Next Fest 25|2 Day 6
Micro-reviews for Day 6 of Summer Next Fest 2025, exploring Öoo, Gemporium, Secrets of the Blackrock Manor, Everdeep Aurora, ODDLI, Strik-9, and Our Journey
A little bit on the shorter and simpler side today, but nonetheless there are always more cool demos to check out
Highlights: Gemporium, Our Journey
Öoo
A simple puzzle game about being a bomb caterpillar, and using the bombs in clever ways to explode your way past obstacles. Well made, but I wish the demo was more than a few minutes long. Though it did showcase everything it needed to, so it's just a sign of it being a thing one would want to play
Playtime: ~5min
Gemporium
Gemporium is a cute mining sim about mining out gems, polishing them up, and then selling them to customers. A simple, cozy loop that does precisely as much as it needs to do to be enjoyable: not too much, not too little.
Playtime: 45min
Secrets of the Blackrock Manor
An escape room inside of a manor in search for an inheritance. A generic setting, and with a level of mystery appropriate for an escape room - requires to connect the dots, but isn't a brain scratcher to solve. Sadly the framerate could use a little boost, regardless of how good your PC is.
Playtime: <15min
Everdeep Aurora
A curious beast. This is a 2D pixel adventure game. But I'm not actually sure what it's meant to be beyond that. You're equipped with a drill that can dig through tiles to make new paths, but it's a mechanic the demo scarcely makes use of compared to the regular platforming. And with the regular stuff, I'm not sure what we're doing and why other than "game demands it". The style is strong and the game knows what it's doing, but I don't
Playtime: 30min
ODDLI
The whole point of ODDLI is to move your character on a grid, on to the goal. Then do it again, but this time avoiding your first character. Then again, avoiding previous two. And again and again and again. Quickly the board becomes full of moving parts, and each level produces an increasingly complex choreography of dancing Oddles. It is missing some QoL features like being able to alter past versions without restarting everything, but is otherwise as satisfying as it claims to be.
Playtime: 30min+
Strik-9
A rhythm bullet heaven, where each song is a simplified beatmap to which you're able to input various means of attacking. Chaining specific attacks can activate special moves, but doing so is quite difficult in the mayhem of the fight. Dying is also difficult, and the demo doesn't have a particular goal so there is a bit of aimlessness, but at least your guns aim for themselves
Playtime: 25min+
Our Journey
A unique co-op game in which one player is a spirit that sees the path forward, and the other is a body that has to take that path. But the only means of communication between them is a set of cards with shapes and colors on them. It feels weird to play a heavily co-op game without talking, but it is an intriguing title nonetheless. Some small hiccups here and there, but auto-save makes sure you don't need to replay the demo from scratch if your game freezes up
