big post incoming of demos i played on my stream for Steam Next Fest
Judero
the latest game in the works by Jack King-Spooner is both exactly what you’d expect from him, and also quite different. the stop-motion, handcrafted sensibility with extremely florid, extremely Scottish writing is there. the folk music on the soundtrack also really worked - def reminded me of a lot of indie music that was big in the late 90’s and the 00’s that i used to listen to, but maybe that’s because i fell out of listening to that kind of music. i actually said on stream that it made me think of the sort of mythological folk art this game is really trying to embody is the stuff that the Zelda games draw on. but this feels closer to the root - one of the folk songs even sorta sounds like the Kakariko Village theme to me.
but yeah, what’s different is that this game is not a surreal wandering simulator but is actually more of a hack and slash action RPG. you’re a beefy action figure looking guy who goes around and stabs ornery demon-looking animals with your staff, though you also have a bunch of different kinds of attacks and you can possess them in order to help you progress.
this is a game where different attacks require different combos (something that immediately turned me off… i guess i’m just not really a fan of button combos outside of fighting games), but there’s also an auto attack thing which i turned on. this game can be a little difficult at times because it’s pretty easy to accidentally bump into things and have it eat your health meter way down before you can get out. the save points are pretty generous, and there are health pickups you can find… but if you accidentally swing at them they disappear. this gets into some of my frustrations with the game.
so of course this game has boss fights. and i guess everyone feels okay about making extremely hard boss fights now because of Dark Souls, but i kind of hate it. maybe it would be okay if the underlying mechanics of fighting were a little tighter and more sound. but i really struggled on that last boss of the demo because the auto-attacks will just seemingly randomly switch in ways that put your character in harm’s way. i was trying to do either projectile attacks or quick slashes and then move out of the way, and the character kept doing incredibly slow attacks that locked my in place for a second or two, or did this aggressive lunge attack that immediately put me in harm’s way and made me get hit. it was extremely frustrating and felt kind of random, and like i didn’t have a lot of control.
eventually i did beat the boss - really easily? i suddenly was just able to stun them and do massive combos. which makes me believe the difficulty automatically adjusted to be easier. which i guess is one way to solve the problem? but it would have been nicer if i could have completed it in a way that felt earned, rather than kinda random.
but this is a demo and maybe these things will be ironed out in the meantime, i dunno. i really hope so, because the game really leans on this more than you’d expect for a Jack King-Spooner game and i enjoyed basically every other aspect of the game.
Mosa Lina
the first observation you might have about this game is that it looks like Baba Is You, which is true. it is a similar sort of visually simple but also chaotic puzzle game. but in terms of being a mysterious cryptic puzzle platformer game with mechanics you have to figure out yourself, it’s more in line with something like Starseed Pilgrim. you have four of a bunch of different abilities that you’re given randomly in each level, and your job is to figure out how to use them in order to collect the fruit on each level and exit.
i honestly really enjoyed this game. it has a sort of sense of mystery of figuring out the game mechanics that seemed more common of indie games 10-15 years ago, and i miss now. the janky ragdoll physics also made me think of a lot of 2000’s flash games. it’s just about playing around in these little spaces and fighting with whatever slightly absurd abilities you have to achieve them. the sensibility also feels kind of weird in a way that i like - the background music ambience reminds me of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 and the background rotates in kind of a nice way. the sort of chaotic surrealness makes the game feels like it has a distinct identity from a lot of other puzzle games in this genre, and feel just as compelling as Baba Is You or Starseed Pilgrim to me.
there’s not really much else to say about this one - but if you enjoy these types of games at all, i’d really recommend it. the full release is coming very soon (i think in another week or two, after steam next fest?) so i’ll post about it again on here.
goblinAmerica
as you might expect, this is a Cruelty Squad inspired? shooter that goes for maximum visual chaos. for the record, i’m a big fan of Cruelty Squad. but this one is very much in the camp of “i wanted to like, but found it really irritating” unfortunately. it starts with a vaguely condescending/unnecessary tutorial level that exposes you to the writing, which is weird and florid but in a way that is really hard to take seriously - because it feels so disconnected from everything else. it feels very undergrad-level trying to be edgy and colorful while not really knowing what it is.
i guess disconnected is the best way to describe the experience. it just feels like a giant, rough mess. there are cool moments and visual flourishes but the game feels so confused about what it wants to be. is it an immersive sim where you walk around and talk to the different goblin NPCs? (who all look the same and say pretty much the same thing). is a game where you have to play with speed to get to the end, so you can collect various medals and awards (which, then why would you put several secrets and side areas and NPCs to talk to if that were the case)? how seriously am i supposed to take the writing? how am i supposed to approach this game? and why would i want to engage when it just feels so rough and unpleasant in so many ways?
believe me, i want to like games like this. i want to support stuff that is weird and idiosyncratic in the midst of so many indie games that look identical and are all copying each other’s mechanics. and i’ve been a fan of several walking sim-oriented games that look kind of like this one. but i just found this one off-putting. it’s the kind of thing someone might play and say “Cruelty Squad was a bad idea” which really hurts me to my core, bc i love that game.
that said, it seems pretty early on and the demo only let you really experience two pretty short levels. so maybe some of these things will improve over time? but i dunno, the whole base of the game just seems confused. it doesn’t have the thematically coherent worlds of a Cosmo D game, or the tight (if slightly wonky) action of a Cruelty Squad. and i’ve found that the more work people put into making games like these, the more they’re probably resistant to criticism or change on them even if they would be massive objective improvements.
