Steam Game Festival

[Worgen]

So Steam has started running these game festivals where a bunch of indie games will have demos and the devs playing and interacting with the community and such. The current one is 2/3/21-2/9/21

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamgamefestival

So far I've found some pretty good games to look forward too.

Last Stand: Aftermath. Ok, so this is an isometric zombie survival roguelike kinda game. Its made by Con Artist Games, if that name sounds familiar its because back in the day they made the Last Stand series of flash games which were pretty awesome. After playing the demo for this, its definitely going on the wishlist, the graphics are nice, the gameplay loop is great, the zombies bleed good and its fun looking for new stuff and trying to survive.

Loop Hero. This is a really interesting little game. You have a hero who will run around this path which will occasionally spawn monsters. When your hero kills the monsters they drop loot, now that is normal but they also drop lands and such that you put around the loop that will spawn other monsters and interact with other lands and that you can collect resources from to build up your base and its just... really cool.

Beacon Pines. Just... this is something new, its kind of a point and click adventure with this really interesting keyword mechanic where you find certain words that you can put into a book to change how the story goes. Plus its cute as hell. Although, considering that I seemed to have made one of the characters mutate, I do have a feeling this will go some places.

Princess Farmer. This is a nice cute match 3 type puzzle game with really nice pixel graphics and its just adorable.

Hidden Deep. I wasn't sure about this game since its one of those physics kinda movement games, but it ends up being pretty cool, with nice creepy monsters and you wandering around an infested cave system trying to do missions while using neat gear. Something to keep an eye on.

Dead Estate. This one kinda feels like it wants to be enter the gungeon but plays slower in a smaller area to fight in. Kinda neat with nice pixel graphics.

Vicerafest. On one hand I really want to like this game, its a fast paced FPS game with a fun story and main character who is some kinda horror monster who just wants to buy a wedding ring for her boyfriend. But... I don't know, the gameplay isn't doing it for me. It might be because so far I haven't been able to find the right fov for it or it just might not be what I want out of a fps of its type.

Foregone. Kinda neat metroidvania type game. Sort of feels a bit like Dead Cells, but I think that has more to do with the 3d rendered character graphics that have a pixel filter on them then the actual gameplay. Worth keeping an eye on.

Despot's Game. This is a rogue-like where you pit punny naked humans against a variety of challenges and gradually gear them up and keep them fed and replace the dead or grind them down to feed the rest. I kinda have a hard time describing this one but its pretty fun, give it a try.

Has anyone else tried the demos out there and found any gems?

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Dammit if you didn’t make all of them sound good. Now I’m going to have to try them all. Sorry, other backlog games.

 

[Worgen]

Dammit if you didn’t make all of them sound good. Now I’m going to have to try them all. Sorry, other backlog games.

For the most part they are all good, or at least interesting enough that they are worth a shot. And I've tried some more.

Graven. This feels like it wants to be Hexen 2. You have a decent sized open yet somewhat liner world with quests that take you around it. It feels open but there also only seems to be one path to take at least for as far as I got. I will be keeping my eye on it though.

Almighty: Kill your Gods. This is a 3rd person action game and its interesting but really rough. It needs a lot of work cause right now it feels like an early alpha but its an interesting idea. You play as someone with a tail that has various ranged attacks and such you use to take down giant monsters. It appears to be coop focused but I only played it single player and it was still neat, but as I said, it needs work and polish.

AK-Xolotl. This is a twin stick shooter with very cute graphics. Not much else to say and to me it feels like its just trying to use cute characters and blood to be edgy, otherwise its fairly solid for its gameplay, but it doesn't seem like there is much to it.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

For the most part they are all good, or at least interesting enough that they are worth a shot. And I've tried some more.

Graven. This feels like it wants to be Hexen 2. You have a decent sized open yet somewhat liner world with quests that take you around it. It feels open but there also only seems to be one path to take at least for as far as I got. I will be keeping my eye on it though.

Almighty: Kill your Gods. This is a 3rd person action game and its interesting but really rough. It needs a lot of work cause right now it feels like an early alpha but its an interesting idea. You play as someone with a tail that has various ranged attacks and such you use to take down giant monsters. It appears to be coop focused but I only played it single player and it was still neat, but as I said, it needs work and polish.

AK-Xolotl. This is a twin stick shooter with very cute graphics. Not much else to say and to me it feels like its just trying to use cute characters and blood to be edgy, otherwise its fairly solid for its gameplay, but it doesn't seem like there is much to it.

I’ve read about Graven and am certainly keeping an eye out for it.

 

[meiam]

Rise eternia seems pretty cool, trying to re capture old fire emblem feel. I get that new FE is more popular but I just can't stand it and I'm a bit sad old one are gone because of that.

Ultimately the problem isn't finding interesting new game, it's actually playing everything I want to. My wishlist is already over 300 title and its going to keep growing forever.

Also I wish every steam game had two trailer. One being the usual announcement trailer where everything look epic (and you get absolutely no information from) and a second one that was just gameplay (with UI) so that you can actually get a good idea of how the game play. And no quick 2 sec cut, 15 sec+ segment to give a good idea.

