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STEAM Next Fest February 2023 |OT| Finally monseur, a waffer thin mint
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- |OT| Event
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Gimme gimme
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Let us know if there's something cool!
Needlecrash
Member
Grim Guardians has a demo up on Steam now.
Bartski
Gold Member
Steam Next Fest Feb 2023 is starting. One million demos of upcoming games, big and small. Bon apetit.
Dig in GAF and drop a link if you find gold.
store.steampowered.com
Dig in GAF and drop a link if you find gold.
Steam Next Fest: October 2023 Edition - Coming Soon
A celebration of upcoming games featuring demos, livestreams and more
chixdiggit
Member
Can't wait to finally try out Dark and Darker
64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
oh boy, time to see whats up this year
i remember seein that one on an Xbox showcase, it looked so fucking good man
VN1X
Banned
Super Auto Battlemon - Not bad actually. Visuals are pretty basic but still charming and the gameplay itself is very easy to get into. I imagine it will expand a fair bit as you get further into a run though. One I'll definitely play a bit more this week for sure.
Meatgrinder - Not sure what the point of this was. Basically a worse Clustertruck with an incredibly grating soundtrack to boot. Hard pass.
Edge of Dead - Kept crashing as soon as I tried to start a run. That said, going by just the visuals and controls in the HUB area I could already tell it seemed very derivative. Not interested.
Ravenbound:
(apologies for the audio but yeah... this is pure trash. I hate using that term but everything about it is so lacklustre and milquetoast that I instantly uninstalled it after that clip)
Meatgrinder - Not sure what the point of this was. Basically a worse Clustertruck with an incredibly grating soundtrack to boot. Hard pass.
Edge of Dead - Kept crashing as soon as I tried to start a run. That said, going by just the visuals and controls in the HUB area I could already tell it seemed very derivative. Not interested.
Ravenbound:
(apologies for the audio but yeah... this is pure trash. I hate using that term but everything about it is so lacklustre and milquetoast that I instantly uninstalled it after that clip)
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64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
was struggling to see what was wrong until i saw the dude randomly fly off into space
also that combat looks shallow and boring.
VN1X
Banned
Yeah to explain a bit further: the movement/combat feels very slow but at the same time it allows you to just spam everything which, as you can see, is bizarre. The performance is also quite rough at 1440p, especially considering the rudimentary visuals. The camera feels bad as well.
Perhaps if someone makes it past the tutorial area they can see if the game still allows you to spam everything without penalty still. didn't have the patience to stick around after that lol.
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Ocean Dweller
Member
Deceive Inc. Multiplayer Extraction Shooter
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.Pennywise
Banned
Recommend me demos! I love to try new weird stuff and fill my Steam Wishlist with games I'll forget until they come out
VN1X
Banned
Played some more and my Wishlist is already thinning out. Perfect!
Inkbound - On paper it ticks all the boxes for me: Turn-based Tactical Roguelite Battler with a nice artstyle? Sign me up! However actually playing it turned out to be a bit of a hassle and just didn't do anything for me. Pass.
Greedventory - Not sure what they were thinking with that battle system. Incredibly cumbersome and far too involved for the type of presentation and vibe it's going for. Hard skip.
Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire - Another game that should be right up my alley, on paper, but it also didn't grab me whatsoever. The simple visuals and mechanics left me cold and overall I just wasn't into it. Next!
Inkbound - On paper it ticks all the boxes for me: Turn-based Tactical Roguelite Battler with a nice artstyle? Sign me up! However actually playing it turned out to be a bit of a hassle and just didn't do anything for me. Pass.
Greedventory - Not sure what they were thinking with that battle system. Incredibly cumbersome and far too involved for the type of presentation and vibe it's going for. Hard skip.
Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire - Another game that should be right up my alley, on paper, but it also didn't grab me whatsoever. The simple visuals and mechanics left me cold and overall I just wasn't into it. Next!
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Syphon Filter
Member
Do they add more as the days pass?
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
from the guys who made monster train. pretty damn good so far.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Damn, I was just wondering the other day what these guys were up to. This looks pretty great, thanks for sharing.
ssringo
Member
Saw FightinCowboy play it a few days ago and had to give it a whirl myself. I had a good bit of fun with what's available though it certainly needs some more work. Will definitely buy when it releases. I spent countless hours playing NHL games on my SNES and this scratches that itch.
