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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   1750 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 28, 2025

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Have you lot found any good demos during steam next fest? There's a couple of days left so here are some demos to check out and a few toys avoid -

Void War is probably the demo I've played most so far - it's basically FTL in the 40k universe. My favourite run so far I got this thing that put out nigh endless machine slaves, so I could flood my enemies with boarding parties of the useless bastards. I can't wait for the full game to come out, but the demo already has a good chunk of content.

Stygian: Outer Gods is the first person sequel to Stygian Reign of The Old Ones, so there is no way I'm buying it (Reign of the old ones was a pretty decent crpg, but it wasn't finished) which is a pity because the demo plays pretty well. Of course the other mark against it is its a first person game set in the Cthulhu mythos, and there has never been a good one of those.

Startron is a star colony sim with a staggering amount of depth, and it's all done in ascii! It desperately needs a decent tutorial, but you can figure out how to play just by fucking around for a bit, and it's a lot of fun to fuck around in.

He is coming reminds me a lot of Loop Hero, aptly as it is also an auto-battler although you have direct control over your character. You basically run around an 8 bit map fighting monsters and grabbing loot for 3 days, then the boss attacks you and hopefully you gained enough strength to survive.

Write warz is presented as collaborative storytelling, but the gamification makes it feel more like a directionless cards against humanity - and the last thing that game needs is less direction. I assume it will evolve into a sex thing whatever the developers have planned though, since that's what happens when you let people on the internet write whatever they like.

Emberfall technically isn't part of next fest, but if you ever wanted to know if a survivors type game would work as a side scroller, it has the answer. And that answer is... I guess? Normal survivors games are about positioning yourself in time with your attacks, but it's a shit load more difficult when you can primarily only move in two directions, moving up seizes control as gravity kicks in, and moving down is just not an option.

Blood Typers is another that technically isn't in the next fest, but the demo is awesome. It's basically a mashup of those multiplayer horror games where you and your friends stumble around some haunted place killing ghosts and trying to survive and Typing of the Dead. You do everything by typing - you attack, move, manage your inventory and use consumables all by typing out words, it's great. Don't play it with zoomers though, it turns out they can't type for shit.

Also this isn't a demo, but Skald Against the Black Priory is on special at the moment and more people should play it, you can grab it for less than $10 and it is worth thrice that. Imagine an old goldbox rpg with more detailed (but equally crappy) graphics, set in a cosmic horror universe where death is often the best end a person can expect. It is brilliant.

Not a demo, but the sequel to one of my favourite survival games was released yesterday.

Card Survival Fantasy Forest currently doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor Card Survival Tropical Island. The original took a couple of years to make it to 1.0 so it not really fair to judge it by that standard. Still, there are many steps backward in terms of the quest system (meant to introduce recipes and game elements to the player) and the exploration system.

I'm sure these will be ironed out over early access and I trust the devs won't abandon the game. Unfortunately in the meantime, the Chinese playerbase are review bombing the game because it doesn't reach the quality of a full release.

Interesting, would 'book of hours but with more direction and depth' be an accurate way to describe these games? That's the impression I get. Ordinarily that style plus your effusive recommendation would be enough for me to at least try out one of these but God damn are they expensive!

Book of Hours and Cultist Simulator are different games, but there is overlap in the 'discover what happens if you combine these two cards' mechanic. There are a lot of intuitive interactions between cards. The survival drive aspect becomes very very obvious when you are new to the game, first thirst, then hunger then disease and finally mental illness.

If you'd like to try these two out, I'd start with Tropical Island. There is a free demo of the first days here on Steam. You should know if the gameplay is for you by the end of the free content.

Edit: I should say that while they seem expensive for indie games, there is so much complexity under the hood that keeps things entertaining. I've got 450 hours in Tropical Island.

I played a few.

  • Orbi Universo II: It looks like Democracy but mixed with Civ/GSG. The content in the demo was a little thin and the systems don't seem particularly balanced, tooltips could use some work, etc, but I'll probably pick up the full game when it comes out as it has some interesting ideas.
  • Icaria: Factorio + programmable bots (with a visual scripting language). I understand this is a bit of a mini-genre of its own; I haven't played any of the other program-bots-to-build-a-base games. It seemed neat, but the demo ends just as it starts to get interesting. Could be a solid foundation, so long as there's enough content in the full version.
  • Machine Mind: A cute little top-down tower defense-esque driving/shooter with customizable vehicles and resource gathering. My only concern is there doesn't seem to be much depth (no production chains) and it's rather casual. Full game will probably include a series of campaign missions that trickle out new mechanics which is not a design I'm fond of, unless it's handled well e.g., Thronefall.
  • Private Military Manager: Tactical Auto Battler: I wanted to like this more than I did. I really want someone to make "Football Manager" but with PMCs. This is not that, it seems very linear and the decisions you make are not interesting.
  • Outworld Station: I liked this a lot. Factory automation in space. Demo sadly ends just as it gets interesting, teasing you with ship-based logistics and then not letting you play with them. It's polished -- zipping around your starbase feels smooth, hauling asteroids back to your forge is satisfying, though combat is a little too trivial but could be fleshed out with e.g., more enemies, allied ships, co-op, etc. If they deliver on the mid & endgame then it could be really good.
  • Terminal One: Airport simulator, like Airport CEO & SimAirport (both reasonably fun). Terminal One is 3D, which sets it apart. Except it's utterly unfinished, so much so I couldn't evaluate it; I placed my stands in the wrong direction and couldn't figure out how to delete them (maybe I was still in tutorial mode?); would not recommend the demo, but I like management games so I will probably give it another shot when it's out in EA.

Not part of Next Fest, but recent releases I've played:

  • Microtopia: Factorio-like with robot ants. The neat thing is it inverts the logistics system you typically see in factory games: everything is delivered by your ants. Your ants also expire, so your base has to be designed around your queen, who poops out larva -- then you hatch them into workers and send them along a defined "trail" with branches based on logical conditions. They grow old and die, but you can merge and evolve your basic workers into more advanced types which resets their lifespan. So your entire factory ends up being a big loop, which is very satisfying to set up and watch in motion. It's cool, though the progression continually unlocks new features that have major implications for your base design, so if you need everything to be 'perfect' at every stage you're going to be in for a rough time.
  • Heart of the Machine: I like Arcen Games, they're always interesting but tend to fall down on the execution. HotM is more polished than I was expecting (thanks Hooded Horse?) but it's probably best described as a sort of visual-novel with a strategy/management wrapper: the actual mechanics are not challenging and mostly serve as a framework to deliver the writing, but the writing itself and some of the story branches are decent enough. I'm also a fan of the nested game loop structure where "new game+" is actually a coherent part of the design and the content updates have been hitting nonstop since the EA launch. Hard to evaluate. I wish there were more systems and less narrative but I like the theme and the concept.

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