Game News Steam Next Fest, October 2024: Demos of upcoming RPGs available from October 14th to 21st

[Infinitron]

Tags: Burden of Command; Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector; Cyclopean; Dreamate Games; eBrothers; Eternal Vigilance Entertainment; Evil Gingerbread Studio; Flint: Treasure of Oblivion; Green Tree Games; Jump Over The Age; Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch; Never Second in Rome; New Arc Line; Ocean Drive Studio; Savage Level; Schmidt Workshops; The Adventurers; Those Who Rule; Whispers of the Eyeless

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest

Burden of Command
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Cyclopean
Flint: Treasure of Oblivion
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch
Never Second in Rome
New Arc Line
The Adventurers
Those Who Rule
Whispers of the Eyeless​

 

[Fenix]

Citizen Sleeper looks interesting, though didn't look into anything other.

 

[Saint Scylla]

The original Citizen Sleeper was outstanding. I'll try the demo, thanks.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I wish more developers would explicitly state whether or not the save data from the demo will carry over to the full game. The only way I'll devote time to a demo these days is if the save data carries over.

 

[flabbyjack]

New Arc Line

'New Arc(anum) Line'

Nice, probably an intentional reference by the dev.

There are 487 RPGs listed in the Steam Next Fest 2024....

 

[Alienman]

Best one I tried so far is the Amerzone remake.

Very nice atmosphere and mechanics, from the little I played.

 

[0sacred]

The Adventurers looks neat. Anyone tried the demo?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

The Adventurers looks neat. Anyone tried the demo?

I very briefly.
Wrote a bit about it on game's thread.

 

[Jaesun]

Best one I tried so far is the Amerzone remake.

Very nice atmosphere and mechanics, from the little I played.

The original Amerzone was a lot of fun. It was however a bit old but still playable. Am hoping they do the original justice with this remake.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The Adventurers looks neat. Anyone tried the demo?

I tried a handful of Steam demos recently:

tl;dr: A bunch of shit, the only ones I'd consider picking up so far are: TMNT: Splintered Fate and Those Who Rule but not in that order.

Depths of Faveg: Bizarre, it's like a roguelike with blobber combat that strips out actually moving around or exploring the dungeon with clicking "explore" and giving you a random battle every time you do that, choosing to either fight random battles or fight a boss and descend to the next dungeon level (or die). Descending a level provides a rest that refills your hp and mp. Class picks for level up are random with your choice to pick one of three to go up a level each time. Not my cup of tea, I'd rather just play a blobber for this sort of thing.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion - not sure yet, I got stuck in dialogue hell and had to run out. What little gameplay I've seen before makes me skeptical, but I reserve judgement for now.

Magic Cauldron - Dungeons: Complete hot garbage. Eye of the Beholder but with one guy (as I recall, I basically uninstalled right away and barely remember it other than noping out pdq)

Never Second in Rome: Sweet mix of ancient Rome and clicking next to read text while watching numbers go +1 next to a skill or something. I don't even want to play this again if you paid me.

Saturated Outer Space: Interesting idea, play a space search and rescue team in tactical turn based combat... with the jankiest shovel ware presentation I've seen in years. Probably not worth a $0.35 coupon to Taco Bell.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate: Isometric action roguelike TMNT brawler take on Hades. I sort of like this one, but there are better games in this space. Only worth it if you both like this style of game and are either a TMNT fan or a kid.

The Adventurers: We have Battle Brothers at home.

Stellar Terminus: Like playing a space blobber on your graphic calculator in 1990. Nope.

Combat Complex: Some sort of progression oriented twin stick shooter except moderately slow paced and clunky. There are way better games to scratch this itch.

Those Who Rule: Let's make Fire Emblem as a westernized flash game. ... I actually really like this, but I also have a soft spot for this genre. I'd totally buy this if I'm looking for something to play in this space. Assuming it's not coming out priced at like $60 or something.

Whispers of the Eyeless: Cool art style, not much else going on. It kind of reminded me of a less interesting Darkest Dungeon. YMMV. I won't be looking at this again.