Holammer
Member
Tried Mika and the Witches Mountain & Gestalt
Gestalt gets some minus points for beating you over the head with too much lore, concepts, names and people early on. It kills pacing, remember in SotN when you had to speak with a dozen overly verbose NPCs, each of them explaining gameplay mechanics for you? (If you do, you have a brain damage).
Still, looks and feels like a very competent Metroidvania even if it insults the intelligence of the player.
Mika was a huge surprise. An open world platformer and broom-em-up where you as the witch's apprentice deliver packages in a world clearly taking inspiration from Wind Waker & Miyazaki. To the extent they for some misguided reason mapped jump to Triangle/Y just because that's what Zelda does (will be fixed).
The game is clearly award bait, but it's still the best looking game for me yet.
Still, looks and feels like a very competent Metroidvania even if it insults the intelligence of the player.
The game is clearly award bait, but it's still the best looking game for me yet.
manfestival
Member
This one is a strong recommendation for strategy and mech fans. It really is unique as far as the system that they have in place. I have been playing it for a while on Epic Games for the early access.
Anyone have any really great recommendations on this list of games? I know every year there are like 3-4 really nice titles that seem to sprout out of nowhere from this.
Buggy Loop
Member
Holy shit, from my System shock kickstarter mail, they just released a new demo on Steam for the fest??
IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
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Ocean Dweller
Member
Deceive Inc is having a raffle giveaway for an Alienware monitor
VN1X
Banned
And mopping up the remaining demos that I downloaded...
The Good:
Voidtrain - I feel like I've had this game on my radar for ages now. Did they remove it from Steam at some point? I'm seeing some EGS comments on the Steam Forums as well? Anyway, this was my first time actually playing it and I very much enjoyed it. It's doing its own thing in the Survival genre and I'm all for it. Performance was perfect and the setting itself seems rife with possibilities to really go crazy with mechanics and what not. I have no idea how progression is handled but I'm definitely intrigued and look forward to the full game. This along with Sons of the Forest will tide me over just fine!
Trinity Fusion - A bit of an odd one as at first I had no idea what it was trying to do. Is it an Action Roguelike, a straight-up Metroidvania? As it turns out it's an excellent Dead Cells-type game that combines both genres. The levels were of the bespoke variety (as far as I could tell anyway) so no RNG shenanigans to be seen there but during a run you'd find plenty of weapon upgrades and other passive boosts. The reason I was drawn to it in the first place is that I thought the visuals look very striking; with simple yet strong character design and bold colours. It does some neat things as well as it lets you swap between three characters on the fly which really opens up the possibilities in terms of going on insane "godruns". So while it takes a bit to get going in, once it opens up it quickly becomes hard to put down.
Elderand - At first glance I thought this was going to be another soulless Metroidvania-Soulslike but thankfully it turned out to be surprisingly good. It's very easy to get into and doesn't constantly stop the player in their tracks with tutorials or exposition dumps. The map is easy to read and move through and it seems like there will be a lot of customisation present in the full game what with the different weapon types, abilities and leveling system. I thought it was a lot of fun but I especially enjoyed the retro audio design which is almost reminiscent of the DOS-era of platformer games. Good stuff.
Shady Knight - As soon as you start moving around you know you have something special on your hands. The traversal mechanics here are fantastic and makes moving around a joy in and of itself. It's snappy but weighty and once you start combining the parkour with combat it felt like a constant endorphin rush. This along with Enchain are singlehandedly reinvigorating the movement-based FPS and are easily among my most anticipated games of the year.
The Meh:
Boti: Byteland Overclocked - Despite boasting some impressive visuals for an indie 3D platformer it just didn't do anything new for me that made me want to keep playing. The voice acting is especially awful with Eastern European accents so thick that even a CS:GO player such as myself had a hard time understanding what was being said. Also the technical performance itself on a 5800X 3D + 6800XT rig was poor at best. Unless you've somehow played every platformer under the sun and are still not satiated you might want to give this a go, otherwise I'd steer clear. That said, I do think this is made for a much younger audience so perhaps if you go in with those expectations you might fight some enjoyment out of it.
Deceive Inc. - I really wanted to like this as I have a soft spot for Tripwire Interactive but I just couldn't get past the convoluted mechanics of it all. I'm sure there's a decent game in there, especially if you put the time in and out-200IQ every opponent (I'm sure it could be a hit among streamers) but I couldn't be bothered myself. The gunplay wasn't anything to write home about either which is odd considering the developer. Felt very floaty and not very engaging at all.
