I Played More Steam NextFest Demos (Oct 2023) (Part 2)

Beacon Patrol

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2273850/Beacon_Patrol/

A game where you're laying down tiles and attempting to create a complete coastal map by laying down random tiles in a contiguous way. It's cute, and apparently they intend for it to be a cooperative multiplayer thing like a board game, which makes a lot of sense. I played it alone, so I don't think I got the full experience.

Fatermyth

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2530420/Fatermyth/

Roguelite deckbuilder, wuxia-themed. Rather than simply playing cards from your deck, there's an additional wrinkle where you have to roll some dice to accrue emblems you spend to use your cards, like it's Dungeon Dice Monsters or something. Not really my kind of game, personally; the only roguelite deckbuilder I've genuinely enjoyed was Inscryption.

The Mildew Children

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2420350/The_Mildew_Children/?beta=0

A narrative adventure game that appears to draw deep from pagan traditions, all about a coven of witches in a small village and their strange rituals. It's a smidge reminiscent of Pentiment in that it looks to take place only within the village. What stood out to me most was a handful of QTEs attached to the dialogue: timed responses, rhythm segments, and a bit where you had to maintain a balance bar while progressing the text.

Tome of Fates

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2310150/Tome_of_Fates/

A text-based RPG that draws from interactive fiction and old tabletop game books, which means a lot of text descriptions of hallways that have multiple exits and whatnot. My play experience was going through 3-5 rooms that all had some kind of ill-explained puzzle that damaged my HP when I chose the wrong option, fighting some demon with opaque combat mechanics, and then the game hard crashing when I clicked an exploration option after the fight.

Classified: France '44

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2085370/Classified_France_44/

XCOM, but it's Operation Jedburgh. Not breaking any new ground, but it's quite polished (especially for a demo) and I can see all the pieces of a solid One Of These. I like the emphasis on suppressive fire as a mechanic; even if you miss a shot, it still depletes the enemies' action points, which is important because Nazis constantly spawn in once alerted.

My Work Is Not Yet Done

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1207690/My_Work_Is_Not_Yet_Done/

A surreal... uh, narrative game, I guess? It seems to have a big emphasis on letting player investigate things and put the pieces together of their own volition, offering little guidance or context with long stretches of downtime. Honestly that's the kind of stuff I appreciate, and the vibes are impeccable. The options screen fuckin looks like this:

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Vlad Circus: Descent into Madness

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1702430/Vlad_Circus_Descend_Into_Madness/

Spooky mansion type game with a creepy carnival aesthetic. Not really my scene in the first place, but I also didn't have much patience for the game's idea of horror, which was wandering dark areas until you see a splash image of graphic gore, at which point the clown protagonist says something along the lines of "I must be seeing things because I'm crazy, I should talk to my shady psychologist". Maybe if you really like locked door item puzzles (and clowns).

Ceiba

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2398940/Ceiba/

A bishoujo visual novel taking place on some kind of bio-ship surveying a dead alien world, where all the characters (read: hot anime girls) are combination animal-plant people. The heroines have full VO for their lines (in I believe Russian), with actors from what appears to be a... Russian anime podcast? Sure, I guess.

Tactic Legends

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1965070/Tactic_Legends/

Tactics game so aggressively made for mobile that I hit da bricks the second the tutorial ended and I saw the "Daily Quests" sidebar.

Tevi

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2230650/TEVI/

I was immediately turned off by the blatant Genshin Impact knock-off title screen, but the game itself turned out to be a Metroidvania that actually played pretty well. It also seems like it's building up to including some kind of bullet hell element based on the first boss's attack patterns, so I guess it's going for that Touhou crowd? It definitely was better than first impressions, at least.

Egypt Frontiers

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2402630/Egypt_Frontiers/

First-person crafting game taking place in Brown Hollywood Egypt. The genre's not my scene in the first place, and this is also super clunky.

Buy Me Some Soup

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1606990/Buy_Me_Some_Soup/

One of those games that imitates an old computer UI, which is goofy on its own, but it uses the framework for some cool stuff. I guess it's some kind of puzzle or detective game where you're trying to dig through the fake internet by recognizing various context clues and pursuing leads. Cool stuff, honestly.

ASTRA: Knights of Veda

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2484250/ASTRA_Knights_of_Veda/

It immediately prompted me to sign in via Google or Apple, so I immediately quit the game.

Telegraphist 1920: Beats of War

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2584510/Telegraphist_1920_Beats_of_War/

A historical rhythm game where you're a Polish telegraphist sending messages during the Polish-Soviet War, tapping out the code in time with the music. I don't actually know Morse code, so I don't know if you're sending actual messages, but it's a pretty cool proof of concept.