fooled by one, now it’s time to get fooled by the other.
Castle V Castle, according to its store page, is a 1v1 card game. More important than any other descriptor, is the fact that it was funded and supported by Slay the Spire’s Casey Yano. It’s incredibly important for you to know this. It’s in the first sentence of the description. It gives the game an air of legitimacy. You know what works to undermine any ounce of legitimacy this game might have? The actual gameplay.
The goal is to either build your castle up to 25 meters, or destroy your opponent’s castle. You do this using a variety of attacks, magic and other effects, like stealing bricks. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? I thought it did. Then I played it.
I drew my hand and went to play a card, but couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? I didn’t have the right resources. What were the right resources? Weapons. How do I get more weapons? I don’t know. I had eight cards in my hand and could only play one, so I played it. Then I got my next hand. You see all the greyed out cards in the screenshot above? Those are unplayable cards. This is a recurring thing. I couldn’t play any cards, so I discard one. Discarding a single card ends your turn. Next hand comes in, I can’t play anything. Discard again. Next card comes in. I can play it. It doesn’t do anything interesting, but I play it because it’s the one and only thing I can do this turn. Next turn, same thing. Then I won.
Wait, what? I won? By playing the one and only card I could play at any given point? Yeah. If I can only play one card because everything else is gated behind some mysterious resource I can’t get, then why would I even bother playing the game at all? Why isn’t this an auto battler? I’m not making any meaningful decisions here. Hell, I’m not making any decisions at all! A chimp could play this. In fact, I’d have a lot more fun training a chimp to play this than actually playing it.
I tried to figure this game out, I really did, but there’s nothing. There’s no tutorial. It’s never a good idea to release a demo without a tutorial. You want people to give the game a shot, you want them to understand it. You only have one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you’ve ever wanted. Would you put a tutorial in it? Or just let it slip?
It didn’t help that when I was trying to figure this mess out I was having my sanity eroded by the soundtrack. It sounds like a drum machine telling me a really long, meandering story about the time he saw Jimmy at the vape shop. You know Jimmy? From high school? He used to sit in the back of class and throw little bits of paper at Melissa? Well I was at the vape shop- no not that one- the one near the strip mall. The one that’s about to be demolished. Real shame, that strip mall had that place- what was it called? That one Mexican place with the chimichangas. Mike and I used to go there all the time. This was before he had the uh- the truck accident. Poor guy. Anyway, like I was saying, I was at the vape shop...
I hope Slay the Spire’s Casey Yano gets a refund on this. I played this demo for free and I feel like I’m owed some monetary recompense. I’ve been injured by this game. Someone contact a scummy TV lawyer. I’ll show up to court in a neck brace and ask for a handout. I slipped and fell because the game didn’t let me play the wet floor sign card.
The Ugly
Chambers
Chambers is a cowboy-themed first person sandbox immersive sim. You are a cowboy and you go around towns shooting other cowpokes and talking to strangers, who have things to say. There’s an inventory system, you can eat food, there’s a fully fledged card game and other things to do.
The main combat is done via shooting, as cowboys are known for. You have access to a variety of guns from revolvers, to shotguns and such. The usual western fare. You can also kick enemies and parry bullets. Yes, you can parry bullets. By pressing C at the right time, you can catch a bullet and throw it back at your attacker. It’s a lot of fun.
The gunplay itself is iffy. There is no targeting reticle, which made me think this was a more realistic (realistic in terms of no UI, I know the game where you catch bullets isn’t realistic) thing and tried shooting only when aiming down the iron sights. This led to me hitting shots every now and then. I think. I’m not sure since the hit feedback is lacking. There’s no clear visual indication of where your bullets are hitting, other than blood splatter when you hit an enemy. Where the blood comes from doesn’t seem to correlate to where you hit the enemy. They just bleed.
The weird hit registration doesn’t help this at all. Sometimes I could shoot enemies through small gaps, other times I’d hit an enemy that I wasn’t even aiming at. One time I shot a window and it bled. I’ve shot at a wall and hit someone behind it somehow. Maybe this game has bullet penetration, but I doubt it.
Fed up with the weird gunplay, I decided to shoot from the hip without aiming. To my surprise, I could still hit everything, so aiming is not a concern. I spent the rest of my time running around like a headless chicken shooting at anything I could and kicking when I got near.
