The best things I played during Steam NextFest

A handful of really cool games to keep an eye on in the near future

Steam Next Fest is one of those recurring events that I will happily drop everything to go and explore. While the platform itself is rife with myriad problems, absolutely flooded with new games of varying quality every day, NextFest is always a guarantee that you will discover something, either through casual browsing or one of many informative Twitter threads. And the games generally speak for themselves.

So I thought I'd put my hat in the ring and tell you about the demos I played:

Shadows of Doubt

A strong contender for emergent gameplay experience of the year, Shadows of Doubt is a game full of red flags and peacock feathers: its a procedurally generated (boo) detective immersive sim (hooray), with a weirdly complex user interface (boo) and a stunning voxel art style (hooray). It’s a game that on the surface has conflicted my excitement to no end.

It features both elements that I, the Disonored and Deus Ex liker, am extremely horny for, and ones that I find potentially quite problematic in their execution. However, even spending a meagre half hour playing this demo I realized that the untapped potential for emergent storytelling in this game has the capacity to be incredible, and I will elucidate this with a fable of my own personal time with the game:

Picture this: I’ve been tasked with investigating the dissappearance of a scientist, identifying his address and making my way to the appartment block. Breaking into his flat was no sweat, I breached the breaker box turning off security and lowering the shutters so as not to be disturbed. Picking the lock, I was in! Finding a body crumpled on the floor, signs of a break in other than my own. A safe open with a nifty cyberware upgrade for me to pinch myself.

I got to work, scanning the place for clues as to this body’s identity. Quickly it became clear that this was the scientist I was looking for, his prints all over the place. But I also found a set that belonged to someone else. Foul play clearly involved, my elation was cut short by a knock at the door. Enforcers had sniffed out that something was up. These motherfuckers are no joke, I was not equipped to take them on. It was time to skidaddle.

After a couple of panicked minutes casing the joint I found a helpfully mansized vent to crawl into, and I hid myself away as the fascist bully boys helped themselves to residency. Crawling my way through the block’s ventilation system I edged myself down to what I thought was street level. Tom, you genius, I thought as I found an exit vent, and vaulted out. Right into a shower. That was in use.

A few seconds of chaos ensued as the poor woman whose personal space I had accidently violated screamed the house down and I frantically tried to navigate my way out of the cubicle, snagged on a bit of the environment for extra comedic effect. Her boyfriend burst into the bathroom, knuckles at the ready to give me what’s for and I found myself scrambling for the door under a flurry of punches, desperately apologizing for the unintentional intrusion.

‘I’m not a pervert’ I yelped as he crippled my ankle ‘I’m just a moron!’. I frantically tried to figure out how to fight back. If I didn’t do something soon this man was going to kill me. But eventually, as I hobbled out into the hallway and my heart sank at the sight of the building’s shutters still down, he just sort of collapsed unconscious. Was that me? Did he just knacker himself out rattling my bones?

Security turned itself off. My exit clear, I didnt stick around to figure out what had happened. ‘Get the fuck out of dodge, Tom!’ I yelled to myself, leaving the building bruised and humiliated. I dragged myself to the nearest clinic to pick up some bandages and nurse my tender wounds.

I’m not a great detective.

Roots of Yggdrasil

City builders are famously constructed on a foundation of legacy. They are games about erecting enduring monuments to humanity’s great defiance in the face of the cold unfeeling universe. Roots of Yggrasil has a different take on this genre, offering a sort of roguelite puzzle element that with the in-universe fiction makes perfect sense.

You goal on any given map is to satisfy the conditions needed to blossom a tree and use its fruit to activate a portal. This is achieved through building up your population through housing, increasing military might to help you explore the hidden wilds and there’s a neat symbiosis between numbers and proximity that means that you can’t simply nestle in at the start and hope to achieve what you need. Sometimes the victory conditions won’t be revealed until you’ve explored a bit.

