I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!
I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!
And I've rated them all below. I'm very glad Steam decided to do a big promotional event around them- it helped point me toward a lot of games I would have never tried/heard of otherwise. Some of the good ones might not be good the entire game, but they were at least good in the demo.
I would recommend trying any demo I rate 4/5, and maybe purchase the full game if you like it. Anything lower, and it's probably down to personal taste, or willingness to hurt ones self.
Robocop Rogue City
It's been years since I last saw a Robocop movie. It's good to know that Robocop has still not gotten over the death of his family.
Gameplay consists of trudging heavily through densely decorated levels, gunning foes down in the dozens. The developers make sure to dress this gameplay with a cheesy story, throwing campy voice acting on top. It should be the kind of FPS I hate, but I loved the feeling of being a strong robot boy destroying everyone. Recommend getting it on sale, but demo is well worth the effort.
4/5
Last Train Home
This is one-part squad RTS, one part resource/base manager. I've not played many RTS games, but I would say the game controls like those single-man units from Red Alert, except you don't really get to feel like an invincible badass. Game is stupidly gorgeous as well, with a strong and interesting historical base where you are a group of Czech soldiers looking to get home in the middle of the Russian Revolution.
Good challenging gameplay, while feeling very fair, or at least "accurate" to the grim reality of this era's world. I'm definitely going to be playing my way through it on release, or shortly after.
5/5
EMPTY SHELL
It's meant to be a mysterious and sinister horror game about exploring a strange and abandoned industrial facility. The game depicts you as an obscure grey figure, being chased by monsters your brain can only envision from lack of detail, as if captured by satellite footage. It's a very stylized game.
The gameplay is that of a top down shooter, where you aim with your mouse and gun/hack down the horrible monstrosities in this place. It's one of those great horror games where the controls are good, and it means nothing in the face of the overwhelming odds you face.
However, the demo was held back by lack of interesting story beats after the start, and overall samey gameplay. I could already find myself getting sick of it without anything new to provoke my interest.
There could be something better further beyond, but I didn't find it.
3/5
Interregnum Chronicles: False Prophet
Somewhat iffy review. The demo begins with you in a freezing apocalypse with mysterious stuff being hinted at around you. You launch immediately into the strategy game, which seems to be based off of stuff like XCOM (which I've never played). Once you die (if you're bad at video games like I am), you find yourself as someone new exploring in an overhead map where you get to make fun and horrible choices, before going off to pick further fights. When you get into fights, you go into that XCOM-like battle system.
I didn't get a tutorial in the demo or a good idea on how to play, so I kind of got fucked early on, and couldn't figure out how to progress meaningfully. If you've played this kind of game before, you'll probably have fun with it. The story itself seems pretty intriguing, albeit with mid voice acting.
3/5, but barely. Worldbuilding really saves it.
Microcivilization
This was the most dangerous game in the entire Steam Next celebration for me. It's one of those addictive kind of "cookie clicker" style games, and it even adds some actual management gameplay into things. The moment I launched the game and resized the window so that it looked right (it can't be stretched to alternative resolutions without messing up the pixel art), I immediately groaned because I knew that I was doomed. I ended up playing for five hours straight until I accidentally closed the game and lost all my progress.
Potential detractors include an inflexible resolution, lack of explanative demo (I still don't know what some of those icons and stuff means), and the complete ability to absolutely cheese the hell out of invasions in this game.
5/5. Don't play this if you've gotten addicted to Runescape in the past.
Cobalt Core
This is probably the cutest game of the bunch. It features a pixel art aesthetic with cute animal friends. You're in a time loop (established from the start), so have fun with your new animal friends in your endless runs. Gameplay is FTL, but with cards and deck building instead of opportune weapon and personnel management.
It's a very simple premise. At the start of each turn, you get three energy. You also get to know what your enemy will do. Each card costs some level of energy, show in the top left of each card. Maybe you get some energy so you can move out of the way of an oncoming attack. May you put energy into your shields if you can't dodge, or just want to tank it. Maybe you just take the hit to your ship health without worry. It's great strategic fun. The game is as much about preparing for the future as it is fighting the current battle, but the current battle stays fun.
There is a small level of indie clunk. Video settings are missing for the game, and it's automatically fullscreen at 16:9- not that I think my ultrawide monitor would be needed for a game like this. Despite these technical limitations, it was an amazing demo. Really hoping the rest of the game will be as good when it releases.
5/5.
The Crust
A promising RTS about managing a colony's energy and infrastructural needs on the moon. It has an ok story, albeit with awkward voice acting, and audio jank (background music plays while characters talk, alternatively getting loud between their lines and making it awkward to listen to. There are a few other weird moments with audio as well). In addition, it's lacking a few nice hotkeys, such as the ability to select the last building you placed to place again.
