Next Fest 25|3 Day 5
Micro-reviews for Day 5 of Autumn Next Fest 2025, exploring YAPYAP, MONUMENTUM, Identifile, ARROW WORLD, Riddlewood Manor, FlippUp, Do You even Forklift?, and Typing Break
NextFest is coming to an end, and I'm continuing the streak of generally more polished games than not. I guess the extra time spent sifting through all the demos to avoid AI garbage is in turn providing higher quality overall, for better and worse
Highlights: Identifile
YAPYAP
A Co-Op game about going into a castle and vandalizing it with voice-activated spells. Your goal is to cause destruction, brew potions, clog toilets, and more. The voice spells - even if not perfect - worked surprisingly well, even with accents. There is some buggyness, room to expand, and I'm disappointed to not have seen a fireball spell; but it was a good time with friends
Playtime: ~1h++
MONUMENTUM
A platformer all about ascending an industrial monument using the momentum its machinery provides. While that description sounds generic, the game is quite unique as rarely do you see platformers without a jump button, much less ones focused on going up at the same time. Most of your momentum, both vertical and horizontal, will come from fixtures of the facility you're climbing, launching you left right and center. It took some getting used to, especially given a controller is mandatory and I don't tend to play with controllers, but there is a lot to master here, and the sparse use of colors is a great aesthetic
Playtime: ~30min
Identifile
A roguelike where you are a cursor fighting malicious files. The combat is a bullet hell where you have to draw circles around enemies to deal damage, providing a good push and pull between being far away from danger and close enough to exterminate the viruses. The Desktop aesthetic is also really well made, and there seems to be decently large variety in items/cursors, even if the base run structure may not change all that much run-to-run
Playtime: ~15min+
ARROW WORLD
Puzzler about placing down belts to lead a box to its cargo/destination. A good game, but it has some very odd design choices. It has a one minute timer on the level, which cascades into design decisions good (constantly moving box) and bad (no undoing mistakes). Weirdest of all, likely due to the time limit, it's locked to a controller, even though it doesn't even use the joystick. Good game, odd choices
Playtime: 10-15min
Riddlewood Manor
A point'n'click filled with puzzles and jumpscares. Since the game warns you about dying and the jumpscares I expected this to be a trial and error of things until I find the ones that work, but not only are the jumpscares tasteful (good animations in the world, not just a jpeg on your screen) they also make a strong minority of the spooky atmosphere. The game isn't really scary, but it's very halloweeny
Playtime: <1h
FlippUp
A very unique game that mixes pinball with rage games. You use the flippers to have your ball climb up a "pinball machine", and every now and again get stopped by actual pinball layouts in which you have to complete objectives to score the goal amount, all while not dropping the ball down and out of the level. The aesthetic is lovely, even if the gameplay isn't for most people
Playtime: 10-30min
Do You even Forklift?
A physics-based game about moving things around with a forklift. Usually vehicles, and usually in perfectly reasonable and legal ways... usually. It's a good silly time, though sometimes the target detection felt a bit wonky
Playtime: ~10min
Typing Break
A game where to shoot a weapon, you need to type its name. And you better type fast cause the enemies ain't waiting. As you progress through the waves you get more weapons and modifiers, so it's your choice if you wanna keep using the low-cooldown Pistol or would rather swap to a Lightning Machinegun. My only complaint is that needing ~2.5h of grind to unlock the second demo character feels like a bit much
