About this site

Welcome to my humble review blog! Expect a lot of posts about my thoughts on games, with a strong focus on Next Fest Demo micro-reviews.

What are Next Fest Demos?

Every 4 months Steam hosts a "Steam Next Fest" — a week-long event to celebrate upcoming games. Game developers whose games are nearing release are encouraged to post a demo for their game during a Next Fest, and will be rewarded with enhanced visibility for those demos.

What do you mean by "micro-reviews"?

My goal is to provide you a quick-to-read preview of what to expect from the demo. Ideally, if a micro-review sounds interesting to you you will pick up the demo for yourself and try it out. By doing this I can go through many titles to let you focus on the ones you actually find interesting! I specifically try and fish out games that are less popular, since there are some real hidden gems out there.

What's with the star ratings?

Reviewing demos is a tricky business because you're not able to judge the complete game, you judge only a slice of it, and what slice you get varies greatly. Sometimes it's the full idea but unpolished, sometimes it's a vertical slice of all the mechanics, and sometimes just the first 20-60 minutes of the game. As such the star rating is less of a score of game's quality/make; and more of a "how worthy is it to try out?" You can roughly understand it as follows:
★★★★★ - If you want to try out some demos, this is a good pick
★★★★ - It has flaws, but still worth picking up if it sounds interesting
★★★ - It's one of the demos of all time.
★★ - I would recommend against trying this, unless you really want to
★ - I think playing this is a waste of your time
Obviously what you think of the genre/style of the game will impact whether or not the demo is a good fit for you, but that's what the short text micro-reviews are for! And if you're really short on time then the highlights are the best demos from each week, so you can treat them as bonus stars if you want.

Who even are you?

"TNT Dragon" at your service. I get myself involved with a ton of projects and may some day have a page for them, but for the time being you can check out my YouTube channel if you like variety of rhythm games with none of the commentary, follow me on Bluesky where I'll eventually post about my writing endeavors that expand beyond the scope of this blog (fiction/mystery novels), or if you're a fellow dragon fan, I have a whole archive of information on dragon games on Discord, so just reach out to me (e.g. on Bluesky) if you're interested.