It is steam next fest night of a thousand demos time, I looked through a bunch and played a few. Ones I feel like noting at this point:
Resnijars just keeps releasing games at quite a clip, this one seems to be about being trapped in a seemingly haunted mansion and having to figure out various puzzles to get through. In terms of their demos from the past year I’d put it below Stardust Demon but above Mythic Mire, but it is pleasant enough.
God bless Renegade Sector, all their games look like this and I love them for it.
my god, another one! i didn’t really see much to get excited about with Mythic Mire, but obvs i like a lot of their other games so i will check this out.
i’m going to probably stream myself playing demos later this week like i usually do with Next fest. here are a few games i noticed that i may or may not play:
i thought the concept of this one is interesting. just the idea of jumping around and latching onto different floating debris in space seems appealing to me.
this is from the person who made that Sanguine Sanctum game year’s back (also another one called Knight’s Try). i am almost certainly going to try this out because i like weird sports games like this that mess with the formula in creative ways.
this looked like a cute platformer where you’re a floating bat with cool gfx. makes me think of Bubble Ghost or something like that from what i can see from the screenshots. probably will check this one out.
just wanted to note the incredibly beautiful pixel art on this fishing game that i’m otherwise not super interested in.
one of the few games i’ve been genuinely interested in from the Wholesome Direct stream from years ago is finally getting a demo. i like lizard and puzzle so i will probably play it.
Tonight I played Erica which is an honest to goodness FMV choose your own adventure game on the PS4. It wanted me to download a companion app and control the game with my phone but I wasn’t about to do all that. Maybe I should have because the alternative is controlling everything with the damn touchpad on the DS4 which is awkward at best and unreliable at worst.
But sometimes, the camera work and the controls will provide the sublime illusion that you are making this living, breathing actress on your screen do things. Most of the time you’re doing awkward drawn out David-Cage-ass mundane actions like opening suitcases with an awkward series of swipes. Or failing to choose dialogue option before a timer runs out because of the squirrelly controls scheme.
The plot is sort of a mess. The acting is frequently kind of wooden. Absolutely nobody ever acts the way a real person ever would and maybe that’s most video games but the presentation here makes it much more obvious. The actors all really tried to do what they could with this script and I salute them.
Ostensibly there are a number of ways the plot could have gone based on my choices but I’m disinclined to have another go even though this game was mercifully brief. I’m satisfied with the ending I got, anyway.
Nice locations they shot on, as well as some nice set/prop design. Costumes are sort of all over the place and honestly the time period the game is set in seems really vague.
So I guess this sounds really negative but you know what? I liked it. Maybe novelty is buoying my opinion here but screw it, this still felt like a breath of fresh air. Maybe I’m just tired of the other kinds of stuff I’ve been playing.
There are so many games I own that I’ve never played, a bunch I’m at least knee deep into and ought to finish, and here I am, playing Rise of the Tomb Raider.
So, two things!
Holy shit this game still looks fantastic. I thought Tomb Raider 2013 was still holding pretty strong, but this outclasses it in every way. Which leads to…
Goddamn is the story, writing, and acting better in this game. Everyone was so fucking obnoxious and quippy in Tomb Raider 2013, and this game feels like they exorcised whatever demons plagued that thing. There’s still some heavy-handed foreshadowing, but it’s not the “beats you over the head and spells it out for you every three seconds” shit the first game did.
I think my only gripe is they go fuckin’ wild with the systems in this one. Lotta shoulders buttons to be held to craft stuff, lotta “thanks for coming way down this cave, but come back later when you’ve got the shit to open this door” affairs.
I’ll…I’ll keep playing it. I know this is a good one. It’s long as shit but it’s a good one.
It’s just still funny to think Microsoft threw a shitload of money to keep this off PS4 for a year (going as far as funding…I wanna say it was Sumo Digital? To make a slightly pared down Xbox 360 version, that I still kinda wanna check out all these years later, in the same sicko way I still kinda wanna play MGSV on PS3), as a counter to Uncharted 4, only for Uncharted 4 to get delayed for a year and pissing off like half the game’s fanbase.
Alec (Renegade Sector) is the best! Not only are his games cool explorations of the pulp-action space he’s most interested in, I also have a personal stake in thinking he’s rad: he was one of the three cohosts of the short-lived TIGSource podcast (the other two being myself and godsavant). Short-lived because I am a dogshit editor.
