A Review of Steam Next Fest
It's a Scholastic Book Fair, but for Game Nerds
Last week was Steam’s Next Fest. It’s a quarterly event where indies of every shape and size can put out their demos for display for Steam to highlight. The algorithm promotes them, and the general gaming community gets excited about it, with lots of streaming and Youtube videos with recommendations on the ones to try.
The closest comparison I can give is a Scholastic Book Fair. It’s a time to get excited about the potential of a whole bunch of games without any of the guilt of them ending up in your backlog. You just get to enjoy swimming in a sea of ideas. What could be more fun?
This year I wanted to take the opportunity to actually try the games so I set a goal of about 20 games to play through. Some of them I spent up to an hour on and others I spent only a few minutes. Overall I really enjoyed the experience, but it reinforced for me just how backwards game development has gotten, in a lot of ways.
I know I know, this really flies in the face of the idea that people like to learn a single game and play it over and over again. But I wonder how much of that has to do with the novelty of the ruleset and the system more than it has to do with actually not wanting to learn new games. Lots of people will play different types of games with a 52 card deck with endless tweaks from Hearts to Euchre. And the gameplay mechanics of Fortnite are constantly changing. So I think it has less to do with a particular desire for commitment and more the cost benefit ratio of learning the rules to a game.
Lots of video games expect so much from us when we learn to play them, and then make us wait so long for payoffs. Even UFO 50, which on some level is this deep and inscrutable love letter to the concept of game design gives way more hooks for players to bounce in and around than a lot of modern games. There are a bunch of structural reasons this is the case, but it does feel like there’s an opportunity here, somewhere.
In short, I realized I really enjoyed the idea of playing around with all of these demos (and maybe picking one or two games) way more than I had any desire to complete all of these experiences. What follows is a semi-ordered list (from most to least likely to purchase) of the games I played and what I thought of them.
The Demos
Lost In Random: The Eternal Die
This is a followup to the first RPG, Lost In Random (which was well liked but not incredibly splashy), and is a very very good Hades-like. And it wears that inspiration quite proudly. But I think the twists it makes are quite interesting as well. I love how it uses the language of card and dice games for combat. You activate a card to use a special ability which can change from run to run, and you throw your dice to deal extra damage, with the amount of damage dealt being equal to the number that’s rolled.
The writing is a step below Hades (whose isn’t?) but the art style and story are on point, and each run up to the first boss (where the demo ends) was unique.
The King is Watching
A uniquely chaotic city-building roguelite with Carcassonney vibes. The key mechanic is that only tiles in the king's focus (initially 3 in an L-shape) produce resources, so you have to pay attention to what’s being produced and focus both on organization and also switching your attention to create the combination of resources you need. Requires balancing building construction, configuration optimization, and shifting attention. I played it on my Steam Deck, but it felt like it would be better suited for a computer with a mouse.
Battle Train
An entertaining deck-building roguelike where you connect train lines to attack opponents as a contestant on a battle train show. It gave me vibes of the YuGiOh TV show with the cut scenes during attacks, and the way that combos unfold over time and the back and forth between you and the opponent. My biggest disappointment here was the depth of the game. It felt like it was trying to be really deep, when for the most part I wanted to focus on battling trains.
Luck and Loot
I caught this one at the very end because someone compared it to Slice & Dice. It’s a dice building roguelike instead of a deckbuilding roguelike. I really dug the aesthetic, it reminds me of Bleak Sword. But, the complexity level up front is way higher than Slice & Dice because you’re given die faces to construct, and you can’t Yahtzee your rolls to pick and choose which dice to reroll. You either have to roll them all or roll the blank faces, which definitely adds a layer of challenge.
Wheel World
This game reminded me of Pokemon, in that you’re going on an adventure to save the world with a supernatural friend and you’re going to do battle with a wild cast of characters. It has a similar sort of wistful feel that Breath of the Wild did, while still containing a world that seems more grounded and lived in. And I got more of a Lucas/Spielberg sort of vibe around longing for adventure. The art style is impeccable on this and the music was amazing. I would buy the soundtrack right now if I could.
Haste: Broken Worlds
Haste is like what if Sonic met Tiny Wings and got thrown into a 3 dimensional Roguelike about speed running a clifftop. I thought the story, the theme and the art style were all really interesting and this felt like the type of game that would really reward digging into it.
Is This Seat Taken
I absolutely did not expect to enjoy this game. It’s a play on the traditional organizing brain teasers like trying to get the Wolf, Sheep, and Person across a river in order, but with seating arrangement. I assumed this would either be too challenging or too easy, and it hit a surprising sweet spot. I completed the entire demo section.
