I like Next Fest, I like trying new games and I don’t play most games for very long anyway.

I tried these:

Helskate Demo - Loved it - Really neat aesthetic, sort of like Tony Hawk games but a wilder aesthetic and has combat. I’m not great at skateboarding games but I enjoy playing them, and this one has swords!

Underspace Demo - Provisional Liked it - A space sim game that calls itself the spiritual successor to Freelancer. Well Freelancer didn’t have giant space monsters but Underspace still looks promising. I played through the first few missions, controls were decent enough that I didn’t bother to remap anything. Visual quality and style are serviceable. The fatal flaw for me is there is no mouse invert Y option so it’s really hard to play for me. There are a lot of options, but not that. The dev indicates he will be adding the option. There have been more than a few space games that I never bothered with due to no invert Y option.

The Fall of Aether Station demo - Not for me - This is a tower defense with spaceships. You have to defend a space station with various ships, but for some reason enemy ships come at it along a bright green line rather than from all directions. You can only afford one ship at first and it doesn’t fully destroy the enemy ships just sitting there stationary. You have to send the ship back on forth on the line by clicking destinations to try to sufficiently shoot the enemy ships before they attack your base. I got to two ships and the micromanagement of only 2 ships got to me and I moved on. Maybe it gets better later on.

Dungeonborne Demo - Dead on Arrival - This one looked like a cool first-person dungeon romp, but as soon as I hit Play I was confronted with a UAC prompt to install “ACE anticheat.” For what I thought was a singleplayer game. I noped out, I’ve got enough invasive crap on my system. Turns out ACE is from Tencent and is a kernel-level anticheat that can access all files on your system, and persists even when you uninstall the game. They should either remove the singleplayer tag from their game or remove the anticheat requirement.

Renaissance Kingdom Wars Demo - Liked it - but not sure what I think of this one. The art style is a bit clunky, I mean it’s light years ahead of what I could do but still. It seems to be a combination of a 4x and a Bannerlord or Total War game. It seems to have a lot of gameplay aspects and considerations. It has an expansive and fairly detailed overworld map that looks nice, town management, and also tactical real-time battles with a lot of units on the screen at once. I played about 20 minutes and was overwhelmed but intrigued. On the fence about it.

Millennia Demo - Loved it - This one is like Civ 6 or Humankind, but I think I might enjoy it more than both of those. I like the look and feel, and it does a few things differently than other 4x games. Like it allows limited unit stacking, and you can choose how much technology to research before advancing to the next age. And in fact advancing to the next age has a few options, like if you have defeated X enemy units you have some sort of Bloodthirsty option for the next age rather than the normal Iron Age or whatever. I got through the 60-turn time limit and wanted more.

Just spent a couple of hours playing gatekeeper with some friends. That was good fun, so if you like top down Rogue like looter shooters, give it a try

Next Fests are my gaming Christmases. I play way too many demos each time

Feb 24 standouts for me so far:

Meta-Ghost: The Breaking Show: Solid roguelite experience. Each of the 3 characters on offer have very different playstyles and speeds. In-run upgrades allowed for powerful, game-breaking synergies. Meta progression goes beyond just stat upgrades into new(?) territory by allowing you to customize your 4 skills (main attack, special, dodge, ultimate) in different tiers. There is also the ability to “weaponize prosthetics” (its a cyberpunk universe) that was not part of the demo. All in all looks like a promising new title for the genre.

Pepper Grinder: A fun, polished Devolver Digital title? Surely not. I heard people had some hype around this one and it seems founded. Fun, old-school type platform adventure with a movement twist - you drill through sand to get around. You can attack from under enemies, there is some puzzle elements to trap doors and bombs, collectathon bits, and YOU CAN SCROOGE MCDUCK ENEMIES. Hard not to see this one as a win. Should be another solid indy entry from the dying Devolver Digital.

Raw Metal: The artstyle and dynamic camera got me in the door. I’m not a stealth game guy, but this one has my interest. Most movement is from a top down perspective while stealthing, but if discovered, the camera shifts for a cqb fight cam while you take out your enemies. Not being successful with stealth at all times seems forgiving if you can make up for it in combat. This is a roguelike title, so patience is likely required regardless of skillset.

Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse: Commonly misconceived as the third Pocketpair EA title, its just published by them, different devs according to steam page. Shares some similarities with Hollow Knight visuals, but its really hard to see in screenshots alone that its only vaguely; in-game its more apparent that it’s not a copy. Gameplay-wise, its Dead Cells-esque roguelite without the soul/cell loss mechanic, so standard meta currency accumulation. There are also other materials you acquire that you use to build up your town and the shrines that let you purchase meta-upgrades. Combat was snappy, movement and exploration felt good for this type of game. One to watch for fans of the genre.

The Age of Hell: The game to beat for me. I am a boomer shooter fan, so I’ve been eating well for a while. But there is also plenty of crap that came with the explosion of the genre. So when you find one that steadily makes you go “oh fuck yes” as it introduces more elements in the demo is a happy time. Running on GZ doom, you have a dash mechanic, great christian demon-slaying one-liners, and a holy hammer for maximum mashing with combos to boot. But wait, you can also Mjolnir that instrument of god right at all the enemies and even reflect projectiles back. And did someone say Holy Hand Grenade? The dev did at least, cuz you get one. Toss in a dragon’s breath shotguncrossbow and chaingun with crazy RPM and I am in. Can’t wait.

I still have a bunch of demos to get through. Will add more if anything else catches my eye.

Pacific Drive is looking incredible!

Have had my eye on Lightyear Frontier since it’s announcement trailer, as well as Ultros and Pacific Drive. Star Trucker, Synergy, Welcome to Paradize look interesting from the default list. Probably gonna give Never Grave a try too. Will update when/if I get the time to play them!