Next Fest 26|1 Day 1

Day 1's a bit late because I'm tight on time, but I've still got plenty of things to recommend! Though pardon if I speed through them a bit, as it's almost midnight and I barely started writing it all

Highlights: Denshattack!

Sokogram

Sokogram on Steam

Sokogram merges Nonogram logic grids with Sokoban box-pushing puzzles. Each level blends both systems into one unified challenge with handcrafted designs that reward deduction over guessing.

STEAM

A very nifty merger of nonograms and sokobans. And if those words don't mean much to you then don't worry, this puzzler does introduce both concepts pretty smoothly, and features a very simple pixelesque aesthetic to it. A jolly time

Denshattack!

Denshattack! on Steam

Flip, trick and grind your train in a fast-paced, off-the-rails ride through a colourful Japanese dystopia. Outmatch rival gangs, wreck a shady megacorp, and take back the tracks with nothing but skill, speed, and style.

STEAM

A chaotic game about train drifting in an anime-styled world of the future. You take your train, go fast, do tricks, be chaotic. Varied environments, great replayability, and a good challenge if you want to master it. Yellow Train Goes Vroom

CALX

CALX on Steam

Flow across the WARP-corrupted planet Syro. Master movement as the Seeker. Double jump, dash, levitate and grapple through atmospheric ruins. Scan, solve puzzles, and engage in measured combat in waves of stillness and frenzy.

STEAM

I really like Calx's visual style, which has specific colors dominate its biomes in a cell-shady world. It does however fall flat a bit on the gameplay side of things. Between the way systems work and getting weirdly glued to walls when walking, I haven't enjoyed it as much as I hoped it would, but I do like the "shoot enemy to weaken them for sword damage" combat focus

Core Descent

Core Descent on Steam

Core Descent is a puzzle-platformer set in a vivid world filled with puzzles to solve, items to collect, and secrets to find.

STEAM

A very short demo mixing some simple puzzles with boxes sliding around the grid with some fairly linear exploration. I like the vibrant pixel visuals, but wish there was a bit more content and polish to the movement

Guardians of the Wild Sky

Guardians of the Wild Sky on Steam

Survive, build, craft and explore a vast magical world as you capture and bond with powerful Guardians. Captain your own airship and sail the cloud seas. Build everything from cozy homes to flying castles. Explore this world solo or with friends; the skies are yours to conquer!

STEAM

A Palworld at its heart, and realistic UE visuals at its surface. It seems the performance was terrible on common hardware, but beyond that and some of the very generic animations/assets, it's a game with a lot of systems that work together in a way that can be most certainly enjoyable. It's an extremely slow burn of a demo, but there is love for the craft in the vast world the game offers

Box or Void

Box or Void on Steam

Walls become empty space. Empty space becomes walls. Box or Void is a puzzle game about reversing positive and negative space. Obstacles in one space become pathways in the other.

STEAM

A sokoban where you can flip between the standard playable 'box' and the 'void' which is also a playable box, but one that walks on the foreground and changes the background instead of the other way around. It's a really solid concept, with some great puzzling potential, even if the demo isn't super complex

Nomori

Nomori on Steam

Nomori is a mind-bending adventure game where you control time and space to journey through a whimsical spirit world. Take shortcuts through portals, rotate your perspective, and control the flow of time to solve puzzles that are out of this world.

STEAM

A gravity-bending portal platformer that has you guide a slime cube to the exit to let you pass to the next level. Any direction can become "down" with the surprisingly smooth portals, but because of that it also feels like the solutions might quite quickly get so open that you won't be really solving a puzzle as much as getting to the end of the level. Like me on the last level. I think. You can never know with these kinds of games

Hozy

Hozy on Steam

Restore a forgotten neighbourhood through your favourite hobby, one cozy room at a time. In Hozy, clean, paint, and decorate abandoned homes with satisfying mechanics and intuitive controls. Enjoy the little details as you interact with tools, items and furniture to bring each space back to life.

STEAM

Hozy has you clean up messy apartments, and then refurbish them with dozens of homely items however you please. It's a cozy game, a lot like Unpacking but with more freedom. And some weird cultist gnomes

The Eternal Life of Goldman

The Eternal Life of Goldman on Steam

In this breathtaking platformer adventure, explore a vast hand-drawn Archipelago, inspired by ancient fables and depicted in classic frame-by-frame animation, and defeat a mysterious Deity.

STEAM

This adventure platformer's animations are teeming with life, with tons of variety and details. There is just so much going on that I don't even mind the easier difficulty and the very unusual level-ish based metroidvania