Next Fest 25|2 Summary

Another Next Fest, another 50(+9) demos played. And this time around majority were great! Most of the games are worth trying, especially the highlights, and even more-so the top picks. While some days only had a single highlight, it was always leagues above the rest.

Now, this time around I'd like to take a moment to share my observations from Next Fest, so I'll start with that. After that is the regular rundown of all the highlights, and then expanded thoughts on my top picks for this Fest.

Thoughts About Next Fest

There has been a number of interesting things I noticed this Fest I want to write down. But I want to focus on the specific point of demo quality, and the types of games I'm seeing participate. If you're only here for the games, skip down a chapter and enjoy them there, otherwise let me take you for a short ramble.

I go through a lot of demos. While I "only" played through 50 of them, I have scrolled past well over a hundred more, trying to find games that would be fitting for the micro-reviews. I try and avoid things that are very likely good games from bigger studios, since I expect plenty of other coverage for those. But I also try and avoid low quality stuff, because the micro-reviews won't interest you in new games if all of those games suck. And that second category is where things got extra iffy this time around.

There are always low quality/effort games uploaded to Steam, and by extension Next Fest. Sometimes through no ill will, but merely an inexperienced developer. But then there are "content games" — collections of assets loosely bound together to form a setting. A lot of these can be described as "XYZ Simulator", have a very basic gameplay loop (often revolving around selling something), and the stuff that happens in the players head (or their recordings) is much more interesting than the base of the game itself. They're not necessarily bad games, just for a specific audience. As an example, Donut Shop Simulator is one such game that has been continuously haunting my Next Fest searches every day.

These "content games" are a symptom of a bigger emerging problem with trend-chasers. Copycats were always present, but with games being easier to make then ever, and assets being available for anything from dragons to spaceship textures; there is more and more of them out and about. People get inspired by a game and want to make their own take — sometimes due to passion, sometimes to try and get a slice of the success pie. But their numbers seemed to always be kept in check, for reasons I can only speculate about.

Until Balatro.

While I've not played it myself, Balatro looks brilliant. I am very happy to see its success given design similarities with an old idea of mine. However, said success is deceptive. Balatro is simple and has reached a massive audience, which naturally exposed it to a lot of indie devs that want to take a crack at the formula. And this fest the fruits of that labor have flourished, as there have been dozens of "Balatro-likes" (in a very loose sense of that phrase), one of which even sneaked its way into Day 5 (Roach Post). And as I commented there, those games completely miss that the Balatro formula isn't just getting points and multipliers from actions and bonuses; it's also the audio-visual feedback of getting good scores and clarity in how to do it. The content is what makes it replayable, but the polish is what makes it enjoyable. And naturally, a demo that's not released shortly before the actual game release will not have that polish, as it isn't something you work on early on. A lot of good ideas fall flat because the one chance they get to present themselves during a Next Fest is spoiled by them feeling they're good enough to take part. For many games an unfinished state of a game is fine, it is a demo after all. But when a core part of design for the type of game they're making requires it to be near-complete, "good enough" is not the bar you want to cross.

Essentially, a lot of devs are releasing demos too early. There are many ways to release a demo, but not all of them apply to all games, and sometimes what's good for one game is bad for another. I hope with increased popularity of Next Fest we'll see more people talking about what makes a good demo good. Like GMTK in his recent video on the topic. But for the time being let's return to this Next Fest, and talk about which demos were not just good, but great, excellent, and beyond.

Day by Day Rundown

Essentially a collection of all the highlights

Day 0

• Dragon Shelter — A delightful farm sim with a large dose of cooking, where different dragons help you with your daily chores
• Gecko Gods — A unique game all about exploring a mysterious island as a gecko. Climb any surface to solve simple puzzles and challenges
• Trifoil — A minimalistic rule discovery game about drawing a path on a grid

Day 1

• Mycopunk — Stylish and chaotic FPS goodness, playable solo or co-op, with a variety of missions that all involve exterminating large amounts of mechanical amalgamations

Day 2

• AEROMACHINA: Test-Flight — A low-poly 3D metroidvania, with brilliant level design and very fun combat and movement

Day 3

• JETRUNNER — Level-based speedrunning FPS, where you gotta hit the targets and reach the goal, and do it as fast as possible

Day 4

• MIO: Memories In Orbit — A stunning 2D metroidvania, excelling in its visuals and being fun to play on top of them
• VOID/BREAKER — A movement shooter roguelike that looks impressively good while having a good mix of familiar and unique systems to it
• A Little Perspective — A puzzle game about changing perspective to completely redefine what moves can be done on the playing board

