The climbing mechanics in Jusant are very fun, but unfortunately the levels aren't really designed to encourage freedom and actively try to sabotage the player's ability to take an alternate path.
I dunno I think it's been relatively popular for a few years. It's not super mainstream or anything, but it's gained traction especially among sports enthusiasts.
I have to say, ^the first two wishlisted games are there more on hoping they turn out good. They both have great potential. Peaks of Yore was really neat but also a bit clunky, which the final one really demonstrated and just like mentioned for Justra, it doesn't really allow for alternate solutions not intended by the devs. The icepicks are especially clunky.
Here's my list of played games so far:
Wishlisted >Viewfinder >Gord >Peaks of Yore
Had fun but not wishlisted >Captain Wayne >Vampire Hunters >Goobies >Deadlink: Tora >ArcRacer >Echo Point Nova >Fortune's Run >Quasimorph >Cross Blitz >Mythical Agent >Plaquaratte down the bunburrows
Wanted to play but didn't work >Jusant
Not for me >Wizard with a Gun >Beyond Sunset >Hammerwatch 2 >KVLT >Odinfall >Greedland >Warhaven >Testament >Station to Station >We the People >Centipede Gun >The Dramer Must Die >Full Moon Rush >Mercenaries of the Kingdom >NeuroSquad >Survivors of the Dawn >Voidborn >Astrobit >Rasant >Stellar Wanderer DX >Wisp Catacombs >El Paso, Elsewhere >En Garde! >The Invincible >Laika: Aged Through Blood >Cuisineer >Legendary Hoplite >Luna Abyss >Resistance 204X >Van Hellswing
>links a shitpost thread with absolutely no criticisms on the gameplay other than "muh Black folk in muh game" and "Poland woke"
moronic anti shill. If you want to undermine the game then make more convincing arguments regarding the mechanics of the game.
How the frick can you try all those games??? That’s more games than I have played in my life
I tried lies of P but I hate dolls and I am not sure if protag is male or female.
I tried warhaven but rounds are so short.
I downloaded pirates shogun stealth game, didn’t get to play it yet
It's not that hard >install a bunch >immediately know it's trash or not for me >uninstall
I am of the firm belief that in any medium, keeping my attention and not wasting my time is part of their job. So a game that is immediately boring, I won't give a chance. I don't care that it gets good 20 hours in. Especially in a demo, a dev shouldn't take my time for granted.
Also, plenty are almost immediately identifiable as garbage, so that helps.
Seems to me you also seem to have mainly downloaded massive demos. Those tend to, for whatever reason, waste your time even more than others. Almost immediately disqualifies it to me. Besides, I don't want "Dark Souls but not as good". Just really not for me. I guess a lot of people enjoy them but I really do not.
Luna Abyss is very pretty, but also extremely easy. There's some kind of issue with the screenshots though, the actual game isn't anywhere near this fuzzy.
Looks cool, gameplay is very sub par though and the voice acting was killing me.
>and the voice acting was killing me.
The other characters were fine but Fawkes was a joke both in writing and in voice. I'm not sure if it was meant to be intentional.
Someone in an earlier thread said it got patched, might try again. The actual gameplay is pretty good but having to backtrack through places you've already cleared/explored gets a bit tedious.
>Probably would have bought game if it werent roguelight.
Several such cases. that and >card mechanics
Not many such cases though most of these games are fricking garbage
This was honestly disappointing. It felt very shallow and trivially easy when every problem is solved by just spamming more copies of the same building, which has no resource cost whatsoever (money/construction materials/time, literally anything) associated with it. There's no resource management or real decisionmaking or making compromises or having to prioritize certain sectors or maintenance or any sort of economics. Just place house, place distribution center, place production, add some amenities, rinse repeat mindlessly without having to think about anything. Can't even rotate buildings or build diagonal roads on the grid.
This was honestly disappointing. It felt very shallow and trivially easy when every problem is solved by just spamming more copies of the same building, which has no resource cost whatsoever (money/construction materials/time, literally anything) associated with it. There's no resource management or real decisionmaking or making compromises or having to prioritize certain sectors or maintenance or any sort of economics. Just place house, place distribution center, place production, add some amenities, rinse repeat mindlessly without having to think about anything. Can't even rotate buildings or build diagonal roads on the grid.
You fogot to mention how you cant rotate buildings which is annoying as frick for game that supposed to be comfy citybuilder.
[...]
You fogot to mention how you cant rotate buildings which is annoying as frick for game that supposed to be comfy citybuilder.
Laysarra was peak comfy. Also yes, you can't rotate buildings, but if you build houses near each other they change their looks. You can also expand Yak pens, if you build 2-3 near one another it becomes a big Yak pen instead of 3 separate ones etc. Love the small details and don't mind that I don't have to gather resources and have to wait to build.
I gotta agree with the first guy. Was also annoyed by all the faults he listed. But the worst thing by far is that there's no challenge nor objective. You gotta have at least some resource limitations or something. Otherwise it's just pointless.
What challenge could there be in the Tutorial teaching you the basic mechanics? Other than that not every game has to be "challenging", they can just be comfy and relaxing like Dorfromantik or similar.
Dorfromantik has a challenge you moron, its a legitimate puzzle game and there are people who grind it for the longest possible chains. There's a metagame and a level of skill development.
99% of the potential playerbase will drop Laysara if it releases with absolutely no obstacles or goal, and that means the devs make no money.
>click daily active demo players >not a single h-game
Oi, what the frick? More lies by Ganker
What's with this thing anyway? Why is it so inaccurate? Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the API fricking up?
Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts. According to the steam list a game with 50 players charts higher than a game with 500.
>Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the api fricking up?
Yes to both, probably. >Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts.
I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest, which is not the case for like half the list on the left.
[...]
What's with this thing anyway? Why is it so inaccurate? Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the api fricking up?
Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts. According to the steam list a game with 50 players charts higher than a game with 500.
>I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest
Its this + Next Fest actually starts before it officially starts. The top played list has barely changed since the day before Next Fest started, because the UI is so fricking awful most people simply click 'what's everyone else playing', tried those then stop bothering. Its a really fricking awful UI.
I really liked Cross Blitz. Got a lot of old yugioh game vibes from it. Only demo I stopped playing because I didn't want to spoil my full experience of it for when I buy it. Day 1 buy obviously.
Toxic Crusaders was about as good as I expected. I liked it but don't bother if you're not into beat-em-ups. Probably get on sale or if it's cheap.
Lords of Exile was fine. I have lots of nostalgia for pixel Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden style games. Plays like a slightly worse Curse of the Moon 1/2 for you zoomers. Another one I'll get if it's on sale.
Full Moon Rush was a great run and gun, but way too short and it doesn't look like it'll get much content in the full release. If the dev is smart he'll put a low price point on it and I'll pick it up day 1.
>Toxic Crusaders was about as good as I expected. I liked it but don't bother if you're not into beat-em-ups. Probably get on sale or if it's cheap. > >Lords of Exile was fine. I have lots of nostalgia for pixel Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden style games. Plays like a slightly worse Curse of the Moon 1/2 for you zoomers. Another one I'll get if it's on sale.
These both sucked lol.
Toxic Crusaders everyone plays the same and you have less than 10 moves + can't pick up and use weapons, Lords of Exile is borderline plaguirized and is a CV clone with absolutely no punishment for dying so nothing matters at all.
The lack of pickups and short movelist in Toxic Crusaders doesn't matter. Some great beat-em-ups have neither of those. I'll admit the game is pretty mediocre compared to other beat-em-ups but it gets the core aspect of the genre right, and it has juggles so there's enough to the combat for me.
I never died in LoE so I didn't notice that. That's kind of annoying. Do you just get placed right back at the spot where you died? I was kind of hoping it would get harder.
You get placed at the start of the same room instantly. I ended up walking through enemies at times because provided I make it to the next room, it doesn't matter if I'm at 1 hp, I can just die for a full heal.
Maybe speedrunners would like it for this reason
>bruh LoE is a sicknasty CastlevaniaGaiden!!! >never dies once during the demo
The game is fricking awful anon. It's just plagiarizing the CV aesthetic so redditors can freak out over knowing about something from before the 2000s.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>bruh LoE is a sicknasty CastlevaniaGaiden!!!
He said it was fun and a slightly worse version of another series. How is that 'sicknasty'.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>I have lots of nostalgia for pixelshit but not enough actual experience with those games to tell when I'm being ripped off
Clearly you and him are both the reddit target audience
11 months ago
Anonymous
But I said the game is shit?
I just didn't need to make shit up to do that.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I said I have nostalgia for that style and that it plays like a slightly worse CotM, which is already a slightly worse version of those classic games. Are you assmad I didn't call the game utter shit or something? Because it isn't. Not everything is 0/10 or 10/10.
11 months ago
Anonymous
If a game isn't 10/10, it might as well be a 0/10. Why would anybody waste their time with anything less than the best if you're playing alone?
11 months ago
Anonymous
I mean, I'm good at those games so it's obvious I wouldn't die. I was just assuming it would get harder after that extremely easy first boss. I'll rethink the game after finding out there's no punishment for dying though, unless the devs add harder modes to it.
>I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest, which is not the case for like half the list on the left.
Even just looking at the top 15, 11 of them are officially a part of the event.
>Day 1 battlepass game >Low effort cash grab souls colone >Le rimworlde >Le rimworlde but black people >Self-insert harem game for 12 year olds >Vampire Survivor clone, again >Le whacky pohysics game
Depressing shit taste
[...]
What's with this thing anyway? Why is it so inaccurate? Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the api fricking up?
Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts. According to the steam list a game with 50 players charts higher than a game with 500.
Active player’s doesn’t include the majority of games. Perhaps there’s a minimum required to make that list but I’ve had over 200 players in a day on my game and didn’t make the list.
If it is a minimum it might only care about downloads and not people actually playing more than 5 minutes, or visa versa, which could explain why the lists are different. Either way I wouldn’t trust it
En garde kinda sucks. You just repeatedly do the same actions every fight like in arkham otherwise enemies no-sell everything automatically. The tone is really weird too. You're straight up murdering people by the dozens and everyone including the enemies just keep cracking jokes
It's pretty clear the swords are full and no-one's dieing. Defeated enemies will occasionally quip for this reason.
The combat being satisfying is going to come down to if you enjoy kicking people into things, things into people, people into people, etc. I found it to be a satisfying gameplay loop.
When I saw it, I thought it was some kinda Dreamworks cartoon adaptation (like that Zorro game I saw several months ago).
It looks pretty gud tho, but it's not like I can properly enjoy the animation while watching the flashing cues.
I really liked Cross Blitz. Got a lot of old yugioh game vibes from it. Only demo I stopped playing because I didn't want to spoil my full experience of it for when I buy it. Day 1 buy obviously.
Toxic Crusaders was about as good as I expected. I liked it but don't bother if you're not into beat-em-ups. Probably get on sale or if it's cheap.
Lords of Exile was fine. I have lots of nostalgia for pixel Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden style games. Plays like a slightly worse Curse of the Moon 1/2 for you zoomers. Another one I'll get if it's on sale.
Full Moon Rush was a great run and gun, but way too short and it doesn't look like it'll get much content in the full release. If the dev is smart he'll put a low price point on it and I'll pick it up day 1.
>Shishi
No QoL at all. I inflict a status, no idea what it is or does. Only 2 attack that both 2 shot every enemy. Cute, which is why I tried it, but there's just nothing to it.
Necrovale:
Asks for feedback with F9, via a tiny little text message in the corner of screen. I know a lot of people who legitimately would not be able to read this even if they noticed it.
Starts with a seemingly unskippable cutscene in a demo???
Makes little to no attempt to explain controls so I don't know if M1 and space are all there is.
Opens me on a world map with no indication which is a good idea to go to first. Not sure if my decision even mattered here or the map is a red herring.
Need to unlock a door for 2G, but the door is clearly above my head. Sprite is misplaced.
Combat has enemies launched so far after every swing the only real threat is not noticing them through the absurd amount of clutter.
First 3 weapons you get in first 3 chest are effectively identical (all kill in about same number of hits at enough speed+knockback the enemies can't fight back). Should have been 1 or 2 of these, then the bow, so people don't immediately get the impression weapons barely differ and people who don't want to melee have an option beyond that early on.
My guy has no dialogue at all and reacts to nothing which feels very unfitting with this hope mechanic. Its built around him reacting. He appears to consider the whole thing completely trvival.
No idea what to do with the cat. Its not talk to it, its not drop item, its not interact with anything else. It just "wants a gift" but so far the only item I can use are the blue orbs. Is it also a blue orb sink, like literally everything else?
Enemies also do nearly no damage.
Got bored after doing a few functionally identical dungeons and handed blue orbs to NPC's who just ask for increasing larger numbers of them. Seems very grindy.
Would have dropped it sooner if it wasn't an AGDG game.
>Shishi >dev for this game is a literal wheelchair-bound cripple with muscular dystrophy >he's been working on some form of this game for nearly a decade at this point >had a failed Kickstarter 4 years ago >all of the game's social media seems to receive basically no views or interaction
Necrovale dev here. Thanks for trying it out and for the feedback.
There's basically no tutorial at all yet. Later on, the first "outdoor" area will teach the controls and mechanics. Weapon drops are completely random, aside from the first weapon you get. They vary mostly in their attack patterns, movements, etc... not so much in the pure stats.
Lies of P - on the fence about getting it. its clearly a sekiro clone without the jumping ability and no iframes on dodge so the only mechanic you can do is parry riposte but even that doesn't really tell you when you parry riposte correctly
Hammerwatch II - 100% buying by far the best thing ive tried out so far
Necrovale - played it and uninstalled after about 5 minutes. Unskippable opening cutscene into a very handholding tutorial.
What else should I try out
I'll add a way to skip the intro cutscene, even though it's only about 30 seconds or so if you click through. No tutorial yet, so not sure what you mean about that.
>WISHLISTED
Laika
Thronefall
Peaks of Yore
Hammerwatch 2
Echo Point Nova
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
A Void Hope >HONORABLE MENTIONS
Quasimorph
Gravity Circuit
Logic Town
Studio System Guardian Angel
Captain Wayne >MEH BUT MIGHT BE SOMEONE'S THING
Toziuha Night
Little Kitty Big City
Fortune's Run
Escape from Mystwood Mansion
Islands of the Caliph
Wanderful
Neverlooted Dungeon >AVOID
Blackout Protocol
Lords of Exile
Sludge Life 2
That GZDOOM port with the awful melee spam I can't even remember the name of
Bakery Girl chinkshit
Battle Absorption Racing or whatever the frick was actually pretty fun. WHen you're racing, the hentai barely registers and the pitstop minigame takes enough concentration that you aren't even looking at the hentai either. If the dev can get the racing to control better (since you pretty much stop immediately if you try and take any turn) I will definitely get it.
>New Cycle
Dull city builder/survival that tries too hard to be like Frostpunk. Building roads was annoying. >Gord
Another interesting city survival thing. Too bad the demo broke on me and I gave up on it. >Vampire Hunters
Stacking on a bunch of guns like Mothergunship is neat, though I don't think I would ever buy it. The hitboxes on the bats are also too small. >Galacticare
Two-Point Hospital clone but in space. Dialogue is shit and cannot be skipped. >Mind Over Magic
Oxygen Not Included but fantasy school. Tutorial is garbage and I didn't really understand what I was doing. So just like ONI. >Station to Station
Fun little puzzle game. Full game would need a lot more to keep my interest though
Lots of inferior clones this time. Kind of disappointing
>Mind Over Magic >Oxygen Not Included but fantasy school. Tutorial is garbage and I didn't really understand what I was doing. So just like ONI.
This one was a shame. It seemed like such a cool concept. Harry Potter school running sim. Then its like >Lol go gather food in the woods lol (boring busywork because it just constantly respawns)
I want to go back to the kids being taught how to do magic and shit, not play every other survivor game ever
I gave up on it when I was trying to go back into the underground dungeon area but I apparently needed my students to be fully trained, and training them was taking forever. Maybe I was missing something, but the game didn't tell me if I was.
Demo was too short but it was still enough to get an idea of what you're getting into. I may pick it up if I'm ever in the mood for any point and click
I had major problems with it too. Gotta do it three times aswell. I eventually made it but was not fun at all. The dialouge and other stuff was great thoigh
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1823950/Laysara_Summit_Kingdom/
Cute city builder, though not being able to rotate your buildings is annoying mechanically
Only played three so far. I wouldn't recommend Tyrant's Realm: the control feels muddy and it's a roguelike. Heretic's Fork is tower defense Vampire Survivors. I put 2.3 hours into the Next Fest demo and 6.8 into the other. Studio System: Guardian Angel plays with tank control horror games by adding mouse controls to play with the fixed camera. The puzzles were simple enough but I'm looking forward to the whole experience. It does have the lo-fi troonyge aesthetic though. But checking on the dev's twitter didn't show anything flag raising.
What the frick have you been searching?
Mine is >Game steam >Game article ign >Game videos >article on medieval torture devices >another one >more shit about game
>How many demos have you played?
0 >How many did you like?
They all look shit. Usually, there's one or two that have me try them but this is the worst fricking year I've seen yet.
I scoured a bunch of games (I usually play retro-style FPSes or heckin' quirky aesthetic walking-simulators, but this time the only think I even installed was the demo for Born of Bread because it kinda reminds me of Bug Fables which I loved, and it looks like it has at least some character to it.
A lot of these games look like they were shit out or are straight-up ripoffs of more popular games. I know that's a common thing with these demo fests but man it's bad this time around.
>I only installed a game because it reminded me of Bug Fables, a game I love. >But the festival is shit because the games are just ripoffs of more popular games
Is this post meant to be ironic?
I'm talking about literal, actual straight-up ripoffs. I swear to god I saw a total Fortnite ripoff. Same art-style, same large character roster. "BROOOOO YOU CAN BE DONALD TRUMP???"
And maybe 6 actual pokemon ripoffs. Where the characters looks look 90% identical (one Metroidvania game I saw had a character literally look like a Buizel and another looked identical to the Cult of Lamb sheep). The Born of Bread and Bug Fables comparison was more that they're both party-based RPG stuff like Paper Mario, but bring their own style to the table. I guess the big thing is that they don't look like obvious cash-grabs.
Now that looks like a good recommendation. Maybe some decent stuff did slip through the cracks. Oh wait sorry, this is Ganker, I meant to say "brown girl in the trailer, DROPPED"
Played a couple. Just skipped on any deckbuilders or roguelikes, don't need any more of those. Ever.
>En Garde
Trailer made it look like Bamham, but it's mostly just running everywhere spamming environmental hazards and then bamhamming the one or two guys who aren't stunned.
Timing on follow-up/consecutive ripostes feels really off, but it's fine.
I like the tone, very fun. Would like more banter with the mooks. Looks like it's not going to have a lot of strings to its bow, but it's fun enough to carry a (short) game.
>Fortune's Run
Reference heavy imsimmy indie thing. Midair momentum is fricked and block-heavy opponents are a chore to fight. Very melee heavy since they can block gunfire. The terminals are neat but otherwise eh.
And quit with the fricking references. That's like the indie dev version of a youtuber with a wall of Nintendo merch behind them.
>Slavicpunk: Oldtimer
Top-down Ruiner wannabe that controls better than Ruiner. Your guy just stops shooting if enemies come into range, which is weird. Or maybe he doesn't. Had major screen flickering for some fricking reason. Heavy autoaim makes sense in a game with fast movement but you're so slow I'm not sure what the point is. Battlehack system feels like shit and enemies just popping into existence in arena fights means taking damage when you really don't want to take damage.
>Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery
Jesus, that's a terrible title.
Apparently this is from some gacha lads who just want to make a regular game with their cumstained gacha money? Good on them. The stealth missions and just giving you enemy movements is pretty novel for an SRPG. Dialogue is a lot of dry exposition and fumbled attempts at intrigue. Good pacing, controls are PC heavy, I'd give a full release a go.
Oh, that gets them less brownie points. You'd think the dialogue would be less boring, even ignoring all the encyclopedia entries I was so close to skipping cutscenes.
Bakery is kinda a remake of something they did before making gacha.
Been excited for bakery for a long time, and the demo was great. Gacha guys really weren't just fricking around with all the delays, the demo felt like I was playing the whole ass game. Seems like it's gonna be long and visual novely on top of the gameplay. Can't wait for the full game
Played a bunch so I'll just dump my thoughts here so people can waste their time like I did. Games I will most likely buy on release are marked with (!) and maybes are marked with (?). Thanks in advance for reading my blog.
Adventure Games
>This Bed We Made (!)
Decent adventure game about snooping around in hotel rooms to uncover a mystery. If you liked the Nancy Drew games, then you might like this one too. Even has equivalent Bess and Ned side characters to give you hints and stuff. Very short demo but it shows lots of promise. >Broken Roads (?)
Narrative-focused post-apocalyptic Australian RPG. Has an interesting alignment system and I enjoyed the dialogue and story that was in the demo, which was light-hearted overall. Ended up finishing the demo without doing any combat at all so I went back and pissed off someone just to see what it was like and it's nothing special. So that's a heads up to not worry too much about character creation when playing the demo. >Chronique des Silenceieux
The dialogue was hurting my brain so I didn't last that long. It's janky to start with and the English translation gets worse and worse the longer you play. Maybe it's a great story if you know French, but I don't.
>Ebenezer and the Invisible World
The art and animation is quite good, but the sound design and music are so anemic that they'll put you to sleep if the overly wordy story that constantly stops you in your tracks already hasn't. The combat and level design are also extremely basic, and you move with the analog stick instead of the directional buttons. I pity the artist who wasted his time on this. >Marko: Beyond Brave
This one feels like an actual pre-alpha game. The art and animation has promise but there's barely anything here. There aren't even any sound effects for most things. As far as I can tell after looking up stuff about it after playing, it's a Kickstarter scam. The game's already been funded and has been in development for two years and this is all they have to show with a Q4 2023 release date around the corner. I would have been more positive if this was something to promote the *start* of a Kickstarter project, but this is already close to the end product. Steer clear. >Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
Dropped it less than a minute in. Webm related. No idea why they're bothering to resurrect this IP in video game form if this is the amount of effort they're putting into it. There's another upcoming game called Guardians of Slumberland that seems to be better but the demo was limited to just the previous weekend so frick that. >The Devil Within: Satgat
Had the exact same thoughts as I did with Ebenezer, except the art design here is much blander. Seems to have a much more involved combat system with combos and skills, but the fundamental combat is the kind of poorly thought-out combat where they make dodging vastly superior to parrying that it makes you wonder why you'd ever bother. Lost interest the moment I saw a PoE-like skill tree for level up upgrades.
>The Muller-Power Principle
A sci-fi gun puzzler like Portal or Antichamber. You hunt around for and carry "photons" in your gun which will let you solve puzzles, but you can only carry around one of these at a time and absorbing a new type takes like 10 seconds, making puzzle solving very cumbersome. Even has the slowest vent crawling speed I've ever seen in a video game. Reminds me of The Entropy Center the most in that it has a cool enough idea for the gun but the puzzles don't measure up as well, and has an annoying voiced companion that gives unsolicited hints. >Stick to the Plan
Sokoban-ish game about a dog delivering sticks. Has some cute art but the in-game graphics don't hold up as well, and the controls are not as snappy and slower than they should be. Normally I'd pick this up because the puzzles are good enough, but I have too many puzzle games in my backlog that I'd rather get to and don't waste time with slow animation. >Cipher Zero (!)
A rule game like The Witness, Understand and Taiji. Mostly like Understand, except with more polish. Seems like it might might be easier though. If you like those, you'll like this one too. I did. >Logic Town
A deductive logic game. It's alright, but it's the kind of game you use to kill time with on your phone rather than something you'd properly "play." >Paquerette Down the Bunburrows (!)
Fantastic puzzle game about cornering a predictable AI. Ended up spending a little over 2 hours doing all of the bonus stuff because of how absorbed I got. I'm aware the dev is a troony, but trannies are autistic and autism is good for making puzzle games.
>KVLT
Janky Unreal project. I say project instead of game because even calling this a pre-alpha game would be inaccurate. It's a bunch of FPS game elements strung together. It's got levels. It's got enemies. It's got guns. All of these are incoherently designed and implemented, and work terribly together. >Fortune's Run (!)
