Its beginning to feel like people have forgotten the true meaning of Next Fest. Steams week-long bonanza of demos once felt like a cool club to be in, indies sharing their progress on games in development and gathering wishlist clicks for forthcoming releases. This year, Ive been bombarded with PR emails about games coming to the event since early January, and with over 3,500 demos, people are finding themselves disappointed by the amount of AI slop that is clogging up the pipes. But fear not, because I—your bravest hero—have trawled through the hundreds and hundreds of pages to bring you ten fantastic games youve likely never heard of before, and that are all totally worth your time.
This is as eclectic a mix as I could manage, with FPSes, word puzzles, demonic farming sims, traditional platformers and text-based survival sims. Theres even a ridiculous game about mining for anachronistic guns. Check them out, and most of all, click that Wishlist button to help the developers gain attention in the utter madness that is Steams store.
I cannot remember the last time I played an FPS that feels this good. Seth is a stage-based shooter in which you take on an arena of enemies in order to gain new abilities, more health, or points to spend between rounds, and it is a complete thrill. There are two weapons to choose from in the demo, the Fang of Anubis and the Bow of Neith, and can I please implore you to pick the latter? Its a crossbow that briefly slows time when you aim, allowing you to pick off perfect headshots in busy crowds of furious demonic enemies, then follow up with an almighty punch to polish them off. Theres also a dash, sprinting, and sizeable jump, all at super-speed, to give that Quake 3-like fluidity, but in a single-player game. Love it.
What an extraordinary thing it can be to play multiple demos for the same game, years apart. When I first played Mythmatch it was a colorful, imaginative merger game based in Greek mythology, and honestly that seemed enough. But playing this enormous demo today, it has grown into so much more! This is now an amazing mix of RPG, merger puzzling and mini-challenges, with a host of mortal and godly characters to talk to and complete quests for, and its all just completely joyful. Even better, its out in just three weeks, so make sure to wishlist this one and grab it March 13.
Sometimes what I want is a good, solid platform action game. No intricate puzzling complexity, no bizarre twist on the format: just proper, chunky running and chopping and bouncing off walls. And thats what the demo for Altered Alma offers, and how. The pixel art is lovely, the action is weighty just where I want it, and sometimes its good for things to be uncomplicated.
In an era when every other game is a farming sim, it takes an awful lot to stand out. But wow, Besmirch does so, with its extraordinary combination of creepypasta weirdness and wonderful aesthetics. This is a game about staving off the hunger of a twisted, broken town—one where no one seems to be entirely right and demons come out in the dark. So water the crops, till the land, and remember to keep a crucifix on your table at night. Or get outside with a shotgun.
Its always a good sign when I realize that Ive been playing one demo for far too long, firstly because it means Im having a great time, and secondly because thats one generous demo! That was my experience with DEG, a logic puzzle game thats a cross between picross, Slitherlink and Pic-a-Pic. Which, if those words mean nothing to you, is a very good thing. Its brilliantly put together, asking you to figure out its rules by trial and error, getting more interesting and involved the more you play. I cannot wait for this to be finished. (Theres no YouTube trailer, but you can watch it on BiliBili.)
The latest game from Owlskip, the small indie team that invented the genre Roottrees got rich from, is The Ratline. You play as a detective in 1971, expert at identifying hiding suspects, and recruited by a mysterious figure to help catch escaped Nazis who have never faced justice! These war criminals are living under assumed identities around the world, and you need to piece together evidence and clues to figure out their new names and locations. You can start catching Nazis in the demo, and the full game comes out March 17.
Im currently running a 77-day streak on the completely splendid Squaredle, and Spellsy takes that same concept of finding words by dragging a line through a grid of letters, but adds an extra dimension of complexity: each letter tile needs to be used a certain number of times to be destroyed, and you have to clear the grid with the fewest three-letter words possible. It requires a remarkable amount of planning and skill, and this demo has a very generous number of puzzles to play.
If you were lucky enough to be part of last years idiotic phenomenon that was A Game About Digging a Hole, then do I have the game for you. Dig for Riches is a blatant rip-off/evolution of the idea, in which instead of digging up a back yard, youre mining in the Old West. Except, um, youre mining for guns? Anachronistic guns that shouldnt be invented yet. But thats a small concern after you unlock the cell phone. Its all extremely silly, with a pleasingly fast loop, plenty to unlock and upgrade, and the sheer stupidity of putting soil-covered guns in a wheelbarrow for profit.
Its a bold move to promote your game as from the legendary developers of something, but in this case its well-earned as it refers to Rares David Doak and Steve Ellis, leads on TimeSplitters and GoldenEye. So what manner of first-person action game are they bringing us? Oh, its single-player Scrabble.
But its good single-player Scrabble! Its actually a lot more complex than that, and while its very much based on the traditional tiles of the board game, this is much more about stringing together ridiculously high scores boosted by bonus cards bought between rounds, on elaborate boards covered in all sorts of special markers.
This is such a neat idea, so impressively delivered. Its a survival game, kinda like The Long Dark, except its played almost entirely in text. Rather than a first-person world to explore, instead youre moving cards between locations and your backpack, managing your food, drink, warmth and sanity through meters, and crafting from the loot you discover when exploring in different locations.
After spending ages with the demo, now as I write Im recalling the games world as if it had had fancy graphics. Turns out my imagination has excellent ray tracing, and very realistic shadows.
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