It might be alright with another six months of final polish work, though I'm not sure if it will ever get it or not. The in-game bug reporter links to the game's Discord server, which is nice to have as an option, but should not be the only default way to report them. I may have gotten explosively angry with the world when this occurred.
Like Anakin Skywalker on the council, it has the honor of going on my wishlist, but does not receive the title of imminent purchase.
3/5.
Forgive Me Father 2
This is one of those 90s-inspired FPS, but actually good. You romp around with gameplay strongly influenced by Doom, shooting undead horrors in wonderfully creative levels, all painted with a fun comic-like style.
Potential detractors include:
- A stupid flashlight recharging system where you have to wind it up, immediately teaching you to babysit the stupid thing every moment you get and creating busywork.
- Problematic audio engineering, where music would play at odd times, in odd beats, with the occasional string (audio punctuation) becoming jarring as you dip in and out of combat with single foes on the first level.
- And it's one of "those" horror games where you're in an asylum, and you may or may not be hallucinating or something, as implied in the demo. Shmeep shmop!
Fortunately, I came for the fun FPS gameplay and not the story. This is Doom but Halloween. I'm definitely picking it up on release if it's for a good price.
4/5.
Hollow Cocoon
A horror game about visiting Gam Gam's house in the Japanese countryside during the 1980s, before they invented compact mobile fun devices. It has a beautiful and seemingly-authentic aesthetic. You only get about 20 minutes of demo though, with hints of stuff like hiding in cupboards and a drain puzzle to look forward to in full release. This is including my earnest exploration of the game, time that was also stretched by being one of "those" horror games with standstill walking, and walking "running".
The demo ends with a long and solid pan of the monster that's probably going to be haunting you in clear sight, ruining a good deal of the scariness. Not promising for the horror. Maybe the game is better, but the demo wasn't!
3/5.
TEVI
A platformer game about being a cute bunny girl. The bunny girl's apron appears to be a one-piece swimsuit, and the demo hints rather charmingly at a lesbian undertone romance.
The gameplay is a fun platformer where enemies have health that you attack, with about a million different surrounding systems that probably enhance the gameplay, but feel distracting to me. If you like a lot of added complexity with upgrade systems, equipable slots, and gameplay that feels a little like modern Shantae games, this might be for you. It's not for me though!
3/5.
The Thaumaturge
An incredibly ambient game about being a man wielding spirits and very subtle magic in early 1900s Eastern Europe. Has strong personality literally built into the gameplay in a very cool way.
The demo's gameplay consists of exploring around in an overhead view similar to Disco Elysium, through 1900s rural Georgia. You get little points and evidence pointing you onward toward other clues/mysteries, with cute Unreal Engine scenes and strange turn based combat in between. The story is well on its way toward developing into something very interesting before I stopped.
Unlike so many of the other games here, it had an incredibly strong audio backing too. It does have mildly janky performance, strange hitches, and a few other minor issues I really hope they iron out before release, because I desperately want to play this game in full.
5/5.
Europa
They made a Miyazaki movie into a game. You're a kid adventuring in a world cultivated by robots into bearing life. They were very successful. Gameplay is like a floaty, forgiving platformer. Kinda cool, but lacking any challenge. You could probably throw this at a kid for baby's first 3D platformer. I'm not a fan of games without any challenge, though the graphics and music carried it pretty far for me, questionable audio triggers aside.
3/5.
Japanese Drift Master
I probably shouldn't have bothered with this since I'm not into racing games, but this seemed like it was a little different. I still got lost and confused. The right stick isn't controlling your camera in this game strangely enough, which really screwed with me and my bad steering. At one point my right trigger started moving me backwards as well, which didn't help. Maybe I'm missing something as a non-racing fan, but I don't think so.
2/5.
Apocalypse Party
You start out with this bog standard, but really sad intro of a father watching his daughter get devoured by his zombie wife. It's an incredibly gruesome and sad comic-book intro. You then flash to him staying behind as the quarantine zone is bombed, as a sort of suicide.
Flash cut to this grief-stricken father landing in a medieval zombie village, drawn in Facebook-like graphics, with happy pinging noises erupting as you collect a score gunning down zombies. You can even turn on auto-aim if you want less of a game. It reminded me of Army of Darkness from the Evil Dead series, and that's not a great comparison to draw. Very disappointing.
2/5.
Enshrouded
A horror game about how terrible poorly implemented FSR 2 is. Playing the game at native resolution results in incredibly poor performance, even at lower res. Playing the game at reduced resolution in FSR is a jagged mess that performs kinda ok. No matter what, your player avatar is going to look weird.