Pretty great. Combat is quick and brutal, and there's a good amount of tools and environment stuff to mess around with. Too combat heavy than I'd prefer though, unless I just suck at its stealth. Comes off like Deus Ex with the initial start and NPCs that you can randomly pick out from the crowd that'll have unique dialogue. After that it's an hour's worth of combat in an open but ultimately linear map which honestly overstayed its welcome. I love a good shooter, but I feel like this one has more potential in its "immersive sim" parts than it does in its combat. I'll follow it and see how it turns out. >Stop Dead (?)
Cool game, but I don't know. I always enjoy games that involve physics like this, and I like how it flows, but I'm not into speedrunning games. Kept crashing every few minutes for me. >Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation (!)
GZDoom game. Solid enough. Guns aren't special but the way they're animated and work with your arm gives them personality. Wish the main character did a crazy pirate voice instead of sounding like a bored Duke. I'll check this out when I get a shooter itch. >Beyond Sunset
A GZDoom game that thinks it's a good idea to start with a not-short-enough platforming challenge until you get a katana, after which it's a discount Ghostrunner until you get guns, after which it's just shit because they feel like crap. Encounters are haphazard and involve enemy spam, and aggravated by enemies only dropping ammo if you use an execution move that has a cooldown and even then it's not a lot. I quit when it thought the best way to invoke cyberpunk was combatless first-person cyberspace hacking segments.
>Valley Peaks (?)
Similar approach as A Short Hike where you take it easy, climb and explore. The climbing might be too easy but could be rectified by having more complex paths in the full game. Fair amount of stuff to find and do in the world outside of the climbing. >Peaks of Yore (!)
A much more challenging climbing game. Similar to Bennett Foddy's games where you always stand to lose all your progress. It's very satisfying because of it but there is frustration involved, and maybe some nausea. You get climbing rope for anchoring but it's more for practice and sneaky shortcuts than a lifeline. I stopped at the bonus ice mountain when ice picks come into play because I couldn't understand how the stamina for it worked. After a few falls, my right arm always had half the stamina of my left no matter how long I rested. >New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering
Most "realistic" one where you use all four limbs and pay attention to a bunch of climbing mechanics, making it slow and methodical. Uses photogrammetry which is pretty but also makes it hard to tell where you can get a good grip because it's the developer's job to turn those photos into a 3D environment again. Not so bad at the start but the second area is where the developers for some reason stopped bothering modelling the footholds as well so everything looks flat and it becomes a guessing game. Could be ironed out with more dev time but it comes out in two weeks. Has a sizable amount of Unity jank so you'll often contort in nightmarish ways. >Jusant (?)
Not part of the Next Fest but the demo came out recently. I was unsure about this since Dontnod has a bad track record and the trailer looked linear. And while it is linear, the climbing is satisfying and there's a lot of potential with the climbing rope. If the game opens up later, then it'll be quite fun to swing around and take risks.
>Slavicpunk: Oldtimer
Given the premise, I was expecting more story, but it was all shooting, which was okay but not good enough to carry the game. >Lords of Exile
Solid classic Castlevania-style game. >En Garde (!)
Fun "barfight" kind of game where you use your environment to mess with enemies. Individual parts of the combat aren't great on their own it's quite easy if you use everything to your advantage but it's very satisfying. To copy the usual template, "It makes you really *feel* like a devilish rogue." >ghostpia
Japanese VN that's apparently already out on the Switch. Completely flew under the radar considering I can't find many news articles on it. Tried it out because it has a nice and unique artstlye. Demo takes almost 2 hours to read through and it's interesting enough. Give it a shot if you like VNs, I guess. >Shadow Gambit
Very polished stealth game. No surprise since it's the Shadow Tactics devs, which makes it funny how there's an undead cook character with a heavy Japanese accent. Liked what I played but couldn't get on board with the story. Pirates being stealthy is just so odd and the protagonist doesn't have any charisma. >Laika: Aged Through Blood (?)
Awesome gameplay where you platform and kill enemies while riding a motorbike and do flips to reload your guns and your parries (you parry with your bike). But I feel like the presentation is at odds with this. It's very slow and moody game despite sounding like it should be action-packed. >Merchant of the Six Kingdoms (?)
Neat game about haggling where you really need to understand the economy. A way to take notes or a trade log at the end of each day would be helpful in that regard. There isn't much to aspire to in the demo so hopefully you can establish a trade empire or something in the full game. >Cuisineer
Decent shopkeeper/dungeon crawling game. More timesink-y than I'd like, but if you're craving more of these games then it's good.
That's all from me.
11 months ago
Anonymous
of the Six Kingdoms >Neat game about haggling where you really need to understand the economy. A way to take notes or a trade log at the end of each day would be helpful in that regard. There isn't much to aspire to in the demo so hopefully you can establish a trade empire or something in the full game.
Game dev here, nice to see a review.
I'm adding notes to the journal. I initially removed notes because players getting hung up on figuring out the 'right' price often slowed them down a lot. Players would take the first trade they got for an item as gospel. Best advice is to find good deals and not precise deals. I'm hoping to add a transaction history ledger if I can figure out this player behavior issue.
The full game has a load of quests including starting a company and becoming King of Coin. You'll still have to sell the shipments yourself, no automated passive income. Ascension is a massive market so that shouldn't be an issue. Late game is designed to be very rewarding and the wealth scales up dramatically. Thanks for taking an interest anon.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks based devanon. Different anon but I played the demo and it's exactly what my friend's been looking for (fantasy Pawn Stars). As soon as it comes out I'm buying him a copy.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>couldn't get on board with the story
Don't think you can slip that one past me, Carlos.
i've been enjoying the new heights demo. i play every day when i'm taking a break from work. hoping they'll push the difficulty a little higher and make the climbing routes longer. online speed competition idea is cool and all, but i hope it's not the main concept of the game. be nice to have stat progression and different kinds of maps, climbing down into caves, and inverted roof climbs, etc.
11 months ago
Anonymous
They need much much larger maps and more freestyle climbing with objectives that encourage exploration and improvising your own climbing routes. They also need a difficulty setting that lowers your stamina and gives you fewer checkpoints. also improvised routes which you can get stuck on so you have to backtrack and find better paths if you haven't properly explored or planned well - not every path should work.
I like the idea of caving - introducing other environmental challenges like dark - having to use a headlamp while you're trying to find holds. The exploration objectives could be something as simple as finding and petting all those cats on the map or finding and reaching little spraypainted symbols on the walls. Good game so far but there's not much indication what their vision is.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>They also need a difficulty setting that lowers your stamina and gives you fewer checkpoints.
yeah. once i got the hang of it i ran through all the challenges all maps with only 5 hours total playtime. only the pro and elite climbs slowed me down.
>but the second area is where the developers for some reason stopped bothering modelling the footholds as well
Which area are you referring to? The tutorial has boulder walls with defined holds but the other location is a photo scanned rockface so in theory everything is a hold.
i've been enjoying the new heights demo. i play every day when i'm taking a break from work. hoping they'll push the difficulty a little higher and make the climbing routes longer. online speed competition idea is cool and all, but i hope it's not the main concept of the game. be nice to have stat progression and different kinds of maps, climbing down into caves, and inverted roof climbs, etc.
>hoping they'll push the difficulty a little higher and make the climbing routes longer.
The final area of the early access release offers some serious long routes. It features the biggest rockface of the Belgian Ardennes.
11 months ago
Anonymous
The second main area, not including the tutorial area. You scale a wall made out of bricks. By the advanced courses there I was having a lot of trouble discerninf what was grabbable because it was all just a blurry photo against flat geometry.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>The final area of the early access release offers some serious long routes
are you talking about that legne one? is that the only other area they're adding at early access release beside the ones in the demo?
11 months ago
Anonymous
>from the steam page: “Currently we are developing two areas: Training Grounds and Belgian Ardennes, containing four locations that can be climbed. It would certainly take about 50+ hours to fully complete every possible route in these four locations alone, but about 12 to 16 hours to progress through them normally, after which you would unlock a new area. >50+ hours
LOL. I completed all 3 star challenges on all the demo maps in just over six hours. Am i misunderstanding something or is their claim that the fourth location has 44 hours worth of content?
11 months ago
Anonymous
It should have about 3-4x the amount of routes compared to the castle, but even then so it'll result in about max 10-20 hours of gameplay.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I want to support the game because I enjoyed playing it, but there's doesn't seem to be a clear outline for the future. And all their store page basically says is we'll see what we plan to do if people show enough interest. Also, adding one additional map from demo to early access will make it hard to justify paying anything over 10-15 dollars.
11 months ago
Anonymous
seems like the plan is more maps and some kind of career mode. possible multiplayer. and maybe a way to scan and upload your own maps if there's enough interest.
Already played that during the Puzzle Fest a few months ago so I didn't include it. Been looking forward to it for a while and the demo was good. Was not a fan of the chatty narrator companion though.
I didn't get that feeling at all. The tone of the game is pretty light-hearted considering you're tripping over puns and dad jokes when exploring the environment. The game does seem to be really proud of its morality system though so we'll see if it has any actual bite in the full game.
Chronique des Silenceieux has potential but they clearly didn't consult a native English speaker for the translation. Also the game throws you off the deep end with a bunch of different potential options which is just about the worst way to start an adventure game.
I hope they get their shit together and the final product is a lot better.
I downloaded The Invincible demo and my PC didn't like it so I had to run it as low as it could go. The ground didn't load for me at a certain part so I fell through map.
Viewfinder demo made me interested in the finished game
Pic related are the demos that I considered pretty good (plus two others not in the Next Fest). >En Garde!
Decent combat, fun atmosphere. Pretty basic but might be worth a pirate. >Land Above Sea
If you like tile puzzle games this one is worth a look. The unique mechanic of the rising sea level prevents you from just infinitely expanding, focusing instead on making tight, well-thought out collections. Wish there was more tile variety but the art on them is nice. >NORCO
Pretty good text-based adventure game. The esoteric flair on a deep south experience was interesting, and I am excited for the full story. If you don't like reading then it's not worth your time, so if you're looking for something like Disco don't get your hopes up. >Sea of Stars
Haven't played yet >Shadow Gambit
Good stealth strategy game with great character designs and a underutilized setting. I've never played any of their other games and I had a great time with the gameplay. >TAGLINE
Kinda like Neon White with a Jet Set Radio aesthetic. I didn't like the level design, as it's pretty hard to understand the intended route you should be taking, but others might enjoy the more open-endedness of it >Thronefall
Good mix of kingdom builder and Vampire Survivor gameplay. Challenging to boot, with different weapons/traits/modifiers to enhance replayability. >Word Factori
Good puzzle game in the lines of Opus Magnus or Spacechem.
>I've never played any of their other games and I had a great time with the gameplay.
I can highly recommend Shadow Tactics and Outlaws 3 if you want more of the modern take on Commandos-style gameplay, they're both excellent games with really solid writing. The party in Gambit isn't quite as charming, but they've probably got room to grow.
Anybody try "Another Space Opera"? It has potential, but seems buggy as frick so far.
Does anyone know what to do with the car and crane in the 2nd level? Did anybody beat Level 3 with the Space dogfighting?
I like how 90% of the trailer is focussed on girl on left because they realized the artist fricked up every other face by going too 'how t o draw anime'
Dunno black dudes in my area are all actual africans who always travel in a pack of like 6 and seem physically incapable of talking at a reasonable volume. Annoying as frick.
Picked the doctor and regretted it, since you basically had two black gurls bantering for the rest of the Demo. She has some useful abilities with being able to place bushes and make bodies disappear wherever, but I think I'd pick the other guy on a new playthrough.
I enjoyed Mind Over Magic more than I expected to. I thought it would just be a straight management game, but the survival elements could make for a fun gameplay loop. I just hope the student training gets a little more involved later in the game. It seemed very hands-off in the demo
>Spells & Secrets
Not very good. Presentation is low budget, gameplay is very simple, there's just nothing interesting for me to latch onto. You fight the same two enemies over and over with magic missile. Not very satisfying. It's a roguelite but they didn't put any effort into even the basic genre staples. It feels like they turned it into a roguelite at the last minute.
Has a character creator but it's pretty rough.
I'm pretty cooled off on character creators these days. There's no point if the art is trash or the outfits suck, just make a decent looking default or let me wear a helmet and I'm fine with that.
Norland was ok but need to be more polished
Ratopia
Alien hominid invasion was fun,i need to buy a controller since keybord control is kind of junky and unresponsive sometimes or maybe it's my keyboard?
I recommend rebinding some of the controls. What I did was use left click for fire, right for mutation, wasd for movement, space for jump, and shift for dodge. I believe it spmetimes happens that when you're hplding down too many keyboard keys you can't press any more, they don't register. Offloading some of the presses onto the mouse meant I never ever had an issue with dodge.
Behemoth games play great on keyboards, they just for the life of them can't be bothered to set up actually comfortable keybinds.
Lies of P - on the fence about getting it. its clearly a sekiro clone without the jumping ability and no iframes on dodge so the only mechanic you can do is parry riposte but even that doesn't really tell you when you parry riposte correctly
Hammerwatch II - 100% buying by far the best thing ive tried out so far
Necrovale - played it and uninstalled after about 5 minutes. Unskippable opening cutscene into a very handholding tutorial.
>no iframes on dodge
That's wrong, though. The dodge is just shit because it barely moves you at all so you can't dodge anything except with the iframes.
There are only so many colony sims, survival games, and base builders that you can play. The indie market is becoming like AAA in terms of creative bankruptcy. Instead of remakes and remasters the indie market just seems to churn out the above three genres to the market.
>the above three
You forgot metroidvanias, Soulslikes, platformers, RPGs, roguelikes, deckbuilders, FPSs, idle games, couch coop games, survivor clones, etc. The indie market is immensely oversaturated all around.
>the above three
You forgot metroidvanias, Soulslikes, platformers, RPGs, roguelikes, deckbuilders, FPSs, idle games, couch coop games, survivor clones, etc. The indie market is immensely oversaturated all around.
You keep seeing these same genres and all games seem clones of each other because the devs just want to make something that will generate some money and is reasonable for an indie to finish because trying to "make it" as an indie is worse than trying to do the same in art or music or whatever creative hellhole you decide to put yourself into.
>colony sims >survival games >base builders >roguelikes >deckbuilders >survivor clones
These are genres that you will make as an indie to try to get money, because they are reasonable to make, you don't have to spend your entire life making assets or content just to achieve a high playtime. You can massively extend the playtime of a roguelike just by implementing some basic meta progression, and genres like colony sims are built on replayability so again you don't have to generate tons of new content and it is easy to artificially elongate the game. Also, the "autistic" genres are programmer friendly because they require less assets and/or have no demand for impressive art/graphics, one of the major examples is Factorio, artgays could never make a Factorio as good and as popular as it is.
>metroidvanias >soulslikes >platformers >RPGs >FPSs
These are popular genres with very high revenue but are absolute shit genres to make, and indie devs will do it and hope they will be one of the few that will be at the top earning millions. Soulslike is an especially shit one because not one it is a ton of work to make something that is at least decent you will also compete against Fromsoft and soulslike players will prefer to do another NG+100 Dark Souls run instead of playing your half-assed soulslike. FPS/Competitive FPS games have a similar problem where all of the revenue just stays at the AAA/AA level and some indies think that just because FPS makes a ton of money then they will be able to do it too. Platformers are almost meme tier because you only have a few at the top earning the most while you have thousands of other platformers that can't even generate $100 to repay Steam's fee, and the main meme part is that those platformers at the top are usually gimmicky artsy ones, so only artgays dominate this genre because the programming is piss easy.
I'm not that sure since I'm not an artist, but art has that same problem with only a few at the top getting everything while you have a massive amount of artists at the bottom barely making it. Just compare it to normal wagie jobs like software engineer where you will see like 95% of the people earning around $30k to $300k, there isn't a massive difference like 0,1% earning >1 million and 70% earning <10k
>modern art complainer in current year
this is like the guy that goes "damn theres nothing good on the radio like [my shitty 3 chord rock band from 1970], no one is making good music anymore!!"
>metroidvanias >soulslikes >platformers >RPGs >FPSs
These are popular genres with very high revenue but are absolute shit genres to make, and indie devs will do it and hope they will be one of the few that will be at the top earning millions. Soulslike is an especially shit one because not one it is a ton of work to make something that is at least decent you will also compete against Fromsoft and soulslike players will prefer to do another NG+100 Dark Souls run instead of playing your half-assed soulslike. FPS/Competitive FPS games have a similar problem where all of the revenue just stays at the AAA/AA level and some indies think that just because FPS makes a ton of money then they will be able to do it too. Platformers are almost meme tier because you only have a few at the top earning the most while you have thousands of other platformers that can't even generate $100 to repay Steam's fee, and the main meme part is that those platformers at the top are usually gimmicky artsy ones, so only artgays dominate this genre because the programming is piss easy.
>idle games >couch coop games
Meme genres
How profitable are porn games? I get the feeling an indie dev could instantly 10x their profits if they made their simple game coomer bait (see: Helltaker) or outright porn but I have no idea if that's true in practice.
Pure porn games are in the middle. There is an ungodly amount of them out there but overall they do ok, nothing too insane, my guess is that coomerbux is always big and coomers like variety, so this is why even with thousands of games out there they can do decent, plus if you are a master of one niche, say cuckshit, you will be more successful.
Now, inserting non obvious coombait like Genshin Impact, Nier Automata, Dark Souls' waifus or even like Overwatch did is good to give a boost and is also easy to do, you can take almost any game and do it relatively easily. Doing it this way you can still keep your normal audience while baiting the coomers in, so the only reason to not do this is if you are one of those homosexuals that can't stand seeing a cute girl. And needless to say, the more obvious your coombait is the more you start to lose your normal audience and the more you lean into a porn game, which is not that great.
Luto seemed pretty interested from the tiny bit I played before work. Very obvious PT influence. Also reminded me of Visage, but I never played it.
Any other spooky demos?
Not too sure how feasible it is to sneak past enemies vs get in a better position to ambush them
I'm holding out that the demo was more linear than the full game will be, especially with how binary the switch was from "wander around and do some talking" to "run down this hallway and kill everything"
I had some decent luck sneaking up on dudes by staying above them with walljumps then dropping down with the sword, the snipers also seem to have a really small viewcone when doing their laser sight thing so if you move quick you can get in their face before they notice.
The demo was pretty hallway heavy for the most part though, and what sneaking there was more boiled down to getting the drop and starting off fights with a katana beheading or a cheeky grenade than actually bypassing enemies.
Luna Abyss is very pretty, but also extremely easy. There's some kind of issue with the screenshots though, the actual game isn't anywhere near this fuzzy.
I found out that they have the whole game at itchio and can be played on the site without download.
It's pretty fun if you like the genre but a bit too easy or impossible depending on what you find.
Not sure about the balance but if you just have a shitty weapon and find no multipliers you are kinda fricked on harder difficulties.
Still a good game.
Not really fest-related but I guess we got lots of indibros here. What's some cool under the radar turnbased roguelite that came out last year or so?
No hate please.
Laika was cool but it just makes me wish the physics were more like the Trials games. And backflipping to reload is annoying and just results in backtracking to the nearest bump for some quick airtime anytime you run out of bullets.
>Viewfinder
Well done gimmick, pretty boring puzzles. >Ghost Trick
Great animations and designs. I like that you get to jump between objects mid-animation.
Still, it's easy, slow and has a tedious presentation. Does it open up? Are scenes done once you've averted death in each of them? Do I get to jump between scenes, do they evolve together? >Lies of P
Runs great on Steam Deck and looks great even on low settings.
Everything about it is a carbon copy of Bloodborne, but somehow worse in most regards except graphical fidelity and engine polish. What's the point?
They could also do a better job explaining the seemingly arbitrary terms plastered over their copied mechanics. Will probably be a decent action game but for whom? Many souls players were complaining about burnout during DS3, why would they want an inferior clone? Odd direction to go with. >wizard with a gun
Polished but shallow. Reminiscant of don't starve. Aiming persisted in locking onto trees and bushes during combat.
Very easy compared to Don't Starve, but might have appeal. >Hammerwatch 2
Tried to get into the first one and Heroes, but this has the same problems.
Too slow, easy and shallow for my taste. Fantastic style which reminds me of Settlers 2. >En Garde!
Fun combat system but a tad easy. A bit of Unity jank but overall pretty stable.
Looks good but the writing is bland. >One Lonely Outpost
Stardew in space. Looks good, trailer seems promising, but it feels very slow starting out.
Robot companion constantly gets in the way.
>Ghost Trick >Lies of P
And honestly just how you passive aggressive complain in general, frick you for using Treasure for your content you homosexual.
>nooo don't list positivies and negatives of games >nooo you have to 100% hate things or 100% like them >mommy help someone is being reasonable in their views and not moronicly bent one way >aaaaah
loooool
Viewfinder is the only demo i've wishlisted so far but i hope to fricking god they either tone down or flat-out remove the female commentator's "i just moved shit with my frigging mind!" cringe shit
Shitty narration seems to be a common issue these days. Everyone wants to be stanley parable
>your content
lol are you a wannabe youtuber? >passive aggressive complain
I was pretty straightforward though. All of the titles have good points to them.
I didn't shit on Ghost Trick and I even threw Lies of P a bone. I own a significant number of Treasure titles and used to have a Treasure shrine alcove in a bookshelf a couple of apartments ago. My favourite is Alien Soldier
It's been many years since I played so I can't recall how hard it gets but IIRC it usually goes >arrive at new area >some plot and set up for the area >puzzles >get plot >move to the next area
But honestly, it's worth a playthrough for the story and charming characters alone and that fricking soundtrack. The entire cast is entertaining and the twists and turns leave you wanting more.
If there was one game I could forget everything about and play again blind, it's Ghost Trick.
>En Garde
Supe railroaded. You just can't actually grab onto whatever the devs want you to even if she should be able to. She'll borderline teleport to what she can. No freedom at all. Combat is watching the same 5 slice animations on repeat or spamming jump slash because that lets you infinitely wall-splat enemies until they die. Either you press Y to hit them twice before they super-armor through your attack despite currently being cut or you're fighting multiple dudes who spam red moves you just dodge then do sometimes as little as 1 attack before they do it again. OR you run around kicking boxes into everything. Its not like Might and Magic people compare it to where you had a lot of options to work with like making things slide on ice, lay down fire traps, kick people into traps (the only things this actually shares with might is kicking into traps and kicking barrels). Demo leaves no really hint on what they'll do to make it more than a more rail-roaded far more poorly animated arkham game that's just the mindless combat.
Don't really get the hype at all
literally contradicting yourself in your own post. >poorly animated arkham game that's just the mindless combat >multiple dudes who spam red moves you just dodge then do sometimes as little as 1 attack before they do it again
you're not supposed to stand around in a circle parrying everything, that's why the enemies are actually aggressive and attack all at once.
you have to use the environment to deal with them. throw stuff at them, kick stuff at them, kick them into stuff, kick them into one another, light them on fire with a lantern, throw a lantern at a cannon while they're chasing you, etc.
the story demo is "railroaded" yes but it quite literally says it's to teach you the mechanics.
>Le kicke >Le kicke again
Wow bro totally didn't mention that in my post and that's totally not taking your total actions from 5 repeat animations + le parry and le dodge to just the same shit + le kicke le barrels
>Oh shit bro you can enforce stun then do 4 hits before they break out mid-swing and le swing so you can le parry
Viewfinder is the only demo i've wishlisted so far but i hope to fricking god they either tone down or flat-out remove the female commentator's "i just moved shit with my frigging mind!" cringe shit
>You miss out on the audio logs but it's worth it.
I'll probably just wait until the game comes out and then shop around for opinions about whether the story/audio logs are worth listening to
5 so far. Most were decent though some really should not have been put out. I get the impression a lot of developers just slapped together a demo ASAP without a care for presentation. A demo is a selling point so it should have a certain amount of polish.
>start Jusant >instant see the chromatic aberration >game has no specific post processing settings >can't even turn it off, only low to max
Fricking seriously? How do devs STILL not get this shit right?