Things I will theoretically try for at least 3 minutes each before NextFest ends:

• Flint: Treasure of Oblivion - just to get into the actual gameplay loop and see if I hate it.
• Spirit of the Samurai
• Stone Madness
• The Precinct
• Neon Blood
• Worshippers of Cthulhu
• Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch
• Knights in Tight Spaces
• Lurks within Walls
• New Arc Line (less sure about this, I was pretty sure it was going to suck before I saw comments that say the demo sucks)

Honourable mention:

Not a demo but I finally got around to trying The Textorcist which is insanely discounted and I've had in my library for years. What a bizarre, yet inspired game. Love it.

 

[mediocrepoet]

A few more things down:

Knights in Tight Spaces: I haven't played it but from the dev's messages in the demo, I assume this is like their earlier game Fights in Tight Spaces. Some sort of deck building strategy game based on grid movement, positioning, and resource management. It looks interesting but wasn't really what I was looking for. Seems to be decent quality though as long as the visuals don't bug you.

Worshippers of Cthulhu: Anno Cthulhu fhtagn ia ia!

 

[mediocrepoet]

Wasn't going to do anymore tonight, but I decided to finish up the Flint demo before winding down.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion: This is really interesting. Some of the UI stuff is a bit clunky, like having to hold the mouse button to confirm actions, but it also offers you more options than many games of this style such as environmental interactions and attacks, various weapon types, trips and knockdowns, etc. that fit with the swashbuckling pirate theme. The art style is fairly cool and the dialogues and story is done with captions and comic book panel interactions. The dice rolls, skill checks, and overall presentation reminds me of either a TTRPG or board game style presentation for both difficulty checks and for progression.

Not a perfect game by any stretch, but one that seems quite promising and actually feels "piratey" unlike most other "pirate" games. For instance, the XP for your captain and crew is actually your loot that you're sharing out, giving a tension between paying out your crew to level them up (and add a mechanical reason to pay them other than having a timer or something) versus keeping money to keep your ship repaired and supplied.

Added it to the wishlist, I probably liked it most out of all of these demos so far, or at least about as much as Those Who Rule (which isn't really fair because that's just re-skinned Fire Emblem). It's certainly the one that I've found most interesting and that felt like its own thing so far.

 

[Nortar]

Wasn't going to do anymore tonight, but I decided to finish up the Flint demo before winding down.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion: This is really interesting. Some of the UI stuff is a bit clunky, like having to hold the mouse button to confirm actions, but it also offers you more options than many games of this style such as environmental interactions and attacks, various weapon types, trips and knockdowns, etc. that fit with the swashbuckling pirate theme. The art style is fairly cool and the dialogues and story is done with captions and comic book panel interactions. The dice rolls, skill checks, and overall presentation reminds me of either a TTRPG or board game style presentation for both difficulty checks and for progression.

Not a perfect game by any stretch, but one that seems quite promising and actually feels "piratey" unlike most other "pirate" games. For instance, the XP for your captain and crew is actually your loot that you're sharing out, giving a tension between paying out your crew to level them up (and add a mechanical reason to pay them other than having a timer or something) versus keeping money to keep your ship repaired and supplied.

Added it to the wishlist, I probably liked it most out of all of these demos so far, or at least about as much as Those Who Rule (which isn't really fair because that's just re-skinned Fire Emblem). It's certainly the one that I've found most interesting and that felt like its own thing so far.

Aye, Flint looks like a quality game.
I did not recognize what system they use, but it seem to be relatively complex and well fleshed out.

The controls felts kinda junky though and the game does need some extra polish.
During the demo I had a couple of glitches with quest objectives, so in the end I decided to wait for the full realease to not spoil my impression.

I've made a bunch of screenshots explaining mechanics, can post them in the game thread.

 

[0sacred]

The Adventurers looks neat. Anyone tried the demo?

I tried a handful of Steam demos recently:

tl;dr: A bunch of shit, the only ones I'd consider picking up so far are: TMNT: Splintered Fate and Those Who Rule but not in that order.

Depths of Faveg: Bizarre, it's like a roguelike with blobber combat that strips out actually moving around or exploring the dungeon with clicking "explore" and giving you a random battle every time you do that, choosing to either fight random battles or fight a boss and descend to the next dungeon level (or die). Descending a level provides a rest that refills your hp and mp. Class picks for level up are random with your choice to pick one of three to go up a level each time. Not my cup of tea, I'd rather just play a blobber for this sort of thing.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion - not sure yet, I got stuck in dialogue hell and had to run out. What little gameplay I've seen before makes me skeptical, but I reserve judgement for now.