It's a survival game about building a survival base, with a makeshift story around it. There's a lot of other multiplayer survival games out there these days, don't bother with this one.
1/5.
FatalZone
I don't know what you call this kind of game. You run around in an open field dodging zombies as your character automatically shoots at them, and occasionally grabbing loot where you are able to.
It's the kind of game that's not really a game. Don't play this.
1/5.
Echoes of the Living
The game launched promisingly, but at the wrong resolution. No biggie, right? Except that you have to click through each resolution like an old, bad PC port. And also, every time you click through a resolution, you change to that resolution. No confirmation asked or required! At one point I landed on the resolution I was looking for and then accidentally clicked again. Then I realized the game has a weird habit of greying out the resolution option and preventing you from selecting it. I never got to the actual game.
1/5.
Astra: Knights of Veda
It asked me for my Google login to play. Whyyyyyyyyyyy.
1/5.
The Inquisitor
A game about Jesus kicking the shit out of the Romans who tried to crucify him, and then many years later you're one of his disciple inquisitors, being a dick to others. Not really that different from the real inquisition, to be honest.
Everything in the game was super ugly. The people sucked and looked terrible, the main character looked terrible, and the voice acting was mid-to-poor. Even when you got into a nicer part of town, it still looked kind of gross, like that era of AAA games when they weren't allowed to look nice (see the COD MW3 era). There seems to be some cool worldbuilding in the game, and probably even a good story. I couldn't make it past the presentation, unfortunately. It didn't help that the gameplay (especially the chase section) was a boring QTE.
3/5, but only because of the worldbuilding. It probably isn't good.
Pioneers of Pagonia
It's weird how many management games I've played now, without any guide whatsoever. And here I've found another one. Why do indie developers keep doing this?
Game also has indie jank, such as poor support for higher resolutions with its text, and some weird exit menus with visual clutter obscuring the actual UI.
1/5.
Laika: Aged Through Blood
Trigger warning: This game has some serious content warnings I'd advise checking before trying the demo.
A morbid motorcycle apocalypse story about vengeance, blood, and how dogs are awesome. I deliberately avoided going too far in because I definitely want to beat this game in full. It has a great story, complimented by artwork that resembles a child's show based in the Mad Max universe. The gameplay is Happy Wheels with bullet parrying and wheelies to reload. My only concern so far is how easy it is to get lost in the expansive levels- there's a lot of "look-alike" areas and I hate getting lost in non-open world video games.
5/5.
Ghostrunner 2
A game about parkouring through mostly linear levels, through a Cyberpunk aesthetic. I've never played the first one, but this demo was alright. Was a little difficult, which is a nice change of pace from other demos. Expecting you to react immediately to being able to ignore gravity was a little iffy of a decision, admittedly.
Some parts were great little sections where you had to use creativity, and some were just on rails action. The former was a lot better than the latter.
4/5.
Sidenote: Pioneers of Pagonia is by the actual developer of the actual old The Settlers.
I loved it. And yeah, it's a simple management game without much depth or fuss, but that chill easygoing settling of the landscape is what enchanted me about the original right around 30 years ago, and it worked just as well with the demo. In fact I found that comparing Against The Storm, I kinda prefer the less gameplay that PoP has, exactly because it has less gameplay. ATS sits a bit in the middle, still being a chill town builder but also wanting to be deeper, and in that case I just want a proper 4X or Grand Strategy game instead. PoP is then the exact opposite of that for me, it appeals to the chill&relax part of gaming, a bit like playing Dorfromantik or something.
Though, as you say, it really was quite janky.
Absolutely adored robocop and cobalt core. Definitely picking up both of them. Robocop nailed everything that made the movie great, cobalt core oozed charm and had fun gameplay.
I had meant to try the thaumaturge but by the time I got around to it, next fest was over and I couldn't play the demo anymore. These time limited demos are a really stupid idea. I'm way less likely to buy it now because those sorts of games are hit or miss for me.
I agree on the annoying timed out demo, I thought the same thing when I missed out on a demo during the last steam next fest. Crazy how even demos are impacted by the ethereal nature of digital storefronts and their sometimes inconsistent access.
It took a lot out of me making time for these demos when I work a full-time job, but I just knew something like that was going to happen if I didn't get around to them.
You really are missing something about Japanese Drift Master, solid list anyway.
I'm just bad at racing games in the first place, so not being able to move my camera with right joystick really messed with my head.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!
Most of your write ups seem decently done if you clicked with the game at all, but if you're going to continue to review things, you might want to do reign in your personal biases a bit.
Low scores for games you didn't play or realize you don't understand the appeal of are pretty bad takes.