Octopus City Blues
this is one of those games that was kickstarted over a decade ago, and now seems to be finally coming to light. and it’s… really good! the writing is great - sorta like the goofier old LucasArts adventure games meets Phillip K Dick. you play an absolute loser character named after Franz Kafka who lives in this sort of dystopian sci-fi world filled with tentacles and giant creatures where you’re just kind of a pawn for other people.
in the demo you basically, at the behest of your employer who is basically controlling everything you do, walk around and gossip with people around the town about various things happening and try to procure information about the world in order to progress. the first major little quest was to find out info about these kinds of creatures that there are rumors a guy who owns a restaurant themed around those creatures are kidnapping and disappearing.
the visuals are so good - so detailed, yet feel really fully realized. there are Cronenbergian moments of body horror, and some darker themes going on in the story. it feels dense but still very accessible, and very sharp in its humor and characterizations.
don’t have much else to say here. but if there’s still some juice left in the game world that hasn’t all been squeezed out by endless clones and reboots and layoffs, hopefully this one becomes popular when it comes out because it is a very likable game and absolutely deserves it.
Holstin
i’ve seen this one make the rounds as viral gif/screenshot because of the admittedly very cool art style and the kind of isometric/third person hybrid camera mode for the combat. the first demo i played, though, didn’t feature any combat. you just explore a house that’s been infested by these large tentacle-like things that go away when light is shined on them.
the main mechanic of the house exploration was really just trying to navigate around the tentacles, and using the light you have via rearranging fuses and lightbulbs you pick up in the house to get to new areas and discover more about the world. honestly with how lovingly realized the house you were in was down to every detail, it felt like a joy. while the “indie top-down Resident Evil” aspect of navigating the game reminded me of Signalis, i really like the setting of this game more than the slightly generic anime robot sci-fi of Signalis. i obviously don’t know how the combat is - i didn’t try that demo. but if the exploration is this nice, and the environments are this lovingly-realized this game will definitely be a winner for me.
basically the only complaint is the two adult characters you encounter (the kid is surprisingly okay) are super aggressive in their writing and voice acting. there’s simply no need to make the main character’s assistant that much of a bitch when the general tone of the game feels more like a “take at your own pace and explore the environment for clues” kind of survival horror game. but this particular scenario for the demo is not supposed to be in the final game, so maybe it’ll either a) make more sense in context or b) they’ll tone it down, because it’s really the only thing i didn’t like about the game.
Peripeteia
a Deus Ex/EYE: Divine Cybermancy style dystopian immersive sim game. they really went above and beyond to recreate the feel of Deus Ex 1, down to the menus and interface and the feel of the movement.
as a fan of Deus Ex 1, you think i would love this. and yes… i really really want to like games like this, because this sort of style is something that i feel quite attached to. but it actually just made me feel uneasy. because the main appeal of this game to me were the absolutely giant empty dystopian environments. they feel very cold but very dreamlike, and like it’s almost incidental that you’re occupying them. i think this is great. the problem is i didn’t really get much else out of the game.
there is something here, there is something unique about this game. but like… the immersive sim elements did not really compel me much at all, they just felt rough and random. i wasn’t really sure what the game was expecting me to do at all. i never understood what caused enemies to even notice me, vs. just let me walk by - it felt kind of broken. sometimes abrupt loud noises or things would play without me having any indication of what was happening - i couldn’t tell if it was a bug or intentional. in general i felt like i was just sort of randomly beset by things happening that i wasn’t able to predict. it’s not just that the environment was hostile, it’s that it felt incomplete and confused. the combat felt really janky and not particularly fun either.
similar to goblinAmerica, i wish people would feel more comfortable just focusing on their strengths and making something that is mostly a walking sim/exploration game, because the massive scale of these environments is really impressive and i enjoyed wandering through them. but i guess we don’t live in that world currently. people want to make “their dream game” even though a lot of the elements that feel like a very poorly executed version of something else weigh down the unique things about the games. the total obsession with aesthetic above everything else some people in indie game world have right now is really going to come around and bite them in the ass, though.
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anyway, videogames are still here. and i’m glad i got to play all of these even if a couple of them left me cold. my endorsements of the bunch are Mosa Lina, Octopus City Blues, and Holstin. and Judero was good too outside of some frustrations with the combat. and Peripeteia at least had some memorable moments.