Magic Cauldron - Dungeons: Complete hot garbage. Eye of the Beholder but with one guy (as I recall, I basically uninstalled right away and barely remember it other than noping out pdq)

Never Second in Rome: Sweet mix of ancient Rome and clicking next to read text while watching numbers go +1 next to a skill or something. I don't even want to play this again if you paid me.

Saturated Outer Space: Interesting idea, play a space search and rescue team in tactical turn based combat... with the jankiest shovel ware presentation I've seen in years. Probably not worth a $0.35 coupon to Taco Bell.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate: Isometric action roguelike TMNT brawler take on Hades. I sort of like this one, but there are better games in this space. Only worth it if you both like this style of game and are either a TMNT fan or a kid.

The Adventurers: We have Battle Brothers at home.

Stellar Terminus: Like playing a space blobber on your graphic calculator in 1990. Nope.

Combat Complex: Some sort of progression oriented twin stick shooter except moderately slow paced and clunky. There are way better games to scratch this itch.

Those Who Rule: Let's make Fire Emblem as a westernized flash game. ... I actually really like this, but I also have a soft spot for this genre. I'd totally buy this if I'm looking for something to play in this space. Assuming it's not coming out priced at like $60 or something.

Whispers of the Eyeless: Cool art style, not much else going on. It kind of reminded me of a less interesting Darkest Dungeon. YMMV. I won't be looking at this again.

Things I will theoretically try for at least 3 minutes each before NextFest ends:

• Flint: Treasure of Oblivion - just to get into the actual gameplay loop and see if I hate it.
• Spirit of the Samurai
• Stone Madness
• The Precinct
• Neon Blood
• Worshippers of Cthulhu
• Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch
• Knights in Tight Spaces
• Lurks within Walls
• New Arc Line (less sure about this, I was pretty sure it was going to suck before I saw comments that say the demo sucks)

Honourable mention:

Not a demo but I finally got around to trying The Textorcist which is insanely discounted and I've had in my library for years. What a bizarre, yet inspired game. Love it.

The Adventurers seems more appealing than Battle Brothers to me, but is this a criticism or an endorsement?

 

[mediocrepoet]

The Adventurers seems more appealing than Battle Brothers to me, but is this a criticism or an endorsement?

It plays like easy mode BB with a different art style. Try it, I think you'll see what I mean right away.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I messed around with a few more demos tonight.

New Arc Line: I was pleasantly surprised. Based on the comments I've seen on the Codex and the asstastic story trailer, I figured this would be hot garbage, but I enjoyed my time enough to shut it down in case I decide to pick it up after all. It has a variety of social, general (like thievery and athletics), technological and magical skills and stats, that actually do come into play as you move around the game world. I also quite liked the art style, though the faces had that sort of expressionless asset flip look to them. Regardless, it looks like there's a solid foundation and it'll just depend on whether the content is worth engaging with. I also know that they'd updated the demo today and I hadn't tried it before, so if you played it earlier and had issues, maybe try it again and see if they're resolved because I didn't have any technical hitches or anything else that bothered me.

Slice & Dice: This is a dice rolling game where 1 6-sided die represents your skills and equipment and rolls will determine what action you can do. You can re-roll for the party up to 3 times, committing to an action or not after each roll. After the third roll, your actions are automatically assigned from whatever was rolled. Enemies range from rats to undead to wizards, and so on. After each combat, you can be rewarded with a choice of an item to equip that may provide a passive bonus or change sides of a character's die, or a class change that will change out the character's die entirely. Classes are all sorts including (descriptively speaking) shield bearers, warriors, berserkers, assassins, archers, paladins, monks, etc. It's a far more engaging and interesting game than it appears at first and is modestly priced. (Game actually released 6 months ago, I just finally got around to trying it since I've been hitting demos which is something I rarely do.)

Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch: It's a tactics RPG roguelike. I'm not sure what else to say about it. The gameplay was solid, but the roguelike elements were weird to me given the odd genre mix. There's an interesting story hook though in that you don't remember who you are or who the people around you are, etc. and it's presented reasonably well, I think, though the dialogue is a bit goofy.

 

[ArchAngel]

Heroes of Hammerwatch II is fun, a mix between Diablo and Rage of Mages and also has some base building. And Rogue-lite.

