Steam Next Fest June 2025

[rusty_shackleford]

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

I got a promo email of some games that will have demos, narrowed it down to ones that look interesting:

[Finarfin]

I installed
Abyssus > Feels good and is fun. Coop too, also a unique setting.
Anvil Empires > Cool Idea but very clunky and weird
Caput Mortem > Very cool game. Feels like Shadow Tower and Arx Fatalis, has a unique hand mechanic, you have to control the hand manually across the screen.
DEFICIT > Eurojank Riddick but with a foid MC called Carrie.
Elengard Ascension > Interesting RPG with a limited party system (only had one companion) combat is either automatic or manual, and you have to get your weapons out to attack with them.
Holstin > Pretty cool polack horror survival shooter. Polish voice acting sounds good too.
Metal Eden > Cool boomershooter with fast paced action similar to GhostRunner
Morbid Metal
Nested Lands > Pretty rough and **** tbh
Parkside Decayed Soul Manipulation
The RPG > A fun little RPG that pokes fun at the OGs.
Sword and Shield Simulator > Janky and ran ******* bad
Texnoplazm > Cool FPS where you use your fists, melee weapons and even ranged. Only bad thing: you play a woman
Vindictus Defying Fate > Korean Spin-off to Vindictus, apparently singleplayer with more emphasis on difficult fights, checked out Lann or what his name was and the lady with sword and shield. You can customize bodies and I guess the women are very coom oriented since you can give them thick thighs and big tits. Outfits range from sexy to cool.
Jump Ship > Looks cool but it is coop so couldn't play much

Will say if hit or ****

[gerey]

Caput Mortem > Very cool game. Feels like Shadow Tower and Arx Fatalis, has a unique hand mechanic, you have to control the hand manually across the screen.

I am getting flashbacks to Trespasser.

Fin already mentioned the imsimmy DEFICIT and the p*lish game, but here are the links:





Here's a few interesting titles I've found:





Kriegsfront is a love letter to Front Mission, the demo came out a year or two ago:



Here's another imsimmy that had a demo in a few Next Fests over the past few years. It's pretty fun:



I'll update the post if I find other interesting stuff.

[gerey]

Okay, so I completed the Holstin demo.

It's okay-ish, it plays similar to Crow Country, in the sense that the camera is "isometric" and you can rotate it around your character at will, while the direction the character is facing is determined by the mouse cursor, though it feels significantly more clunky that it because the protagonist doesn't rotate towards the cursor smoothly. I suspect the reason is that the character model is a sprite.

The start of the demo is fairly rough - protagonist is chasing after his conspiracy nut friend and jumps out of a moving train because it won't stop at the town where he thinks his friend is at. The protagonist stands up, enters the train station and there's a brief blurb of what he sees before we are told he locks himself in the bathroom to escape the monster. It's a very bad case of telling and not showing.

He proceeds to talk with a suicidal woman, apparently a scientist, which is all fine and dandy, but the issue is that the protagonist proceeds to be completely unfazed about the biological growth consuming the town and turning the inhabitants into monsters. Many of them aren't hostile, but they are equally oblivious that something is terribly wrong with them too. Problem here is that the protagonist just arrived, and the female scientist he met in the station is still sane, even though she's been here longer than him, he can't have succumbed to whatever is going on that quickly.

What follows is typical survival horror fare - solve puzzles, fight enemies, manage your resources, though the game spices it up by having the non-hostile NPCs give you quests.

Exploration is enjoyable, but the issue is inventory management, or better said, a lack of box to place excess items in. The game showers you in stuff, I was never at risk of running out of ammo, especially since you can trade cigarettes you find with an NPC for handgun bullets, which in turn means you'll quickly run out of space in the inventory, and with no ability to deposit items anywhere, your only recourse is to either use them up or discard them, since the inventory space is shared by quest items too.

Combat is meh - you shoot enemies in the glowy-bits, though that doesn't take them down, and I didn't quite understand if I was interfacing with the mechanics correctly. You also have access to melee weapons, which can break from use, but most of the time you can just shoot enemies since ammo is so plentiful. I did like that blowing an enemy's head off isn't an instant kill, it just makes him flail around blindly.

When aiming you switch to an over-the-shoulder, RE4-styled, camera, and it's not as jarring as I thought it would be, though it also feels largely unnecessary.

The game also has crafting, but you only have a grand total of two recipes - combining herbs and alcohol for the main healing item and gunpowder and nails (wft?) to make pistol ammo.

All in all I'd say the game is a 7/10. The gameplay loop is enjoyable, but the writing is desperately trying to be mysterious, but just comes across as nonsensical due to the behavior of the protagonist. Giving him a few lines where he grumbles about having to play along with the insane NPCs would help not make him come across as a ******.

Voice acting is also fairly subdued, but that might be because it's all in Polish. I remember thinking that the Polish voice acting in the Witcher games was also lacking in emotion.

