Steam Next Fest - Fall 2023

[JDR13]

What demos have you tried? I've downloaded...

The Thaumaturge
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Sovereign Syndicate
Enshrouded
Hollow Cocoon

I've only played The Thaumaturge so far. I played an older demo of Sovereign Syndicate before, but this one is apparently different in some ways. I hope to try most of them today.

 

[Redglyph]

Good thing that you made that post, it completely slipped my mind.

I'm not sure what's good. The Thaumaturge looks interesting. I've just seen Urban Explorer (simple parkour / adventure) that I'd like to try too, and Master of Chess (chess game) but I'm not sure I have the patience to play long games of chess right now.

Maybe Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express (detective / adventure).

It's not easy to browse since those festivals are invaded by a lot of junk.

 

[Pladio]

What demos have you tried? I've downloaded...

The Thaumaturge
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Sovereign Syndicate
Enshrouded
Hollow Cocoon

I've only played The Thaumaturge so far. I played an older demo of Sovereign Syndicate before, but this one is apparently different in some ways. I hope to try most of them today.

Let us know what your thoughts are

 

[JDR13]

I wasn't overly impressed with The Thaumaturge. It looks nice, but I found the gameplay too simplistic. It's basically a detective game where you spend most of your time running around looking for clues. There's some combat, but it's very basic and not engaging enough imo.

 

[purpleblob]

I tried out Sovereign Syndicate - only played like 20mins and got bored. It tries to be Disco Elysium with all the different aspect of your mind talking but without the oomph. We don't even get to create a character - experiencing story of 3 premade characters. It also felt a bit like adventure game where you find items to figure out how to open crates etc. Definitely was not for me.

 

[JDR13]

Yeah, I played the new demo of Sovereign Syndicate for awhile before realizing it's the same as the old demo at least in terms of location and characters. It's exactly the same as I remember, so I'm not sure what they changed.

I also don't see how it's an RPG. To me, it's an adventure game. Cool setting though, and the writing seems good enough. It also has a very diverse range of characters.

It's not for me either, but I think people who tend to focus more on the narration will enjoy it if they like the setting.

 

[Vaelith]

I installed a number of demos to try over the next couple days while waiting for Lords of the Fallen:

- Interregnum Chronicles: False Prophet
- Kristalia
- Skybreakers
- Eldrimar
- Tactic Legends
- Arksync
- Twilight Wars
- Unawake
- The Last Flame
- Empty Shell
- Magicraft
- Spellrogue
- Dungeons 4
- Sandwalkers

We'll see what little gems we can find.

 

[JDR13]

I tried Star Ocean: The Second Story for a bit. Not much to say except that it's your typical JRPG as far as the characters and dialogue go. The two main protagonists are both teens of course, and they talk like teens. I didn't play for long, and it's definitely not something I'd purchase.

I also tried Passageway of the Ancients. It's an old-school crpg that was mentioned in a news post not long ago. It has RTwP combat and reminds me of NWN 2 in a way, but that's probably mostly due to the fact that it looks like something from the early 2000's graphically. I found it a bit too slow and clunky for my taste, but someone looking for a classic crpg experience might like it more.

 

[Redglyph]

I quickly tried Urban Explorer but it will need some serious polishing work on the controls, the graphics, and the gameplay for me to play it. You can do some parkour like sprinting, jumping over things and along walls, but the controls cannot be remapped and are not very comfortable (like using both Shift and Ctrl + WASD). It's feels clunky too.

There's apparently no more to it than breaking in and exploring areas under surveillance.

 

[JDR13]

I was looking at Urban Explorer but ultimately passed on it.

I tried Interregnum Chronicles: False Prophet. It's a post-apoc survival game where you control a party looking for supplies while going on various missions. It has tactical turn-based combat, and the battles reminded me of Urban Strife.

The travel system is a lot different though. You move the party around the map from a birds-eye view, and looting is done automatically when you click on a house, etc. That's also where the survival aspect come into play as you have to rest, eat, stay warm, etc. My main character actually died from sickness while traveling.

I'd say it's a maybe for me. I liked the combat, but I'm not a big fan of the survival elements and they're pretty unforgiving.

 

[Redglyph]

I played a while with Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express. It's like a cheaper Sherlock Holmes game, in which you have to investigate a murder by talking to people in a train that is stuck in the mountains and use a mind map for the deductions.

