My Favorite Steam Next Fest Demos
Featuring Guitars, Shoes, Squirrels, Turtles, Typing, and a Game About Sitting
Steam’s Next Fest is a semiannual event that showcases hundreds of demos for upcoming games. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with the year’s slate of upcoming titles, as well as a good way to spend a week if you have no gamin’ money whatsoever, like me. If either of these applies to you, here’s a list of the best stuff I discovered while checking out a lot of demos this week. I’ve sorted through the ones I didn’t like, didn’t finish, and didn’t understand to provide what I think is a pretty good sampling of games that grabbed my interest while literally hundreds were vying for it.
However, please note this is by no means what I feel are the absolute best games or anything like that. Playing every demo available would keep me busy until the next Steam Fest. In fact, I could name a half dozen games I still am itching to play that I just didn’t get to. This is merely meant as a potential guide should you want to dive in, as well as me trying to shine a light on stuff I liked and hope doesn’t get lost in the never-ending tidal wave of video game releases. Enjoy!
TypInc.
After being one of the hits of Next Fest at this time last year, Balatro’s influence is seen all over Steam these days. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a game being so good that it becomes a whole genre (see Grand Theft Auto III, Vampire Survivors, Slay the Spire), but I didn’t dive into many of the ones that seemed overly obvious. This one, however, set on a word processor, sure as shit did it for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a sicko that has always liked typing games, from Mario Teaches Typing to the bizarre mountain climbing-themed one we had on the computers in high school, but I had a blast with this, and am gonna play it so much. To the outside listener, it’ll sound like I’m working my ass off. But no, I’m just playing Typing of the Dead meets Balatro. Let’s fucking go.
Desktop Survivors 98
Vampire Survivors continues to influence the indie gaming world, and Desktop Survivors 98 stands out of the pack with its originality and surprising depth. Play it over top of whatever you’re doing, using only your mouse cursor to unlock a hilarious assortment of Windows95-inspired weaponry, from Recycle Bins shooting documents to Solitaire cards buzzing around the screen to a map straight out of Minesweeper. It took zero seconds for this game to win me over.
Is This Seat Taken?
Absolutely one of the best demos that I played. A cozy and funny game about putting people where they’d like to sit. What else could I tell you?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown
I’m always gonna be in the bag for the Turtles, but the boys are 100% on a video game tear these last few years. Shredder’s Revenge was a well-received ode to the beat ‘em ups of the past, and for my money, Splintered Fate is a wildly underrated Hades clone. Tactical Takedown is going on the shelf right alongside those.
The turtles lend themselves to turn based tactics naturally, and developers Strange Scaffold nailed it here. In my brief time with the game, I especially liked the way you easily overpower lone foot clan members, but when a half dozen come your way you have to be more considerate with the pattern in which you beat everyone’s ass. The board game-style pieces won’t be for everybody, but the explosive art style bursting from all parts of the game shows that its a choice, not a shortcut, and if you liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, I bet you’ll like the presentation here.
Double Whammy
This ambitious ode to the whole guitar, not just the whammy bar, is being made by a solo developer, which surprised me given how much is in here. By night, you fight nightmare creatures with your guitar (as well as use it to grind rails!), and by day, you work at your Aunt’s guitar shop. The day cycle consists of cleaning the guitar shop, selling guitars, tuning the guitars, playing the guitars, etc. You get it. It’s guitars. This is a game that loves the guitar like Crash Bandicoot loves fucking up boxes that he finds.
There’s even a guitar designer, and the peek of it in the trailer shows how in-depth users will be able to get. If this game finds an audience, it would be great to see that feature get support and allow players to download iconic guitars from users everywhere, all because one solo developer made a love letter to the guitar.
Fretless
Keeping with the theme, here’s another guitar-obsessed game. I would call Fretless a GuitaRPG1. It utilizes a dynamite pixel art style and original soundtrack, all the while incorporating every single element of a guitar into its gameplay. The axe you play (acoustic, bass, etc.) has you using riffs specific to it, allowing you three per turn. The riffs are like cards in a deck, and you choose from your hand which three you shred per turn, with different equipped strings and effects pedals providing perks. Paper Mario-inspired timing inputs make all the sense in the world here, as does the frantic ‘crescendo’ mode, which is basically a Limit Break that plays like Guitar Hero. Fretless infuses the rhythm, deckbuilding, and classic RPG genres in unique and surprising ways, and just might’ve been my favorite game of the festival.
Skin Deep
A clear highlight of Next Fest. If you tend to try goofy shit when games give you freedom, you need to play Skin Deep. Infiltrate cat-operated spaceships that have been conquered by pirates and thwart them by any means you can. I utilized the banana peel I found and threw it where someone would walk on it. This is gonna be one of the best games of the year.