Day 5

• Chronoquartz — A metroidbrania disguised as an adventure game, where you have 10 screens before you have to reset
• Memory's Reach — A 3D exploration puzzle game, requiring you to explore both the world and the puzzle mechanics to progress

Day 6

• Gemporium — A cute game about mining, polishing, and selling gems; that does exact as much as it needs to do
• Our Journey — A unique co-op puzzle adventure, where you need to communicate with your teammate through cards with shapes and colors on them

Day 7

• Inkshade — Spiritual sequel to Inscryption, using strategic turn-based combat with permadeath instead of cards. Great atmosphere
• Sinker Sound — Brilliant rhythm fishing game that mixes up a lot of mechanics to make each fish a unique challenge to catch
• He Who Watches — A gravity-bending 3D grid-based first-person puzzle game. A large mix of genres, but executed cleanly with very satisfying puzzles

Top Picks

Finally, the special Top 3. There is only so much detail I can put into a micro-review, so I'm taking this summary as a chance to talk more in depth about what made these games earn their spot at the top of the pack.

MIO: Memories In Orbit

MIO is a stellar experience. Before I even go talking about it look at these screenshots:

Every screen in this game is so rich in detail that stretches deep beyond the 2D plane you walk on. It's hard to get me to gush over graphics in a video game, but this one floored me time and time again. I can't show animations via screenshots, but those too were brilliant, giving a lot of personality to the limited inhabitants of what I presume to be a vast space station?

Beyond the artistry, the gameplay too is of highest quality. You start with double jump and in a glacial area, instantly putting a lot of emphasis on moving through the world, ensuring the start of the game (or at least the demo, but I think it's the game as a whole too) is not a slow crawl from enemy to enemy.

The combat itself is both fluid and simple, within the scope of the demo at least. But the interesting things are the components around combat. If you die all your currency gets absorbed by the station itself, potentially slowly providing you upgrades such as the ability to see the map. Meanwhile during combat you have modifiers, which go into limited slots to provide buffs and stuff. Interestingly enough, even content such as enemy healthbars or your own are things you can control with modifiers, meaning you can disable your own health HUD and gain a buff via a different modifier instead. I'm curious to see if they'll have more complex interactions between modifiers, but even this one is a neat touch

Overall I have high hopes for the full game, releasing later this year!

JETRUNNER

Get Gun. Shoot Target. Be Fast.

That's all this game is, but if you're the type of person that enjoys movement shooters and/or speedrunning, then you'll be in for a treat. I could say a lot about this game but I think the biggest compliment I can give is that this is technically a 10 minute demo, but I spent 2 hours honing in my times, and I did not grow tired of it. It's satisfying, polished, and all around a good time.

A worthwhile addition to that speedy praise is a comment on the levels themselves. Similarly to Neon White, there is a a very obvious "main path" you're meant to follow, and if you get fast enough you'll get hints to shortcuts in the level. But the best part is that sometimes those shortcuts are not enough if you're going for the scarlet developer times, and you really need to analyze where in the level you can go. Below two examples of the "intended shortcut" and the path I found to be the most efficient for myself:

There is a lot of momentum tricks to learn: wave dashing, target bouncing, corner boosting; and mastering the route that you decide is best for your abilities feels great. Sometimes a technically slower path is better because you can go through it faster and more reliably than a slower one!

AEROMACHINA: Test-Flight

And finally a demo that is a rare example of being a separate custom-made thing rather than the first X minutes of the full game. Test-Flight provides a slice through what I presume to be most of the game's movement mechanics and exploratory feeling without spoiling every single environment in the game. And they do it well, because all those mechanics are extremely fun to chain together

I said it before and I'll say it again, the level design of this demo is brilliant. It constantly loops back on itself preventing backtracking, has tons of nooks and crannies with goodies to find, and even within the limitations of this single facility it has very varied environments — both in their decor and means of traversal

And to top it all off, the combat and writing are both fun too! Granted, the character names are on the simpler side, but there is a charm in that too. But whether you're talking to NPCs or smacking enemies dead, it's a good time regardless.

As always, thank you for making it to the end of this post, and this fest as a whole. I hope to update the site with my previous Next Fest coverages over the summer, maybe even finally add thumbnails to posts. Either way, I'll be back Oct 12 with yet another Day 0 of what might end up a bit slimmer of a Fest.