Next Fest 26|3 Day 5
Micro-reviews for Day 5 of October Next Fest 2026, exploring Folder Dungeon, My Arms Are Longer Now, Gem Beasts, Shoot & Jump, CitaDrill, Me and You, and Night Hike
Noticed I've not played many strategy games this time around so tried to fish some out. This, in turn, made me realize a lot of strategy games are now bundled as deckbuilders or roguelikes, at least the ones with demos. I did momentarily forget how not every game is suited for a demo, and more complex strategy games are definitely in that camp
Highlights: Citadrill, Folder Dungeon
Folder Dungeon
A roguelike dungeon crawler stylized after exploring a file system on a desktop. The structure is simple, but there is a promising amount of replayability and potential builds that could be formed with various relics, modifiers, and spells. A % chance to heal every time you heal, while also activating other effects on heal? Sign me up
Playtime: 40min++
My Arms Are Longer Now
This game offers an absurd premise of an elongated arm wrecking mayhem across various levels. But the demo only has one level that has you mainly commit petty theft so it's hard to say how well it flows. I feel like the game overshot the silliness it was aiming for, and landed in the puddle of apathy that lies beyond. Sure, there are funny quips said by characters when you steal their Very Important Property, but they literally just watch you slowly drag away their bike or whatnot without doing anything to stop it. Feels like I can interact with the world, but the world hardly interacts with me
Playtime: ~15min
Gem Beasts
Gem Beasts mixes creature auto-battlers, bullet heavens, and roguelikes into something surprisingly palatable. The audio is a bit lackluster, but the system of slotting gems in specific places to maximize your stats offers good incentives to not only prioritize a specific build, but also to swap things around when your slots get full and you start going for quality over quantity. I was positively surprised by this game, but definitely could do with a bit more
Playtime: 20-30min++
Shoot & Jump
Chess but with guns and a lot more pieces. You can't actually move, you can only shoot your guns and have to use their recoil to move around and adjust your shots. Could be interesting but gets quite repetitive quite quickly, and even the bandaid fix of survivor-like boosts every so often is not helping
Playtime: ~15min++
CitaDrill
A strategy roguelike where you have to balance drilling down for resources in bug-filled caverns, and building a small colony on top of your drill with the resources you mine. The game throws you right in so I found myself bombarded with tutorials left and right at the start, but once I got the hang of things it had a quite good flow... granted you weren't missing the one crucial resource to combat your problems. Still, worth trying if you'd like a demo you can pick up for many runs
Playtime: 20-40min++
Me and You
Baba is You but 2-player. My expectations were low going in, but ultimately the game is fine. There is hardly anything here that isn't already done (often better) in Baba, but the demo is digestible and my partner enjoyed it
Playtime: ~30 min
Night Hike
Night Hike feels strongly inspired by Blue Prince: building out your own trail, limited steps, mysteries you need to solve between areas. But it also is very much its own thing, with simple 2D visuals, smaller boards, and a focus on a roguelite structure where your knowledge is primarily used to help you get further and further. It's a good simplification of the Blue Prince formula, at the cost of losing the mysterious vibes