Flame Keeper - I don't want to be too harsh on this one as it feels like a labour of love but ultimately it's a very bare bones Action Roguelike-Em-Up that I hard to force myself to keep playing. It either needs a complete (combat) overhaul or simply far more additions to run progression to make it slightly interesting. At the moment it's a slog to play and the meta-progression seems very grindy. I'll stick to Hades and Risk of Rain 2.
Picayune Dreams - Another Vampire Survivors clone albeit this time with its own flavour of visuals and mechanics. The biggest hurdle in this case being that you have to aim and shoot yourself. And while I'm sure it really shines once you start being swarmed by hundreds of enemies I couldn't muster the patiences and put it down ater 2 minutes. Not for me and I'll stick to VS, Brotato, Soulstone Survivors, or the many other clones that have come out instead.
ArcRunner - While I commend the dev(s) for their efforts I do think this is a little too derivative. The performance is fine but the visuals, while technically quite decent, lack any sort of art style and go for that bland untextured look you see everywhere these days. Along with the royalty free soundtrack it's all just a bit too indie for me lol. I'm not sure why people would choose to play this over the excellent Roboquest or the equally good Deadlink. Both of which have fantastic soundtracks. The latter of which also seems to go for the same Cyberpunk vibe as ArcRunner but boasts a much more engaging art style.
Meet Your Makes - I was one of the first that jumped on the bandwagon for this but after playing it I have to admit it did leave me a bit cold. I only tried the "Raid" mode (as I didn't feel like spending time learning the build mechanics if the main mode isn't any fun) and while the concept is very well realized I didn't very much care for it. I imagine it'll be quite exciting as a builder getting people to die a bunch of times to your traps so I'll wait for some more in-depth impressions of the 1.0 version before writing it off completely. I think it'll be one of those games for me that's more fun to watch rather than play.
The Ugly:
Paranoid - Literally unplayable and apparently I'm not the only one struggling with performance. People with 3080's or better are reporting sub-60 FPS at the best of times and even then it's a stuttering mess. Not sure that the devs were thinking in putting out this version for demo purposes.
Gestalt Steam & Cinder - One of those Metroidvania's that looks decent at first glance but actually playing it betrayed it for just another clunky Unity title that is more interested in endless tutorials and cutscene interruptions rather than providing fun and engaging gameplay. I'm probably too harsh on it but I could already tell from my brief time with it that, along with the stilted and uninteresting writing, it will simply annoy the fuck out of me (like Blasphemous did). It doesn't help that despite the decent art the actual visuals ended up looking cheap which is probably due to the way animations are handled in this typical flash/Newgrounds style. The UI and map interfaces were also quite rudimentary and so I quickly quit the game and removed it from my wishlist. It's not bad bad per se but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
The Good:
Voidtrain - I feel like I've had this game on my radar for ages now. Did they remove it from Steam at some point? I'm seeing some EGS comments on the Steam Forums as well? Anyway, this was my first time actually playing it and I very much enjoyed it. It's doing its own thing in the Survival genre and I'm all for it. Performance was perfect and the setting itself seems rife with possibilities to really go crazy with mechanics and what not. I have no idea how progression is handled but I'm definitely intrigued and look forward to the full game. This along with Sons of the Forest will tide me over just fine!
Trinity Fusion - A bit of an odd one as at first I had no idea what it was trying to do. Is it an Action Roguelike, a straight-up Metroidvania? As it turns out it's an excellent Dead Cells-type game that combines both genres. The levels were of the bespoke variety (as far as I could tell anyway) so no RNG shenanigans to be seen there but during a run you'd find plenty of weapon upgrades and other passive boosts. The reason I was drawn to it in the first place is that I thought the visuals look very striking; with simple yet strong character design and bold colours. It does some neat things as well as it lets you swap between three characters on the fly which really opens up the possibilities in terms of going on insane "godruns". So while it takes a bit to get going in, once it opens up it quickly becomes hard to put down.
Elderand - At first glance I thought this was going to be another soulless Metroidvania-Soulslike but thankfully it turned out to be surprisingly good. It's very easy to get into and doesn't constantly stop the player in their tracks with tutorials or exposition dumps. The map is easy to read and move through and it seems like there will be a lot of customisation present in the full game what with the different weapon types, abilities and leveling system. I thought it was a lot of fun but I especially enjoyed the retro audio design which is almost reminiscent of the DOS-era of platformer games. Good stuff.