 

[Worgen]

Ultimately the problem isn't finding interesting new game, it's actually playing everything I want to. My wishlist is already over 300 title and its going to keep growing forever.

I have almost 800 games on my wishlist. I tend to use it to keep an eye on interesting titles. The first 150 are the ones I'm paying closest attention too.

 

[Worgen]

I tried a few more game demos.

Squadron 51. This is a pretty solid side scrolling shooter heavily inspired by 50s alien invasion b movies. Even some of the UFOs you fight have that look of being held up by a string to them.

The Longest Road on Earth. This one is weird, its a very indie movie kinda... I guess walking sim done from the side perspective with various anthropomorphic characters living their lives and finding meaning in existence with some pretty great music. Its... interesting, has no dialog, really good pixel art and is kinda neat.

Antiprism. This is a kinda weird VR game. Each of your controllers is a ship and you use them to shoot down pirates and such. The story is kinda interesting with the two pilots finding a weird artifact and other factions trying to get it from them but the controls are odd. Like to shoot you need to press the top button and trigger on controllers and the movement feels weird, not as responsive as that Valve demo which was the same kinda thing of controlling a ship and dodging enemy fire.

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery. This is a point and click kinda puzzle game where you go through kinda self contained rooms and rotate them to see all sides and find clues and solve puzzles. Its got a nice simple 3d style to the graphics but a couple of the puzzles go into the more annoying kinda puzzle. Still worth keeping an eye on.

Highrisers. You have a few survivors that are trapped in a sky scrapper and you need to look the different floors to make weapons and defenses to combat the not zombie invasion. I should have played more of it, its got really nice pixel graphics but the gameplay really didn't work for me and I got distracted by other things.

 

[wings012]

Last Stand: Aftermath. Ok, so this is an isometric zombie survival roguelike kinda game. Its made by Con Artist Games, if that name sounds familiar its because back in the day they made the Last Stand series of flash games which were pretty awesome. After playing the demo for this, its definitely going on the wishlist, the graphics are nice, the gameplay loop is great, the zombies bleed good and its fun looking for new stuff and trying to survive.

This is interesting to hear. I played their flash games back in the day. I also gave their facebook game a spin for a bit. I typically do not play FB games, but since I enjoyed the flash games I decided to give it a shake. Though as expected, it fell into the usual FB game trappings and I got bored of it eventually. I thought the mission structure in the FB game was kinda alright, you controlled a squad in real time and explored/looted places while fighitng off zombies.

I might give this a shake when it comes out, though I'll need to give zombie games a rest for a while longer. I kinda just came out of playing too much 7Days2Die and my friend roped me into playing State of Decay 2 after that.

 

[Worgen]

I thought the mission structure in the FB game was kinda alright, you controlled a squad in real time and explored/looted places while fighitng off zombies.

This one plays pretty different. Its kind of like the old top down dungeon crawler games where you control one person as they look around for resources and fight zombies when they get detected. Then after you get enough fuel for your ride and have looted all you want, you head to the next area. If you die though, a new character comes and picks up for you. I would suggest giving it a shot since it has some of the concepts of the old games, but its, its own thing. No ruining your finger when your stuck with the pistol required.

I've also played some additional games.

Warhammer 40k Dakka Squadron. Its an air combat game where you are a flyboyz and you have all da dakka. It controls weird with your aircraft whipping around this way and that. It works, its just really weird feeling. Voice acting is good.

Inferno: Beyond the 7th Circle. This is a really old school dungeon crawler game, you know the type. Its first person but you turn 90% angles and move one spot at a time. The game play is neat and its got some nice graphics and really gross monster designs. One to keep an eye on if you like old school.

Steel Assault. Speaking of old school this game has a difficulty mode called arcade. Its a side scrolling run and gun shooter. Kinda feels like it wants to be a combination of Bionic Commando and Contra with fantastic pixel graphics that beat them both. Although the graphics are so detailed it can be weirdly hard to keep track of everything going on. Its difficulty is high, but you have a weird electro whip thing that can take out enemy bullets. Either way, really fun, got my eye on it.

Unsouled. A sort of interesting top down souls like. Seems kinda cool, decent graphics decent gameplay.

Sands of Aura. This one didn't do it for me at all, couldn't even bother getting into the real game play of it.

The Last Spell. This is cool, its a turn based tactics game where you have a few powerful heroes against a horde of zombie things and you have to stop them from destroying some big magic spell. It sounds like its going to have a lot of roguelike mechanics that aren't in place yet. The gameplay was really neat, good music and fantastic pixel graphics.

Draft of Darkness. This is a survival horror deck builder card game. You play as some dude who is exploring a building, you find other survivors to join you, you loot rooms, and fight monsters. The fighting monsters part is neat, the exploring the building is awkward. Graphics are decent. It feels like they would have something really solid if they can figure out how to make the exploration feel less awkward. Probably has something to do with the really stiff walking animation.

Tiny Topia. This feels a bit like babys first sim city, but I get the feeling its much much deeper then that. What gives it that feeling is the fact you are building a toy city thing. It also has the weird awkwardness of needing some more polish or something to really give it what it needs.