It's OK, but it feels more on rails (!) than the Sherlock games, and the experience is very limited, so I think it could quickly feel boring and repetitive. There are a few mini-puzzles that feel slightly out of place and are very simplistic (one of which told me a solution was wrong, then when I gave the same answer again, it said it was right...). The game completely broke after 1 hour, replaying an old conversation, showing an NPC in double, and leaving me in a position where I couldn't do anything, so I called it a day. I suppose the devs will have to investigate what went wrong without me.

The game is supposed to be released in a few days, but there's no price tag and I doubt it's stable enough for that.

 

[Redglyph]

I briefly tried The Thaumaturge, but it's one of those devs who think everyone has a qwerty keyboard and don't allow remapping the keys. It also seems to stress the GPU a lot for no particular reason.

 

[JDR13]

I played the demo for Retrowave World. It's a cool nostalgia trip to the 80's. Not much there in terms of gameplay though, and it needs some polish. It has some cool 80's synth music tracks.

I'm currently playing the demo for The Inquisitor.

 

[JDR13]

Finished The Inquisitor demo. It kind of feels like a poor man's Witcher. You play the role of a 16th-century inquisitor investigating people for various offenses, and there are some supernatural elements. The demo has you interrogating people and looking for clues in a city while following rumors of a vampire.

It feels like it has potential, but like a lot of these demos, it's in serious need of some polish. It's also lacking production values. I'd call it a AA game at best.

 

[JDR13]

Japanese Drift Master. An open-world racing game set in a region of Japan where you speed around and perform drift stunts for points. It's not my cup of tea, but it's one of the more polished demos I've tried.

The visuals are decent, and the controls are excellent. The only thing I had a hard time with was the orientation of the car since Japan uses a left-side driving system like the UK. Weirdos...

 

[Redglyph]

Drifting in itself is a weird notion. Those Japanese are such tyre wreckers

 

[JDR13]

Enshrouded

I'm not sure why I waited so long to try it, but I regret waiting because it's easily the best demo from this Next Fest that I've played.

It's an action-RPG/survival hybrid that will probably remind some people of the more recent Zelda games. It features a very large open-world map, and all the locations are handcrafted. You can tell these guys placed a strong emphasis on exploration.

It seems like a very solid game with strong production values. WIshlisted.

 

[Shagnak]

Enshrouded

It seems like a very solid game with strong production values. WIshlisted.

I'll have to give that one a go. I tried several, but none really did anything for me. That Deep Rock Galactic Survivor (a Vampire Survivor-like) was particularly uninspiring.

Edit: added to my wishlist as well. I only played 15-20 minutes, but that was enough to tell me that it had potential.

 

[Dafela]

I tried All Quiet in the Trenches. It is quite simple group management game, but I was surprised how engaging it was.

I tried Tharmaturge and I didn't like voiceacting and even those dialogues. It seems to be ambitious, but I couldn't get into it. I think it was in this game where movement was quite strange, like if they cannot decide if they want wsad or mouse movement. Games with WSAD but without mouse turning around are usually labelled as "better with controller" and I'm not sure why they don't implement it in other games. Here it seems like they should decide what they want and make it well IMHO.

I tried Pale Beyond from Bellular and I didn't like the dialogues aswell. There was no introduction, no description of what those decisions will do. There was some tutorial, but I don't like tutorials

I tried Gangs of Sherwood and was quite relieved when it was criticized in their forums aswell - I'm not the target audience, so I wasn't sure if it is only me, but it is very pragmatic game with no immersion, the graphics/videos are gorgeous, but the design doesn't try to hide that it is a coop boss fight game, which I'm not sure is good or bad for such game. The tutorial was too long. Also it is one of those game with 2-3 skills like in Dark alliance, so I cannot imagine how someone can play it for a long time. But there are players who do it I guess, so maybe that is why companies/publishers release such coop games over and over and for some reason they all fail, even with higher budget/more experienced studios, so I wonder why they think this game will be better - I assume it was requested by Nacon? Gangs of Sherwood is a great idea of group combat focused game, but I would prefer more PVE version of it - like Dragon Age Inquisition group management combat.

EDIT:
I didn't play Monster hunter, so I keep forgetting that is the inspiration I guess for all of those coops. But I don't know why it was successfull and all the others arn't.
I actually enjoyed Dragon age Inquisition multiplayer, but maybe it was because there was a lot of player there, who wasn't toxic, after some experiences from Warframe and ESO, I don't play multiplayer anymore.

 

[Dafela]

I tried also Flame in a Winter and I couldn't get into it aswell, it was a story from WWII with a lot of dialogues which lowered or added some affinity points. I guess such pure dialogue based games arn't for me.