Shady Knight - As soon as you start moving around you know you have something special on your hands. The traversal mechanics here are fantastic and makes moving around a joy in and of itself. It's snappy but weighty and once you start combining the parkour with combat it felt like a constant endorphin rush. This along with Enchain are singlehandedly reinvigorating the movement-based FPS and are easily among my most anticipated games of the year.
The Meh:
Boti: Byteland Overclocked - Despite boasting some impressive visuals for an indie 3D platformer it just didn't do anything new for me that made me want to keep playing. The voice acting is especially awful with Eastern European accents so thick that even a CS:GO player such as myself had a hard time understanding what was being said. Also the technical performance itself on a 5800X 3D + 6800XT rig was poor at best. Unless you've somehow played every platformer under the sun and are still not satiated you might want to give this a go, otherwise I'd steer clear. That said, I do think this is made for a much younger audience so perhaps if you go in with those expectations you might fight some enjoyment out of it.
Deceive Inc. - I really wanted to like this as I have a soft spot for Tripwire Interactive but I just couldn't get past the convoluted mechanics of it all. I'm sure there's a decent game in there, especially if you put the time in and out-200IQ every opponent (I'm sure it could be a hit among streamers) but I couldn't be bothered myself. The gunplay wasn't anything to write home about either which is odd considering the developer. Felt very floaty and not very engaging at all.
Flame Keeper - I don't want to be too harsh on this one as it feels like a labour of love but ultimately it's a very bare bones Action Roguelike-Em-Up that I hard to force myself to keep playing. It either needs a complete (combat) overhaul or simply far more additions to run progression to make it slightly interesting. At the moment it's a slog to play and the meta-progression seems very grindy. I'll stick to Hades and Risk of Rain 2.
Picayune Dreams - Another Vampire Survivors clone albeit this time with its own flavour of visuals and mechanics. The biggest hurdle in this case being that you have to aim and shoot yourself. And while I'm sure it really shines once you start being swarmed by hundreds of enemies I couldn't muster the patiences and put it down ater 2 minutes. Not for me and I'll stick to VS, Brotato, Soulstone Survivors, or the many other clones that have come out instead.
ArcRunner - While I commend the dev(s) for their efforts I do think this is a little too derivative. The performance is fine but the visuals, while technically quite decent, lack any sort of art style and go for that bland untextured look you see everywhere these days. Along with the royalty free soundtrack it's all just a bit too indie for me lol. I'm not sure why people would choose to play this over the excellent Roboquest or the equally good Deadlink. Both of which have fantastic soundtracks. The latter of which also seems to go for the same Cyberpunk vibe as ArcRunner but boasts a much more engaging art style.
Meet Your Makes - I was one of the first that jumped on the bandwagon for this but after playing it I have to admit it did leave me a bit cold. I only tried the "Raid" mode (as I didn't feel like spending time learning the build mechanics if the main mode isn't any fun) and while the concept is very well realized I didn't very much care for it. I imagine it'll be quite exciting as a builder getting people to die a bunch of times to your traps so I'll wait for some more in-depth impressions of the 1.0 version before writing it off completely. I think it'll be one of those games for me that's more fun to watch rather than play.
The Ugly:
Paranoid - Literally unplayable and apparently I'm not the only one struggling with performance. People with 3080's or better are reporting sub-60 FPS at the best of times and even then it's a stuttering mess. Not sure that the devs were thinking in putting out this version for demo purposes.
Gestalt Steam & Cinder - One of those Metroidvania's that looks decent at first glance but actually playing it betrayed it for just another clunky Unity title that is more interested in endless tutorials and cutscene interruptions rather than providing fun and engaging gameplay. I'm probably too harsh on it but I could already tell from my brief time with it that, along with the stilted and uninteresting writing, it will simply annoy the fuck out of me (like Blasphemous did). It doesn't help that despite the decent art the actual visuals ended up looking cheap which is probably due to the way animations are handled in this typical flash/Newgrounds style. The UI and map interfaces were also quite rudimentary and so I quickly quit the game and removed it from my wishlist. It's not bad bad per se but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
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Hadn't heard of this, looks promising thanks for bringing it to my attention. Goes on the follow list with nightingale.