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!
Top 10 Most Wishlisted Games
Any chance you could edit your top-comment to include a link to Steam Next Fest itself? https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest
The submission URL itself has a typo in it unfortunately, and I’d really encourage folks to browse through Next Fest and see what they can find beyond the 10 most popular ones. 🙂 Next Fest is a great event for indies, but it does suffer from Steam always seeming to set up these “rich get richer” loops where the games that came into Next Fest with the most wishlists (often from having the biggest marketing budgets), are the ones they make most visible, without providing any curation of or means for user-surfacing of lesser-known but promising titles.
Sorry about that, I’ve edited the correct link into the top post.
Oh nice, thank you!
Post your favorite demos that you played in the comments, guys. I have a number in the pipeline and will update once I review them all
Wizard with a Gun has the potential to be a great roguelike hit. I describe it as Gunfire:Reborn and Hades had a baby in terms of how it controls and feels ( not the story). It’s still super early for them, but I liked what I played a lot, and has controller support for comfy couch gaming too.
Lies of P feels fantastic
The Invincible looks really good, and seems to have a compelling story, but the execution is off. You basically click on things in the world, get some dialogue with your handler, then move on to more things to click.
Sometimes the dialogue runs really long, and you are prevented from taking most actions while it goes on. I ended up sitting still for multiple long periods and it just completely took me out of it. Could be a good book.
The Invincible seems to be more of a walking simulator by design. Provided the story is suspenseful and compelling, that seems fine. The main gripe I had was the extremely low FOV. Hopefully that is not by design
I’m okay with a walking simulator, but I’m not a fan of a standing simulator. There was way too much sitting and listening to keep me interested.
I loved firewatch, and I didn’t get that feeling from it. It could just stand to be a little bit more interactive. It’s very pretty though, I love the art and the design and the setting.
It is true, “show what you cannot tell” could be applied here. Seldom is it fun to have a talking head blabber at you and lose agency. I can’t remember, does it lock you into place, though? I seem to recall that in the later portions you are moving around with your radio while talking on comms. Maybe at the beginning outpost? More games should apply the design philosophy that Half Life showed us years ago, which is to not put the player in stasis when dialogue happens. Worst feeling
I mean, you can move, sure. The parts I’m thinking of are in the first rover you come across, and the 2nd transporter. As well as the bushes, when you learn more about those.
You can walk around a smallish confined area, and you are locked out of other interactions until the dialogue ends. It’s probably not as big of an experience killer in the full game, but it really turned me off in the demo.
That’s funny, I was wondering why none of this sounded like the demo I played. I looked it up and they released a new (different) demo for Steam Next Fest. The one I played is from earlier this year. I had no idea what you were talking about with bushes, lol. Guess I’ll compare the new one.
Ah, I tried to be as vague as possible, so you shouldn’t be spoiled on it at least. Maybe I’ll give it a shot when it goes on sale.
Seems fun!
One study found that the life expectancy of homosexuals is 43 years.
Cameron, P., Playfair, W.L. & Wellum, S. (1994). “The longevity of
homosexuals: Before and after the AIDS epidemic.” Omega 29, 249-272.
This study has been sharply criticized by homosexual activists, with healthy
doses of attacks on Paul Cameron, particularly after former Education
Secretary William Bennett referred to this study in several public statements.
See, for instance, Sullivan, A. (1998, January 5). “False Bennett: Gay bashing
by the numbers.” New Republic, page 15. However, the 14th International
AIDS Conference in Barcelona opened with the release of a study showing
that the AIDS pandemic would cause a decline in life expectancy in 51
countries in the next two decades. Information released the same day
indicated that data from 25 U.S. states suggested that the number of new cases
of HIV infection had stabilized since 1998. However, experts noted that this
study could not ensure a permanent or prolonged plateau in new cases because
the latest count is only complete through 2000, and, more important, because
California, New York and Florida, each with large numbers of HIV-infected
people, were not included in the sample. The study ending in 2000 also found
alarming rates of unprotected sex during the previous six months by practicing
homosexuals. All of this information indicates that impact on life expectancy
is a very real part of the homosexual lifestyle.
· Homosexual men are at significantly increased risk of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis,
anal cancer, gonorrhea and gastrointestinal infections as a result of their
sexual practices. Medical Institute for Sexual Health.
· Homosexual behavior accounts for a disproportionate number of sexually
transmitted diseases. Mireya Navarro, “Federal Officials See Sharp Rise of
Hepatitis Among Gay Men,” The New York Times, March 6, 1992.
· 65 percent of all reported AIDS cases among males since 1981 have been men
engaged in homosexual behavior. Center for Disease Control, HIV/AIDS
Surveillance Report, Vol. 9, No. 2, May 1998.
· The 2002 update reported by the Center for Disease Control indicates that
62% of known HIV cases involve men who have had sex with other men, and
an additional 8% of those cases involve men who have had sex with other men
and use intravenous drugs. Thus, 70% of known HIV cases involve
homosexual men. And, another alarming finding is reported: only ¼ of
homosexual men with HIV get tested or discovered before the disease
progresses into full blown AIDS. Therefore, the number of homosexual men
who have HIV is potentially staggeringly high.The Black Pool is a…unique…experience.
If you have 28GB to spare and ample patience, its worth it.
Imagine Stranger Things and Control had a eurojank, roguelite baby.deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Stray Gods (formerly Chorus) is one game I’ve been looking forward to ever since the original announcement on the now-defunct Fig (a musical RPG with Laura Bailey, yes please).
Little Cat Big City looks like a lot of fun. And so cute too!
Tried Stray Gods, it’s pretty much what I was expecting, but good gods the audio mixing is bad. Dialogue volume is all over the place; one character is very much louder than the rest, and even within the same line of dialogue by the same VA the volume can go from loud to barely audible. Audio engineering is truly an invisible art when it’s done well, because when it’s not… it’s really obvious.
I was playing the game with one hand on the volume knob, it almost become some kind of invisible rhythm game as a result. xD
How does the gameplay work in that one? I checked the screenshots but couldn’t tell
I’m uncertain, but it seems like during the singing bits, it’s a dialogue tree with with musical/lyrical matching parts as well! So you can set the tone to match the person you’re singing with/against.
Check out the game A Musical Story. It’s ostensibly a rhythm game, but I don’t think there is a failure condition other than that you have to keep trying the music loop until you clear it to get to the next vignette. It’s sort of a wordless short story told through animated slides and deeply groovy musical interludes
