2y ago

Demos from Steam's Next Fest?

store.steampowered.com Next Fest June 2023 - NOW LIVE!

Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!

Would love to hear peoples experiences with any of the demos out for this Next Fest.

A standout for me is Sea of Stars, and it seems the demo runs perfectly so far!

Let's collect some recommendations here for others to join in

7 comments

I wrote up some reviews of demos I tried here.

I really enjoyed the demo for Station to Station. It reminds me a lot of Mini Metro in how you connect all the stations, but the aesthetic is wonderful (not that mini metro isn't)
- I wanted to like it, but it's a little too much puzzle and not enough train.
  
  Same unfortunately. I mean I did still really like it, but I was bummed at the ratio of puzzle to chill choochoo

I've played the Lies of P demo. Very Bloodborne-ish, hoping to see how the rest of the game fares. The only thing is that dodging initially doesn't move you much at all and so it can feel useless but you can upgrade that later on
- That's my biggest complaint with it. The dodge feels borderline useless but mandatory. It's like it wants you to use their perfect parry system but there's no reward for using it. The timing is inconsistent and it won't even stagger enemies half the time, and will never stagger a boss until they're nearly dead anyway. The risk of missing the parry isn't really worth it most of the time when the only reward is no damage taken. Also the hit boxing against bosses and large enemies is extremely deceptive. Like the first boss had me struggling until I realized that I could dodge most of the attacks easily, even though all his animations still looked like they were hitting me. On the other hand the second boss has attacks that seem to track and connect no matter what, even if they seem like they're a mile away.
  
  Yeah the second boss made parrying seem mandatory which was annoying as hell. I also had the issue of getting stuck between the bosses with dodging so I couldn't move anywhere

7 comments