And some more demos i have tried.
White Knuckle - a horror game where you're climbing upwards inside a brutalist looking facility while trying to outrun an evergrowing mass of bodies that is coming from below.
I found controls to be interesting. Each of your hands has a separate button you press in order to grab something and they get tired if you hold onto something for too long so ideally you want to constantly alternate them to avoid falling. Eating food for some reason makes your hands less tired which is useful if there is a particular long ascent you must perform.
There is not always an obvious path to climb so you're expected to hold a couple of nails or throwing spears in order to create a path. Nails needs to be hammered down in order to be grabbable which is not always convinient as sometimes you will need to do it in the middle of climbing. You also need to be mindful of holding too many items at the same time as your hands gets tired quicker if you're overburdened.
Not into horror games or roguelikes/roguelites but if found gameplay interesting.
Stellar outpost commander - a Majesty clone but sci-fi, your heroes are mercenaries piloting startships and you're running a space station. Visually it looks really cluttered despite being in space and GUI is not very intuitive. It also made me realise just how much the voice acting from original Majesty enchanced the experience.
Goldenheart - a first person action adventure game that reminds me of the Northern Journey but not really. Combat feels really basic but the visuals are interesting(nowhere near the level of Northern Journey tho). Enemies have a fairly varied behaviour and the overall demo level has a nice sense of journey.
Granvir - mech action roguelite where you scavenge the battlefield for body parts and assemble your own mech while fighting a one men/mech guerilla war against a military corporation. Spent a bit of time on this one actually.
Chosen body parts has a strong affect on how your mech operates. Some parts can be nimble but fragile, others can be highly armored but weight a lot or be better at heat management at the cost of something else, etc. You can equip all sorts of weapons ranging from melee swords, power fists, katanas or two-handed axes to various heavy guns, shoulder artillery, two handed rifles or light guns that are built into your torso., etc.
I found going full melee to be a bit too risky as it makes it harder to avoid damage, while going full ranged you must be mindfull of ammo supply which is not free. Nothing prevents you from wielding a strong gun in one hand and sword in another though - in certain situations it can be quite optimal as certain enemies are quite helpless if you get into their face while some others are dangerous if you get within the range of their fists/axe.
There is also an interesting management aspect in between missions where you're given a limited amount of hours to do certain things. There are a lot of things you can spend your time on like searching scrap heaps for body parts, repairing and tuning your mech, going shopping for ammo/parts, buying some contraband from smugglers to sell it at a good price in the next area, taking bank loans to finance your war, helping local resistance with chores to improve reputation or ask them for favours, utilise local terrain to sabatoge enemies or lay low in order to lower your threat level...
The game is structured somewhat like those Slay the Spire clones/FTL games where you can choose which location you go to and your main goal is to reach the enemy capital. Locations have different terrains, farming or industrial types, special facilities like resistance cells that are avaliable only in certain regions and also some region specific quests like the one that contains an enemy ace pilot that you can provoke by rising your threat level to three.
Honestly i don't like the roguelike aspect that much but the gameplay itself is pretty fun.
Starsim - pretty cool but it is a literal Space Rangers clone with less mini-games. Saw it mentioned in the upcoming rpg thread.
Some other differences of course, the biggest one is that there is ground level combat a la Darkest Dungeon/Star Traders: Froniters.
Didn't manage to actually try this^ combat as the demo was apparently on time limit and i wasted a lot of time doing random stuff in between tutorial missions.
Verho - another King's Field/Dark Souls/Bloodborne inspired first-person rpg with retro graphics. Enjoyed HARK THE GHOUL a lot more.
I will just copy what i said in that thread here.
After trying the demo i am kinda not feeling it.
Don't like how the combat feels and is that just me or old PSX games weren't as blurry as this? That cave that requires torch/light spell gave me a headache.
I also don't like respawning enemies combined with limited consumables(didn't find the trader for those so i might be wrong here.).
Still, it got some nice visuals from time to time and there is some nice loot that can be found by exploring.
Bellfortis - a very Total War-like startegy game. For some reason i assumed that the demo was not avaliable anymore after steam next fest but it's actually still avaliable.
Not bad and looks nice to me but it didn't grab me.
