Greetings, flaming fellas of the Fediverse, we are halfway through #SteamNextFest , but that's no reason to be idle, for surprises at every corner and every genre awaits
I wasn't expecting much from this, and yet I came out positively impressed,
it can be defined as a more refined Kingdom Two Crowns-type of tower defense. Instead of using coins, the player uses faith, crabs can specialize in 5 roles, it's level based, instead of having a singular map, progressing once gathered enough food. I suspect that this game was made by a marine biologist, no other way to explain the detailed in-game encyclopedia.
Bizarre premise, and even more bizarre gameplay, it's a turn based economy and savaging game, economy because half of the gameplay loop is about constructing your city to reach the bottom and the treasure, the other half where you have to scavenge level by level the resources need to survive, mainly wood to hire gnomes and food to keep the bats at bay.
I came out of this demo with a perplexed face, I'll have to double think whether if this premise is appealing to me or not
I'm acquiring a certain taste for auto battlers, and this one has definitely a lot of charm, the graphical style reminds me a bit of Loop-hero, albeit in a more simplified matter, and the deck building is an interesting choice for progression.
My only doubt is about variety of enemy encounters, for now there is only the human kingdom, so I hope for more factions and more races in the future, still, I'll keep it in my radar.
I took me 2 minutes of playtime for a grin to start forming in my face, for I recognized what the project was aiming to achieve: this is a turn-based title following the same design principles of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, but in a sci-fi setting. It has everything: random resources on the map, stacked units, abilities, equipment, city management, the hexagonal battle map, plus some other unique tricks, this game is an instant wishlist.
Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss
It’s a creepy underwater walking sim. It’s… actually pretty damn good in atmosphere, despite not playing into thalassophobia remotely as much as the name would suggest. I really like its style and design. OTOH, technically it’s rough, with only a single very slow pick-up / interact animation that has the character awkwardly center in front of the object first.
If they polish it a bit, I’m interested. Kept on my follow list.
Creatures of Ava
A game somewhere between a more peaceful Zelda, a Pokemon-like and a lot of Pokemon Snap? Not reasy to describe. Very beautifuly, and I really liked the world as designed. The tutorial is overly simplistic and long for what it teaches you, but eh, minor issue. Definitely keeping an eye on this, quite interested in how it is at release. Kept on my follow list.
The Alters The most impressive game I’ve tried this Next Fest. A survival game on another planet where you need to recruit the only reliable person you know: Yourself. You got access to a cloning bay and a quantum computer and the computer can create you, but if you had decided differently at certain points in your life, e.g. not moving out early from home would have led to a life where you are an engineer, which gives that clone +50% technical skill. These “alters” have their own stories and you get to talk to them about it, which is really cool.
Quite impressed, wishlisted.
I’ve been playing Enotria: The Last Song. So far seems like a solid souls like but it has wicked performance issues right now. I’m really digging the vibe of the main demo city but I’m barely hitting 40fps on low settings with an RTX 3070ti
I’ve been playing Heart of the Machine, and really enjoying it. It’s a fascinating 4x ish in a future city, in a bit of an inversion of AI Wars (same developer). Before playing, I was merely intrigued, but now I’m excitedly awaiting where it goes. It was, however, initially difficult to figure out what to do. Perhaps more UX is going to be useful here.