Only tried two so far. >En Garde
Great visuals, but that's about it. Combat is a hodgepodge of mechanics lifted from other games that haven't been made to mesh well together. Game feel is terrible, and characters never shut up. >Remore: Infested Kingdom
Pretty engrossing TRPG, seems solid all-round. Great presentation, gameplay's tight, writing is spot-on for the tone they're going for. Definitely keeping an eye on it.
I'll try Sea of Stars later tonight, but that's Sabotage so I'm pretty sure it'll be good.
>UP MY ALLEY/WISHLISTED
Studio System: Guardian Angel
Radio The Universe
Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation
Alien Hominid: Invasion
Redline Crooks
Jusant
Wildmender >WILL WAIT FOR REVIEWS
El Paso, Elsewhere
Hellsweeper VR
Motordoom
Valley Peaks
Quasimorph >SHIT
Die Again
Bloody Downsizing
Sea of Stars
>PLAN TO PLAY IN THE FUTURE:
Mislight
OVRLRD
En Garde!
Laika: Aged Through Blood
>GENRES I AM SICK OF
Metroidvania (I recognize them as good games, but they're just not for me. And there's SO MANY of them)
Turn Based Card Games (dime a dozen, I have enough of these in my steam library and some can be modded, I don't need more)
Survival Horror/Horror (majority of the genre is low effort shovelware, also dime a dozen)
Top Down shooters/Bullet Hell (I feel like if you've played 5 good ones of these you've played them all)
Farming Games (I have farming games already, and they eat up a lot of time individually, CLOSE THE VALVE, I DON'T NEED MORE)
Boomer Shooters (Only a handful of these actually have the magic that makes this genre good, and I need a break)
>GENRES I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
Combat Racing (More A to B racing with aggressive driving like Burnout 3 and Wipeout, less vehicle arena combat like Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal)
3D Platformers (Pleasant atmosphere, good world design, fun controls)
Action Horror (Stuff like Resident Evil 4/Dead Space where you're not necessarily in great danger but you are shooting at stuff with thick atmosphere and punchy guns)
Zelda-like 3D adventure games (There's lots of top down 2D ones, I want people to go for Ocarina of Time, not A Link to the Past.)
>ELEMENTS OF GAMES I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
Memorable soundtracks that I'd listen to outside of the games
Attention to detail
Good art styles that don't look like something I'd see in a mobile game.
>ELEMENTS I WANT TO SEE LESS OF
stock unreal engine visuals
developers explaining their game instead of letting the game speak for itself
multiplayer, but local/SRPT only
its clear they put a lot of work into it but the story/characters dont grab me at all
it says something when i want to frick the in-motion sprite of the main girl more than the actual art of the girl
the "press x when thing happens" also kinda felt like it lacked feedback for letting me know when i should be pressing or not or when i succeed, and the traversal (press space to climb a ledge, jump, climb, jump down etc) is so simple and mindless, it begs the question of why its even a button, its not like a platformer where theres some kind of "challenge" inherent to the movement, its just walking from point a to point b but you're pressing a button while you walk.
I don't remember how jumping spaces worked in Golden Sun but I think it was basically the same in many ways. The character design and music leaves a lot to be desired. 100% spot on that there isn't enough feedback on when you should be pressing buttons
I dont get it. What am I supposed to do here?
Yes, I've read PDA, but typing neither password nor login doesnt do anything. Even tried typing "help" and "commands" - 0 results.
I liked picrel and I don't see it in this thread so, here goes. Opinions from those who played it?
I also reccomend asterogues for those who want a fun twist on enter the gungeon like roguelikes
Looks good >Hang out with weirdos just like you! Yay, friendship! … ᴀɴd Romᴀɴce … >If you don’t build affection with a character, they may die in the end!
nevermind
shame reminds me of twewy, no interest in mandatory or be punished romance
Is alright but default PC controls are ass and the timing of visual and audio cues needs improvement. Wishlisted but I'm not getting my hopes up, could end up another deadge.
The idea of an RPG Rhythm game hybrid is cool but the actual rhythm gameplay in this sucks dick. I can't see any scenario in which I would rather play this than just grind osu
I played another different Rhythm RPG earlier this year too (Infinite Guitars, it was on GamePass) and that was also really mediocre. A shame since it also had decent visuals and music (though it played its hand with the OST really hard and reused the same few songs the entire first act before I quit.
Indie devs seem to have a hard time making good rhythm games for whatever reason. Maybe because most of the good games are arcade or require unique controllers, so there isn't an easy format to copy.
Meanwhile A Song of Fire & Ice or whatever is super successful by Indie Rhythm standards and it looks like the most basic thing in the world. Also it must suck trying to do a Rhythm hybrid game and seeing Hi-Fi Rush nail it and raise the bar for that way up high.
>Saltsea Chronicles
Shamelessly tumblr game, to the point that it basically exists in its own ecosystem. One of those very word-heavy point-and-clicks with minimal actual gameplay (except for a card mini-game with convoluted rules).
It is oddly well-made for what it is. It has a style that most people won't like but it leans into it hard. The UI had some effort put into it, though the dialogue box (which you will be spending most of your time staring at) is pretty plain.
Seems to take place in a low fantasy setting. I don't know if I'd call the story particularly interesting, it's a lot of characters talking about random things with the plot not being a huge concern. Definitely vibes-driven. I don't know. I have to wonder what made the developers want to make something like this, it doesn't have an obvious hook.
Also I hate that the screenshot manager takes five times as long to open now. What was Valve thinking?
Urbano seems cool. Kinda reminds me of the time when vidya was still about having fun. Combat controls are ass though and they need to fix sync'ing the visual and audio cues. Nothing unfixable. Hope it doesn't become a never ever or turn into a dumpster fire.
>Ready Steady Ship!
it was a little fun game to play co-op, not much going on and I think the boxes bugs out when they get stuck. >Toxic Crusaders
not bad but pretty barebones, it would be good to add more special moves with the special button instead of the AoE emergency attack. music was 'aight >Captain Wayne
I think it was good Doom WAD? it is kind of annoying dealing with super fast enemies on Doom and the melee charging dude was annoying, at least he is easier to deal with than the inspiring champions in boltgun >House Flipper 2
gay dude traps you in a island and you do the same shit you do in all those games, dunno why I downloaded it. >Dungeon Renovation Simulator
Janitor simulator and it barely runs, I could count the fps with my hands.
>Border Patrol: Papers Please with robots.
Box to the Beat: Yet another beatsaber clone but gloves.
Crumbling: Floating hand puppet slasher.
Davigo: Asymmetric multiplayer only.
The Devourer: 10fps.
Drunk Dead 2: Almost interesting then it turns into a shooting gallery.
Hellsweeper: Arena fighter with rogueshit.
Inter Solar 83: Elite Nondangerous.
Magecosmos: A literal scam?
Minigolf Aeons: Too basic minigolf.
Monoracevr: Broken controls. >Ovrlrd: Mech wienerpit, joysticks dont support tilting so it feels clumsy.
Pointy Ends: PVP throw stuff from towers.
Premortal: Craft things for no reason.
Retropolis 2: 99% cutscenes, followed by boring mini "puzzles"
Sharks: Third person head controlled sharks playing Infection.
Solarblack: Yet another beatsaber clone but you sometimes shoot. >Stack: Multiplayer only but the telekenisis boomerang mechanic seemed good.
System Critical 2: Broken controls. >Tea for God: Cool infinite walking, but not engaging beyond that.
Unmanned: Broken.
Vetrix Worlds: 3D Tetris without gravity, almost good but you can't freely rotate the playfield.
Wandering in Space: Requires account creation.
Mr Bears Bizarre Adventure: Broken controls.
>Laika: Aged Through Blood
Shooting mechanics are neat in combat but suck everywhere else since you need to shoot shit to get resources, so you'll end up driving back and forth to backflip and reload.
The dark souls mechanic of dropping currency when you die is moronic since it punishes you for trying out cool shit. Dying already kicks you back to the last checkpoint which may or may not be far away, so it's entirely pointless
Dialogue takes your eyes away from the center of the screen, which is really bad when you're trying to drive. Also it gets cut off by pretty much anything (dying, dismounting, interacting, etc) and it does not repeat even if you die, so you can end up completely missing all context and plot. Also the devs are ESL and it really shows
Other than that it was a enjoyable experience, and the music was really good. I give it a 7/10, if they work out the kinks and release it at a reasonable price I might get it
>"wow holy shit stop making VS clones"
the only ones im interested in are the totally not diablo one with the hot chicks that go ":p" in the dialogue and the vtuber one because ITS FRICKING FREE and not a shallow attempt to make money
>>the only ones im interested in are the totally not diablo one with the hot chicks that go ":p" in the dialogue a
?
Which one is like diablo? Does it have a necromancer?
>Alien Hominid Invasion
I wish it was still a Metal Slug-esque game but what this is is still very fun. Controls really well and the charm of the original is completely intact visually. Had a really annoying issue I couldn't fix where pressing Up or Down while holding Jump paused the game. Wishlisted. >Battle Shapers
Clearly polished and has some neat ideas but I don't see myself getting into it long-term. Feels very "from the team that played Doom Eternal". Punch animation is very satisfying. Didn't Wishlist, but not bad. >Decline's Drops
Something about the attack animations/inputs felt a little slow but otherwise this was so nice. I can feel how much there is to do with the mechanics and the MC is distinct and cute visually. Will buy. >El Paso, Elsewhere
Very much Max Payne but fantasy, but the level/encounter design was kind of weak and the game really fought me on mapping my controls. >En Garde!
Genuinely loved the combat despite the simplicity. Each mechanic is minor but its strength is that the variety comes from the room you're in and the resources around you rather than what enemies are facing you. Super charming presentation but the MC's model should match the art better. Also should not need me to turn settings down to make a game that looks like it came out in 2007 run well on a 3050.
>Eternights
Writing is actually charming but the visuals are meh and the combat felt extremely dull and repetitive. Apparently this only exists because the dev wanted to put out a game before Yanderedev, so it's based, but I didn't Wishlist. >FINAL KNIGHT
Most difficulty I've had binding controls in any of these, but as a singleplayer party-based beat-em-up RPG it has a lot of potential. Visuals are very busy though. I'll keep an eye on it. >Ghost Trick
Haven't played it before but I've only heard good things and it's from before that dark early-mid 10s era of Capcom sank in. >Isekai Janken Hero
Grabbed just for how silly the premise is. Manages to make Rock-Paper-Scissors confusing which is a feat. The porn part is pretty good, but they fricked up by putting by far the best girl of the 5 in the demo, I have no reason to buy the final game. >Laika: Aged Through Blood
Took me by surprise. I can't say Metroidvania with crafting seemed that interesting but the actual gameplay is really brilliant and the presentation is incredible. The boss fight in the forest graveyard was fantastic, and I love the music system. The checkpoints seem to encourage brute forcing things though, which may make it overstay its welcome. Will buy. >Legendary Hoplite
Tower defense + vertical shmup with RPG elements. More fun than that sounds but it comes off kind of cheap at times. Once I got some abilities I liked I got into a flow state that felt really good. Demo has a MASSIVE difficulty spike when the boss arrives though. Wishlisted. >Merchant of the Six Kingdoms
Thanks to the devanon who shilled his game here. This is the perfect gift for a friend of mine. Not my kind of game but I can tell there's a lot of effort put into the economy here. Wishlisted, will gift. >Might & Magic Clash of Heroes Definitive Edition
I could probably just emulate this (same with Ghost Trick) but this seems like a good version. Very short demo but I really dig the mechanics. Wishlisted.
>Motordoom
Sadly I didn't enjoy it. Awesome premise but ultimately doesn't control as well as it should and felt the need to go for roguelite mechanics, plus outside of the skellies you can play as I didn't think any of the models looked good. Rollerdrome pulls off THPS w/ Guns better. Didn't wishlist. >Pocket Bravery
VERY competent fighting game with great animation. Really only can recommend if you like sprite-based fighting games that won't have huge playerbases though. Wishlisted. >Pull Stay
One of those games where I feel like at least some of the jank is intentional. The gameplay concept is actually fantastic despite all the problems with how it plays and the cheap visuals. Oozes that uniqueness that a solo Japanese PC dev brings. Wishlisted. >Redline Crooks
Last demo I tried and this was fantastic. Once I understood how the systems worked everything flowed really well but I could feel that there was room for mastery. Charming simple style and music too. Sleeper hit, will buy. >Resistance 204X
Had my eye on this for a while so it's nice to play it. Think Nidhogg + an anime fighting game, playing the Hard CPU was exhilarating. Will buy. >Skator Gator 3D
Half extremely basic & loose 3D platformer, half rail-hopping with very deliberate & tight controls. Charming enough but if this launches above $8 it'll be too much. Tentative Wishlist. >Star Salvager
Puzzle-Shmup where you pick up bricks to match to make ammo or shields. Great premise, really confusing execution, and the art is cheap and ugly. Real shame, probably the worst demo I played. >TAGLINE
The style is excellent and makes the most out of super low-fidelity visuals and you can see that there's a good amount of variety in the format of the game, but the controls are too slippery and I only enjoyed two out of five weapons. Wishlisted, hope they fix it up some.
3/4 because I can't count and Toxic Crusaders specifically disappointed me.
>Toxic Crusaders
The music is great, the voice acting is above-average. Everything else kind of sucks. I love beat-em-ups but everything about this felt wrong. I couldn't get a handle on how hitboxes and juggle points were functioning, I juggled two corpses to a 200-hit combo by mashing Dash Attack as two enemies watched motionless on the other side of the room. I turned on the super mode and Touch of Death'd the boss also by mashing Dash Attack. The button to pick up and throw things being the same as the one to pick up and throw enemies felt wrong, and the wall splat not letting you continue the combo felt wrong. Special Attack is really slow and not really worth anything except crowd control.
On the plus side, I had no idea that TMNT Shredder's Revenge had a DLC announced with Usagi Yojimbo until yesterday which helped me get over how weak that demo was.
>I can feel how much there is to do with the mechanics
Like what lol? Mechanics seemed very simple and the enemies barely did shit. I wasn't even expecting much and was disappointed.
The demo showcased a lot of simple mechanics that can interact with one another. It's a system that can scale up the difficulty and depth based on how the combat room is designed, and that's with only two enemy types shown. It remains to be seen how creative the devs get with encounter design, but if they can pull it off I can absolutely see the arrangement of these mechanics being used in a way to keep it fresh while maintaining that simple "you can't handle more than a 2v1, so find a way to break up the enemy group with what's around you" flow. If the El Vigilante boss is as complex as it gets then it'll get dull quickly though, it was really nice for a tutorial boss, but only because it was a tutorial boss.
That doesn't answer my question at all. How is there much to do with her incredibly tiny moveset and boring-ass enemies? There's no reason to assume she'll have tons of extra moves in the full game.
You can say literally any game with more than 1 attack and enemy can 'scale up'
She had nearly no moves and most of them filled the exact same niche (2 of them are the same move outside of the first punch in the combo) and half weren't even really useable in fights
The demo showcased a lot of simple mechanics that can interact with one another. It's a system that can scale up the difficulty and depth based on how the combat room is designed, and that's with only two enemy types shown. It remains to be seen how creative the devs get with encounter design, but if they can pull it off I can absolutely see the arrangement of these mechanics being used in a way to keep it fresh while maintaining that simple "you can't handle more than a 2v1, so find a way to break up the enemy group with what's around you" flow. If the El Vigilante boss is as complex as it gets then it'll get dull quickly though, it was really nice for a tutorial boss, but only because it was a tutorial boss.
Oh I'm moronic, I thought you meant En Garde.
I was talking more the level design. The plant serum & tomatoes in the second level were really nice for what seemed like a one-and-done gimmick and were used to their fullest. The combat room in that level showed what the game can potentially be like once it throws more complex/hearty enemies at you. I just wish those heavy attacks had a different input since I kept getting them instead of the lighter strings.
Oh that makes more sense.
En guard is just hit hit parry unless outnumbered, then its hit hit dodge OR if there are things to kick at people/kick people into its just spam kick.
Very boring game, you spend 90% of the time watching the same m1 combo being spammed. At least Mordor and Asscreed its 'inspired' by have really cool animations that often have the enemies react as if being hit, her weapon just sort of phases through them. Massive step down.
I enjoyed it more when I realized the game really doesn't want you to just go through those motions. My main point as to how it differentiates from Arkham combat is that in Arkham you're always attacking and bouncing from enemy to enemy and only deviating when an enemy gimmick prompts you to; counters come out in the middle of your combo and let you flow back into attacking. En Garde seems to want you to not bother attacking until you've figured out how you want to separate the enemies and allow you to pick them off individually; parries break your string and red attacks force a well-timed sidestep to raposte or a roll to entirely disengage, closer to something that will let you keep those that enemy from interrupting you again. It's more like a puzzle than anything, and I just hope they have harder puzzles than the demo in the final game since the rooms they had in it were just loaded with toys because they wanted you to learn what everything did.
Nah just kick box at them, kick guy into wall, jump slash repeatedly. 100-0 stunlock on every enemy in the demo.
Even if you don't jump slash spam the only 'puzzle' is 'open your eyes and find the thing that stuns dude'.
Or don't and just spam dodge they really can't stop you at all the dodge is easier to dodge than unblockable attacks in fricking Arkham its super telegraphed
I want to like En Garde but the combat isn't anywhere near polished enough. There's way too much magnetism/tracking on both the player's and enemies' attacks. Also it's poorly optimized.
I really don't understand why it doesn't have a hard lock on. That softlock/magnetism shit feels awful, especially when its as poorly implemented as it is in En Garde.
I'm disappointed for the amount of blatant clones there are. I started Steamworld Build because I liked the earlier games, its literally just a reskin of Anno.
It's not a deckbuilder but yes I realize the whole cards thing has been done a lot lately. I thought it did a pretty good job of >fighting game, but cards
myself.
Frick David Sirlin, that's why. He tried to sue the guy making Yomi Hustle over the word "Yomi" as if he owned the word but didn't bother suing Trek to Yomi because it wasn't FGC-adjacent. The name change to Your Only Move Is Hustle (or YOMI Hustle) to sidestep that was based, and YOMI Hustle is better than Yomi, Yomi 2, & Fantasy Strike.
If you want a card game you're likely already burnt out before reaching this
If you want a fighting game this is vastly superior: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1555150/Pocket_Bravery/
If you want a fighting game for babies you can play fantasy strike which is literally the same characters anyways (including literally just Slayer)
If you want to watch fights play out aftr you make numbers big not only does Matchless KungFu do this much better, the trailer of Yomi 2 shows it looks like fricking shit
If you just want a fun game the trailer looks like shit
It looks like shit
i thought the original yomi was fun what does this change to make it stand out/ better? Also, does it have online multiplayer and can you find matches?
Y2 has a bunch of small changes that I didn't think would be that big of a deal or sounded kind of lame but which actually make the game a lot more interesting.
One of the bigger ones is that on your turn every other combat you can exchange one of your normal non-special/super cards in hand with one from the discard. It helps create consistency and reduce randomness of the card draws, and also create this risk/reward mechanic where you can exchange cards for normals to build up an attack combo, or do the reverse and trade in cards to get your missing options back and retrieve a block or a throw you're missing.
And the thing is when you do that the opponent also sees what you're exchanging for, so you can make calculated decisions or mindgames based on what you see your opponent exchanging and what you are exchanging. There are a bunch of changes like this in the game (high/low blocks, gem selection, a codified fireball mechanic) that add a lot of wrinkles and folds to the decision space so it feels like there's a lot more to think about and more opportunities to make interesting decisions based on what's happening.
It's too bad so many people seem to hate the creator, I think the game feels pretty fun.
also 2bf sirlin did it to himself. Ill give it a shot probably like i said i really enjoyed the first one and if this one is good and you can get games that sounds good to me.
I wish this was a real fricking card game with deck building and metagaming and cards getting released so you can think about decks all week between fnms oh god I want a card game so bad.
Great Ambition of the Slimes is pretty fun. It's an SRPG where the gimmick is your party is made of various slimes that possess the enemy units to attack for you. Neat idea but not sure if it can carry a whole game. Wishlisted anyway.
Steamworld :Build was fun. You manage a city and a deep mineshaft that has ancient treasures. The tutorial had no fail state, but it looks like there will be enemies in the full game attacking the mines.
Drive Crazy is a shitty racing platformer where the truck can wallrun/walljump. it has the energy of an indie PS2 game that gets ridiculed on xplay and then forgotten about, but with some actual sfx for running over stuff could make the rounds on variety gaming channels.
bonus points for ending your demo with a girl/boy song expy
Shilling this game, I liked it; played it 8 hours. Has some jank (controller aiming has auto-aim and it can lock on to bushes and shit), Petting your charmed enemy (a useless joke interaction I think) locks you in place while you're trying to pick up valuable loot.
Demo did a bad job of showing you the possibilities; only after playing for 8 hours did I realize (for example) there are guns you can loot off baddies that can shoot two bullets and be upgraded via crafting, there are secret doors that can be repaired, and there is a platform building gun to let you traverse gaps.
Also not allowing multiplayer, even if it was jank peer 2 peer, was a mistake but maybe they flat out couldn't swing it yet (which would be kind of a bad sign).
PROTIP TO INDIE DEVS: PUT FRAMECAPS IN YOUR GAME
If I start up your game and the main menu is running at 3000 FPS with no way to cap it I'm uninstalling.
Whatever your one skill is lean into that heavily and use that to attract other people and/or money.
Plan your game as much as you can, the more time you spend planning it out and creating an outline (called a "Design Document") the easier it is to cut out the parts that inevitably don't work and change them.
>encouraging an anon to just endlessly plan
no, he needs to make shit and find the fun in the idea or drop it and move onto a new prototype
a design doc should be bullet points about what the game is, with maybe an accompanying document that focuses on individual systems within it, and keep the scope small until he has enough experience and manpower to actually make a larger game.
Also sometimes it's better to not listen to the players. It's your game with your vision, sometimes the end player would absolutely ruin a game if they had their way, you don't need to buckle to requests, but keep an ear open because some feedback can indicate that there is a deeper issue that could be addressed in a way that they aren't actually suggesting.
your early projects will all suck, that's fine, it's a learning process both for design and programming, but also for project management. You'll only improve by iterating, I've seen countless starry-eyed morons burnout entirely and teams implode because they want their first game to be some overly-ambitious thing, be practical and realistic with your expectations. And above all, have fun.
This anon gets it. Make shit, finish it, iterate. That said, once you've made a bit of something set your scope early so you know where to stop, this is the most important part of planning if you don't want to make something forever.
It gets good 30 minutes in isn't a valid excuse, it's an example of poor pacing. Buildup and progression are fine, but there should be some initial hook to show the potential of your game. Non gameplay stuff like lore&setting or art direction can fill this niche if the gameplay isn't bad or stale, but if that's all you have why are you making a game instead of a book/movie/album?
Genuinely ask yourself why what you're making needs to be a game and you'll make something that isn't bad.
|++| >Neverlooted Dungeon
Cute. Hard to say if it'll have staying power for me, but a nice simple concept that tickles your brain just a smidge. >Back to the Dawn
Really refreshing take on the lifesim genre, anthro without being completely furhomosexual, still plays all the typical cards but has a lot of other stuff going on. It's a bit slow paced though, I don't think the 3-day limit does it a lot of justice yet? Either way, It's staying on my watchlist. >Luto
Similar to PT/Visage/etc, atmospheric horror interior exploration, with a nice focus on being unsettling without jump scare shit. Pursuer is literally just a white-sheet ghost figure and it's great. Had to leave, no saving, so didn't get horribly far.
|--| >Gord
Obvious effort put into it, but it meanders like a motherfricker and its once again one of those situations where the combined autism of Dwarf Fortress and comfy modability of Rimworld have ruined this kind of game for me and never gives me reason to play anything but those two. >Norland
Same as above. Again, obvious effort, can't be assed though.
>One of the most active demos is Davigo >This game expects its long term playerbase to be 20% VR owners
I suspect this will become a problem with time.