Damn, got ambushed and killed by some humanoid rats on first real mission LOL

 

[mediocrepoet]

Almost done with the demos I was curious about from Steam.

tl;dr: Bunch of crap except The Precinct which I'm going to keep an eye on.

Spirit of the Samurai: I wanted to like this one much more than I did. The gameplay is a bit janky and stilted and reminded me a lot of an old Genesis game called Sword of Sodan* in that it forgets that what makes a side scrolling action game isn’t the visuals, it’s the fluidity of gameplay. You have jank like combo animations moving you to the other side of an enemy where nothing hits and your back is to the guy you’ve been fighting, animations moving you into an area transition where you leave the fight and then if you go back, the enemy you were fighting no longer exists, etc.

The voice acting is a mixed bag, leaning towards mildly racist ass and the writing is a bit stilted and weird, but the biggest issue is that the visuals have no options other than resolution, meaning that a lot of areas have that film grain effect, except it’s so poorly implemented it doesn’t do anything other than make everything look like pixelated dog shit. Worse than this, anything to do with spirits or the spirit realm has the gamma turned so high, I found it uncomfortable to look at and almost quit the demo before even making it to the main gameplay loop. As it is, what I got out of that wasn’t worth making it through burning out my retinas.

The nicer ideas of the game are that you can manage your stat growth and as you level up or find things, you learn new combat moves that you can add to attack combos, but the implementation is very amateur and leaves a lot to be desired. As I said earlier, the game reminds me of a nicer looking title I’d have expected from the 16 bit era or so and even then I found this sort of game lacking.

The game wants to be a visually cool side scrolling action RPG, but it doesn’t really make it there and I wouldn’t even play this thing again for free. They’d seriously need to tighten up the animations and gameplay and massively tone down the gamma or add an option to manage this stuff before I’d bother with it.

*Apparently it was originally an Amiga title, but I only played it on the Genesis.


To Kill a God: A slow arena based action RPG where each arena is based on choosing options out of a Path of Exile style Chinese checkers grid. Could be fun, but there are many better ways to spend your time with this sort of thing unless the PoE grid specifically draws you in. Meh.


The Precinct: Top down police simulator including appropriate levels of force, various ways of policing (walking the beat, driving a police car, flying a helicopter), Mirandizing suspects, etc. This was really cool. The only things that weren’t great were the community theatre voice acting, clunky writing, and Flash/AI style dialogue graphics. The isometric city streets that are the primary game play presentation are very nice and detailed. This could be pretty cool.

 

[Hellion]

Burden of Command is tactically autistic enough, it feels like playing some 90s war game like Steel Panthers. There's a lot of micromanagement but after you get the hang of it it really feels like Band of Brothers: The Game. My only concern is the "RPG" aspect of it, based on what is available in the demo all dialogue choices and corresponding stats mostly seem to affect minor flavor text, but I guess that might change further down the storyline.

I agree with what was written about The Precinct as well. Voice acting kinda sucks but gameplay-wise it's what we imagined Police Quest might be in the future when playing it back in its day. The demo's too short though, you barely get the hang of the absolute basics before it ends.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I tried the last three demos I had on my list for the Steam week.

Stone of Blood: This may interest people who are into that real time strategy puzzle sort of game. I wasn't a huge fan of the art style and it's not really my type of game, so about all I'll say is that the setting and such is interesting and the game seems like it's at least reasonably well made.

Neon Blood: Basically a traditional adventure game in a cyberpunk setting with that hipster pixel presentation. The game struck me as fairly tedious with the adventure parts literally being solvable by wandering around and clicking on every point of interest that comes up and then there are some turn based flash JRPG style battles that were fairly dull with the last one being topped off with a QTE. Between that and some really dated and awful pop culture references, I had my fill by the end of the extremely short demo.

Lurks Within Walls: This was a weird mix of single person blobber with grid based tile movement and survival horror. The combat was fairly meh as you might imagine, but they managed to nail the sort of creepy atmosphere that makes me enjoy some horror games. I'm not sure if this will be a good game or not but it's interesting and I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[Grauken]

Lurks Within Walls: This was a weird mix of single person blobber with grid based tile movement and survival horror. The combat was fairly meh as you might imagine, but they managed to nail the sort of creepy atmosphere that makes me enjoy some horror games. I'm not sure if this will be a good game or not but it's interesting and I'll keep an eye on it.