Then I tried to kick some varmint and found that I couldn’t. Instead I got a little message that read “You can’t kick without boots”. This led me on an existential exploration of my being, where I pondered where, and how I’d lost my boots, where I could get a new pair, and why that would make me unable to kick. I kept going and had to interrupt the game and go do something else. I came back and continued the game, only to find that I couldn’t shoot because I had no ammo. Fair enough, I’ll do like George Washington, Washington and kick people apart. I didn’t have boots so I couldn’t kick. Okay, I thought. I’ll be a cool cowboy ninja guy and parry bullets as my main form of attack. Then I got another little message saying “You can’t catch bullets barehanded”. That’s when every ounce of fun I’d felt left my body in a nano second. I turned the game off, and I won’t be bothering with it anymore.
I want to play the game, but the game says “You can’t play ye game”, and I have to sit there and wonder why on Earth I can’t play ye game. Combine that with the weird, sprawling nature of the game, that can’t be experienced in a demo, with the weird gunplay, the tons of systems, the weird controls and this became a real chore. Not to mention the enemies whose modus operandi is to shoot whenever, wherever like their AI was programmed by Shakira. That joke made more sense than Chambers.
Maybe this is like the man digging meme, and I’m about to hit diamonds, but I will stop digging regardless. Why? Because I can’t dig without a pickaxe, and I don’t know where to get one or how I lost mine.
Side note: The constant Fistful of Frags references let me know that the devs have played it, and I think they should copy more from that game. It has way better gunplay.
Advent Neon
It’s Sonic. Sonic Advance, specifically, with combat. You play as a little green guy and you run around levels getting locked into fights every now and then. You can run, jump and dash through things. There’s also a wall run. It’s a well fleshed-out move set that feels okay to use.
The combat is fast, simple and fun. You can do free-form combos using a variety of different attacks and juggles. If you keep a combo going long enough, you can go into Super Sonic mode, or whatever legally-distinct mode this game has.
The comparisons to Sonic don’t stop at the gameplay or general visual level. Sure, it’s supposed to be like Sonic, it’s a spiky little scrimblo running around at the speed of sound, and the backgrounds and UI elements are also reminiscent of Sonic, but it goes a bit further than that. A bit too far in my opinion. The attacks are lifted directly from Sonic’s moveset in Sonic Battle Fighters. His air attacks, ground attacks and every other move is practically traced from there.
The reason why it’s in the “ugly” category is due to its overt “inspiration”. I get that if you make a game, you want to make something similar to what you like, and what inspired you, but it doesn’t have to be so blatant. When the gameplay, style, color palette, level hub and even the UI is taken from another game, you might as well stop calling it “inspired by Sonic” and just “a Sonic fangame”, but Sega wouldn’t let that fly.
Demos Without a Tutorial
It’s a game’s first impression, people. Put a little something explaining your game to people. It’s not for the player to master the game instantly, but there should be a way for a new player to learn the systems and such.
Games that advertise themselves poorly
Games that have a name like “Runestrike” and have a completely generic image and screenshots that don’t explain anything. The store description doesn’t have anything relevant. Developers on Twitter who post about their game using key art and no descriptions of what it even is. You know what your game is, no one else does. I saw a few games on Twitter and had to click on the developer’s profile, scroll past multiple memes and other nonsense just to find anything about the game. I didn’t download those demos.
AI Art
I don’t care if you can’t draw. If you use AI art to advertise your game, I’m skipping over that garbage.
Conclusion
Those were the demos I checked out during February’s Next Fest. Some good, some bad, some baffling. I’d say it was a positive experience overall. Check out the ones I recommended, and avoid the ones I told you to avoid. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.
My personal favorites were City of Rampage for its unforgiving gameplay, Bramble Royale for its fun deckbuilding, Arashi Gaiden for its unique puzzle action blend and Genokids for its fun DMC-lite gameplay.
Videogames are fun.
Bonus: Replicube
Replicube is kind of like picross with programming. Use simple language instructions to recreate shapes made of voxels. It’s fun. It’s in the bonus section because I’m awful at this kind of thing, even though I enjoy doing it every now and then. It might be too easy for some, but I think everyone should give it a shot. It has a good tutorial. Check out the dev’s previous game Parking Garage Rally Circuit. It’s great, too.