I don't think I even saw Tobor anywhere in the pages of demos I looked through. Thanks to whoever I saw recommended it, that was the highlight of this demo fest.
Yellow Taxi go Vroom is legit as frick. Captures the era its emulating very well, snappy if not slightly strange controls, fun and cute style. Definitely wishlisting.
I enjoyed it decently too. Not the kind of game I normally play but I could tell it was a good version of it. It was part of the last NextFest though, not the current one. If we're coutning the last one, I loved Slave Zero X & Gravity Circuit most there. MEATGRINDER too but that came out and I realized the demo was literally 40% of the entire game.
>Try game blatantly being viral market spammed, shilled more than any other game combined while constantly propping it up as if it has absolutely no flaws >Oh shit the game people had to be paid to shill is bad
Oh nooooo
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628610/Paquerette_Down_the_Bunburrows/
This?
Its cute
Do we have a list of what Ganker considers a top five to ten must plays?
V is mostly just circlejerking the first things brought up so its officially
>En Garde (an arkham game that's just combat and the combat is bad) >Vroom Vroom (sex with cars) >Fortune's Run (entirely linear 'immersive sim') >Lies of P (Soulslike with inferior combat and you can only play a twink)
What game is shit enough to be number 5?
The 10 I liked most personally:
Alien Hominid Invasion
Laika Aged Through Blood
En Garde!
Redline Crooks
Resistance 204X
Merchant of the Six Kingdoms
TAGLINE
FINAL KNIGHT
Decline's Drops
Legendary Hoplite
my main complaint with bakery is that the translation is pretty poor, lots of bad grammer and poor word choices and some bits that feel the like the translator isn't very familiar with the story and wordbuilding. Which is surprising given that GF1 and PNC both have great translations.
They're not perfect of course but they don't get basic facts wrong.
11 months ago
Anonymous
What's the problem here?
11 months ago
Anonymous
1: the beginning should say 'Dolls without a neural cloud' because it's a singular noun
2: by definition all dolls have neural clouds because that's just what their AI is called, if it didn't have one it would be dead.
3: it's actually mistranslated, in context a better set of lines would say >M: ...We have a perfectly legal fake identity. >M: Ordinary rescue team members won't be able to see through it. Fortunately, the supervisor for this team is an old-school Doll. >M: Given their [Neural Clouds], they won't be suspicious of a colleague of theirs with a verifiable legal ID.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I see, that is a problem. Especially since such a thing isn't at all obvious to anyone not already familiar with the setting. That's the dangerous part of having a poor translation with good English editing.
Did you report it to them?
11 months ago
Anonymous
yeah there's a survey and most people are noting the translation as a sticking point. This remake has been in development hell for a while so the running theory is that the script was written and translated before the current actually good crew (featuring a bona fide real anon, not joking) came on.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2303850/Toxic_Crusaders/ >Toxic crusader devs gave up on showing their shitty game >The watch devs play thing is just doing reruns of their show
BNased
That list defaults to the current amount players. Of course demos for the most recent upcoming games are going to be the most popular right now. If you sort it all-time peak, the numbers for this year's demos are nowhere close.
Did you only play for 5 minutes or something? The demo hides the grip gauge at the start. I think it shows up after the tutorial that teaches you about jump climbing.
> WISHLISTED > Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of Moonfall
DAZslop at its sloppiest when it comes to h-game shit, but has a surprisingly great grip of what makes CRPGs great. Also you can call a dev a gay on /vrpg/. > El Paso, Somewhere
Edge beyond belief (in a good way), the shotgun is the greatest one in years, the music is shit (par for the course, i guess), but the overall experience is great. > Poached: Hunt the Hunter
Travel through South Africa and kill blacks (and some whites) poaching while a Zulu tribal drum beat reverbates through your skull, then come to your trailer home and make some BBQ. > Mythical Agent
Clear mark of an outsider solodev that delivers great shit (think Brigand: Oaxaca or PARADIGM WORLDS), loved it. > Anger Foot
Don't know if it was on the previous one, but feels like Hotline Miami 2 we actually deserved instead of the window circus. > Broken Roads
Writing at the beginning is a bit shit and start and it it tries a bit too hard to show that your choices matter, but overall a good CRPG mechanically. Will probably do a free trial first or buy on sale. > Quasimorph
DoomRL for the youngsters, can't frick it up. > DID NOT WISHLIST > Fortune's Run
Make an immersive sim, don't understand that things were done in imsims for a reason (like an art style that doesn't cause eye pain after the first 10 minutes and has good visual fidelity). Also Gianni's worst voice to date: you'll recognize this shit immediately. > Motordoom
Frick off with these controls. > Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
Good idea and pretty addicting, but the writing's a bit dogshit. Will try a free trial first before buying. > En Garde!
Good idea, but the combat is a bit off. > Islands of the Caliph
Very soulful, but my hands begin to twitch after pressing W+A/D 500 times to progress. Would seriously be better with mouselook. > For Evelyn II
Interesting, but the artstyle is AIDS. > Captain Wayne
Good game, just not my cup of rum.
>Vampire Syndicate
It had no video on the page and the pictures were a bizarre mishmash of hentai pictures, 3D images, and all manner of other bullshit looking like it's a piece of malware that stitched together randomly googled porn game screenshots as bait so the moroniest of morons would download it.
Is it an actual videogame?
>robobeat
rhythm fps where you can wallrun, double jump, slide, and ground pound. Have to shoot to the beat. I like rythm games, but im bad at fps so its not for me but might be worth checking out if you like both genres. Oh also it has rogue-lite features.
>viewfinder
i hope this game is good the demo was pretty straightforward altho i actually fricked up the last puzzle for myself by accidentally cutting the battery in half and it took my awhile to figure out what was wrong.
>Quasimorph
i only played a little of DoomRL so i cant confidently compare it to that, but its a fun rogue-like. I dont think i understand all the mechanics in it, and i havent gotten very far yet only unlocked the second area. Wish there was more items then just weapons with ranges to add variety. Also, how do you use grenades?
>En Garde!
Everyone is talking about this but i played it as well. This game is very cute and that made me enjoy it a lot. I dont know if i suck but the parry took me awhile to get used to, and i dont think im doing it right. I just hold the button down when the circle appears and it seems to be working. Im not sure if its because my SteamDeck isnt running it smoothly or not though.
>shadow gambit
was already very excited for this before the demo was announced, and the demo has made me more excited. Seems like there is going to be a lot of variety with how many characters there are. Not super excited that there is an upgrade system but it seems pretty limited. Also, the abilities seem pretty strong this time around. Will probably replay the demo with the other characters i did not use yet.
>Download 25GB for some 40 minute demo instead of waiting a couple of weeks and just downloading the entire game for free
When demos became so short and you still had to download the engine every time, they kinda became pointless for such short playtime
If a Game I Pirated feels worth it, I buy it.
Rarely happens, most I can't even be asked to finish.
played 45 games so far, here is my shortlist for favorites (in order)
echo point nova
deep rock galactic: survivor
surmount
peaks of yore
cross blitz
might & magic: clash of heroes - definitive edition
crop rotation
alien hominid invasion
little kitty, big city
athenian rhapsody
laika: aged through blood
notables i haven't played yet, but plan to play soon:
pull stay
sea of stars
viewfinder
soulvars
jusant
stop dead
ugly
my only complaint is that I ran into a bug where my card got stuck when trying to place it so I had to play something else while it was stuck to my movements.
>Viewfinder
Incredible, a new puzzle masterpiece >Stray Gods
Insanely boring and annoying. Lyrics are really bad and the writing is not great. The second song has them exposition dump the situation to Grace in plain dialogue before spoken-word singing the exact same information. There is almost nothing to the visuals, which are actually really important to the musicals. The character designs are serviceable if generic, but the posing and stage setting are Insanely lazy, empty, and amateurish. Just not much salvageable from this. The best part is when the Troy Baker character breaks the God council's unanimity as the only male and then all the cows agree with him
A shame because a video game that's a proper musical (not just a rhythm game) is something I'm interested in.
Can't expect anything from David Gaider I guess.
Define "a proper musical."
If I remember correctly, the Rhythm Doctor demo from a few years ago had one or two levels with an actual plot to them, and I think singing as well.
Nobody uses Follow, only Wishlist. #838 in wishlists sounds good considering how many upcoming games there are at any given time. Compare that to Captain Wayne which is at the #2000 mark and Peaks of Yore which doesn't even have a place.
Yeah. I can't imagine how competitive the market is. It looks like Steam only tracks the places of the Top 2300 or so games in wishlists. Compare that to the fact that there are 1009 demos featured in this Next Fest alone, and we get new Next Fests every season with minor fests happening in between. It's insane.
I REALLY didn't like it personally.
It feels like a prototype made in a few days.
It's not only the visuals but also the feel of it, it's very floaty, the level design is pretty boring and not that well thought-out for the kind of speed and momentum based movement, the AI is non-existent, the guns are completely generic.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is great, but the writer is haunted by an evil entity that makes her insert FRICK and SHIT into random sentences, along with a rare shitty quip. Other than that, it's pretty good at being a spiritual successor to DOS CRPGs and all that, I've wishlisted it.
Reminder that if you got no replies I read your post and thank you for your recommendations. I've found a lot of interesting games I didn't see on the next fest page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951350/The_Delusions_of_Maximillian_Wurst/
it's like a flash skate game, but with a lot of purple prose
I enjoyed it but ymmv
Everything I've played so far: >Lies of P
You already know this one, decent clone of Bloodborne/Sekiro >The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Nice little story game, cool artstyle and making tarot cards for readings is fun. Definitely going to play the full version. >Echo Point Nova
Basically just a bunch of fun movement mechanics slapped on top of each other. Ends up being fun, but also a bit empty >En Garde!
Delivers on the niche of swashbuckling fantasy that hasn't had any good games really. Seems fun but might be a bit too cutesy and casual. >Necrofugitive
Nice action/stealth 2D game where you play as a shapeshifting monster escaping a medieval prison. Lots of build options to change your abilities, satisfying movement, good artstyle. >Fortune's Run
The artstyle really fricks this one for me. The gameplay has potential but it's so ugly and difficult to see anything going on. >Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of Moonfall
Coomer VtM-ripoff cyberpunk CRPG sounds right up my alley, but this just isn't it. Every aspect needs a lot of work, I'm sorry to say the dev is probably being way too ambitious with what he wants to make vs what he actually can make. >Robobeat
A ripoff of BPM:Bullets Per Minute. Could end up being fun, but it feels really lacking now. Also the songs in the demo were pretty bad. >Islands of the Caliph
Lack of mouse controls and directional audio make this completely unplayable >Urbano Legends Debut
Cool idea, but feels like a flash game >El Paso Elsewhere
Shitty Max Payne clone but it has soul >Isekai Janken Hero
You play rock paper scissors and you get chink hentai
VERY Likely to buy day 1 >Shadow Gambit >Jusant >Norland >Laika
Will follow and look how they develop >En Garde (very fun but also very one dimensional, it needs variety to stay interesting for 8 to 10 hours) >Gord (very appealing visually but I think it's more a Frostpunk one and done kind of game where there's nothing besides the very scripted campaign) >Viewfinder (devs like their audio logs and voiced protagonist way too much but were kind of lazy when it comes to interesting challenges, in the demo that is)
Didn't like even though they're appealing to me >Wizard with a Gun >Echo Point Nova >Bulwark
Not for me but you may like them >Little Kitty, Big City >The Bookwalker >Pizza Possum >These Doomed Isles >Peaks of Yore
>absorption battle racing
F-zero but with sex. Not bad, but I'm not sure if I just suck at this game or if it's ludicrously hard. Even on easy difficulty I can't break into the top 20 out of 30. I'm pretty sure the AI always perfects the pitstop sex even on easy, so even when you do make progress it's taken away from you there.
>boot up Matchless Kung Fu just to check it out before i sleep >create character >get a basic tutorial and then i'm free to do whatever >train, do quests, fight people, kill people >get btfo because an NPC went all out when sparring and raped me then felt guilty about it so he took me to a clinic >build a house and start a business myself selling elixirs >wow that was fun, i should probably take a break and... >6 AM
>get btfo because an NPC went all out when sparring and raped me then felt guilty about it so he took me to a clinic
Real shit? Because I will literally download the game right now if true.
Basically what you want to do is either counter the attack type your enemy is using, or use more attacks than they are so you overwhelm them and get free hits.
picrel are the advantages and disadvantages, the numbers are how many attacks of that type are available in your "deck", which are dictated by how many skills that require those attacks you have equipped (for example tortoise fist is 3 punches, the slap skill is 2 palm 1 kick).
If you complete the requirement for the skill, the card for it is activated and it becomes a free action in the next turn. And the numbers matter quite a bit, for example if you equip a sword skill that requires 6 sword attacks but you fill all your other slots with random shit, chances are you're never gonna get that 6 sword skill to go off.
Then there's the "combo" mechanics:
4 attacks of the same type at once = 1 extra attack of that type
at least 1 attack of three different types = 1 extra random attack
Also you always have two "special moves", one that lets you carry over one move into the next round (two if you train it to the next level), and another that lets you convert any attack into the type that it rolled. In the beggining you start with 4 or 5 attacks each turn so you can always have 6 if you save one. I think there's a stat that lets you have more actions per turn (or less if you have enough stacks of the cold debuff) so keep that in mind, if you're not strong enough you won't even be able to learn high level skills.
This is all explained in the "scrolls" or whatever btw.
Also the game just never fricking tells you this, stealth mode is G and construction is H.
Thanks, although by now I've more or less figured it out. I was just confused during the tutorial, ironically being told the mechanics was more confusing than just observing them in practice while fisting monkeys due to the poor translation
I was gonna mention the translation is ESL tier kek. But I don't think it's any worse than the average chink indie game, and it's probably gonna improve by the time it's out r-right bros?
Its just a generic survival game but with chink animations, doing basically anything grinds some stata ala Rune Factory and you decide where towns and such are placed. Surprisingly generous demo
>boot up Matchless Kung Fu just to check it out before i sleep >create character >get a basic tutorial and then i'm free to do whatever >train, do quests, fight people, kill people >get btfo because an NPC went all out when sparring and raped me then felt guilty about it so he took me to a clinic >build a house and start a business myself selling elixirs >wow that was fun, i should probably take a break and... >6 AM
Basically what you want to do is either counter the attack type your enemy is using, or use more attacks than they are so you overwhelm them and get free hits.
picrel are the advantages and disadvantages, the numbers are how many attacks of that type are available in your "deck", which are dictated by how many skills that require those attacks you have equipped (for example tortoise fist is 3 punches, the slap skill is 2 palm 1 kick).
If you complete the requirement for the skill, the card for it is activated and it becomes a free action in the next turn. And the numbers matter quite a bit, for example if you equip a sword skill that requires 6 sword attacks but you fill all your other slots with random shit, chances are you're never gonna get that 6 sword skill to go off.
Then there's the "combo" mechanics:
4 attacks of the same type at once = 1 extra attack of that type
at least 1 attack of three different types = 1 extra random attack
Also you always have two "special moves", one that lets you carry over one move into the next round (two if you train it to the next level), and another that lets you convert any attack into the type that it rolled. In the beggining you start with 4 or 5 attacks each turn so you can always have 6 if you save one. I think there's a stat that lets you have more actions per turn (or less if you have enough stacks of the cold debuff) so keep that in mind, if you're not strong enough you won't even be able to learn high level skills.
This is all explained in the "scrolls" or whatever btw.
Also the game just never fricking tells you this, stealth mode is G and construction is H.
man at least it fricking has combat. the average combat system for these chink cultivation games is a silhouette doing one animation with numbers coming out of it. i'm just glad the genre is evolving, and i hope amazing cultivation simulator 2 delivers.
I really liked the Sea of Stars demo, sadly The Invincible demo was slow and boring, even though I think the book is great.
Apart from these two there seems to be nothing for my taste. It's all Soulslike, Rogouelite, Survival or plain bad.
Laika is very good, although there's quite a bit of dissonance between the plot where a child gets tortured and crucified with his own guts, and the gameplay where I do triple backflips to style on birds
The fact that the birds will crucify a child for no reason is what gives you the motivation to do sick bullet time flips to kill them in droves and the license to use their innards as currency. The second level is them trashing your community cemetery just to be buttholes. Frick birds.
>Battle Shapers
It's like Gunfire Reborn but with a Megaman aesthetic and with more satisfying combat. The music is also groovy.
>Lies of P
More like lies of PEE. Not my first soulslike so i assumed i know what to expect. But nope. The combat feels too sluggish even by souls standards. The animation lock for some move are way to fricking long and the long buffer time for inputs makes you do some stupid shit. I guess it's possible to "git gud" at it but i rather skip for now.
Has anyone actually beaten the final floor of Quasimorph?
It seems like such a dice roll of not just what you find in the dungeon, but what you're given on the way in. One time I started with an automatic shotgun and found an assault rifle on the way down and ended up lasting quite a while before reaching the point where there were like 20 enemies flooding the center area at once and I just got overwhelmed by enemy gunfire, but the next run it didn't even give me any guns except the starting pistol, which broke on the first floor, I found no other good weapons, and I ended up going down there with my half-repaired pistol and one of the enemies' shitty guns and getting stomped.
It feels bad that there are rounds where you might as well just have a nice day and reroll the starting gear because you know you don't have enough firepower to win.
>Try reverse collapse since people here shill it
>It's a complete garbage
Never trust gachatrannies
>be a brainlet
>cry and shitpost
It's a great game, but I'd prefer if it was more tactical and less static. Still very fun on hard+challenge
Is there any difference with the og or is just a grafical update?
Supposedly the new one has 3x the number of stages, and given that they feel confident enough to put 10 in a demo I'm inclined to believe them.
it is good
>t. played on hard
the beginning stages got remade a bit with most notably characters from GFL put into the refugee truck mission
Red bad
Blue good
Anything else mediocre
There is nothing blue there!
poor colorbind anon
>quasimorph
>bad
didn't even read the rest
Sorry your game sucks
The climbing mechanics in Jusant are very fun, but unfortunately the levels aren't really designed to encourage freedom and actively try to sabotage the player's ability to take an alternate path.
This is what Death Stranding should've been about. Hiking and climbing in an open world.
damn, now i'm kinda interested in learning how to climb irl tbh. dumb video games making me interested in how the real thing works.
Climbing gyms are becoming popular, you might have one in your area. Just prepare to put your fingers through hell.
why's it popular? why are normies having the same ideas like me? frick OFF
I dunno I think it's been relatively popular for a few years. It's not super mainstream or anything, but it's gained traction especially among sports enthusiasts.
I think it became popular with the zoomers after a bunch of cute videos of bf and gf duo climbing
i just want to climb in peace and be AWAY from people. woman really do ruin everything
This
Its one of the few '''''sports'''' where women don't get treat like a sideshow and its full of cute guys
I have to say, ^the first two wishlisted games are there more on hoping they turn out good. They both have great potential. Peaks of Yore was really neat but also a bit clunky, which the final one really demonstrated and just like mentioned for Justra, it doesn't really allow for alternate solutions not intended by the devs. The icepicks are especially clunky.
Here's my list of played games so far:
Wishlisted
>Viewfinder
>Gord
>Peaks of Yore
Had fun but not wishlisted
>Captain Wayne
>Vampire Hunters
>Goobies
>Deadlink: Tora
>ArcRacer
>Echo Point Nova
>Fortune's Run
>Quasimorph
>Cross Blitz
>Mythical Agent
>Plaquaratte down the bunburrows
Wanted to play but didn't work
>Jusant
Not for me
>Wizard with a Gun
>Beyond Sunset
>Hammerwatch 2
>KVLT
>Odinfall
>Greedland
>Warhaven
>Testament
>Station to Station
>We the People
>Centipede Gun
>The Dramer Must Die
>Full Moon Rush
>Mercenaries of the Kingdom
>NeuroSquad
>Survivors of the Dawn
>Voidborn
>Astrobit
>Rasant
>Stellar Wanderer DX
>Wisp Catacombs
>El Paso, Elsewhere
>En Garde!
>The Invincible
>Laika: Aged Through Blood
>Cuisineer
>Legendary Hoplite
>Luna Abyss
>Resistance 204X
>Van Hellswing
>>Gord
You have to be shitting us if you think that garbage was good. We have an entire thread dedicated to shitting on it.
I don't buy games to fight political boogymen, I actually like games unlike you
>no discussion about the game at all
>just the usual shrieking about blacks
tiresome
We just like to play videogames, go leave to whine about your israeli conspiracies.
>links a shitpost thread with absolutely no criticisms on the gameplay other than "muh Black folk in muh game" and "Poland woke"
moronic anti shill. If you want to undermine the game then make more convincing arguments regarding the mechanics of the game.
Gord is communist garbage
How the frick can you try all those games??? That’s more games than I have played in my life
I tried lies of P but I hate dolls and I am not sure if protag is male or female.
I tried warhaven but rounds are so short.
I downloaded pirates shogun stealth game, didn’t get to play it yet
Most of them are 5 minutes experience.
It's not that hard
>install a bunch
>immediately know it's trash or not for me
>uninstall
I am of the firm belief that in any medium, keeping my attention and not wasting my time is part of their job. So a game that is immediately boring, I won't give a chance. I don't care that it gets good 20 hours in. Especially in a demo, a dev shouldn't take my time for granted.
Also, plenty are almost immediately identifiable as garbage, so that helps.
Seems to me you also seem to have mainly downloaded massive demos. Those tend to, for whatever reason, waste your time even more than others. Almost immediately disqualifies it to me. Besides, I don't want "Dark Souls but not as good". Just really not for me. I guess a lot of people enjoy them but I really do not.
Looks cool, gameplay is very sub par though and the voice acting was killing me.
>and the voice acting was killing me.
The other characters were fine but Fawkes was a joke both in writing and in voice. I'm not sure if it was meant to be intentional.
>gord
shit taste, stopped reading
its over
I'm just hoping that it's because this whole demo is a very on-rail tutorial segment.
I would hold that hope too if the company in question wasn't dontnod
despite the buggy bit, that running with the rope looks dope as hell. I'm gonna download it to give it a whirl.
I enjoyed the following demos:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1654660/En_Garde/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1382070/Viewfinder/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1538970/Hammerwatch_II/
hammerwatch 2 kept crashing every time i tried starting it.
Someone in an earlier thread said it got patched, might try again. The actual gameplay is pretty good but having to backtrack through places you've already cleared/explored gets a bit tedious.
Enjoyed Deadlink: Tora. Probably would have bought game if it werent roguelight.
>Probably would have bought game if it werent roguelight.
Several such cases. that and >card mechanics
Not many such cases though most of these games are fricking garbage
So far I played the trail one and weird Scrooge platformer, both were decent
This was honestly disappointing. It felt very shallow and trivially easy when every problem is solved by just spamming more copies of the same building, which has no resource cost whatsoever (money/construction materials/time, literally anything) associated with it. There's no resource management or real decisionmaking or making compromises or having to prioritize certain sectors or maintenance or any sort of economics. Just place house, place distribution center, place production, add some amenities, rinse repeat mindlessly without having to think about anything. Can't even rotate buildings or build diagonal roads on the grid.
Oh and the extremely limited range on buildings was annoying as hell.
You fogot to mention how you cant rotate buildings which is annoying as frick for game that supposed to be comfy citybuilder.
read the entire post next time, friend
Cant. Have too much demos to try out.
Laysarra was peak comfy. Also yes, you can't rotate buildings, but if you build houses near each other they change their looks. You can also expand Yak pens, if you build 2-3 near one another it becomes a big Yak pen instead of 3 separate ones etc. Love the small details and don't mind that I don't have to gather resources and have to wait to build.
I gotta agree with the first guy. Was also annoyed by all the faults he listed. But the worst thing by far is that there's no challenge nor objective. You gotta have at least some resource limitations or something. Otherwise it's just pointless.
What challenge could there be in the Tutorial teaching you the basic mechanics? Other than that not every game has to be "challenging", they can just be comfy and relaxing like Dorfromantik or similar.
Dorfromantik has a challenge you moron, its a legitimate puzzle game and there are people who grind it for the longest possible chains. There's a metagame and a level of skill development.