If you’ve never played Dadaists Gone Wild you should give it a shot.
continuing to play a little death stranding each day, surprisingly good game for shortish sessions? run a quick mission, build a structure or two, log off
fun little stealth bit today where i had to steal something from a MULE camp, so i rode up on a trike with no cargo, dismounted and snuck thru the grass, bound two dudes and stole the loot, then ran like hell when guard #3 found his buddy and they started looking around. thank god it’s not like mgs where they shoot you in the back (the no killing rule is really interesting this way, love the worldbuilding of it. it’s sort of socialist, the idea that we’re all stuck here together and have to figure out ways to coexist)
i’m taking my time and enjoying the pacing, i’ve really grown to enjoy not rushing through things and having time to reflect instead
got the Feather & now have to remember all the spots that it might be useful for. having a wonderful time on minibosses where I hope I can hit them more and faster than they can hit me
My buddies and I tried out a system called Archipelago. It’s a network that connects people playing emulators and games across multiple systems. It does this not so everyone can compete against each other in the same game. No, it connects people so everyone can play separate randomized games, alone together. My fans of parallel play, this is for you.
I chose a randomized Landstalker for the session. My friends chose Undertale, Pokemon Red, Sonic Adventure 2, and Mario 64. You might be wondering, “what would connecting Mario 64 with Landstalker over a network accomplish?” Good question. Archipelago basically blends the if/then statements of games together. So instead of getting a star for defeating the Whomp King in Super Mario, you get your friend the Fly HM in Pokemon.
We played like this for like 3 hours straight. I got to the witches’ hut where she turns you into a dog. I streamed my game and made everyone watch as I tortured myself with isometric platforming. I promised that I liked the game more than Link to the Past. All in all, it was a pretty good time.
few demo games that look neat to me which havent been mentioned
Kind of an irresistible premise here:
I like how the visuals implement 3d scans in contrast with typical game assets to emphasize unreality and play with scale. Based(?) on a student game released in 2022, which is on itch for free as well:
How the tactics work is unclear to me but I really like the choice to set this in 14th century Italy, have you convert rather than kill, and have the little papercraft lookin tweened characters be like…merchants & catholics:
Classical music lumines with tetronimoes ? maybe? I can’t actualy tell exactly how it works, keys on a piano are set to different colors that clear when they play leading to combos ? I guess that’s why there’s a demo
I just like that this looks like a webcomic.
Proudly using game boy camera for all your npc dialogue is a marker of good taste.
These last two just charm me in looking like pure expressions of the contrasting paths most people take towards their first ‘official’ game.
raw, uncut jank. the jankiest jank. the return of Jaleco made manifest. awkward movement, easily abusable mechanics, a bizarre localization. the demo ending with the script invoking 64th Street.
perfect. don’t change. stay like this. be honest.
from the same perverts who mades Streets of Rage 4. it’s a roguelike but you won’t care
because the combat feels that good. it’s not as perverted as the “please do big juggle thanks” kind of gameplay ethos SoR4 stole from the Sengoku 3 cab they have in the office but instead reward you with boss knowledge checks by letting you parry/clash with heavy attacks and skills, which means parrying is an offensive tool, like it’s supposed to be
this is actually legitimately good and I will give Dotemu another 30 bucks because I am a rube
i think the items/builds are pretty boring (might be a demo thing but items like “5% dodge” do not inspire confidence!) but the combat is much better than Hades sooooo probably a thumbs up from me too?
i do have to admit though i’d be much more excited about it if it featured systems that weren’t so well-trodden. if designers insist on only making roguelikes the least they could do is make something that isn’t literally Spelunky/Isaac/Slay the Spire/Hades.
I tried this and… well I hope you enjoy it at least. Love the concept, think the controls/physics are a problem.
Also bounced off Tamashika for similar reasons, you basically have a knife and gun to Post Void your way through things and I just sadly hate the knife? It is basically a QTE with the timing on pressing the button so bafflingly late with the penalty being instant death/back to the start of that run/section that it both hurts my brain and feels bad, like running through the halls blasting stuff then having to go really slow whenever something gets close is among the most baffled I’ve been by a game design choice in a good bit. Hope they fix it, game would be fun otherwise.
I did enjoy the demos for Bulbo’s Belief System (puzzle platformer where you have to learn/forget concepts like gravity and jumping) and UVSU (you have to play through rooms multiple times switching between the character trying to reach the goal and the character who has to kill the player’s ghost from getting to said goal, one upping your prior self a set number of times to succeed), the latter even gets in on the recent “let’s make everything look like claymation” trend I am still a fan of.
The demo for Dead as Disco is pretty cool because it lets you import whatever songs you’ve got, set the BPM and then brawl to 'em. Ripped a few from YouTube and it kinda works, it’s neat.
Also finished the demo for Ooo, which I guess is from the developer of ElecHead, which I still gotta play. It’s really cute! The puzzles are pretty clever!