[Acrux]

Should this just be a generic Next Fest thread? A few rpgs look interesting this time.

From our very own @RolandKvltgames


Dragon Dropper has released some other rpgs most of you were indifferent toward. Each one he makes looks improved imo


Cyclopean II. The previous one came out less than a year ago. The monochromatic UI turned a lot of you away from a pretty good game. This one has more colors.

[Rienen]

Jump Ship > Looks cool but it is coop so couldn't play much

For what it's worth, it is technically playable solo as you'll have the help of a companion bot. That said, it's generally only for lower difficulties. I've played, maybe, 5-7 missions with it, and it was competent. It's still a shallow experience, though.

[Valter]

New game by the Disco Elysium devs, demo available.

[Orvas Dren]

New game by the Disco Elysium devs, demo available.

foid pc, PASS

[rusty_shackleford]

New game by the Disco Elysium devs, demo available.

visual novel made by ******** communists, PASS

[Valter]

I'm just surprised they took so long

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm just surprised they took so long

AFAIK it's from completely different people because the communists began eating each other once they saw dollar signs(shocker)

[Roguey]

New game by the Disco Elysium devs, demo available.

visual novel made by ******** communists, PASS

I've gone through a good chunk of it, it comes across as a game made by liberals masquerading as communists. It lacks the working class authenticity of Disco Elysium. The lead writer is Estonian but comes from a higher class background of course https://et-wikipedia-org.translate.goog ... _tr_pto=sc

[stormvermin]

Cralon has a demo out. I won't have time to play until the weekend.

[Tadeusz]

New game by the Disco Elysium devs, demo available.

I was curious and watched some of the gameplay. It was disappointing. I'm a sucker for good art direction and atmosphere and this game doesn't deliver. Skill entities lack personality, narrator's voice is hard to listen to and the art style seems weaker. Maybe this fad for Disco clones will subside soon.

[roldet]

I liked Zero Parades demo. Certainly better than Esoteric Ebb crap. If you liked DE I think you will also like it. Watching gameplay is not enough to have an understanding of it. Also idk about writers view but DE itself did not have pro-left narrative, redditors are just ******* about it like Shining or Watchmen.

[rusty_shackleford]

but DE itself did not have pro-left narrative,

[stormvermin]

I liked Zero Parades demo. Certainly better than Esoteric Ebb crap. If you liked DE I think you will also like it. Watching gameplay is not enough to have an understanding of it. Also idk about writers view but DE itself did not have pro-left narrative, redditors are just ******* about it like Shining or Watchmen.

Unfortunately, I think the writers are now too self aware to allow a character like Measurehead to slip through the cracks again.

[Kalarion]

I've gone through a good chunk of it, it comes across as a game made by liberals masquerading as communists. It lacks the working class authenticity of Disco Elysium. The lead writer is Estonian but comes from a higher class background of course https://et-wikipedia-org.translate.goog ... _tr_pto=sc

For anyone reading who is not aware that rouge is a liar, this just means the writer is a trotskyist instead of a stalinist.

Never listen to rouge, kids!

[Roguey]

I've gone through a good chunk of it, it comes across as a game made by liberals masquerading as communists. It lacks the working class authenticity of Disco Elysium. The lead writer is Estonian but comes from a higher class background of course https://et-wikipedia-org.translate.goog ... _tr_pto=sc

For anyone reading who is not aware that rouge is a liar, this just means the writer is a trotskyist instead of a stalinist.

Never listen to rouge, kids!

How it feels to me whenever this game mentions anything related to communism:

[Rand]

Just because they wrote their leftist commie trash clumsily and poorly because they are stupid does not mean that it's not intentional and not satirical or poorly executed "all sides are dumb" smooth-brained centrism.

[Acrux]

@rusty_shackleford

you might be interested in this

[Roguey]

Just because they wrote their leftist commie trash clumsily and poorly because they are stupid does not mean that it's not intentional and not satirical or poorly executed "all sides are dumb" smooth-brained centrism.

If the writers were real communists, they would not be working for ZA/UM still, they'd be at one of the splinter groups. It's liberals role-playing as communists trying to evoke the previous game, but they do not truly believe. They're not doing "all side are dumb" at all, unlike DE your character is inherently a communist working for a communist spy agency, you cannot have any other political ideas.

[roldet]

Upcoming Battle Brothers like game in space. Has really nice artstyle.

[roldet]

Rare sci fi/cyberpunk arpg. Has a demo.

[Algol]

Bunch of ******* **** this year.

[Valter]

I liked Zero Parades demo. Certainly better than Esoteric Ebb crap. If you liked DE I think you will also like it. Watching gameplay is not enough to have an understanding of it. Also idk about writers view but DE itself did not have pro-left narrative, redditors are just ******* about it like Shining or Watchmen.

It's out. I'm playing other stuff right now so to the backlog it goes, but let me know if it meets the expectations the demo set for you.