99% of the potential playerbase will drop Laysara if it releases with absolutely no obstacles or goal, and that means the devs make no money.
>click daily active demo players
>it is all h-games
jej
>click daily active demo players
>not a single h-game
Oi, what the frick? More lies by Ganker
What's with this thing anyway? Why is it so inaccurate? Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the API fricking up?
Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts. According to the steam list a game with 50 players charts higher than a game with 500.
>Are developers just paying to keep their games on the chart or is the api fricking up?
Yes to both, probably.
>Almost every game on the left is a part of the next fest yet almost none of them show up on the daily charts.
I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest, which is not the case for like half the list on the left.
>I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest
Its this + Next Fest actually starts before it officially starts. The top played list has barely changed since the day before Next Fest started, because the UI is so fricking awful most people simply click 'what's everyone else playing', tried those then stop bothering. Its a really fricking awful UI.
>Toxic Crusaders was about as good as I expected. I liked it but don't bother if you're not into beat-em-ups. Probably get on sale or if it's cheap.
>
>Lords of Exile was fine. I have lots of nostalgia for pixel Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden style games. Plays like a slightly worse Curse of the Moon 1/2 for you zoomers. Another one I'll get if it's on sale.
These both sucked lol.
Toxic Crusaders everyone plays the same and you have less than 10 moves + can't pick up and use weapons, Lords of Exile is borderline plaguirized and is a CV clone with absolutely no punishment for dying so nothing matters at all.
The lack of pickups and short movelist in Toxic Crusaders doesn't matter. Some great beat-em-ups have neither of those. I'll admit the game is pretty mediocre compared to other beat-em-ups but it gets the core aspect of the genre right, and it has juggles so there's enough to the combat for me.
I never died in LoE so I didn't notice that. That's kind of annoying. Do you just get placed right back at the spot where you died? I was kind of hoping it would get harder.
You get placed at the start of the same room instantly. I ended up walking through enemies at times because provided I make it to the next room, it doesn't matter if I'm at 1 hp, I can just die for a full heal.
Maybe speedrunners would like it for this reason
>bruh LoE is a sicknasty CastlevaniaGaiden!!!
>never dies once during the demo
The game is fricking awful anon. It's just plagiarizing the CV aesthetic so redditors can freak out over knowing about something from before the 2000s.
>bruh LoE is a sicknasty CastlevaniaGaiden!!!
He said it was fun and a slightly worse version of another series. How is that 'sicknasty'.
>I have lots of nostalgia for pixelshit but not enough actual experience with those games to tell when I'm being ripped off
Clearly you and him are both the reddit target audience
But I said the game is shit?
I just didn't need to make shit up to do that.
I said I have nostalgia for that style and that it plays like a slightly worse CotM, which is already a slightly worse version of those classic games. Are you assmad I didn't call the game utter shit or something? Because it isn't. Not everything is 0/10 or 10/10.
If a game isn't 10/10, it might as well be a 0/10. Why would anybody waste their time with anything less than the best if you're playing alone?
I mean, I'm good at those games so it's obvious I wouldn't die. I was just assuming it would get harder after that extremely easy first boss. I'll rethink the game after finding out there's no punishment for dying though, unless the devs add harder modes to it.
>I'm pretty sure Steam only shows the demos that are only available during Next Fest, which is not the case for like half the list on the left.
Even just looking at the top 15, 11 of them are officially a part of the event.
no shit moron, why the frick would It Takes Two show up in the Next Fext you moronic inbred? That game already came out.
No one said that it should be, dumb frick. Pay attention.
>Day 1 battlepass game
>Low effort cash grab souls colone
>Le rimworlde
>Le rimworlde but black people
>Self-insert harem game for 12 year olds
>Vampire Survivor clone, again
>Le whacky pohysics game
Depressing shit taste
I remember when Canada had those same prices for games. I'm not going to pay $92 for Lies of P.
Active player’s doesn’t include the majority of games. Perhaps there’s a minimum required to make that list but I’ve had over 200 players in a day on my game and didn’t make the list.
If it is a minimum it might only care about downloads and not people actually playing more than 5 minutes, or visa versa, which could explain why the lists are different. Either way I wouldn’t trust it
En garde kinda sucks. You just repeatedly do the same actions every fight like in arkham otherwise enemies no-sell everything automatically. The tone is really weird too. You're straight up murdering people by the dozens and everyone including the enemies just keep cracking jokes
It's pretty clear the swords are full and no-one's dieing. Defeated enemies will occasionally quip for this reason.
The combat being satisfying is going to come down to if you enjoy kicking people into things, things into people, people into people, etc. I found it to be a satisfying gameplay loop.
When I saw it, I thought it was some kinda Dreamworks cartoon adaptation (like that Zorro game I saw several months ago).
It looks pretty gud tho, but it's not like I can properly enjoy the animation while watching the flashing cues.
did you do the combat arena? There's a lot more environmental options there beyond kicking crates into baddies
get good and all that
>tries to kick the enemy but the auto-aim makes her kick the brazier instead
>buggy installs
>shitty interface
>Tuesday prime time server maintenance
Frick steam
I really liked Cross Blitz. Got a lot of old yugioh game vibes from it. Only demo I stopped playing because I didn't want to spoil my full experience of it for when I buy it. Day 1 buy obviously.
Toxic Crusaders was about as good as I expected. I liked it but don't bother if you're not into beat-em-ups. Probably get on sale or if it's cheap.
Lords of Exile was fine. I have lots of nostalgia for pixel Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden style games. Plays like a slightly worse Curse of the Moon 1/2 for you zoomers. Another one I'll get if it's on sale.
Full Moon Rush was a great run and gun, but way too short and it doesn't look like it'll get much content in the full release. If the dev is smart he'll put a low price point on it and I'll pick it up day 1.
>I really liked Cross Blitz.
furry garbage, your post is now completely invalidated since you have shit taste and you opinoin cant be trusted
>Shishi
No QoL at all. I inflict a status, no idea what it is or does. Only 2 attack that both 2 shot every enemy. Cute, which is why I tried it, but there's just nothing to it.
Necrovale:
Asks for feedback with F9, via a tiny little text message in the corner of screen. I know a lot of people who legitimately would not be able to read this even if they noticed it.
Starts with a seemingly unskippable cutscene in a demo???
Makes little to no attempt to explain controls so I don't know if M1 and space are all there is.
Opens me on a world map with no indication which is a good idea to go to first. Not sure if my decision even mattered here or the map is a red herring.
Need to unlock a door for 2G, but the door is clearly above my head. Sprite is misplaced.
Combat has enemies launched so far after every swing the only real threat is not noticing them through the absurd amount of clutter.
First 3 weapons you get in first 3 chest are effectively identical (all kill in about same number of hits at enough speed+knockback the enemies can't fight back). Should have been 1 or 2 of these, then the bow, so people don't immediately get the impression weapons barely differ and people who don't want to melee have an option beyond that early on.
My guy has no dialogue at all and reacts to nothing which feels very unfitting with this hope mechanic. Its built around him reacting. He appears to consider the whole thing completely trvival.
No idea what to do with the cat. Its not talk to it, its not drop item, its not interact with anything else. It just "wants a gift" but so far the only item I can use are the blue orbs. Is it also a blue orb sink, like literally everything else?
Enemies also do nearly no damage.
Got bored after doing a few functionally identical dungeons and handed blue orbs to NPC's who just ask for increasing larger numbers of them. Seems very grindy.
Would have dropped it sooner if it wasn't an AGDG game.
God of Weapons:
VS clone
>Shishi
>dev for this game is a literal wheelchair-bound cripple with muscular dystrophy
>he's been working on some form of this game for nearly a decade at this point
>had a failed Kickstarter 4 years ago
>all of the game's social media seems to receive basically no views or interaction
it doesn't even look remotely good so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to empathize with a crippled kusoge dev
Apparently the current version is goverment funded so he seems to be doing fine enough
Necrovale dev here. Thanks for trying it out and for the feedback.
There's basically no tutorial at all yet. Later on, the first "outdoor" area will teach the controls and mechanics. Weapon drops are completely random, aside from the first weapon you get. They vary mostly in their attack patterns, movements, etc... not so much in the pure stats.
I'll add a way to skip the intro cutscene, even though it's only about 30 seconds or so if you click through. No tutorial yet, so not sure what you mean about that.
>WISHLISTED
Laika
Thronefall
Peaks of Yore
Hammerwatch 2
Echo Point Nova
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
A Void Hope
>HONORABLE MENTIONS
Quasimorph
Gravity Circuit
Logic Town
Studio System Guardian Angel
Captain Wayne
>MEH BUT MIGHT BE SOMEONE'S THING
Toziuha Night
Little Kitty Big City
Fortune's Run
Escape from Mystwood Mansion
Islands of the Caliph
Wanderful
Neverlooted Dungeon
>AVOID
Blackout Protocol
Lords of Exile
Sludge Life 2
That GZDOOM port with the awful melee spam I can't even remember the name of
Bakery Girl chinkshit
>A Void Hope
shit taste
-2
Battle Shapers is fun, bit easy though
Battle Absorption Racing or whatever the frick was actually pretty fun. WHen you're racing, the hentai barely registers and the pitstop minigame takes enough concentration that you aren't even looking at the hentai either. If the dev can get the racing to control better (since you pretty much stop immediately if you try and take any turn) I will definitely get it.
Any comfy games where I can go on adventures with pets
>New Cycle
Dull city builder/survival that tries too hard to be like Frostpunk. Building roads was annoying.
>Gord
Another interesting city survival thing. Too bad the demo broke on me and I gave up on it.
>Vampire Hunters
Stacking on a bunch of guns like Mothergunship is neat, though I don't think I would ever buy it. The hitboxes on the bats are also too small.
>Galacticare
Two-Point Hospital clone but in space. Dialogue is shit and cannot be skipped.
>Mind Over Magic
Oxygen Not Included but fantasy school. Tutorial is garbage and I didn't really understand what I was doing. So just like ONI.
>Station to Station
Fun little puzzle game. Full game would need a lot more to keep my interest though
Lots of inferior clones this time. Kind of disappointing
>Mind Over Magic
>Oxygen Not Included but fantasy school. Tutorial is garbage and I didn't really understand what I was doing. So just like ONI.
This one was a shame. It seemed like such a cool concept. Harry Potter school running sim. Then its like
>Lol go gather food in the woods lol (boring busywork because it just constantly respawns)
I want to go back to the kids being taught how to do magic and shit, not play every other survivor game ever
I gave up on it when I was trying to go back into the underground dungeon area but I apparently needed my students to be fully trained, and training them was taking forever. Maybe I was missing something, but the game didn't tell me if I was.
You should give Spellcaster University a try.
most of them are absolute dogshit, there were a few interesting ones but they were games i already had wishlisted for a few months now
>Try Viewfinder
>To high IQ
>Puzzles to easy
>To good at think
lol shit game lol
moron
>No one has mentioned this gem
I had fun.
Demo was too short but it was still enough to get an idea of what you're getting into. I may pick it up if I'm ever in the mood for any point and click
I got filtered on hammering the wienerroaches
I had major problems with it too. Gotta do it three times aswell. I eventually made it but was not fun at all. The dialouge and other stuff was great thoigh
This and Rise of the Triad were the best demos for me.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1823950/Laysara_Summit_Kingdom/
Cute city builder, though not being able to rotate your buildings is annoying mechanically
Wish the demo for home safety hotline was longer and showed off a bit more of the creepy stuff.
What the frick is this??
looks like they're trying to integrate a chatbot as NPCs
Well this piece of shit "feature" doesn't even work.
good thing there's a disclaimer saying it may not work properly at this stage, then
Fortune's Run is pretty neat, though the level is a bit obtuse about indicating where you need to go.
Only played three so far. I wouldn't recommend Tyrant's Realm: the control feels muddy and it's a roguelike. Heretic's Fork is tower defense Vampire Survivors. I put 2.3 hours into the Next Fest demo and 6.8 into the other. Studio System: Guardian Angel plays with tank control horror games by adding mouse controls to play with the fixed camera. The puzzles were simple enough but I'm looking forward to the whole experience. It does have the lo-fi troonyge aesthetic though. But checking on the dev's twitter didn't show anything flag raising.
>Heretic's Fork
I shouldn't have googled that, white women are mentally ill.
What the frick have you been searching?
Mine is
>Game steam
>Game article ign
>Game videos
>article on medieval torture devices
>another one
>more shit about game
>How many demos have you played?
0
>How many did you like?
They all look shit. Usually, there's one or two that have me try them but this is the worst fricking year I've seen yet.
I scoured a bunch of games (I usually play retro-style FPSes or heckin' quirky aesthetic walking-simulators, but this time the only think I even installed was the demo for Born of Bread because it kinda reminds me of Bug Fables which I loved, and it looks like it has at least some character to it.
A lot of these games look like they were shit out or are straight-up ripoffs of more popular games. I know that's a common thing with these demo fests but man it's bad this time around.
You have atrocious taste in games but yeah you're right, this fest is garbage, the industry is falling.
Oh and to add on, there's Fortune's Run which looks promising and unique, but I already played the demo last year so it doesn't count HAHAHAHAHAHA
>I only installed a game because it reminded me of Bug Fables, a game I love.
>But the festival is shit because the games are just ripoffs of more popular games
Is this post meant to be ironic?
I'm talking about literal, actual straight-up ripoffs. I swear to god I saw a total Fortnite ripoff. Same art-style, same large character roster. "BROOOOO YOU CAN BE DONALD TRUMP???"
And maybe 6 actual pokemon ripoffs. Where the characters looks look 90% identical (one Metroidvania game I saw had a character literally look like a Buizel and another looked identical to the Cult of Lamb sheep). The Born of Bread and Bug Fables comparison was more that they're both party-based RPG stuff like Paper Mario, but bring their own style to the table. I guess the big thing is that they don't look like obvious cash-grabs.
Did you try captain wayne by any chance?
it should fit within your tastes.
Now that looks like a good recommendation. Maybe some decent stuff did slip through the cracks. Oh wait sorry, this is Ganker, I meant to say "brown girl in the trailer, DROPPED"
Played a couple. Just skipped on any deckbuilders or roguelikes, don't need any more of those. Ever.
>En Garde
Trailer made it look like Bamham, but it's mostly just running everywhere spamming environmental hazards and then bamhamming the one or two guys who aren't stunned.
Timing on follow-up/consecutive ripostes feels really off, but it's fine.
I like the tone, very fun. Would like more banter with the mooks. Looks like it's not going to have a lot of strings to its bow, but it's fun enough to carry a (short) game.
>Fortune's Run
Reference heavy imsimmy indie thing. Midair momentum is fricked and block-heavy opponents are a chore to fight. Very melee heavy since they can block gunfire. The terminals are neat but otherwise eh.
And quit with the fricking references. That's like the indie dev version of a youtuber with a wall of Nintendo merch behind them.
>Slavicpunk: Oldtimer
Top-down Ruiner wannabe that controls better than Ruiner. Your guy just stops shooting if enemies come into range, which is weird. Or maybe he doesn't. Had major screen flickering for some fricking reason. Heavy autoaim makes sense in a game with fast movement but you're so slow I'm not sure what the point is. Battlehack system feels like shit and enemies just popping into existence in arena fights means taking damage when you really don't want to take damage.
>Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery
Jesus, that's a terrible title.
Apparently this is from some gacha lads who just want to make a regular game with their cumstained gacha money? Good on them. The stealth missions and just giving you enemy movements is pretty novel for an SRPG. Dialogue is a lot of dry exposition and fumbled attempts at intrigue. Good pacing, controls are PC heavy, I'd give a full release a go.
Bakery is kinda a remake of something they did before making gacha.
Oh, that gets them less brownie points. You'd think the dialogue would be less boring, even ignoring all the encyclopedia entries I was so close to skipping cutscenes.
Fun game, though.
>Think her coat is somehow so tight ass is visibly creasing it
>No
>Its just transparent
wow they were moronic coomers before they made gacha, too
Been excited for bakery for a long time, and the demo was great. Gacha guys really weren't just fricking around with all the delays, the demo felt like I was playing the whole ass game. Seems like it's gonna be long and visual novely on top of the gameplay. Can't wait for the full game
Played a bunch so I'll just dump my thoughts here so people can waste their time like I did. Games I will most likely buy on release are marked with (!) and maybes are marked with (?). Thanks in advance for reading my blog.
Adventure Games
>This Bed We Made (!)
Decent adventure game about snooping around in hotel rooms to uncover a mystery. If you liked the Nancy Drew games, then you might like this one too. Even has equivalent Bess and Ned side characters to give you hints and stuff. Very short demo but it shows lots of promise.
>Broken Roads (?)
Narrative-focused post-apocalyptic Australian RPG. Has an interesting alignment system and I enjoyed the dialogue and story that was in the demo, which was light-hearted overall. Ended up finishing the demo without doing any combat at all so I went back and pissed off someone just to see what it was like and it's nothing special. So that's a heads up to not worry too much about character creation when playing the demo.
>Chronique des Silenceieux
The dialogue was hurting my brain so I didn't last that long. It's janky to start with and the English translation gets worse and worse the longer you play. Maybe it's a great story if you know French, but I don't.
Metroidvania Games
>Ebenezer and the Invisible World
The art and animation is quite good, but the sound design and music are so anemic that they'll put you to sleep if the overly wordy story that constantly stops you in your tracks already hasn't. The combat and level design are also extremely basic, and you move with the analog stick instead of the directional buttons. I pity the artist who wasted his time on this.
>Marko: Beyond Brave
This one feels like an actual pre-alpha game. The art and animation has promise but there's barely anything here. There aren't even any sound effects for most things. As far as I can tell after looking up stuff about it after playing, it's a Kickstarter scam. The game's already been funded and has been in development for two years and this is all they have to show with a Q4 2023 release date around the corner. I would have been more positive if this was something to promote the *start* of a Kickstarter project, but this is already close to the end product. Steer clear.
>Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
Dropped it less than a minute in. Webm related. No idea why they're bothering to resurrect this IP in video game form if this is the amount of effort they're putting into it. There's another upcoming game called Guardians of Slumberland that seems to be better but the demo was limited to just the previous weekend so frick that.
>The Devil Within: Satgat
Had the exact same thoughts as I did with Ebenezer, except the art design here is much blander. Seems to have a much more involved combat system with combos and skills, but the fundamental combat is the kind of poorly thought-out combat where they make dodging vastly superior to parrying that it makes you wonder why you'd ever bother. Lost interest the moment I saw a PoE-like skill tree for level up upgrades.
Puzzle Games
>The Muller-Power Principle
A sci-fi gun puzzler like Portal or Antichamber. You hunt around for and carry "photons" in your gun which will let you solve puzzles, but you can only carry around one of these at a time and absorbing a new type takes like 10 seconds, making puzzle solving very cumbersome. Even has the slowest vent crawling speed I've ever seen in a video game. Reminds me of The Entropy Center the most in that it has a cool enough idea for the gun but the puzzles don't measure up as well, and has an annoying voiced companion that gives unsolicited hints.
>Stick to the Plan
Sokoban-ish game about a dog delivering sticks. Has some cute art but the in-game graphics don't hold up as well, and the controls are not as snappy and slower than they should be. Normally I'd pick this up because the puzzles are good enough, but I have too many puzzle games in my backlog that I'd rather get to and don't waste time with slow animation.
>Cipher Zero (!)
A rule game like The Witness, Understand and Taiji. Mostly like Understand, except with more polish. Seems like it might might be easier though. If you like those, you'll like this one too. I did.
>Logic Town
A deductive logic game. It's alright, but it's the kind of game you use to kill time with on your phone rather than something you'd properly "play."
>Paquerette Down the Bunburrows (!)
Fantastic puzzle game about cornering a predictable AI. Ended up spending a little over 2 hours doing all of the bonus stuff because of how absorbed I got. I'm aware the dev is a troony, but trannies are autistic and autism is good for making puzzle games.
FPS Games
>KVLT
Janky Unreal project. I say project instead of game because even calling this a pre-alpha game would be inaccurate. It's a bunch of FPS game elements strung together. It's got levels. It's got enemies. It's got guns. All of these are incoherently designed and implemented, and work terribly together.
>Fortune's Run (!)
Pretty great. Combat is quick and brutal, and there's a good amount of tools and environment stuff to mess around with. Too combat heavy than I'd prefer though, unless I just suck at its stealth. Comes off like Deus Ex with the initial start and NPCs that you can randomly pick out from the crowd that'll have unique dialogue. After that it's an hour's worth of combat in an open but ultimately linear map which honestly overstayed its welcome. I love a good shooter, but I feel like this one has more potential in its "immersive sim" parts than it does in its combat. I'll follow it and see how it turns out.
>Stop Dead (?)
Cool game, but I don't know. I always enjoy games that involve physics like this, and I like how it flows, but I'm not into speedrunning games. Kept crashing every few minutes for me.
>Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation (!)
GZDoom game. Solid enough. Guns aren't special but the way they're animated and work with your arm gives them personality. Wish the main character did a crazy pirate voice instead of sounding like a bored Duke. I'll check this out when I get a shooter itch.
>Beyond Sunset
A GZDoom game that thinks it's a good idea to start with a not-short-enough platforming challenge until you get a katana, after which it's a discount Ghostrunner until you get guns, after which it's just shit because they feel like crap. Encounters are haphazard and involve enemy spam, and aggravated by enemies only dropping ammo if you use an execution move that has a cooldown and even then it's not a lot. I quit when it thought the best way to invoke cyberpunk was combatless first-person cyberspace hacking segments.
Climbing Games (Unexpected category)
>Valley Peaks (?)
Similar approach as A Short Hike where you take it easy, climb and explore. The climbing might be too easy but could be rectified by having more complex paths in the full game. Fair amount of stuff to find and do in the world outside of the climbing.
>Peaks of Yore (!)
A much more challenging climbing game. Similar to Bennett Foddy's games where you always stand to lose all your progress. It's very satisfying because of it but there is frustration involved, and maybe some nausea. You get climbing rope for anchoring but it's more for practice and sneaky shortcuts than a lifeline. I stopped at the bonus ice mountain when ice picks come into play because I couldn't understand how the stamina for it worked. After a few falls, my right arm always had half the stamina of my left no matter how long I rested.
>New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering
Most "realistic" one where you use all four limbs and pay attention to a bunch of climbing mechanics, making it slow and methodical. Uses photogrammetry which is pretty but also makes it hard to tell where you can get a good grip because it's the developer's job to turn those photos into a 3D environment again. Not so bad at the start but the second area is where the developers for some reason stopped bothering modelling the footholds as well so everything looks flat and it becomes a guessing game. Could be ironed out with more dev time but it comes out in two weeks. Has a sizable amount of Unity jank so you'll often contort in nightmarish ways.
>Jusant (?)
Not part of the Next Fest but the demo came out recently. I was unsure about this since Dontnod has a bad track record and the trailer looked linear. And while it is linear, the climbing is satisfying and there's a lot of potential with the climbing rope. If the game opens up later, then it'll be quite fun to swing around and take risks.
Miscellaneous
>Slavicpunk: Oldtimer
Given the premise, I was expecting more story, but it was all shooting, which was okay but not good enough to carry the game.
>Lords of Exile
Solid classic Castlevania-style game.
>En Garde (!)
Fun "barfight" kind of game where you use your environment to mess with enemies. Individual parts of the combat aren't great on their own it's quite easy if you use everything to your advantage but it's very satisfying. To copy the usual template, "It makes you really *feel* like a devilish rogue."
>ghostpia
Japanese VN that's apparently already out on the Switch. Completely flew under the radar considering I can't find many news articles on it. Tried it out because it has a nice and unique artstlye. Demo takes almost 2 hours to read through and it's interesting enough. Give it a shot if you like VNs, I guess.
>Shadow Gambit
Very polished stealth game. No surprise since it's the Shadow Tactics devs, which makes it funny how there's an undead cook character with a heavy Japanese accent. Liked what I played but couldn't get on board with the story. Pirates being stealthy is just so odd and the protagonist doesn't have any charisma.
>Laika: Aged Through Blood (?)
