Next Fest 25|1 Day 4
Micro-reviews for Day 4 of Winter Next Fest 2025, exploring The Knightling, The Swordfish: Knight of the Deep, Tentacle Tango, There's No Dragons, AquaDream, and Skulker
Somehow I kept stumbling on water-themed demos when browsing the Next Fest, so I decided to include them all in one big bundle of wetness. With some other stuff sprinkled in for extra flavor
Highlights: The Knightling, The Swordfish: Knight of the Deep
The Swordfish: Knight of the Deep
Okay, hear me out. This underwater metroidvania, where you're a fish holding a sword, is not perfect. In fact, I think there is room for improvement across all fronts. But despite that, man have I enjoyed myself with this title, and I'm not quite sure why. Hence the weird recommend despite the problems. I hope it gets polished up because it deserves to be a great metroidvania, but for now it's another title to keep a lazy eye on
Playtime: ~35min
Skulker
While it labels itself as casual, it's more of a kids game. You roll dice to move around the coast of one of many islands, across one of four planets. You then "fish" wherever you land, which you do via one of dozens of minigames, whose biggest challenge is lack of an explanation on what to do, which is pretty intuitive for the most part. It has a lot of vibrant colors and varied fish/skins so I do think it can work well for a younger audience, but I don't think many kids are reading these micro-reviews. Or reading overall... Oh, also for some reason it has an animated wallpaper mode that lets you put the fish you catch to swim around your screen. Kinda neat I guess?
Playtime: Any
Tentacle Tango
A surprisingly difficult game you can play solo or co-op. You're two squids whose tentacles are tied together, and all you can do is rotate, jump, and stretch as you try and free your starfish friend from a cage. The fact that the rotation never stops — and even gets faster the longer you rotate without hitting anything — makes for a surprisingly difficult experience. You'd think my experience with ADoFaI would help me with that, but nope, game hard. But not in the unfair kinda way. I'm sure some content creators will get a kick out of raging at their friend, but the solo experience is probably equally challenging.
Playtime: 30min+
AquaDream
A simple game where you're an angler fish swimming through an underwater cavern, that has all the inklings of being someone's first video game. And through that lens it's perfectly fine. The only real bug was the pause menu being off-screen for me. The game is divided into levels that each act as a lock-and-key puzzle. They're not small, and even though mostly empty there is effort put in to enrich the underwater caverns, both with generic details and rarer decorations. Ultimately a very video gamey game
Playtime: 12-16min
There's No Dragons
Very simple hidden object game where the object is tiny dragons, their heads poking out of the busy scenery. Their locations are randomly generated so it's not a "one and done" kinda game, but the locations are also relatively small, making the levels (at least the two in the demo) quite short
Playtime: 3min+
The Knightling
A charming action-adventure where you're a kid wanting to become a knight, that dream being almost as big as the shield you carry. The shield acts as a tool for everything in this game: Smash enemies with it, throw it at switches to interact with the world, or sit on it as you sled down an aqueduct. I had a handful of performance issues when playing, but beyond that this feels and looks great, do have a look at it.
