Game News Steam Next Fest, June 2024: Demos of upcoming RPGs available from June 10th to 17th

[Infinitron]

Tags: ATOM Team; Black Voyage Games; Demonschool; GG Studio; Hidden Pass; Leikir Studio; Lost In The Open; Metal Slug Tactics; Necrosoft Games; Steam Next Fest; Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy; Tape Drive Games; Wardens of Chaos

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

Demonschool
Hidden Pass
Lost In The Open
Metal Slug Tactics
Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy
Wardens of Chaos​

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

No mention of Veterum.
Shame.

 

[Nortar]

Is this thread only for the demos available for the first time?
Because there are a lot more:

Saturated Outer Space
Successor
Tenebris Terra Incognita
Kriegsfront Tactics
We are the Plague
The Necromancer's Tale

 

[elverkongen]

Here are my thoughts on what I played:

• Demonschool: 10 seconds into the demo, getting some Persona wannabe vibes. MC is a manly looking red-haired girl(?). First NPC is a professor with blue hair. Alt+F4.
• Kriegsfront Tactics: The music in the main menu had me feeling like I just booted up Farm Simulator 2022 or something. Played most of one mission, it's an (even lower) budget Mechwarrior Battletech. With that said, it wasn't bad. My major gripe is that once you're out of ammo or you get your weapon arm blown off, you have to resort to the super low-damage physical attack. It needs some way to procure more ammo and repair mech parts during the mission. Personally I see this as a critical omission, one that renders the game not worth playing if not rectified.
• Dungeons of Hinterberg: Another red-haired female protag. First scene has her sitting down in some German city with an androgynous black female with a side shave. Combat was brainless. No thanks.
• Veterum: Very promising, reminds me a lot of Battle Brothers. I like the map design quite a bit, but I wish you could either move freely or move across multiple nodes with one click, rather than having to click on each one as you travel.
• Veritus: Being from Colorgrave (Curse Crackers, Prodigal), this is an automatic wishlist.
• Saturated Outer Space: My initial impression was negative but after playing the first mission I feel it's promising. I like the idea of playing as a rescue squad, murdering space pirates and saving civilians.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

It needs some way to procure more ammo and repair mech parts during the mission.

Permanent loss of ammo or limbs is staple of mech combat subgenre.

 

[Alphons]

Lost in the open

Before a meeting with a rival king you get ambushed by his assassins. You survive with a deep wound and just 2 bodyguards. You have to now escape the kingdom while being pursued by the enemy army, bandits, assassins and bounty hunters.

You navigate the map similarly to FTL by moving between nodes that can contain random text encounters, stores or enemies. You can't hang around as the nodes get overtaken by the enemy army, replacing the nodes with encounters with armored soldiers that give minimal reward.

Combat relies heavily on positioning and status effects.

Characters are defined by their class, stamina (AP), HP, armor (blocks X damage before breaking), initiative, dodge.

Each class has set weapon and armor than you can upgrade at stores. They start with a basic attack + 1/2 special abilities randomly chosen from the pool of their class abilities (these range from extra dodge, attacking and taking a step back, disarming someone, pushing enemy back or applying status effect like blind, stun, poison, bleeding, etc).

Characters gain XP depending on number of kills in battle. During the level up you get 1 skill point to upgrade current class abilites + a choice between 1 of 3 new abilities or 3 additional SPs.
Each ability has 2 upgrade branches that you need to choose between- for example Bleed skill can be upgraded to lower it's cooldown and raise crit chance and damage or increase it's accuracy, bleed amount and demoralize enemy and his nearby allies.

It's very heavy on RNG and doesn't allow to position your characters at the beginning of combat.
During one of my attempts I had a fight with assassins before I recruited even 1 additional ally. All characters spawned so close to them that they were all able to reach my party during first turn. Assassins apply stacking poison that lowers max stamina and king was quickly killed.
During my winning run I met 2 archers that joined me for some food before first fight and found a free pickaxe that gave me blue option in mine to load up on gold, which allowed me to recruit a bounty hunter and a heavy bandit and upgrade all my weapons

 

[luj1]

No mention of Veterum.
Shame.

looks great

but the shill hates incline

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

No mention of Veterum.
Shame.

looks great

but the shill hates incline

To be fair, demo has been around for a while, but it got updated early June.

 

[elverkongen]

It needs some way to procure more ammo and repair mech parts during the mission.

Permanent loss of ammo or limbs is staple of mech combat subgenre.

I could have sworn in Battletech there was a way to repair during missions. Maybe I'm thinking of Front Mission.

 

[Infinitron]

Is this thread only for the demos available for the first time?
Because there are a lot more:

Saturated Outer Space
Successor
Tenebris Terra Incognita
Kriegsfront Tactics
We are the Plague
The Necromancer's Tale

It's for RPGs officially participating in Steam Next Fest (as seen by the banner at the top of their store pages). Obviously at any given moment there may be many other RPG demos available on Steam.

 

[luj1]

Yeah. Not like this is an RPG website

 

[elverkongen]

Some more impressions

• Lost in the Open: It's an interesting take on the Rogue/Rogue-adjacent genre, but it follows conventions I really don't like: RNG nodes, nodes, nodes, with no backtracking, like so many other games in the genre. How much will different runs vary? Will there be different campaigns? With Veterum having a similar style of combat but more agency in the world (e.g., choosing missions to complete, economy, outfitting units, etc.) I just can't see a reason to play this.
• Metal Slug Tactics: Pretty fun, there are a few different mission types in the demo (kill all enemies; survive x number of rounds; get to the exit; defeat the boss).
• Riven: I think I've played every version of Myst on PC and I really liked the most recent version so this is a definite wishlist. I do wish they could integrate the FMVs, but they'd probably be so resolution that it would be jarring when juxtaposed with the more modern graphics.
• Once Human: I didn't realize this was an MMO. Made a big titty character, jumped around, saw there's no jiggle physics, quit.
• Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy: I really enjoyed ATOM RPG and I think the UI here is really well done. I'm hoping there are plenty of opportunities for variation in characters classes, particularly non-combat focused ones, but we'll see. Definitely a wishlist.

 

[baba is you]

Monomyth also got pretty good with this update.

 

[Bester]

I gave Enotria a try, it's a souls-clone. When you hit the roll button, it takes a noticeable 100-200ms before the roll even starts. Feels very annoying. I don't even know what they're trying to do, because none of them have the artistic talent to create Souls-like music and visual atmosphere, so what's the point? It feels like a student's home assignment.

 

[Modron]

Kriegsfront Tactics: The music in the main menu had me feeling like I just booted up Farm Simulator 2022 or something. Played most of one mission, it's an (even lower) budget Mechwarrior. With that said, it wasn't bad. My major gripe is that once you're out of ammo or you get your weapon arm blown off, you have to resort to the super low-damage physical attack. It needs some way to procure more ammo and repair mech parts during the mission. Personally I see this as a critical omission, one that renders the game not worth playing if not rectified.

Get gud.

Scramble: Battle of Britain was good,
Rise of the Golden Idol more of the same quality as the first game,
Mirthwood and Songs of Steel: Hispania were both better than I expected from the style of graphics,

Still a fair amount of stuff I want to test before the end of the fest like The Alters, Beyond Galaxyland, Deepsleep: Labrynth of the Forsaken, City 20, Huaxia: Warring States, Republic of Pirates, and Kaiserpunk.

 

[elverkongen]

Get gud.

I will but only if the game does first.