Awesome gameplay where you platform and kill enemies while riding a motorbike and do flips to reload your guns and your parries (you parry with your bike). But I feel like the presentation is at odds with this. It's very slow and moody game despite sounding like it should be action-packed.
>Merchant of the Six Kingdoms (?)
Neat game about haggling where you really need to understand the economy. A way to take notes or a trade log at the end of each day would be helpful in that regard. There isn't much to aspire to in the demo so hopefully you can establish a trade empire or something in the full game.
>Cuisineer
Decent shopkeeper/dungeon crawling game. More timesink-y than I'd like, but if you're craving more of these games then it's good.
That's all from me.
of the Six Kingdoms
>Neat game about haggling where you really need to understand the economy. A way to take notes or a trade log at the end of each day would be helpful in that regard. There isn't much to aspire to in the demo so hopefully you can establish a trade empire or something in the full game.
Game dev here, nice to see a review.
I'm adding notes to the journal. I initially removed notes because players getting hung up on figuring out the 'right' price often slowed them down a lot. Players would take the first trade they got for an item as gospel. Best advice is to find good deals and not precise deals. I'm hoping to add a transaction history ledger if I can figure out this player behavior issue.
The full game has a load of quests including starting a company and becoming King of Coin. You'll still have to sell the shipments yourself, no automated passive income. Ascension is a massive market so that shouldn't be an issue. Late game is designed to be very rewarding and the wealth scales up dramatically. Thanks for taking an interest anon.
Thanks based devanon. Different anon but I played the demo and it's exactly what my friend's been looking for (fantasy Pawn Stars). As soon as it comes out I'm buying him a copy.
>couldn't get on board with the story
Don't think you can slip that one past me, Carlos.
>one hand and one foot not aligned kind of floating there
>yeah I don't know how realistic this is
>spazzes out completely
kek
i've been enjoying the new heights demo. i play every day when i'm taking a break from work. hoping they'll push the difficulty a little higher and make the climbing routes longer. online speed competition idea is cool and all, but i hope it's not the main concept of the game. be nice to have stat progression and different kinds of maps, climbing down into caves, and inverted roof climbs, etc.
They need much much larger maps and more freestyle climbing with objectives that encourage exploration and improvising your own climbing routes. They also need a difficulty setting that lowers your stamina and gives you fewer checkpoints. also improvised routes which you can get stuck on so you have to backtrack and find better paths if you haven't properly explored or planned well - not every path should work.
I like the idea of caving - introducing other environmental challenges like dark - having to use a headlamp while you're trying to find holds. The exploration objectives could be something as simple as finding and petting all those cats on the map or finding and reaching little spraypainted symbols on the walls. Good game so far but there's not much indication what their vision is.
>They also need a difficulty setting that lowers your stamina and gives you fewer checkpoints.
yeah. once i got the hang of it i ran through all the challenges all maps with only 5 hours total playtime. only the pro and elite climbs slowed me down.
>but the second area is where the developers for some reason stopped bothering modelling the footholds as well
Which area are you referring to? The tutorial has boulder walls with defined holds but the other location is a photo scanned rockface so in theory everything is a hold.
>hoping they'll push the difficulty a little higher and make the climbing routes longer.
The final area of the early access release offers some serious long routes. It features the biggest rockface of the Belgian Ardennes.
The second main area, not including the tutorial area. You scale a wall made out of bricks. By the advanced courses there I was having a lot of trouble discerninf what was grabbable because it was all just a blurry photo against flat geometry.
>The final area of the early access release offers some serious long routes
are you talking about that legne one? is that the only other area they're adding at early access release beside the ones in the demo?
>from the steam page: “Currently we are developing two areas: Training Grounds and Belgian Ardennes, containing four locations that can be climbed. It would certainly take about 50+ hours to fully complete every possible route in these four locations alone, but about 12 to 16 hours to progress through them normally, after which you would unlock a new area.
>50+ hours
LOL. I completed all 3 star challenges on all the demo maps in just over six hours. Am i misunderstanding something or is their claim that the fourth location has 44 hours worth of content?
It should have about 3-4x the amount of routes compared to the castle, but even then so it'll result in about max 10-20 hours of gameplay.
I want to support the game because I enjoyed playing it, but there's doesn't seem to be a clear outline for the future. And all their store page basically says is we'll see what we plan to do if people show enough interest. Also, adding one additional map from demo to early access will make it hard to justify paying anything over 10-15 dollars.
seems like the plan is more maps and some kind of career mode. possible multiplayer. and maybe a way to scan and upload your own maps if there's enough interest.
The Viewfinder demo was short but the gimmick was very interesting
Already played that during the Puzzle Fest a few months ago so I didn't include it. Been looking forward to it for a while and the demo was good. Was not a fan of the chatty narrator companion though.
looks attrocious
>No idea why they're bothering to resurrect this IP
I'm pretty sure it's public domain and anyone can do whatever they want with it now.
Roads (?)
My problem with this game is that the characters are uninteresting and the setting is "safe edge", its edgy but only to twittergays.
I didn't get that feeling at all. The tone of the game is pretty light-hearted considering you're tripping over puns and dad jokes when exploring the environment. The game does seem to be really proud of its morality system though so we'll see if it has any actual bite in the full game.
Chronique des Silenceieux has potential but they clearly didn't consult a native English speaker for the translation. Also the game throws you off the deep end with a bunch of different potential options which is just about the worst way to start an adventure game.
I hope they get their shit together and the final product is a lot better.
>jusant
>valley peaks
>new heights
huh
Peaks of Yore
>Steam Next Fest
can this give steam badges
t. steam badge collector
When was the last time Steam gave badges? Christmas?
I downloaded The Invincible demo and my PC didn't like it so I had to run it as low as it could go. The ground didn't load for me at a certain part so I fell through map.
Viewfinder demo made me interested in the finished game
Pic related are the demos that I considered pretty good (plus two others not in the Next Fest).
>En Garde!
Decent combat, fun atmosphere. Pretty basic but might be worth a pirate.
>Land Above Sea
If you like tile puzzle games this one is worth a look. The unique mechanic of the rising sea level prevents you from just infinitely expanding, focusing instead on making tight, well-thought out collections. Wish there was more tile variety but the art on them is nice.
>NORCO
Pretty good text-based adventure game. The esoteric flair on a deep south experience was interesting, and I am excited for the full story. If you don't like reading then it's not worth your time, so if you're looking for something like Disco don't get your hopes up.
>Sea of Stars
Haven't played yet
>Shadow Gambit
Good stealth strategy game with great character designs and a underutilized setting. I've never played any of their other games and I had a great time with the gameplay.
>TAGLINE
Kinda like Neon White with a Jet Set Radio aesthetic. I didn't like the level design, as it's pretty hard to understand the intended route you should be taking, but others might enjoy the more open-endedness of it
>Thronefall
Good mix of kingdom builder and Vampire Survivor gameplay. Challenging to boot, with different weapons/traits/modifiers to enhance replayability.
>Word Factori
Good puzzle game in the lines of Opus Magnus or Spacechem.
Nice pic moron
FRICK forgot pic lol
>I Wani Hug that Gatori
man, it would be hilarious if the snoot devs release their second game before GVH is even out.
Haha yeah.
We're trying to, okay?
Ganbatte, dev anon!
>I've never played any of their other games and I had a great time with the gameplay.
I can highly recommend Shadow Tactics and Outlaws 3 if you want more of the modern take on Commandos-style gameplay, they're both excellent games with really solid writing. The party in Gambit isn't quite as charming, but they've probably got room to grow.
I've added 5 or 6 things to my wishlist, not bad.
What is this?
I need more games like ONI
It's Ratopia.
Not as good IMO, doesn't have anywhere near the same depth and is lacking a lot of QoL.
Anybody try "Another Space Opera"? It has potential, but seems buggy as frick so far.
Does anyone know what to do with the car and crane in the 2nd level? Did anybody beat Level 3 with the Space dogfighting?
Broken Roads has a koala on its icon despite being set on the wrong side of the continent for koalas.
Dicefolk needs more love. Great roguelite turn based strategy game
Western game dev challenge: Design characters that I'd actually want to date (impossible)
Here you go.
Was pleasantly surprised by Judero. But not enough to buy the game.
any good mecha games?
yikes
I like how 90% of the trailer is focussed on girl on left because they realized the artist fricked up every other face by going too 'how t o draw anime'
Where are all these homies with fruity hair colors irl
Dunno black dudes in my area are all actual africans who always travel in a pack of like 6 and seem physically incapable of talking at a reasonable volume. Annoying as frick.
"Anime styled" stuff is no stranger to inhuman hair colors, but rainbow hair clashes really harshly with dark skin so it stands out even more.
>we need nose rings on every character
They both look like trash
I enjoyed thronefall, that is all
Steamworld Build is fun. So is Born of Bread. Surprised to see so few mentions of them
Hahahaha what the frick is this garbage
>that sway
Wew
The weird callout he does when scrambling for ammo is ridiculous. RIDIIICULOUUUUUS! The recording director really fricked up on that one.
For those that played Shadow Gambit, did you pick the doctor or the cook?
Pickced the cook since his abilities sounded more useful to me. Whistling in stealth games is always OP, and his teleporting is also very useful.
Picked the doctor and regretted it, since you basically had two black gurls bantering for the rest of the Demo. She has some useful abilities with being able to place bushes and make bodies disappear wherever, but I think I'd pick the other guy on a new playthrough.
They should've featured the canon chick instead. She looks fun to use.
*cannon
The doctor and I wasn't disappointed because she kills fast compared to the slow as frick navigator.
cook but i am going to probably replay the demo and use the other characters i didnt this time through.
I enjoyed Mind Over Magic more than I expected to. I thought it would just be a straight management game, but the survival elements could make for a fun gameplay loop. I just hope the student training gets a little more involved later in the game. It seemed very hands-off in the demo
>indie game has VA
>no option to disable/mute
There's a good way to instantly sabotage your demo. Your VA sucks.
Also why the hell is the Laika demo 12gigs. It looks like a flash game.
>why the hell is the Laika demo 12gigs
HD animated cutscenes, might also be uncompressed music
Cato is a pretty fun little puzzle game.
Most developers don't compress audio anymore.
>why the hell is the Laika demo 12gigs
resources.assets.resS is literally 11,1 GB of uncompressed bitmaps
what the frick
>Spells & Secrets
Not very good. Presentation is low budget, gameplay is very simple, there's just nothing interesting for me to latch onto. You fight the same two enemies over and over with magic missile. Not very satisfying. It's a roguelite but they didn't put any effort into even the basic genre staples. It feels like they turned it into a roguelite at the last minute.
Has a character creator but it's pretty rough.
I'm pretty cooled off on character creators these days. There's no point if the art is trash or the outfits suck, just make a decent looking default or let me wear a helmet and I'm fine with that.
Norland was ok but need to be more polished
Ratopia
Alien hominid invasion was fun,i need to buy a controller since keybord control is kind of junky and unresponsive sometimes or maybe it's my keyboard?
If you mean spamming The dodge but not doing anything, it's also happened to me too!
I hope they fix that.
I recommend rebinding some of the controls. What I did was use left click for fire, right for mutation, wasd for movement, space for jump, and shift for dodge. I believe it spmetimes happens that when you're hplding down too many keyboard keys you can't press any more, they don't register. Offloading some of the presses onto the mouse meant I never ever had an issue with dodge.
Behemoth games play great on keyboards, they just for the life of them can't be bothered to set up actually comfortable keybinds.
Lies of P - on the fence about getting it. its clearly a sekiro clone without the jumping ability and no iframes on dodge so the only mechanic you can do is parry riposte but even that doesn't really tell you when you parry riposte correctly
Hammerwatch II - 100% buying by far the best thing ive tried out so far
Necrovale - played it and uninstalled after about 5 minutes. Unskippable opening cutscene into a very handholding tutorial.
What else should I try out
>no iframes on dodge
That's wrong, though. The dodge is just shit because it barely moves you at all so you can't dodge anything except with the iframes.
>its clearly a sekiro clone
how is it anything like sekiro lol
its just regular souls slop
Played: 22
Enjoyed: 8
Wishlisted: 1
There are only so many colony sims, survival games, and base builders that you can play. The indie market is becoming like AAA in terms of creative bankruptcy. Instead of remakes and remasters the indie market just seems to churn out the above three genres to the market.
I think those are the type of games that programmers enjoy playing so when they are their own creative lead they can’t resist.
I should know, I’m one of them, but I resisted the urge as I’d rather play those games than make them.
>the above three
You forgot metroidvanias, Soulslikes, platformers, RPGs, roguelikes, deckbuilders, FPSs, idle games, couch coop games, survivor clones, etc. The indie market is immensely oversaturated all around.
Give me an original game idea.
Not trying to start shit, I'm genuinely curious what anons here could come up with.
Shoot your shot.
You keep seeing these same genres and all games seem clones of each other because the devs just want to make something that will generate some money and is reasonable for an indie to finish because trying to "make it" as an indie is worse than trying to do the same in art or music or whatever creative hellhole you decide to put yourself into.
>colony sims
>survival games
>base builders
>roguelikes
>deckbuilders
>survivor clones
These are genres that you will make as an indie to try to get money, because they are reasonable to make, you don't have to spend your entire life making assets or content just to achieve a high playtime. You can massively extend the playtime of a roguelike just by implementing some basic meta progression, and genres like colony sims are built on replayability so again you don't have to generate tons of new content and it is easy to artificially elongate the game. Also, the "autistic" genres are programmer friendly because they require less assets and/or have no demand for impressive art/graphics, one of the major examples is Factorio, artgays could never make a Factorio as good and as popular as it is.
>metroidvanias
>soulslikes
>platformers
>RPGs
>FPSs
These are popular genres with very high revenue but are absolute shit genres to make, and indie devs will do it and hope they will be one of the few that will be at the top earning millions. Soulslike is an especially shit one because not one it is a ton of work to make something that is at least decent you will also compete against Fromsoft and soulslike players will prefer to do another NG+100 Dark Souls run instead of playing your half-assed soulslike. FPS/Competitive FPS games have a similar problem where all of the revenue just stays at the AAA/AA level and some indies think that just because FPS makes a ton of money then they will be able to do it too. Platformers are almost meme tier because you only have a few at the top earning the most while you have thousands of other platformers that can't even generate $100 to repay Steam's fee, and the main meme part is that those platformers at the top are usually gimmicky artsy ones, so only artgays dominate this genre because the programming is piss easy.
>idle games
>couch coop games
Meme genres
Is "art" that hard? Modern "art" looks like the apex of low effort and requires zero skill.
I'm not that sure since I'm not an artist, but art has that same problem with only a few at the top getting everything while you have a massive amount of artists at the bottom barely making it. Just compare it to normal wagie jobs like software engineer where you will see like 95% of the people earning around $30k to $300k, there isn't a massive difference like 0,1% earning >1 million and 70% earning <10k
>modern art complainer in current year
this is like the guy that goes "damn theres nothing good on the radio like [my shitty 3 chord rock band from 1970], no one is making good music anymore!!"
How profitable are porn games? I get the feeling an indie dev could instantly 10x their profits if they made their simple game coomer bait (see: Helltaker) or outright porn but I have no idea if that's true in practice.
Dead estate made a lot despite being a simple boi clone due to very sexo witch
So i think the answer is fanservice without being ecchi
Pure porn games are in the middle. There is an ungodly amount of them out there but overall they do ok, nothing too insane, my guess is that coomerbux is always big and coomers like variety, so this is why even with thousands of games out there they can do decent, plus if you are a master of one niche, say cuckshit, you will be more successful.
Now, inserting non obvious coombait like Genshin Impact, Nier Automata, Dark Souls' waifus or even like Overwatch did is good to give a boost and is also easy to do, you can take almost any game and do it relatively easily. Doing it this way you can still keep your normal audience while baiting the coomers in, so the only reason to not do this is if you are one of those homosexuals that can't stand seeing a cute girl. And needless to say, the more obvious your coombait is the more you start to lose your normal audience and the more you lean into a porn game, which is not that great.
Luto seemed pretty interested from the tiny bit I played before work. Very obvious PT influence. Also reminded me of Visage, but I never played it.
Any other spooky demos?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2194790/Studio_System__Guardian_Angel/
Artstyle and tone will always win over graphics
I wanted to like this but it's so fricking dark and I felt things kinda all blended together.
Whole sections of the map being copies of Deus Ex was a bit much. Especially when it doesn't hold a candle to Deus Ex.
That's terror.
It's on the verge on the greatness, but the result looks shit
fortunes run has the stealth tag but it seems like an action game. What is the stealth like in that game because thats all i would care about.
Not too sure how feasible it is to sneak past enemies vs get in a better position to ambush them
I'm holding out that the demo was more linear than the full game will be, especially with how binary the switch was from "wander around and do some talking" to "run down this hallway and kill everything"
i figured oh well game looks cool but was only interested because stealth is my favorite genre.
I had some decent luck sneaking up on dudes by staying above them with walljumps then dropping down with the sword, the snipers also seem to have a really small viewcone when doing their laser sight thing so if you move quick you can get in their face before they notice.
The demo was pretty hallway heavy for the most part though, and what sneaking there was more boiled down to getting the drop and starting off fights with a katana beheading or a cheeky grenade than actually bypassing enemies.
Luna Abyss is very pretty, but also extremely easy. There's some kind of issue with the screenshots though, the actual game isn't anywhere near this fuzzy.
I don't know if I liked Jusant or not. It was super easy but I like the idea of a climbing game
Try peaks of yore too if you haven't yet.
Backpack hero is great but I'm not sure if it's part of this event. It has a demo up, but it might be older.
I found out that they have the whole game at itchio and can be played on the site without download.
It's pretty fun if you like the genre but a bit too easy or impossible depending on what you find.
>or impossible depending on what you find.
so the balance is just not great? shame
Not sure about the balance but if you just have a shitty weapon and find no multipliers you are kinda fricked on harder difficulties.
Still a good game.
i dont tink the itchio version is up to date with the steam version for what its worth. The steam version at least has two more characters.
nta but i think the balance is fine. Wands are pretty heckin strong though.
Not really fest-related but I guess we got lots of indibros here. What's some cool under the radar turnbased roguelite that came out last year or so?
No hate please.
Laika was cool but it just makes me wish the physics were more like the Trials games. And backflipping to reload is annoying and just results in backtracking to the nearest bump for some quick airtime anytime you run out of bullets.
>Viewfinder
Well done gimmick, pretty boring puzzles.
>Ghost Trick
Great animations and designs. I like that you get to jump between objects mid-animation.
Still, it's easy, slow and has a tedious presentation. Does it open up? Are scenes done once you've averted death in each of them? Do I get to jump between scenes, do they evolve together?
>Lies of P
Runs great on Steam Deck and looks great even on low settings.
Everything about it is a carbon copy of Bloodborne, but somehow worse in most regards except graphical fidelity and engine polish. What's the point?
They could also do a better job explaining the seemingly arbitrary terms plastered over their copied mechanics. Will probably be a decent action game but for whom? Many souls players were complaining about burnout during DS3, why would they want an inferior clone? Odd direction to go with.
>wizard with a gun
Polished but shallow. Reminiscant of don't starve. Aiming persisted in locking onto trees and bushes during combat.
Very easy compared to Don't Starve, but might have appeal.
>Hammerwatch 2
Tried to get into the first one and Heroes, but this has the same problems.
Too slow, easy and shallow for my taste. Fantastic style which reminds me of Settlers 2.
>En Garde!
Fun combat system but a tad easy. A bit of Unity jank but overall pretty stable.
Looks good but the writing is bland.
>One Lonely Outpost
Stardew in space. Looks good, trailer seems promising, but it feels very slow starting out.
Robot companion constantly gets in the way.
I hate you using Guardian Heroes best girl for this drivel of a post. Get fricked.
What triggered you? Was it Hammerwatch?
>Ghost Trick
>Lies of P
And honestly just how you passive aggressive complain in general, frick you for using Treasure for your content you homosexual.
>nooo don't list positivies and negatives of games
>nooo you have to 100% hate things or 100% like them
>mommy help someone is being reasonable in their views and not moronicly bent one way
>aaaaah
loooool
Shitty narration seems to be a common issue these days. Everyone wants to be stanley parable
>>nooo you have to 100% hate things or 100% like them
>why yes I will eat shit if there is sugar in it because i love goyslop
>your content
lol are you a wannabe youtuber?
>passive aggressive complain
I was pretty straightforward though. All of the titles have good points to them.
I didn't shit on Ghost Trick and I even threw Lies of P a bone.
I own a significant number of Treasure titles and used to have a Treasure shrine alcove in a bookshelf a couple of apartments ago. My favourite is Alien Soldier
>Ghost Trick
It's been many years since I played so I can't recall how hard it gets but IIRC it usually goes
>arrive at new area
>some plot and set up for the area
>puzzles
>get plot
>move to the next area
But honestly, it's worth a playthrough for the story and charming characters alone and that fricking soundtrack. The entire cast is entertaining and the twists and turns leave you wanting more.
If there was one game I could forget everything about and play again blind, it's Ghost Trick.
Cool, I'll pick it up if it hits $15 or so
Anyone else get trailer audio playing in the background when playing viewfinder?
I'm here to shill another space opera because there's not enough people telling the dev what needs fixing
>inventory tetris
I will now play your game
does she get raped if you lose?
>En Garde
Supe railroaded. You just can't actually grab onto whatever the devs want you to even if she should be able to. She'll borderline teleport to what she can. No freedom at all. Combat is watching the same 5 slice animations on repeat or spamming jump slash because that lets you infinitely wall-splat enemies until they die. Either you press Y to hit them twice before they super-armor through your attack despite currently being cut or you're fighting multiple dudes who spam red moves you just dodge then do sometimes as little as 1 attack before they do it again. OR you run around kicking boxes into everything. Its not like Might and Magic people compare it to where you had a lot of options to work with like making things slide on ice, lay down fire traps, kick people into traps (the only things this actually shares with might is kicking into traps and kicking barrels). Demo leaves no really hint on what they'll do to make it more than a more rail-roaded far more poorly animated arkham game that's just the mindless combat.
Don't really get the hype at all
literally contradicting yourself in your own post.
>poorly animated arkham game that's just the mindless combat
>multiple dudes who spam red moves you just dodge then do sometimes as little as 1 attack before they do it again
you're not supposed to stand around in a circle parrying everything, that's why the enemies are actually aggressive and attack all at once.
you have to use the environment to deal with them. throw stuff at them, kick stuff at them, kick them into stuff, kick them into one another, light them on fire with a lantern, throw a lantern at a cannon while they're chasing you, etc.
the story demo is "railroaded" yes but it quite literally says it's to teach you the mechanics.
>Le kicke
>Le kicke again
Wow bro totally didn't mention that in my post and that's totally not taking your total actions from 5 repeat animations + le parry and le dodge to just the same shit + le kicke le barrels
>Oh shit bro you can enforce stun then do 4 hits before they break out mid-swing and le swing so you can le parry
Warhaven looked cool in the trailer, but it's a shitfest. Apparently it got downgraded a lot from previous playtests too.
Viewfinder is the only demo i've wishlisted so far but i hope to fricking god they either tone down or flat-out remove the female commentator's "i just moved shit with my frigging mind!" cringe shit
You can turn the voice volume to 0 and disable subtitles. You miss out on the audio logs but it's worth it.
>You miss out on the audio logs but it's worth it.
I'll probably just wait until the game comes out and then shop around for opinions about whether the story/audio logs are worth listening to
Yeah, no indie game benefits from VA. None of anything in the demo was worth listening to.
5 so far. Most were decent though some really should not have been put out. I get the impression a lot of developers just slapped together a demo ASAP without a care for presentation. A demo is a selling point so it should have a certain amount of polish.
>start Jusant
>instant see the chromatic aberration
>game has no specific post processing settings
>can't even turn it off, only low to max
Fricking seriously? How do devs STILL not get this shit right?
It's also got motion blur you can't turn off
Yeah. I dunno why devs keep adding these effects when they just make the screen a blurry mess.
Dontnod are moronic, they have never made a good game
I don't know why people still give them the benefit of the doubt
This Bed We Made is actually pretty intriguing. Demo's not that long but it has a nice vibe to it.
