https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest
Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!
Stray Gods (formerly Chorus) is one game I’ve been looking forward to ever since the original announcement on the now-defunct Fig (a musical RPG with Laura Bailey, yes please).
Little Cat Big City looks like a lot of fun. And so cute too!
Tried Stray Gods, it’s pretty much what I was expecting, but good gods the audio mixing is bad. Dialogue volume is all over the place; one character is very much louder than the rest, and even within the same line of dialogue by the same VA the volume can go from loud to barely audible. Audio engineering is truly an invisible art when it’s done well, because when it’s not… it’s really obvious.
I was playing the game with one hand on the volume knob, it almost become some kind of invisible rhythm game as a result. xD
How does the gameplay work in that one? I checked the screenshots but couldn’t tell
I’m uncertain, but it seems like during the singing bits, it’s a dialogue tree with with musical/lyrical matching parts as well! So you can set the tone to match the person you’re singing with/against.
Check out the game A Musical Story. It’s ostensibly a rhythm game, but I don’t think there is a failure condition other than that you have to keep trying the music loop until you clear it to get to the next vignette. It’s sort of a wordless short story told through animated slides and deeply groovy musical interludes
Top 10 Most Wishlisted Games
Any chance you could edit your top-comment to include a link to Steam Next Fest itself? https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest
The submission URL itself has a typo in it unfortunately, and I’d really encourage folks to browse through Next Fest and see what they can find beyond the 10 most popular ones. 🙂 Next Fest is a great event for indies, but it does suffer from Steam always seeming to set up these “rich get richer” loops where the games that came into Next Fest with the most wishlists (often from having the biggest marketing budgets), are the ones they make most visible, without providing any curation of or means for user-surfacing of lesser-known but promising titles.
Sorry about that, I’ve edited the correct link into the top post.
Oh nice, thank you!
Post your favorite demos that you played in the comments, guys. I have a number in the pipeline and will update once I review them all
Lies of P feels fantastic
The Invincible looks really good, and seems to have a compelling story, but the execution is off. You basically click on things in the world, get some dialogue with your handler, then move on to more things to click.
Sometimes the dialogue runs really long, and you are prevented from taking most actions while it goes on. I ended up sitting still for multiple long periods and it just completely took me out of it. Could be a good book.
The Invincible seems to be more of a walking simulator by design. Provided the story is suspenseful and compelling, that seems fine. The main gripe I had was the extremely low FOV. Hopefully that is not by design
I’m okay with a walking simulator, but I’m not a fan of a standing simulator. There was way too much sitting and listening to keep me interested.
I loved firewatch, and I didn’t get that feeling from it. It could just stand to be a little bit more interactive. It’s very pretty though, I love the art and the design and the setting.
It is true, “show what you cannot tell” could be applied here. Seldom is it fun to have a talking head blabber at you and lose agency. I can’t remember, does it lock you into place, though? I seem to recall that in the later portions you are moving around with your radio while talking on comms. Maybe at the beginning outpost? More games should apply the design philosophy that Half Life showed us years ago, which is to not put the player in stasis when dialogue happens. Worst feeling
I mean, you can move, sure. The parts I’m thinking of are in the first rover you come across, and the 2nd transporter. As well as the bushes, when you learn more about those.
You can walk around a smallish confined area, and you are locked out of other interactions until the dialogue ends. It’s probably not as big of an experience killer in the full game, but it really turned me off in the demo.
That’s funny, I was wondering why none of this sounded like the demo I played. I looked it up and they released a new (different) demo for Steam Next Fest. The one I played is from earlier this year. I had no idea what you were talking about with bushes, lol. Guess I’ll compare the new one.
Ah, I tried to be as vague as possible, so you shouldn’t be spoiled on it at least. Maybe I’ll give it a shot when it goes on sale.
