Next Fest 24|3 Day 1
Micro-reviews for Day 1 of Autumn Next Fest 2024, exploring Toggle Tile, FINAL FURY, Kumitantei, Deadbeat, Chrono Crimes, and The Shaman's Ark
This post was originally on Discord, and as such does not contain additional information 2025+ posts have
Next Fest proper starts, and surprisingly enough Steam has some updates that make smaller demos more likely to be seen by people. Great to see, though the new layout makes it a little bit harder for me to quickly collect interesting demos, so first day is a bit slow.
Highlights: Toggle Tile, by a mile
FINAL FURY
I'm not a big fighter gamer, so not sure how well this VR fighter compares, but it looks like a decent transition into VR. All the moves are controlled by gestures, composed of the default set (attack, block, grab [heavy attack]) and some character-specific abilities that have different movesets. Simple, but it's all it needs. And there is some extra depth to it. For example if you grab someone at the same time as they grab you, the grabs cancel out. And if you try and grab too far from the opponent you will stumble forward, and they can get free hits on you. I think my biggest problem is a lack of a training room where I can just duke it out against a stationary strawman. I use old hardware, meaning both the button layout is different, and the tracking is a bit weak at times, making it impossible to figure out the special moves while being pummelled by CPU opponents. I haven't had luck in finding players, but I imagine they would've punished me heavily for only being able to use basic moves.
Playtime: ??h
Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter
This is an interesting demo, as it provides a good view into the style of the game (Japanese anime from the 80s), and a good intro to the story (school battle royale murder mystery), but it doesn't get far enough to get through to more meaningful gameplay (any dialogue choices or character familiarization). But it does provide a separate demo-inside-the-demo where you can test out the card-battling-discussion mechanic and it's a simple yet effective system of trying to one-up the value of your opponents card constantly. I'm tentatively curious, mainly because they did a really good job at presenting a wide variety of characters, from the expected detective-prosecutor and rich snobs, all the way down to a kid that's obsessed with bees. If you're also interested try the demo quick, as they have a kickstarter running for a little over 2 more days.
Playtime: ??h
Deadbeat
I think this game is really neat, though held back by visuals (and possibly gamemaker engine). It has an isometric perspective, and I found it very hard to figure out where I am in 3D space. The game does try to help with that by having higher platforms be colored brighter, but all that goes out of the window when you're thrown into the air by one of numerous geysers. Gameplay-wise it's essentially run of the mill soulslike, but has a completely different combat that heavily encourages bouncing around the combat field and into enemies. I think all the mechanics are introduced a bit too quickly to get a grip on them (I ended up not using calls [summons] and rarely using my constructs [spells]) but once I did grasp how to play it it clicked and was quite enjoyable. Shame the demo ended right after that moment. In short, consider giving it a whirl. It's ~40 min length, and you'll be the best judge of how you feel about it.
Playtime: 40 min
Chrono Crimes
Chrono Crimes has an interesting premise of being a detective with a time machine, going back in the past to solve things with a mix of VN Detective work and Stealth Exploration gameplay. I like bits of it (you can zoom into a lot of things to inspect them, but the big clues will be revealed once you zoom into them), dislike some other bits (stealth gameplay progress can get removed if you get caught, and there is no way to fast forward through the rather slow sequence). Overall coming to a pretty mid result. The character dialogue also throws you right in which is a bit confusing to wrap your head around at first, but I presume that'll get straightened out with more hours of gameplay
Playtime: ??h
The Shaman's Ark
The idea and gameplay itself is fine, but the actual gameplay experience leaves much to be desired. It calls itself a soulslike and indeed there are soulslike elements, but the big empty world makes it feel more like a walking simulator than an interesting place to explore. While I can see that the combat could be interesting, it lacks a little bit of nuance (thought that may just be because it's the start of the game) but also it quickly gets repetitive and bland. I appreciate a quick-kill option, but the fact that I enjoy a button that makes the game have less game in it is a bit worrying. Overall my gameplay dragged on for 90 minutes for what was like 15 minutes of gameplay, and 10 minutes of dialogues. I'd recommend checking out Nocturne instead of this
Playtime: 1.5h
Toggle Tile
Have you ever played Ultimate Tic Tac Toe? If yes, then imagine if it was a great puzzle game. If not, then you'll understand what I mean 1 minute into the demo, and you'll appreciate the depth a few minutes later. All the puzzles are 'simple', happening on a 3x3 grid, but they are most certainly not trivial. The demo showcases some of hopefully many mechanics the game will have, and you can already see how the interactions between tiles moving and rotating about can create a lot of complexity. If you like puzzle games, definitely give it a whirl.