>the one other guy playing the shit im playing
did you like phoenix springs
I haven't played it yet but it's on my list.
looks weg-tiers
Only tried two so far.
>En Garde
Great visuals, but that's about it. Combat is a hodgepodge of mechanics lifted from other games that haven't been made to mesh well together. Game feel is terrible, and characters never shut up.
>Remore: Infested Kingdom
Pretty engrossing TRPG, seems solid all-round. Great presentation, gameplay's tight, writing is spot-on for the tone they're going for. Definitely keeping an eye on it.
I'll try Sea of Stars later tonight, but that's Sabotage so I'm pretty sure it'll be good.
>UP MY ALLEY/WISHLISTED
Studio System: Guardian Angel
Radio The Universe
Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation
Alien Hominid: Invasion
Redline Crooks
Jusant
Wildmender
>WILL WAIT FOR REVIEWS
El Paso, Elsewhere
Hellsweeper VR
Motordoom
Valley Peaks
Quasimorph
>SHIT
Die Again
Bloody Downsizing
Sea of Stars
>PLAN TO PLAY IN THE FUTURE:
Mislight
OVRLRD
En Garde!
Laika: Aged Through Blood
>GENRES I AM SICK OF
Metroidvania (I recognize them as good games, but they're just not for me. And there's SO MANY of them)
Turn Based Card Games (dime a dozen, I have enough of these in my steam library and some can be modded, I don't need more)
Survival Horror/Horror (majority of the genre is low effort shovelware, also dime a dozen)
Top Down shooters/Bullet Hell (I feel like if you've played 5 good ones of these you've played them all)
Farming Games (I have farming games already, and they eat up a lot of time individually, CLOSE THE VALVE, I DON'T NEED MORE)
Boomer Shooters (Only a handful of these actually have the magic that makes this genre good, and I need a break)
>GENRES I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
Combat Racing (More A to B racing with aggressive driving like Burnout 3 and Wipeout, less vehicle arena combat like Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal)
3D Platformers (Pleasant atmosphere, good world design, fun controls)
Action Horror (Stuff like Resident Evil 4/Dead Space where you're not necessarily in great danger but you are shooting at stuff with thick atmosphere and punchy guns)
Zelda-like 3D adventure games (There's lots of top down 2D ones, I want people to go for Ocarina of Time, not A Link to the Past.)
>ELEMENTS OF GAMES I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
Memorable soundtracks that I'd listen to outside of the games
Attention to detail
Good art styles that don't look like something I'd see in a mobile game.
>ELEMENTS I WANT TO SEE LESS OF
stock unreal engine visuals
developers explaining their game instead of letting the game speak for itself
multiplayer, but local/SRPT only
>sea of stars in shit
meant to be in "plan to play in the future"
its clear they put a lot of work into it but the story/characters dont grab me at all
it says something when i want to frick the in-motion sprite of the main girl more than the actual art of the girl
the "press x when thing happens" also kinda felt like it lacked feedback for letting me know when i should be pressing or not or when i succeed, and the traversal (press space to climb a ledge, jump, climb, jump down etc) is so simple and mindless, it begs the question of why its even a button, its not like a platformer where theres some kind of "challenge" inherent to the movement, its just walking from point a to point b but you're pressing a button while you walk.
I don't remember how jumping spaces worked in Golden Sun but I think it was basically the same in many ways. The character design and music leaves a lot to be desired. 100% spot on that there isn't enough feedback on when you should be pressing buttons
Thank you for posting, added a few more to my own list.
radio the universe isnt even in the festival idiot
Anyone else just too good at videogames, so all demos are boring?
Surmount just doesn't work, that shit is busted. Is that mountain procgen?
I dont get it. What am I supposed to do here?
Yes, I've read PDA, but typing neither password nor login doesnt do anything. Even tried typing "help" and "commands" - 0 results.
man youre a brainlet
type "login {username} {password}"
>Did this
>It kicked me out of machine
>Now won't let me enter anything
nice GAME nerds
didn't ask + ratio
Any good porn games with actual gameplay?
Absorption Battle Racing
Holy shit Steam is so bloated now. For frick's sake Valve.
I liked picrel and I don't see it in this thread so, here goes. Opinions from those who played it?
I also reccomend asterogues for those who want a fun twist on enter the gungeon like roguelikes
Looks good
>Hang out with weirdos just like you! Yay, friendship! … ᴀɴd Romᴀɴce …
>If you don’t build affection with a character, they may die in the end!
nevermind
shame reminds me of twewy, no interest in mandatory or be punished romance
Is alright but default PC controls are ass and the timing of visual and audio cues needs improvement. Wishlisted but I'm not getting my hopes up, could end up another deadge.
The idea of an RPG Rhythm game hybrid is cool but the actual rhythm gameplay in this sucks dick. I can't see any scenario in which I would rather play this than just grind osu
I played another different Rhythm RPG earlier this year too (Infinite Guitars, it was on GamePass) and that was also really mediocre. A shame since it also had decent visuals and music (though it played its hand with the OST really hard and reused the same few songs the entire first act before I quit.
Indie devs seem to have a hard time making good rhythm games for whatever reason. Maybe because most of the good games are arcade or require unique controllers, so there isn't an easy format to copy.
Meanwhile A Song of Fire & Ice or whatever is super successful by Indie Rhythm standards and it looks like the most basic thing in the world. Also it must suck trying to do a Rhythm hybrid game and seeing Hi-Fi Rush nail it and raise the bar for that way up high.
En Garde! Was fun but its an easy day 300 buy in a bundle game.
>Saltsea Chronicles
Shamelessly tumblr game, to the point that it basically exists in its own ecosystem. One of those very word-heavy point-and-clicks with minimal actual gameplay (except for a card mini-game with convoluted rules).
It is oddly well-made for what it is. It has a style that most people won't like but it leans into it hard. The UI had some effort put into it, though the dialogue box (which you will be spending most of your time staring at) is pretty plain.
Seems to take place in a low fantasy setting. I don't know if I'd call the story particularly interesting, it's a lot of characters talking about random things with the plot not being a huge concern. Definitely vibes-driven. I don't know. I have to wonder what made the developers want to make something like this, it doesn't have an obvious hook.
Also I hate that the screenshot manager takes five times as long to open now. What was Valve thinking?
>try new heights
>instantly start goofing about
test
you passed
Steamworld dig was a nice little Anno+dungeon keeper game.
Do you mean Steamworld Build?
yeah that one
Urbano seems cool. Kinda reminds me of the time when vidya was still about having fun. Combat controls are ass though and they need to fix sync'ing the visual and audio cues. Nothing unfixable. Hope it doesn't become a never ever or turn into a dumpster fire.
Zero, I haven't even opened steam in a few days. I don't play demos, I pirate the games and try them.
Crypt Lord has some potential, the world fluff and presentation is nice but combat is stiff as shit. Plus hit reg will just not work sometimes.
Anyone played DriveCrazy?
Redline Crooks is definitely the most fun demo I've played so far.
Any decent metroidvanias this time around?
Any particular reason there's like half a dozen indie imsims coming out in the next year?
Prey 2017 probably.
Fair enough
What games like Prey 2017 are coming out? I really want more games like it and the Deus Ex games.
Youtubers doing a good job shilling the genre if I had to guess
Which ones?
>Ready Steady Ship!
it was a little fun game to play co-op, not much going on and I think the boxes bugs out when they get stuck.
>Toxic Crusaders
not bad but pretty barebones, it would be good to add more special moves with the special button instead of the AoE emergency attack. music was 'aight
>Captain Wayne
I think it was good Doom WAD? it is kind of annoying dealing with super fast enemies on Doom and the melee charging dude was annoying, at least he is easier to deal with than the inspiring champions in boltgun
>House Flipper 2
gay dude traps you in a island and you do the same shit you do in all those games, dunno why I downloaded it.
>Dungeon Renovation Simulator
Janitor simulator and it barely runs, I could count the fps with my hands.
I want to like Ebenezer for how moronic the premise is, and the visuals are competent, but in terms of game design it's super clumsy.
Steam Next Fest VR Demos June 2023
>Good
Not Good
>Border Patrol: Papers Please with robots.
Box to the Beat: Yet another beatsaber clone but gloves.
Crumbling: Floating hand puppet slasher.
Davigo: Asymmetric multiplayer only.
The Devourer: 10fps.
Drunk Dead 2: Almost interesting then it turns into a shooting gallery.
Hellsweeper: Arena fighter with rogueshit.
Inter Solar 83: Elite Nondangerous.
Magecosmos: A literal scam?
Minigolf Aeons: Too basic minigolf.
Monoracevr: Broken controls.
>Ovrlrd: Mech wienerpit, joysticks dont support tilting so it feels clumsy.
Pointy Ends: PVP throw stuff from towers.
Premortal: Craft things for no reason.
Retropolis 2: 99% cutscenes, followed by boring mini "puzzles"
Sharks: Third person head controlled sharks playing Infection.
Solarblack: Yet another beatsaber clone but you sometimes shoot.
>Stack: Multiplayer only but the telekenisis boomerang mechanic seemed good.
System Critical 2: Broken controls.
>Tea for God: Cool infinite walking, but not engaging beyond that.
Unmanned: Broken.
Vetrix Worlds: 3D Tetris without gravity, almost good but you can't freely rotate the playfield.
Wandering in Space: Requires account creation.
Mr Bears Bizarre Adventure: Broken controls.
>Laika: Aged Through Blood
Shooting mechanics are neat in combat but suck everywhere else since you need to shoot shit to get resources, so you'll end up driving back and forth to backflip and reload.
The dark souls mechanic of dropping currency when you die is moronic since it punishes you for trying out cool shit. Dying already kicks you back to the last checkpoint which may or may not be far away, so it's entirely pointless
Dialogue takes your eyes away from the center of the screen, which is really bad when you're trying to drive. Also it gets cut off by pretty much anything (dying, dismounting, interacting, etc) and it does not repeat even if you die, so you can end up completely missing all context and plot. Also the devs are ESL and it really shows
Other than that it was a enjoyable experience, and the music was really good. I give it a 7/10, if they work out the kinks and release it at a reasonable price I might get it
>demos I've tried that looked interesting
En Garde,
>demos that made me decide the games were in fact not interesting
En Garde.
NEXT fest, please.
mmmm yea cant wait for the next episode of "wow holy shit stop making VS clones"
>"wow holy shit stop making VS clones"
the only ones im interested in are the totally not diablo one with the hot chicks that go ":p" in the dialogue and the vtuber one because ITS FRICKING FREE and not a shallow attempt to make money
>>the only ones im interested in are the totally not diablo one with the hot chicks that go ":p" in the dialogue a
?
Which one is like diablo? Does it have a necromancer?
death must die
> Does it have a necromancer?
kinda? havent really seen at the skills yet
Oh the hades wannabe.
Shame cute girls garbage game.
hades is a vampire survivor-like is a new take
Half this fest is just vampire survival or card mechanics + other existing thing
There's even a vampire survival slay the spire combo
i just meant referring to it as a hades wannabe when it doesnt play like that at all
Plays like vampire survivor but shit, powerups being from humanoids is taken from hades, same exact setup
Instead of cloning one hyped game you... clone TWO hyped games!
i didnt mean take as in its a fresh concept, im saying that calling hades "like vampire survivor" is certainly a new "take"
Gonna go over everything I played alphabetically:
>Alien Hominid Invasion
I wish it was still a Metal Slug-esque game but what this is is still very fun. Controls really well and the charm of the original is completely intact visually. Had a really annoying issue I couldn't fix where pressing Up or Down while holding Jump paused the game. Wishlisted.
>Battle Shapers
Clearly polished and has some neat ideas but I don't see myself getting into it long-term. Feels very "from the team that played Doom Eternal". Punch animation is very satisfying. Didn't Wishlist, but not bad.
>Decline's Drops
Something about the attack animations/inputs felt a little slow but otherwise this was so nice. I can feel how much there is to do with the mechanics and the MC is distinct and cute visually. Will buy.
>El Paso, Elsewhere
Very much Max Payne but fantasy, but the level/encounter design was kind of weak and the game really fought me on mapping my controls.
>En Garde!
Genuinely loved the combat despite the simplicity. Each mechanic is minor but its strength is that the variety comes from the room you're in and the resources around you rather than what enemies are facing you. Super charming presentation but the MC's model should match the art better. Also should not need me to turn settings down to make a game that looks like it came out in 2007 run well on a 3050.
1/3
>Eternights
Writing is actually charming but the visuals are meh and the combat felt extremely dull and repetitive. Apparently this only exists because the dev wanted to put out a game before Yanderedev, so it's based, but I didn't Wishlist.
>FINAL KNIGHT
Most difficulty I've had binding controls in any of these, but as a singleplayer party-based beat-em-up RPG it has a lot of potential. Visuals are very busy though. I'll keep an eye on it.
>Ghost Trick
Haven't played it before but I've only heard good things and it's from before that dark early-mid 10s era of Capcom sank in.
>Isekai Janken Hero
Grabbed just for how silly the premise is. Manages to make Rock-Paper-Scissors confusing which is a feat. The porn part is pretty good, but they fricked up by putting by far the best girl of the 5 in the demo, I have no reason to buy the final game.
>Laika: Aged Through Blood
Took me by surprise. I can't say Metroidvania with crafting seemed that interesting but the actual gameplay is really brilliant and the presentation is incredible. The boss fight in the forest graveyard was fantastic, and I love the music system. The checkpoints seem to encourage brute forcing things though, which may make it overstay its welcome. Will buy.
>Legendary Hoplite
Tower defense + vertical shmup with RPG elements. More fun than that sounds but it comes off kind of cheap at times. Once I got some abilities I liked I got into a flow state that felt really good. Demo has a MASSIVE difficulty spike when the boss arrives though. Wishlisted.
>Merchant of the Six Kingdoms
Thanks to the devanon who shilled his game here. This is the perfect gift for a friend of mine. Not my kind of game but I can tell there's a lot of effort put into the economy here. Wishlisted, will gift.
>Might & Magic Clash of Heroes Definitive Edition
I could probably just emulate this (same with Ghost Trick) but this seems like a good version. Very short demo but I really dig the mechanics. Wishlisted.
2/3
>Motordoom
Sadly I didn't enjoy it. Awesome premise but ultimately doesn't control as well as it should and felt the need to go for roguelite mechanics, plus outside of the skellies you can play as I didn't think any of the models looked good. Rollerdrome pulls off THPS w/ Guns better. Didn't wishlist.
>Pocket Bravery
VERY competent fighting game with great animation. Really only can recommend if you like sprite-based fighting games that won't have huge playerbases though. Wishlisted.
>Pull Stay
One of those games where I feel like at least some of the jank is intentional. The gameplay concept is actually fantastic despite all the problems with how it plays and the cheap visuals. Oozes that uniqueness that a solo Japanese PC dev brings. Wishlisted.
>Redline Crooks
Last demo I tried and this was fantastic. Once I understood how the systems worked everything flowed really well but I could feel that there was room for mastery. Charming simple style and music too. Sleeper hit, will buy.
>Resistance 204X
Had my eye on this for a while so it's nice to play it. Think Nidhogg + an anime fighting game, playing the Hard CPU was exhilarating. Will buy.
>Skator Gator 3D
Half extremely basic & loose 3D platformer, half rail-hopping with very deliberate & tight controls. Charming enough but if this launches above $8 it'll be too much. Tentative Wishlist.
>Star Salvager
Puzzle-Shmup where you pick up bricks to match to make ammo or shields. Great premise, really confusing execution, and the art is cheap and ugly. Real shame, probably the worst demo I played.
>TAGLINE
The style is excellent and makes the most out of super low-fidelity visuals and you can see that there's a good amount of variety in the format of the game, but the controls are too slippery and I only enjoyed two out of five weapons. Wishlisted, hope they fix it up some.
3/4 because I can't count and Toxic Crusaders specifically disappointed me.
>Toxic Crusaders
The music is great, the voice acting is above-average. Everything else kind of sucks. I love beat-em-ups but everything about this felt wrong. I couldn't get a handle on how hitboxes and juggle points were functioning, I juggled two corpses to a 200-hit combo by mashing Dash Attack as two enemies watched motionless on the other side of the room. I turned on the super mode and Touch of Death'd the boss also by mashing Dash Attack. The button to pick up and throw things being the same as the one to pick up and throw enemies felt wrong, and the wall splat not letting you continue the combo felt wrong. Special Attack is really slow and not really worth anything except crowd control.
On the plus side, I had no idea that TMNT Shredder's Revenge had a DLC announced with Usagi Yojimbo until yesterday which helped me get over how weak that demo was.
>I can feel how much there is to do with the mechanics
Like what lol? Mechanics seemed very simple and the enemies barely did shit. I wasn't even expecting much and was disappointed.
The demo showcased a lot of simple mechanics that can interact with one another. It's a system that can scale up the difficulty and depth based on how the combat room is designed, and that's with only two enemy types shown. It remains to be seen how creative the devs get with encounter design, but if they can pull it off I can absolutely see the arrangement of these mechanics being used in a way to keep it fresh while maintaining that simple "you can't handle more than a 2v1, so find a way to break up the enemy group with what's around you" flow. If the El Vigilante boss is as complex as it gets then it'll get dull quickly though, it was really nice for a tutorial boss, but only because it was a tutorial boss.
That doesn't answer my question at all. How is there much to do with her incredibly tiny moveset and boring-ass enemies? There's no reason to assume she'll have tons of extra moves in the full game.
You can say literally any game with more than 1 attack and enemy can 'scale up'
She had nearly no moves and most of them filled the exact same niche (2 of them are the same move outside of the first punch in the combo) and half weren't even really useable in fights
Oh I'm moronic, I thought you meant En Garde.
I was talking more the level design. The plant serum & tomatoes in the second level were really nice for what seemed like a one-and-done gimmick and were used to their fullest. The combat room in that level showed what the game can potentially be like once it throws more complex/hearty enemies at you. I just wish those heavy attacks had a different input since I kept getting them instead of the lighter strings.
Oh that makes more sense.
En guard is just hit hit parry unless outnumbered, then its hit hit dodge OR if there are things to kick at people/kick people into its just spam kick.
Very boring game, you spend 90% of the time watching the same m1 combo being spammed. At least Mordor and Asscreed its 'inspired' by have really cool animations that often have the enemies react as if being hit, her weapon just sort of phases through them. Massive step down.
I enjoyed it more when I realized the game really doesn't want you to just go through those motions. My main point as to how it differentiates from Arkham combat is that in Arkham you're always attacking and bouncing from enemy to enemy and only deviating when an enemy gimmick prompts you to; counters come out in the middle of your combo and let you flow back into attacking. En Garde seems to want you to not bother attacking until you've figured out how you want to separate the enemies and allow you to pick them off individually; parries break your string and red attacks force a well-timed sidestep to raposte or a roll to entirely disengage, closer to something that will let you keep those that enemy from interrupting you again. It's more like a puzzle than anything, and I just hope they have harder puzzles than the demo in the final game since the rooms they had in it were just loaded with toys because they wanted you to learn what everything did.
Nah just kick box at them, kick guy into wall, jump slash repeatedly. 100-0 stunlock on every enemy in the demo.
Even if you don't jump slash spam the only 'puzzle' is 'open your eyes and find the thing that stuns dude'.
Or don't and just spam dodge they really can't stop you at all the dodge is easier to dodge than unblockable attacks in fricking Arkham its super telegraphed
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2132410/Absorption_Battle_Racing/
can't decide if this is better or worse than vampire saviors.
I want to like En Garde but the combat isn't anywhere near polished enough. There's way too much magnetism/tracking on both the player's and enemies' attacks. Also it's poorly optimized.
I really don't understand why it doesn't have a hard lock on. That softlock/magnetism shit feels awful, especially when its as poorly implemented as it is in En Garde.
What was the best optimized demo you played in this next fest?
I was actually surprised how well Lies of P ran on my potato. I've seen worse looking demos actually chug so I never expect much from next fest games.
>Russian devs trying to make a RE clone
I get it, but what the frick is this title haha
>indie_games_studio
>Ebola Village
Reads like a shitpost.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2103440/SHIRIME_2_The_Genesis_of_ButtEye/
Superior chinese shitpost re game
Please report back on this. I may need to redeem.
>Ebola Village
>E-bola VIL-lage
>EVIL
Explain this team's other title.
>HUNG IT IN HAND
The gun is hung in your hand. Truly layered.
I'm extremely disappointed it doesn't spell SHIT
Is it good though?
the girl in the poster is super cute so I will play your game
bruh the store screenshots make it look like literally RE7 but in Russia
might be more shameless than the chinks
Damn, a spiritual successor to Parasite Eve 2???
i'm surprised there hasn't been an indie game called parasite steve.
Or Parasite Evil, or Resident Eve. Very simple but legacy distinct changes.
now that i think about it, a parasite steve would like have lgbt elements.
bump
I'm disappointed for the amount of blatant clones there are. I started Steamworld Build because I liked the earlier games, its literally just a reskin of Anno.
I take it back, there is a layer of dungeon keeper to it. Not so bad after all.
Yomi 2 is fun, too bad nobody is talking about it. It's like it's not even part of the next fest at all.
>deckbuilder
Is probably why.
It's not a deckbuilder but yes I realize the whole cards thing has been done a lot lately. I thought it did a pretty good job of
>fighting game, but cards
myself.
Frick David Sirlin, that's why. He tried to sue the guy making Yomi Hustle over the word "Yomi" as if he owned the word but didn't bother suing Trek to Yomi because it wasn't FGC-adjacent. The name change to Your Only Move Is Hustle (or YOMI Hustle) to sidestep that was based, and YOMI Hustle is better than Yomi, Yomi 2, & Fantasy Strike.
I mean he sued Yomi Hustle and not Trek to Yomi because Hustle was literally also an indie fighting game using the name Yomi.
His game isn't a fighting game and Yomi is a common term in fighting games not to mention an actual Japanese word
Both of them are fighting games
Yomi is a card game
Yeah but a card game implementation of a fighting game
because yomi hustle is better than staring at jpegs trying to emulate a fighting game
If you want a card game you're likely already burnt out before reaching this
If you want a fighting game this is vastly superior: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1555150/Pocket_Bravery/
If you want a fighting game for babies you can play fantasy strike which is literally the same characters anyways (including literally just Slayer)
If you want to watch fights play out aftr you make numbers big not only does Matchless KungFu do this much better, the trailer of Yomi 2 shows it looks like fricking shit
If you just want a fun game the trailer looks like shit
It looks like shit
Dude tried to frick over the YOMI hustle dev for using Yomi in the name, dude can frick off.
i thought the original yomi was fun what does this change to make it stand out/ better? Also, does it have online multiplayer and can you find matches?
Y2 has a bunch of small changes that I didn't think would be that big of a deal or sounded kind of lame but which actually make the game a lot more interesting.
One of the bigger ones is that on your turn every other combat you can exchange one of your normal non-special/super cards in hand with one from the discard. It helps create consistency and reduce randomness of the card draws, and also create this risk/reward mechanic where you can exchange cards for normals to build up an attack combo, or do the reverse and trade in cards to get your missing options back and retrieve a block or a throw you're missing.
And the thing is when you do that the opponent also sees what you're exchanging for, so you can make calculated decisions or mindgames based on what you see your opponent exchanging and what you are exchanging. There are a bunch of changes like this in the game (high/low blocks, gem selection, a codified fireball mechanic) that add a lot of wrinkles and folds to the decision space so it feels like there's a lot more to think about and more opportunities to make interesting decisions based on what's happening.
It's too bad so many people seem to hate the creator, I think the game feels pretty fun.
>gem selection
uh oh
also 2bf sirlin did it to himself. Ill give it a shot probably like i said i really enjoyed the first one and if this one is good and you can get games that sounds good to me.
Oh and yes there's online multi. 3 characters in the yomi 2 demo and it's entering early access soon too.
I wish this was a real fricking card game with deck building and metagaming and cards getting released so you can think about decks all week between fnms oh god I want a card game so bad.
Just played studio system that's some good shit.
Just wish the writing was a bit better and cutscenes a bit shorter
Why would you ever put this garbage in Next Fest?
