Next Fest 25|2 Day 7
Micro-reviews for Day 7 of Summer Next Fest 2025, exploring Sinker Sound, He Who Watches, Dragimon Dungeons, Morbid Metal, VIractal: World of Viractalia, The Lonesome Guild, and Inkshade
And the final day of the fest is here! Some real great stuff this time around, and some more goodies for the end. I wanted to go through all the demos people suggested, so a lot of good quality stuff to end off the Fest.
Highlights: Inkshade, Sinker Sound, He Who Watches
Sinker Sound
A truly unique rhythm fishing game. It mixes up individual mechanics you may have seen in other rhythm/fishing games, and puts it together into a musical mayhem. I have never had this much fun fishing in a game, and the boss fish at the end of a demo is a perfect culmination of it all. The English is a bit broken, but mostly with phonetic spelling
Playtime: ~1h
He Who Watches
A gravity-bending 3D grid puzzler, where every level has you figure out a slightly new way to use the very limited tools at your disposal. The puzzles are fantastic, even though I caught myself overthinking them a fair few times. It's rare to see first person be both free look and grid-based, and they pull it off exceedingly well
Playtime: 0.5-1.5h
Dragimon Dungeons
This is a PvP focused game, where you and your opponent will battle with various summon-able "dragimons". At the start of each turn you roll die that distribute resources, and then it is your job to do the best you can with the resources you earn. Going in I expected the battles to be maybe 20min long, but friend and I have been duking it out for nearly an hour before being stopped by a crash, giving us ample time to recognize the poor choices we made with our selection of dragimons and especially dice
Playtime: 1h+
Morbid Metal
A hack'n'slash roguelike in a sci-fi samurai setting. The world is very beautiful, and you are very powerful as you combo your regular moves with randomized upgrades. Very high quality game to look forward to
Playtime: 20min+
VIractal: World of Viractalia
An RPG where you control a small party of heroes on an honorable quest. It's turn-based and your movement on the map is determined by dice rolls, while moves during combat are based on a card deck of moves, and a unique system of "Wills". While the demo is single-player in the full game each hero can be controlled by a different player, which I think is an ideal way to play, though it does hold up well when playing alone
Playtime: <50min
The Lonesome Guild
A cozy action-adventure, that has an unlikely group of heroes battle loneliness and figure out who their companion is. It may sound a bit generic, but the vibes are most delightful, and I enjoyed the writing that really does give each character a different personality and mannerism. Gameplay-wise it's a mix of combat and simple environmental 'puzzles', but nothing that's so hard as to stop the progress of the story
Playtime: 1-2h
Inkshade
Inkshade provides the same mysterious atmosphere in a dark setting as Inscryption, but instead of cards it has you play a hexagonal strategy game with permadeath pieces every run, as well as a cross-run progression where you can upgrade all your units and your chance to survive. While inspiration is clear it does stand as its own thing, and is a demo worth trying if you enjoyed Inscryption