You have a turn limit, an encroaching evil that is forever at the back of your mind. It’s not obvious what direction it will saunter in from, sometimes your best laid plans will be completely screwed as the fates laugh at you, and you have to scramble to come up with a plan B.

Success or failure, you end up returning to a hub where you can rethink your strategies, spend any earned resources to help you have a better chance on the next run, and proceed again. Classic Roguelite behaviour.

I found this gameplay loop, the simplicity of the core mechanics and the overall design very compelling. Obviously a demo won’t show you the bredth of the systems here, so there’s definitely complexity to be earned through play. It’s a winner for sure. I don’t have a fun micro story to sound off this section, so just give this game a go while the demo is still up. (If you’re reading this in the future when the game is out, go buy it!)

Radio the Universe

There’s a sort of phantom quality to certain games. Often you’ll see a fragment of a facade of a WIP that looks like it could be the next big thing. An errant GIF languishing in a long forgotten tweet, as the complications of game design and the horrors of life get tangled together, and sometimes well intended projects get waylaid.

I’ve known about Radio the Universe for a while. It’s something that has such a striking art style and such a fascinating overall mood that it’s hard not to get sucked into it’s own fragile mythology, but I never really knew what the end result would actually be, and based on this demo, there’s a violent clash between the familiar and the alien to be found here.

If you’ve played excellent Zelda-like Eastward, there will definitely be stuff here that you’ll recognise. A touch of that side angle top down dungeon crawling majesty, but here the mechanical side of the game takes a more interesting turn. Enemy encounters are dictated in an almost mathematical manner. Your actions, the sword swipes, heavy attacks and bursts of gunfire all have particular values, and your foes will only drop experience if you defeat them with the exact amount of damage that their health pool shows you.

It’s a fascinating wrench in the cogs, because it sits alongside an already quite brutal game. While checkpoints are plentiful, you might as well be made out of crepe paper. As much as you have to be considered in how you plan your attacks, you must also be wary of what’s coming at you. Enemy assaults are well signposted, but it’s easy to get lost in the miasma of calculations, hand eye coordination and environmental navigation.

It’s very cool, and I can’t wait to see how far it branches out.

1000XResist

Every time a NextFest happens there's always one game that I had no idea existed, from a studio I have no familiarity with, that stays with me for weeks after. 1000XResist is that game this time. A weird, beautiful, considered post-apocalyptic adventure game that has a huge [Evangelion x Signalis] vibe.

The demo focuses on the navigation of a school across multiple timelines. It’s not very clear exactly what this space is, it feels like a simulation of someone else’s memory, but the soldiers who join you speak as though there’s a tangible danger in being here.

In classic adventure game fashion, you explore, talk to the students of this school, and slowly uncover the truth about what’s actually going on. A mysterious disease that this place is the ground zero for, the first contact with gargantuan astral bodies, and a solemn, mournful conversation about replication, function and relationships ensue. It’s beautifully written, and I was absolutely enraptured by the direction of the voice cast. It’s a series of such understated, quiet performances of even the NPCs, a really atypical approach to voice acting even for the least obnoxious games out there.

I’m quietly very in love with what this game is doing, and I hope the full release nails the landing.

Mineko’s Night Market

I’ve already written about this game, but now i’ve actually played it, let me reiterate: This is going to be a really nice time. The demo is slight but showcases what will likely be the main gameplay loop. You explore a town, building relationships with the residents, collecting items and crafting goods for the titular night market, as well as exploring the outskirts.

There’s a rudimentary stealth element in these moments, as you find ways to sneak past G-Men and rescue cats from their clutches. A mystery to unearth, artefacts to find, but the overall tone is so light and fluffy that no doubt the vibes will be good throughout. I really love the design of Mineko, the player character, but the art direction overall is extremely good. The cast is wonderfully expressive.

I’m looking forward to playing more.

Xenonauts 2

Listen, I really love XCOM Enemy Unknown, but one of my biggest bugbears with it, and it’s sequels, is that even on decent PC hardware it runs like arse. It looks really nice but a lot of the mood lighting and environmental design and big sweeping cinematic camera work actually gets in the way of the meat and potatoes of the game.