>that reload animation
Holy frick
Now that's some kino Studio Black person reload animation right there.
Great Ambition of the Slimes is pretty fun. It's an SRPG where the gimmick is your party is made of various slimes that possess the enemy units to attack for you. Neat idea but not sure if it can carry a whole game. Wishlisted anyway.
Steamworld :Build was fun. You manage a city and a deep mineshaft that has ancient treasures. The tutorial had no fail state, but it looks like there will be enemies in the full game attacking the mines.
man, there are a shitton of city builders, any good recommendation?
genre peaked with majesty and stronghold
Who cares whats new
Drive Crazy is a shitty racing platformer where the truck can wallrun/walljump. it has the energy of an indie PS2 game that gets ridiculed on xplay and then forgotten about, but with some actual sfx for running over stuff could make the rounds on variety gaming channels.
bonus points for ending your demo with a girl/boy song expy
Shilling this game, I liked it; played it 8 hours. Has some jank (controller aiming has auto-aim and it can lock on to bushes and shit), Petting your charmed enemy (a useless joke interaction I think) locks you in place while you're trying to pick up valuable loot.
Demo did a bad job of showing you the possibilities; only after playing for 8 hours did I realize (for example) there are guns you can loot off baddies that can shoot two bullets and be upgraded via crafting, there are secret doors that can be repaired, and there is a platform building gun to let you traverse gaps.
Also not allowing multiplayer, even if it was jank peer 2 peer, was a mistake but maybe they flat out couldn't swing it yet (which would be kind of a bad sign).
>8 hours
Holy frick, I had the platform gun, extra doors, and a submachine gun by the 4 hour mark and I was already sick of the game by that point.
PROTIP TO INDIE DEVS: PUT FRAMECAPS IN YOUR GAME
If I start up your game and the main menu is running at 3000 FPS with no way to cap it I'm uninstalling.
Yeah, what's nutty is that's like the third tutorial in SDL and SFML, and I assume it's in Unity, etc as well
Good to know. Any other pro tips for aspiring devs?
At the very least attempt to make pretty women.
Whatever your one skill is lean into that heavily and use that to attract other people and/or money.
Plan your game as much as you can, the more time you spend planning it out and creating an outline (called a "Design Document") the easier it is to cut out the parts that inevitably don't work and change them.
>encouraging an anon to just endlessly plan
no, he needs to make shit and find the fun in the idea or drop it and move onto a new prototype
a design doc should be bullet points about what the game is, with maybe an accompanying document that focuses on individual systems within it, and keep the scope small until he has enough experience and manpower to actually make a larger game.
Also sometimes it's better to not listen to the players. It's your game with your vision, sometimes the end player would absolutely ruin a game if they had their way, you don't need to buckle to requests, but keep an ear open because some feedback can indicate that there is a deeper issue that could be addressed in a way that they aren't actually suggesting.
your early projects will all suck, that's fine, it's a learning process both for design and programming, but also for project management. You'll only improve by iterating, I've seen countless starry-eyed morons burnout entirely and teams implode because they want their first game to be some overly-ambitious thing, be practical and realistic with your expectations. And above all, have fun.
This anon gets it. Make shit, finish it, iterate. That said, once you've made a bit of something set your scope early so you know where to stop, this is the most important part of planning if you don't want to make something forever.
If you're going to add graphics settings don't be a lazy frick about it. I don't want to see "Anti Aliasing: ON/OFF".
Don't use smooth high res fonts if your aesthetic is pixel art and vice versa
Better yet, actually add a way to disable AA. I had one demo be FXAA and TSAA and no other options
don't make a game you're not willing to play, it will show.
It gets good 30 minutes in isn't a valid excuse, it's an example of poor pacing. Buildup and progression are fine, but there should be some initial hook to show the potential of your game. Non gameplay stuff like lore&setting or art direction can fill this niche if the gameplay isn't bad or stale, but if that's all you have why are you making a game instead of a book/movie/album?
Genuinely ask yourself why what you're making needs to be a game and you'll make something that isn't bad.
|++|
>Neverlooted Dungeon
Cute. Hard to say if it'll have staying power for me, but a nice simple concept that tickles your brain just a smidge.
>Back to the Dawn
Really refreshing take on the lifesim genre, anthro without being completely furhomosexual, still plays all the typical cards but has a lot of other stuff going on. It's a bit slow paced though, I don't think the 3-day limit does it a lot of justice yet? Either way, It's staying on my watchlist.
>Luto
Similar to PT/Visage/etc, atmospheric horror interior exploration, with a nice focus on being unsettling without jump scare shit. Pursuer is literally just a white-sheet ghost figure and it's great. Had to leave, no saving, so didn't get horribly far.
|--|
>Gord
Obvious effort put into it, but it meanders like a motherfricker and its once again one of those situations where the combined autism of Dwarf Fortress and comfy modability of Rimworld have ruined this kind of game for me and never gives me reason to play anything but those two.
>Norland
Same as above. Again, obvious effort, can't be assed though.
>One of the most active demos is Davigo
>This game expects its long term playerbase to be 20% VR owners
I suspect this will become a problem with time.
I don't think I even saw Tobor anywhere in the pages of demos I looked through. Thanks to whoever I saw recommended it, that was the highlight of this demo fest.
Yellow Taxi go Vroom is legit as frick. Captures the era its emulating very well, snappy if not slightly strange controls, fun and cute style. Definitely wishlisting.
I enjoyed it decently too. Not the kind of game I normally play but I could tell it was a good version of it. It was part of the last NextFest though, not the current one. If we're coutning the last one, I loved Slave Zero X & Gravity Circuit most there. MEATGRINDER too but that came out and I realized the demo was literally 40% of the entire game.
I'll second this, it's a weird combination of genres that works surprisingly well.
Anything like Diablo to wash away the disappointment of D4?
>Devs playing demo
>But they're not
>They're playing content not in the demo
frick you
>Try game blatantly being viral market spammed, shilled more than any other game combined while constantly propping it up as if it has absolutely no flaws
>Oh shit the game people had to be paid to shill is bad
Oh nooooo
Do we have a list of what Ganker considers a top five to ten must plays?
the only game i would recommend to people is bun burrows
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628610/Paquerette_Down_the_Bunburrows/
This?
Its cute
V is mostly just circlejerking the first things brought up so its officially
>En Garde (an arkham game that's just combat and the combat is bad)
>Vroom Vroom (sex with cars)
>Fortune's Run (entirely linear 'immersive sim')
>Lies of P (Soulslike with inferior combat and you can only play a twink)
What game is shit enough to be number 5?
New Heights has to be on that list, right?
I'd put Judero on the list because it's peak schizocore.
The 10 I liked most personally:
Alien Hominid Invasion
Laika Aged Through Blood
En Garde!
Redline Crooks
Resistance 204X
Merchant of the Six Kingdoms
TAGLINE
FINAL KNIGHT
Decline's Drops
Legendary Hoplite
I think the ones that are most popular here are
>En Garde
>Hammerwatch 2
>Viewfinder
Can't confidently say it about anything else.
Deadlink: Tora, Voidborn, Sea of Stars, Tobor, and Urbano are the best things I've played so far.
Forgot to mention Code Name Bakery, that's a surprisingly polished and competent SRPG given the devs' previous main work was a shitty gacha.
my main complaint with bakery is that the translation is pretty poor, lots of bad grammer and poor word choices and some bits that feel the like the translator isn't very familiar with the story and wordbuilding. Which is surprising given that GF1 and PNC both have great translations.
> Which is surprising given that GF1 and PNC both have great translations.
I don't think we played the same games.
They're not perfect of course but they don't get basic facts wrong.
What's the problem here?
1: the beginning should say 'Dolls without a neural cloud' because it's a singular noun
2: by definition all dolls have neural clouds because that's just what their AI is called, if it didn't have one it would be dead.
3: it's actually mistranslated, in context a better set of lines would say
>M: ...We have a perfectly legal fake identity.
>M: Ordinary rescue team members won't be able to see through it. Fortunately, the supervisor for this team is an old-school Doll.
>M: Given their [Neural Clouds], they won't be suspicious of a colleague of theirs with a verifiable legal ID.
I see, that is a problem. Especially since such a thing isn't at all obvious to anyone not already familiar with the setting. That's the dangerous part of having a poor translation with good English editing.
Did you report it to them?
yeah there's a survey and most people are noting the translation as a sticking point. This remake has been in development hell for a while so the running theory is that the script was written and translated before the current actually good crew (featuring a bona fide real anon, not joking) came on.
number 1 for me is the shadow gambit demo, and number 2 is probably quasimorph
lurk moar tourist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2303850/Toxic_Crusaders/
>Toxic crusader devs gave up on showing their shitty game
>The watch devs play thing is just doing reruns of their show
BNased
I want to like lunar lux but those out of place character portraits and then battles taking 5 years compared to MMBN. at least it has decent music.
This year had some of the demos going into the top 10, thoughts?
https://steamdb.info/charts/?category=10
That list defaults to the current amount players. Of course demos for the most recent upcoming games are going to be the most popular right now. If you sort it all-time peak, the numbers for this year's demos are nowhere close.
I didn't think I would enjoy Judant as much as I did. I'm kind of shocked.
Jusant? It's alright. Hope it stops being linear later on but I'm not going to get my hopes up since it's Dontnod.
Wait there's a grip gauge? Maybe I had easy mode turned on or something because I didn't have it, or at least didn't see it.
Did you only play for 5 minutes or something? The demo hides the grip gauge at the start. I think it shows up after the tutorial that teaches you about jump climbing.
No I played to the end
That's weird then. Maybe you missed the trigger somehow.
> WISHLISTED
> Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of Moonfall
DAZslop at its sloppiest when it comes to h-game shit, but has a surprisingly great grip of what makes CRPGs great. Also you can call a dev a gay on /vrpg/.
> El Paso, Somewhere
Edge beyond belief (in a good way), the shotgun is the greatest one in years, the music is shit (par for the course, i guess), but the overall experience is great.
> Poached: Hunt the Hunter
Travel through South Africa and kill blacks (and some whites) poaching while a Zulu tribal drum beat reverbates through your skull, then come to your trailer home and make some BBQ.
> Mythical Agent
Clear mark of an outsider solodev that delivers great shit (think Brigand: Oaxaca or PARADIGM WORLDS), loved it.
> Anger Foot
Don't know if it was on the previous one, but feels like Hotline Miami 2 we actually deserved instead of the window circus.
> Broken Roads
Writing at the beginning is a bit shit and start and it it tries a bit too hard to show that your choices matter, but overall a good CRPG mechanically. Will probably do a free trial first or buy on sale.
> Quasimorph
DoomRL for the youngsters, can't frick it up.
> DID NOT WISHLIST
> Fortune's Run
Make an immersive sim, don't understand that things were done in imsims for a reason (like an art style that doesn't cause eye pain after the first 10 minutes and has good visual fidelity). Also Gianni's worst voice to date: you'll recognize this shit immediately.
> Motordoom
Frick off with these controls.
> Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
Good idea and pretty addicting, but the writing's a bit dogshit. Will try a free trial first before buying.
> En Garde!
Good idea, but the combat is a bit off.
> Islands of the Caliph
Very soulful, but my hands begin to twitch after pressing W+A/D 500 times to progress. Would seriously be better with mouselook.
> For Evelyn II
Interesting, but the artstyle is AIDS.
> Captain Wayne
Good game, just not my cup of rum.
Gotta try SKALD: Against the Black Priory later.
>Vampire Syndicate
It had no video on the page and the pictures were a bizarre mishmash of hentai pictures, 3D images, and all manner of other bullshit looking like it's a piece of malware that stitched together randomly googled porn game screenshots as bait so the moroniest of morons would download it.
Is it an actual videogame?
> Is it an actual videogame?
Yeah. It plays pretty much like a typical CRPG except made in RPG Maker, which adds jank.
>CRPG except made in RPG Maker
sounds extremely janky but i just have to check it out now, i saw the DAZ3D weg art and was instantly repelled
did vlambeer work on Odinfall or is it just straight 1:1 copying nuclear throne?
>robobeat
rhythm fps where you can wallrun, double jump, slide, and ground pound. Have to shoot to the beat. I like rythm games, but im bad at fps so its not for me but might be worth checking out if you like both genres. Oh also it has rogue-lite features.
>viewfinder
i hope this game is good the demo was pretty straightforward altho i actually fricked up the last puzzle for myself by accidentally cutting the battery in half and it took my awhile to figure out what was wrong.
>Quasimorph
i only played a little of DoomRL so i cant confidently compare it to that, but its a fun rogue-like. I dont think i understand all the mechanics in it, and i havent gotten very far yet only unlocked the second area. Wish there was more items then just weapons with ranges to add variety. Also, how do you use grenades?
>En Garde!
Everyone is talking about this but i played it as well. This game is very cute and that made me enjoy it a lot. I dont know if i suck but the parry took me awhile to get used to, and i dont think im doing it right. I just hold the button down when the circle appears and it seems to be working. Im not sure if its because my SteamDeck isnt running it smoothly or not though.
>shadow gambit
was already very excited for this before the demo was announced, and the demo has made me more excited. Seems like there is going to be a lot of variety with how many characters there are. Not super excited that there is an upgrade system but it seems pretty limited. Also, the abilities seem pretty strong this time around. Will probably replay the demo with the other characters i did not use yet.
>Download 25GB for some 40 minute demo instead of waiting a couple of weeks and just downloading the entire game for free
When demos became so short and you still had to download the engine every time, they kinda became pointless for such short playtime
If a Game I Pirated feels worth it, I buy it.
Rarely happens, most I can't even be asked to finish.
damn surmount is super cute
played 45 games so far, here is my shortlist for favorites (in order)
echo point nova
deep rock galactic: survivor
surmount
peaks of yore
cross blitz
might & magic: clash of heroes - definitive edition
crop rotation
alien hominid invasion
little kitty, big city
athenian rhapsody
laika: aged through blood
notables i haven't played yet, but plan to play soon:
pull stay
sea of stars
viewfinder
soulvars
jusant
stop dead
ugly
>in b4 'deep rock galactic: survivor' isn't in the festival
the devs made demo access available in line with the festival so it basically is cope
Cross Blitz is really nice, my only complaint is that some of the animations take just a bit too long.
my only complaint is that I ran into a bug where my card got stuck when trying to place it so I had to play something else while it was stuck to my movements.
yea hoping theres a instant mode on launch
Holy frick Echo Point Nova is so fricking good. My favorite demo so far. Actually had more fun with it than ff16 and totk lmao
yea its wild, curious to see if they can mold it into something more comprehensive
If you like it check out severed steel too
What are some good non-shooters you all can recommend?
>Viewfinder
Incredible, a new puzzle masterpiece
>Stray Gods
Insanely boring and annoying. Lyrics are really bad and the writing is not great. The second song has them exposition dump the situation to Grace in plain dialogue before spoken-word singing the exact same information. There is almost nothing to the visuals, which are actually really important to the musicals. The character designs are serviceable if generic, but the posing and stage setting are Insanely lazy, empty, and amateurish. Just not much salvageable from this. The best part is when the Troy Baker character breaks the God council's unanimity as the only male and then all the cows agree with him
>to the musicals.
*To musicals, generally
A shame because a video game that's a proper musical (not just a rhythm game) is something I'm interested in.
Can't expect anything from David Gaider I guess.
Define "a proper musical."
If I remember correctly, the Rhythm Doctor demo from a few years ago had one or two levels with an actual plot to them, and I think singing as well.
You may not like it but this is what a peak musical looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYvLTTNxRCI
https://steamdb.info/app/1836730/charts/
kind of expected echo point nova to have way more followers than it does with how often it is brought up in this thread
i mean, it feels like it legit won the demo festival but is still irrelevant as frick kek
Nobody uses Follow, only Wishlist. #838 in wishlists sounds good considering how many upcoming games there are at any given time. Compare that to Captain Wayne which is at the #2000 mark and Peaks of Yore which doesn't even have a place.
Yeah. I can't imagine how competitive the market is. It looks like Steam only tracks the places of the Top 2300 or so games in wishlists. Compare that to the fact that there are 1009 demos featured in this Next Fest alone, and we get new Next Fests every season with minor fests happening in between. It's insane.
I REALLY didn't like it personally.
It feels like a prototype made in a few days.
It's not only the visuals but also the feel of it, it's very floaty, the level design is pretty boring and not that well thought-out for the kind of speed and momentum based movement, the AI is non-existent, the guns are completely generic.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is great, but the writer is haunted by an evil entity that makes her insert FRICK and SHIT into random sentences, along with a rare shitty quip. Other than that, it's pretty good at being a spiritual successor to DOS CRPGs and all that, I've wishlisted it.
I didn't mind the swearing. It makes sense with most of them being mercs and bandits
Reminder that if you got no replies I read your post and thank you for your recommendations. I've found a lot of interesting games I didn't see on the next fest page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951350/The_Delusions_of_Maximillian_Wurst/
it's like a flash skate game, but with a lot of purple prose
I enjoyed it but ymmv
Is quasimorph the only notable roguelike this time?
Redline Crooks, it's pretty fun IMO.
yes
thats not a roguelike
Everything I've played so far:
>Lies of P
You already know this one, decent clone of Bloodborne/Sekiro
>The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Nice little story game, cool artstyle and making tarot cards for readings is fun. Definitely going to play the full version.
>Echo Point Nova
Basically just a bunch of fun movement mechanics slapped on top of each other. Ends up being fun, but also a bit empty
>En Garde!
Delivers on the niche of swashbuckling fantasy that hasn't had any good games really. Seems fun but might be a bit too cutesy and casual.
>Necrofugitive
Nice action/stealth 2D game where you play as a shapeshifting monster escaping a medieval prison. Lots of build options to change your abilities, satisfying movement, good artstyle.
>Fortune's Run
The artstyle really fricks this one for me. The gameplay has potential but it's so ugly and difficult to see anything going on.
>Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of Moonfall
Coomer VtM-ripoff cyberpunk CRPG sounds right up my alley, but this just isn't it. Every aspect needs a lot of work, I'm sorry to say the dev is probably being way too ambitious with what he wants to make vs what he actually can make.
>Robobeat
A ripoff of BPM:Bullets Per Minute. Could end up being fun, but it feels really lacking now. Also the songs in the demo were pretty bad.
>Islands of the Caliph
Lack of mouse controls and directional audio make this completely unplayable
>Urbano Legends Debut
Cool idea, but feels like a flash game
>El Paso Elsewhere
Shitty Max Payne clone but it has soul
>Isekai Janken Hero
You play rock paper scissors and you get chink hentai
En Garde is my most anticipated game so far but I wish it was more fluid and less janky
VERY Likely to buy day 1
>Shadow Gambit
>Jusant
>Norland
>Laika
Will follow and look how they develop
>En Garde (very fun but also very one dimensional, it needs variety to stay interesting for 8 to 10 hours)
>Gord (very appealing visually but I think it's more a Frostpunk one and done kind of game where there's nothing besides the very scripted campaign)
>Viewfinder (devs like their audio logs and voiced protagonist way too much but were kind of lazy when it comes to interesting challenges, in the demo that is)
Didn't like even though they're appealing to me
>Wizard with a Gun
>Echo Point Nova
>Bulwark
Not for me but you may like them
>Little Kitty, Big City
>The Bookwalker
>Pizza Possum
>These Doomed Isles
>Peaks of Yore
>absorption battle racing
F-zero but with sex. Not bad, but I'm not sure if I just suck at this game or if it's ludicrously hard. Even on easy difficulty I can't break into the top 20 out of 30. I'm pretty sure the AI always perfects the pitstop sex even on easy, so even when you do make progress it's taken away from you there.
>boot up Matchless Kung Fu just to check it out before i sleep
>create character
>get a basic tutorial and then i'm free to do whatever
>train, do quests, fight people, kill people
>get btfo because an NPC went all out when sparring and raped me then felt guilty about it so he took me to a clinic
>build a house and start a business myself selling elixirs
>wow that was fun, i should probably take a break and...
>6 AM
I like how the Xia Ji expresses your confusion.
>get btfo because an NPC went all out when sparring and raped me then felt guilty about it so he took me to a clinic
Real shit? Because I will literally download the game right now if true.
If you've played so much of it can you explain to me how the frick the combat works?
Basically what you want to do is either counter the attack type your enemy is using, or use more attacks than they are so you overwhelm them and get free hits.
picrel are the advantages and disadvantages, the numbers are how many attacks of that type are available in your "deck", which are dictated by how many skills that require those attacks you have equipped (for example tortoise fist is 3 punches, the slap skill is 2 palm 1 kick).
If you complete the requirement for the skill, the card for it is activated and it becomes a free action in the next turn. And the numbers matter quite a bit, for example if you equip a sword skill that requires 6 sword attacks but you fill all your other slots with random shit, chances are you're never gonna get that 6 sword skill to go off.
Then there's the "combo" mechanics:
4 attacks of the same type at once = 1 extra attack of that type
at least 1 attack of three different types = 1 extra random attack
Also you always have two "special moves", one that lets you carry over one move into the next round (two if you train it to the next level), and another that lets you convert any attack into the type that it rolled. In the beggining you start with 4 or 5 attacks each turn so you can always have 6 if you save one. I think there's a stat that lets you have more actions per turn (or less if you have enough stacks of the cold debuff) so keep that in mind, if you're not strong enough you won't even be able to learn high level skills.
This is all explained in the "scrolls" or whatever btw.
Also the game just never fricking tells you this, stealth mode is G and construction is H.
Thanks, although by now I've more or less figured it out. I was just confused during the tutorial, ironically being told the mechanics was more confusing than just observing them in practice while fisting monkeys due to the poor translation
I was gonna mention the translation is ESL tier kek. But I don't think it's any worse than the average chink indie game, and it's probably gonna improve by the time it's out r-right bros?
Is this game like a chink Kenshi?
Its just a generic survival game but with chink animations, doing basically anything grinds some stata ala Rune Factory and you decide where towns and such are placed. Surprisingly generous demo
Combat is the worst part of it. Super repetitive.
man at least it fricking has combat. the average combat system for these chink cultivation games is a silhouette doing one animation with numbers coming out of it. i'm just glad the genre is evolving, and i hope amazing cultivation simulator 2 delivers.
I really liked the Sea of Stars demo, sadly The Invincible demo was slow and boring, even though I think the book is great.
Apart from these two there seems to be nothing for my taste. It's all Soulslike, Rogouelite, Survival or plain bad.
Laika is very good, although there's quite a bit of dissonance between the plot where a child gets tortured and crucified with his own guts, and the gameplay where I do triple backflips to style on birds
The fact that the birds will crucify a child for no reason is what gives you the motivation to do sick bullet time flips to kill them in droves and the license to use their innards as currency. The second level is them trashing your community cemetery just to be buttholes. Frick birds.
any good RPGs demos?
>eat raw monkey meat
>character shits himself for the next several minutes
Lesson learned
game? game? game?
Matchless kung fu
>Battle Shapers
It's like Gunfire Reborn but with a Megaman aesthetic and with more satisfying combat. The music is also groovy.
>Lies of P
More like lies of PEE. Not my first soulslike so i assumed i know what to expect. But nope. The combat feels too sluggish even by souls standards. The animation lock for some move are way to fricking long and the long buffer time for inputs makes you do some stupid shit. I guess it's possible to "git gud" at it but i rather skip for now.
Has anyone actually beaten the final floor of Quasimorph?
It seems like such a dice roll of not just what you find in the dungeon, but what you're given on the way in. One time I started with an automatic shotgun and found an assault rifle on the way down and ended up lasting quite a while before reaching the point where there were like 20 enemies flooding the center area at once and I just got overwhelmed by enemy gunfire, but the next run it didn't even give me any guns except the starting pistol, which broke on the first floor, I found no other good weapons, and I ended up going down there with my half-repaired pistol and one of the enemies' shitty guns and getting stomped.
It feels bad that there are rounds where you might as well just have a nice day and reroll the starting gear because you know you don't have enough firepower to win.
Tried Necrofugitive. It's kinda average and a bit janky, but overall I'm in a better mood after having played it, so I wishlisted it.