I played so many games, warning - media heavy post. Lots of hotlinked webms.

Next Fest

Next Fest is a thrice a year event where game developers put up demos of what they're working on and let people go HAM and I love it. When I grew up I had my own computer, but I didn't have a lot of money for video games so I played a lot of PC Gamer/Computer Gaming World/Incite demo discs, and a whole lot of shareware compilation CDs with thousands of "shareware" titles sourced from legal and sometimes less than legal sources. I have fond memories of these demo and shareware discs, finding hidden treasures, trying something you'd never normally play because you're just bored out of your skull and Next Fest reminds me of that. So every time next fest comes around I end up streaming way too many demos on twitch and looking for that new hit of demo dopamine which is definitely not in anyway a symptom of ADHD absolutely not.

This Next Fest I ended up trying TWENTY FIVE games which is actually not a record for me, but it's still ridiculous.

WARNING: starting from here there are going to be many hotlinked webm videos to steam microtrailers, which are a beta test thing Valve has been doing for years. They may at some point stop working, I've included store links as well. These microtrailers have no sound.

I'm a big fan of simple rating systems: You don't need a 10 point rating system, or 5 stars, or god forbid 100 point system to rate games effectively: Yeah, Meh, Nah is all you need. I've chosen to add a fourth level here because I'm indicating both how much I liked the game and also how likely I am to buy it:

• Games I loved -- will likely be bought
• Games I liked -- might not be bought, but I did like them
• Games that were meh -- sometimes a game just doesn't land. Doesn't mean it's the games fault.
• Games that I did not like -- most of these are less "I didn't like them" and more "they're broken or too alpha or not ready for a demo yet."

Games I loved

As a heavy metal stealth archer game I didn't know what to expect. The UI is brilliant, having it all on the bow and hand tattoos is such a cool take on minimalism. The low gravity environment makes getting hit super impactful. The world with massive snake skeletons and demons is radical.

Cyclopean is an old school first person dungeon crawler with a top down overworld. Extremely old school in both visuals and gameplay. Lovecraftian through and through (space cats, gugs, zooz, dholes, the works.). Unforgiving. I kind of love it.

A single player MMO. Weird concept. Other players are simulated like bots in any shooter, with more elaborate chatter routines. Mixture of Runescape and Everquest as the influence. I liked it a lot, but it's very much an alpha product. Something to keep an eye on, I'd love to raid in this game (that's planned, or already done but not in the demo)

Lethal Company but your conveyance to different floors in an endless building is a demonic elevator that must be fed. Really fun, great if you like this breed of janky co-op horror game.

Reminds me a lot of Neurovoider. You're a protagonist without a body, you hijack temporary robot bodies using a resource that fills as you kill. When your body is ready to die you can hop to another one. VERY frenetic and fast paced, I loved it but am trash at it.

What even is this: A survival horror, top down shooter? Every room your view point changes: from sidescroller, to top down, to isometric with tankish controls, to third person. You're in hell, you've got a magical gun with six bullets (ala Heavy Bullets) and you get your bullets back when things die. You've also got a skateboard to skate with (runner segments) or beat the hell out of demons with. Good attitude, weird game. I like it a lot.

Extremely pre-alpha but also extremely promising. I've very much looking forward to what this will be like in Multiplayer. Top down, co-op GTA meets immersive sim (think Deus Ex/the new Prey).

V.A Proxy

Bastard love child of Furi, Nier Automata, and Risk of Rain 2. Hyper kinetic combat focused on parrying. Cool, weird glitch aesthetic and world. You really feel like a Robot Ninja while playing this.

Soulslike with simple shapes as the player/enemy. Reminds me of Triangle Wizard a lot which a good thing. Decent mechanics, probably on the simpler end of a souls like, I'm just bad at them.

Games I liked

Decent, follow up to Bio Prototype. Autoshooter where you craft your attacks, I like this more than your average auto shooter but it's still a bit boring. Graphics are cool though.

Shapez.io but with lego blocks, blocks are constructed in a 4x4x4 cube and can be cut, glued, and stacked. Neat. Didn't draw me in as much as Shapez.io initially did though.

1980's cop game with a focus on, not realism, but "actual" police work. You give out parking tickets AND have shoot outs with bank robbers. Decent, fun GTA as a cop style game. Story lays on the copaganda a bit thick though.

Kind of an Astroneers/Forager harvesting/automation game. Was cute, had a lot going on. Might be one to keep an eye on.

Room/Round based Roguelite with a diablo style inventory/gear system. Seems like it has a pretty indepth skill modification system. More fun than I thought it would be. Aesthetic is very crunchy pixel graphics too which I love.

It's Anno 1800 but you're a cult summoning eldritch creatures to fight the AI players. You can scarify your followers with symbols to change stats in a completely unnecessary but utterly cool pseudo mini game.

Games that were meh

Basic Hotline Miami clone, stylish but didn't rock my socks the way OTXO did.

Versus Tower Defense (where you're sending enemies to each other), with resource gathering. It was fine.

SNES era style twin stick shooter feels very similar to Nuclear Throne in some ways, it's cute but not enough going on to make me want to play it. Your bullets can deflect enemy bullets on direct hit which is super neat and it does the Hotline Miami style thing where guns are to be used till they're empty then thrown/discarded.

Games that I did not like

Basic endless sky/escape velocity/star valor style game. Nothing to write home about.

Wouldn't load, dev responded to forum post saying issue was fixed, issue was not fixed.

Not even an alpha, a bad tech demo. Might be an asset flip too. Basically unplayable.

Clone of Thronefall but you're the super sheep from the Worms series. If that sounds random... yeah. It was.

Agrarian skies from minecraft but as a 3d god game. Felt really alpha and didn't gel with me.