Wild Growth
I’d never heard of an incremental healer style game before and I didn’t know what to expect going in. The best I can personally describe this is as the opposite of Vampire Survivors. Hordes are attack your stationary squares and you’re trying to beef them up with tech trees over time to survive. I dug the abstract Norse vibes.
Into the Restless Ruins
For my board game fans out there, this is like Castles of Mad King Ludwig meets Vampire Survivors! From a concept perspective this is a 10/10 and I’m completely there. I loved the way the room building broke up each wave and provided a narrative arc to the play experience. From an execution perspective I struggled a bit with the characters limitations and the concept around the narrowing of vision as your torch ran out. But perhaps this would have improved as I continued deeper in my explorations.
Sol Cesto
I really really love the concept of the game. Each turn you have to pick a row and you have a percentage chance of landing on a spot in that row either granting you awards or making you fight monsters. So the idea is to find the best path through in order to maximize your opportunities for success. The implementation of the game didn’t quite live up to that premise for me. Outside of the creature that flipped back and forth it mostly felt like there was an optimal path and I was hoping to get lucky enough to not die.
Maze Mice
An interesting concept mixing Vampire Survivors with Pacman from the designer of Luck Be a LandLord. You play as a mouse avoiding cats in a maze while dealing damage. It features a "Superhot" mechanic where time only moves when you do, though this felt like it lead to control issues where frames would hop or skip unexpectedly. I struggled to understand how the different damage types could actually get at the ghosts, which was a bit of a struggle for me. Typically my experience with Survivors style games has been there’s a clear linkage between upgrades and how enemies get defeated.
Rift Riff
A charming tower defense game with appealing art style. Similar to Thronefall but with more traditional tower defense elements. Cute presentation and solid gameplay mechanics. Definitely wishlist-worthy, but purchase-wise, I struggle to dial in just how many different tower defense games I actually need to play.
The Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition
A very polished puzzle game with numerous clever ideas. Particularly appealing for fans of Monster's Expedition. Well-executed with high production values. I personally struggle with puzzle games like these just because each subsequent level feels like pushing an increasingly heavy bolder up an increasingly steep hill. The care, love and craft is very apparent here though. One day… I will finish A Monster’s Expedition.
Koira
A cute and somewhat melancholic game about a boy and a puppy adventuring through dark woods. The art style and vibes are lovely but I really struggled to tell which components were puzzles and what parts were more visual novel-y where you’re experiencing the world more than solving problems. My demo ended with me and the pupper getting captured, which might have been a puzzle and/or user error! But was hard to tell. I can definitely see myself picking this one up if I have a lazy weekend I’d like to enjoy it in.
He is Coming
This art style is popular huh? This one combines a rogue (lite? like?) with an autobattler. You’re exploring terrain but then the fights against monsters are automatic, which is actually really nice from my perspective, because battling is my least favorite part of the exploration. I was struggling to get the feedback I wanted to know where to go next or if I should’ve been focusing on beefing up my abilities instead of derping around.
Castle v Castle
Another game with a confident (but simple) art style, a board game-y style feel and a really sharp premise. It’s an abstract tower defense/attack style game where you’re collecting various forms of resource generators (magic, attack, stones) and then using those resources to attack, build your tower, or play special abilities. The game feels well designed and smart but bounced off of me because the math is so up front. I think in order to play well you really have to commit to mathing out the best strategies from turn one, which isn’t exactly what I’m looking for on a regular basis.
Monaco 2
Monaco, my beloved Monaco. The original game was one of the first 5 indie games (and maybe Steam games generally?) I ever purchased. I love the idea and the aesthetic. A sort of madcap heist multiplayer game where you’re trying to complete objectives and get out just in time. The visuals in this one are gorgeous and I think the change to 3-dimensions really suits the game overall. But there’s just too much information overload for me personally to get really into.
Day of the Shell
A 3D gunslinging game that feels like an evolution of old-school Rogue aesthetics. I really enjoyed the gun-slinging vibe and the simplified mechanics, but the demo levels seemed to lack exploration elements, so it felt like an extended tactical battle. For the amount of simplicity in the battle components it would’ve been nice for exploration to be highlighted more. That being said I do think there’s an interesting core idea here, and the art style reminds me of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, which is a definite plus.
Gentoo Rescue
A Sokoban-style puzzle metroidvania featuring sliding penguins and walruses. The ice mechanics are a great idea but weren’t quite compelling enough to overcome the my personal feelings about the Sokoban format. (Love the idea but I can’t seem to put in the effort after the first 5 levels or so)
The End
It’s just, really fun to take some time to go bouncing around ideas like that, and I wish there were more ways to facilitate that sort of exploration, though I fully admit this might be a “me” desire more than a particularly popular desire. There were quite a few of these I intend to come back to though