Vampire Survivors was quite literally one of the hit games of the year when it came out, to call other games of the genre that are following on its coattails "not really a game" and saying people shouldn't buy a literal genre is just ridiculous. Is FatalZone trying to be some huge blockbuster, no, it's just iterating on the survivor concept (same as Deep Rock Galactic is doing, which has more polish but less features than most). The game is literally $5 to buy right now in early access and as one of the many who do enjoy the genre, it's probably worth the price with the content it has now (unknown if it'll be same insane value VS has been).
Hard disagree.
People should have spicy takes. I love when someone goes, "I don't like Dark Souls because it's too hard." Or "Not a fan of gore so Doom isn't for me". It tells me more about the writer and seeing their perspective.
There's enough annoying fanboys out there. If I wanted a tamed review, Ill go read some gaming blog thats too afraid to piss off their advertisers.
"I don't like X game/genre" is a fine take, calling something you don't like “not really a game" is not, unless you can really justify it not meeting some minimum criteria to be called a game (doesn't present a challenge or problem to overcome, doesn't have a fail-state, has no player agency, etc)
Isn't that exactly what lead us to the "every AAA game is an 8/10" meta of current videogame reviewing? I think it's totally valid to make subjective game reviews. Big outlets trying to make their reviews objectives is IMHO the reason why they are totally worthless (for me).
Everyone has a bias and that's expected and the stating of opinions as opinions is good, the line is stating opinion as fact or review bombing.
I didn't play it because I didn't want to log in, isn't a review of the actual game, it's at best review bombing against secondary logins. It tells anyone interested in playing the game nothing other than that a secondary login is needed.
The definition of the minimum criteria for what makes a game is pretty nebulous, but survivor styles are well above all but the most disingenuous definitions of what makes a game. Saying it isn't a game because you don't enjoy it is not having a bias that causes you to like something less.
The trending of most games to be 7+/10 is largely driven by idiots who tied the success of a game to metacritic scores and publishers who retaliate against games journalists for "hurting" that success by not cooperating with them on future products by providing review codes.
I don't even know where to begin on the question of "reining in my personal bias", other than to note all reviews are based on a person's personal bias, and what they know about the gaming format and industry as a whole. I know it's a tired trope, but everyone has personal bias, and game/game demo reviews should not try to be objective looks at games (it's near useless). Reviewers should instead make their experience and opinions known from the start, or throughout the review. That way if their opinions are diametrically opposed, readers who don't share the same opinions can readily discount it.
Also, while you can empathize with and realize that someone might like a game if they're into that genre, you can only go so far. I have not played Vampire Survivors, but if it's anything like FatalZone, I will gleefully state it's not really a game. Or if I want to be less glib, not really a game I'd recommend for others. Again, for you this might be a good cue to discard my reviews as worthless for you. You should make your own reviews in this subreddit in that case, as it could certainly use more posts.
OP, really appreciate your write up and going through each game!
Just reading your minicivilization review makes me both excited and scared for my time.
Thanks! As someone corrected me, it it "Microcivilization", my b on the misnaming.
Thanks man. But what about "minicivilization"? I don't find this one on steam
It looks to be actually called "Microcivilization"
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1822550/Microcivilization/
Thank you random Internet stranger!
I think it's "Tiny civilization", which is really cute indeed. Got it on sale for less then 2 bucks, well worth it!
Edit: nah, probably not, but tiny civilization is a nice little game anyway :)
Indeed. Thanks for the hint. Looks interesting. The other commenter named the right one: "micro civilization"
I really liked Earthless, which is similar to Cobalt Core but adds grid movement.
Galactic Glitch was pretty fun, too.
ColorSpace is annoyingly challenging, in an addicting sort of way.
I also played a lot of 'Survivors' games. Most of them sucked, and surprisingly few worked well on Steam Deck, but Sea of Survivors was fun.
I'll have to check out Earthless. I've been in the mood for single player games recently.
I understand you have a lot of demos to cover, though I can’t help but feel there’s some dishonesty about the Robocop demo. First mission gets you used to killing gangsters in simple corridors, though after that the demo actually gives a lot of focus on side quests, and very traditional “community policing”, including detective work, and many occasions of trying to find the best balance between community lenience and upholding justice. I even managed to avoid a gunfight in one case by finding clues and negotiating some of the gangsters down.
Maybe you played all that part and it just didn’t feel significant. I admit, it just felt pleasantly unexpected to me.
Ah, I only played the first level, I didn't finish every demo.
That content warning about Laika is legit. It gets real heavy very quickly!
The demo really was an excellent content warning in itself. I hope that's the actual opening- that way people who buy it and don't know what they're getting into can find out real quick, and get their return.
I would characterize the crust as more colony sim than RTS. It's definitely rough around the edges, but it has a strong foundation and I expect it will be a great game when finished.