Deliver At All Costs
Like Skin Deep, another game that respects that the player wants needs to fuck around when given a sandbox. I loved this demo’s sense of place, overall presentation, and most of all, that invaluable thing in a game where I get excited to see what insanity each new mission will bring. Banger.
Ruffy and the Riverside
Ruffy is a 3D platformer with a striking art style and a clever gimmick that sees you copying and pasting surfaces, i.e. turning a waterfall into a climbable wall of leaves. Honestly, you can probably look at this picture and tell if this one is your shit or not.
Haste: Broken Worlds
Sonic the Hedgehog meets, uh, ATV Off-Road Fury? This game is all about running fast and landing the right way on hills. It reminds me of Trials mixed with the control I always wished I had over Sonic but never really did. Easily one of the best demos I played this week.
Nautical Survival
With the possible exception of Desktop Survivors 98, my favorite Vampire Survivors-like game I played was this seafaring shooter. All of the tropes of the genre are here but appropriately altered for the game’s setting. Physically traversing the sea to reach different upgrade shops, as well as the solid steering mechanics, make Nautical Survival’s water setting much more than a cosmetic layer. Additionally, I love the graphics and the enemies in this game, and I found choosing whether to prioritize your boat’s steering or its weapons a creative innovation. Hidden gems like this are what I love about Next Fest.
Twisted Tower
London, 1945. A mysterious letter beckons a man to a seemingly deserted carnival. This original setting, mixed with my love for amusement parks, probably gave me the false impression I should play this game (I am not good with scary games at all). I was hoping it’d be more fun than frightening, and after vibing out in the opening area for a while and marveling at how well realized it was, I saw one (1) scary thing and realized I couldn’t handle it. I really want to know what it’s all about, but alas, it felt like a haunted house makes me feel, where cling to the question of: Why should I keep participating in my continued anxiety?
In the case of Steam Next Fest, I just politely move on to the next demo. In the unfortunate case of my wife and I during Cedar Point’s Halloweekends event, they can’t let you leave the haunted house halfway in, you just have to hurry through the rest of it and let them know you’re not into it.
Squirreled Away
In recent years I’ve greatly enjoyed video games that let me be a cute goose, bird, gator, kitty cat, other bird, and now we can add a squirrel to that list. Squirreled Away didn’t need to be anything more than a little cutie running around solving his friends’ problems to earn my recommendation, but it adds depth to this blossoming genre by including a crafting system. On top of innovating, it also adds to the feeling that it’s a great big world and you’re just a cute lil’ squirrel, as recipes for axes and other tools rely on you gathering sticks and rocks, forcing you to pay attention to things you’d just walk by in other games. Plus, naturally, it’s incredibly fun to jump from limb to limb as a squirrel.
Bambas!
Another cozy ‘go around town and help the people you meet’ game, but here, you’re shoes. As much a love letter to shoe culture as Double Whammy and Fretless are the guitar, you play as a customizable set of kicks, all while QWOPing your way around the city, stomping out cigarettes and kicking cans. You’ll be able to upload your original shoe creations in the final game, so if Bambas! catches on, you should be able to find whatever classic Nikes or Adidas tickle your fancy and hit the streets.
Clutchtime: Basketball Deckbuilder
“What are they trying to do to us, man?” I asked my fellow deckbuilding-and-basketball-nut friend, Parker, only half-jokingly, upon discovering this demo. I’d never thought about a basketball deck builder before2, but suddenly it made perfect sense. If they pulled it off, this kind of thing could really ruin me.
Honestly, my first impressions weren’t strong. If the demo offered a tutorial, I sure missed it. I jumped into a match, and quickly got my ass handed to me in a game of card ball. I thought the presentation was flat and uninspired, with plain cards being played over a plain background. The side of the screen was a mess of numbers that I only partially grew to understand. By the end of the fourth quarter, I sort of got it, so I decided to try another one, and then move on.
Then it all clicked during that second game, and soon I was growing to understand the mechanics and was actually quite impressed with the merging of basketball and turn-based card games. Without pulling a hamstring trying to explain it here, suffice to say soon I was marveling at the flow of the game, deploying different defensive schemes and carefully choosing when to foul so as not to end up in the penalty too early in the half. They did it, the crazy bastards. Suddenly, I didn’t give a fuck about card designs or backgrounds: I was hooping.
I’m going to play this game for hours and hours.
Did anyone else get there yet?
Actually, one time I was smoking weed and watching basketball and had the thought that it’s a lot like X-Com out there, a squad of guys trying to take the highest percentage shots they can. Hey, will someone make a basketball X-Com game next?