Nice, I like the visuals and blobber perspective is always a plus

 

[mediocrepoet]

Lurks Within Walls: This was a weird mix of single person blobber with grid based tile movement and survival horror. The combat was fairly meh as you might imagine, but they managed to nail the sort of creepy atmosphere that makes me enjoy some horror games. I'm not sure if this will be a good game or not but it's interesting and I'll keep an eye on it.

Nice, I like the visuals and blobber perspective is always a plus

Weirdly it reminded me of Silent Hill 1 in a way, with the general sense of unease being stuck in a creepy, dark, dirty environment.

 

[Kabas]

I also have been trying a lot of demos lately, here are my thoughts.

Voin - First person extraction action rpg with some pretty views. Protagonist looks like something straight from the metal album and slashing zombies feels nice but the gameplay loop itself didn't grab me. Dev likes making you walk a lot for some reason.

Mohrta - very stylish GZDoom based retro FPS. Very interesting locales to look at(HUB area especially) but gameplay is honestly lacking and in some places feel tedious. Shotgun primary feels weak, healing doll is very cute.

Tribe Nation - FTL but you're playing as celts trying to escape romans and you command armies on hex grids. Can pillage softly, normally or hard. Like visual style.

Second Sun - mindless but surprisingly fun. Demo left me wanting for more.

HARK THE GHOUL - definitely one of the steam next highlights for me, even made a thread for it. Dark Messiah/King's field-like with a fun to explore world and cool unique items.

Commander Quest - deckbuilder/auto battle strategy game where you play as reincarnated historical figures in a fantasy world. Summon squads with your cards and watch them clash with the enemy squads on different lanes. You can summon towers, giant eagles that don't require a designated spot for summoning, place fire, call rogue/assassin squads in the rear of enemy and stuff.
Kinda like the presentation and there is quite a bit of content in the demo. I am yet to beat the final boss fight.

Metal Bringer - frantic action roguelike where you create and send your remote controlled android into the outside world to battle large hordes of enemies. Your android in turn can pilot mechs to help with the hordes and against enemy mechs. You can then steal the later limbs to replace your own damaged ones or outright hijack defeated mechs if yours is too worn down.
This whole appropriating enemy parts reminded me of Metal Fatigue. Like the concept and in Metal Bringer the execution is pretty fun as certain parts can radically alter how your mech moves and attacks.
Not sure how to feel about the meta progression where you need to spend money to analyze data disks(improves android stats) and mecha parts(allows you to assemble mech at the start of the run). Analyzing mech parts is very expensive so it's unlikely that you will be able to assemble your own mech before demo timer runs out.
All in all, this one is another highlight for me.

Aether Singularity - a Parasite Eve inspired game about FBI agents fighting demons. Found it kinda hard.
Steam page blurb says that there will be a time limit that will affect your ending. Sucks for me because i like taking my sweet time exploring places.
Demo is really short but there are extra combat challenges you can try.

CONERU -DIMENSION GIRL-

"A 2D Platformer "Date" Action" where you play as android powered by a girl from another dimension. You're on a quest to save the city from alien group known as "Hateful Fruit Company" and you can throw moon at people. The most genuinely stupid fun game that i have tried amongst these demos.

SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding - comfy little skiing game, demo is turbo short.

Anode Heart: Layer Null - a pokemon-like game where you duel people in a card game. Like the concept but i didn't like the card game itself. Might be a skill issue but i feel like it's way too easy for a single bad hand to decide the match due to the fact that both players have only 3 HP.

Vivid World - auto battler roguelike where you assemble a squad of viking/pirates/whatnots in the pseudo afterlife and collect gems. Don't have much to say about it other than that artsyle is cute.

Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate

It's a hitman-like game where you must figure out how to progress and complete objectives as an undercover agent in a NotHogwarts.
There are physics and a bunch of secrets that you can stumble upon in the demo level.
Junky but really fun.

 

[toro]

Citizen Sleeper looks interesting, though didn't look into anything other.

It's woke as fuck.

 

[lukaszek]

Citizen Sleeper looks interesting, though didn't look into anything other.

It's woke as fuck.

while normally i dont care, this gaym is writing heavy and characters will share their pronouns and tragic backstories without being asked