I’ve not played the original Xenonauts, although I was familiar with it and know it’s well regarded by fans of the genre. A sort of ‘reject modernity embrace tradition’ return to the more basic design principles of Julian Gollop’s original Xcom UFO franchise. This sequel feels like a continuation of that lineage.

The simplicity of the art style really works for this strategy game. It looks lovely, embracing the style of the older games while updating the models and definition to something a little more enticing for modern gamer sensibilities, and the core mechanics are solid. Your soldiers are limited in their actions, you have to consider the space you’re fighting in, how distance affects accuracy, what you’re willing to sacrifice to draw out your foe. Classic Xcom shit. Solid.

That’s what this game is, really: Solid. Exactly what traditionalists want. Will I play the full release? Probably not, but I am all here for studios revisiting older motifs and genre tropes and updating them in ways that celebrate but don’t revere. We inevitably get better versions of the things we loved growing up this way.

Bramble: The Mountain King

I’m a sucker for this kind of experience. I really loved Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is unrelated but the first thing that popped into my head playing this platforming adventure game. The sense of scale is really interesting here, you’re playing such a small lad, but in a world where even smaller lads exist. Embracing that Borrowers style of building entire worlds in the microscopic folds of environments, but also allowing the true size of these things to be utilised for some excellent traversal.

Above anything else though, what Bramble is doing so well is crafting something so sinister and terrifying in the peripheries of your vision. For such a light, airy and cute game to suddenly pull your guts up through your lungs with a split second moment of horror is a brilliant effect.

Minding your own business exploring a quaint little space, hopping along on lillypads, how cute, but then suddenly something far bigger than you sat far away in the background notices you. Stress mounts, you forget where your feet are, or how they work as this adorable little adventure gets smeared with that classic nasty Andersonian twist.

I’m very excited to find out what other supremely fucked up adaptations of folklore will be stalking you throughout.

HeistGeist

Slay the Spire is a personal favourite of mine. The game that finally made me understand the Deck Builder genre, a thing of such beautiful balance and intricacy with dozens of contenders to the throne that don’t really quite get it.

What HeistGeist is doing on that mechanical level isn’t particularly as interesting. Your deck feels more attuned to getting as much damage out each round as you possibly can, and feels extremely limited (although, it’s a demo, I appreciate that there’s probably going to be more interesting stuff later in the game).

It’s what the game is doing at a macro level that interests me more. The traditional arc of moving room to room holds up incredibly well in the narrative set up: a series of elaborate cyberpunk heists where you’re guiding multiple characters with different ability sets through a series of encounters. Sometimes one person is locked off from progression until the other manages to open the way forward. In what I played here it is very rudimentary but I’m curious to see how much more complex and challenging the game ends up being.

Also, given that I managed to pass the demo first try, i’m also interested to know how impactful the failstate ends up being. Will this be an Invisible,inc situation where you can permanently fuck your progress if you make bad choices? Or do the stakes live and die with particular heists? It’s really good, I just need to see more to determine if it ends up being great.

Some Honorable Mentions

I am Future - A chill sort of survival crafting game set on the rooftops of a flooded world. Build stuff from the materials you reclaim from other stuff. Explore, survive, vibe. Your character does look like he works at BrewDog though, so it loses points for that.

Planet of Lana - I didn’t play enough of this demo to see anything that really blew me away but the trailer promises a nice juxtaposition between it’s painterly natural world and the shiny spherical monstrosities that fall from the sky. Something bad will happen to that cat thing, I just know it.

Witch Spring R - A fun Atelier like that I probably won’t play the full release of. Crafting, combat, magic, etc. Looks and plays nice. You can ride around on a tiny boar. Very cute.

Return - An incredibly striking art style let down by being ‘one of those games’. That whole brutally difficult side scrolling metroidvania schtick is just not for me, I’m sorry. Points for style though!

If you have any reccomendations of your own, comment below.