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[Duuvian]

This is going again and I thought I'd start a thread for this. I've been finding some neat demos in these. You can find a link to the demos on the Steam store page.

Previous Nextfest Demos:

Planetary Life
You start with single cell creatures and evolve them over time. It's pretty sweet. I made hellmuppets in my first game. After that I made animals that exist today, and then I made flying pigs by crossing a bird and a pig or something. I really recommend this one, it has some great potential.






DOUGH: A Crime Strategy RPG
NOTE: This has textual sex stuff in it so be warned if that is bad. It's part of the Womanizing aspect of the game or something. It's not fleshed out well but it's there.

If you had played an old game called Omerta - City of Gangsters (which I have because it was likely part of a Paradox firesale during the recession IIRC, I think it was bundled with Sword of the Stars and Crusader Kings 2 and Magicka and some other good stuff for like 15$; it was a memorable sale) then this demo is trying to be basically the good parts of that game (economics) without the bad parts (mediocre combat scenes in large amounts).

It's still pretty rough but it has improved and seems stable now, which it was not at first. The text isn't edited well in some places but it seems like it could be good if it continues.

 





















I found a few interesting demos in the current nextgen demos thing, I'll take some screenshots of the more interesting ones. I ran through a few of them, First Dwarf is looking especially good. Pax Augusta seems good, it reminds me of the Manorlords demo. Scramble: Battle of Britain looks pretty cool, though I haven't messed with it much yet, only the very first tutorial; it seems to be a Matrix game so I thought this would be awesome if it could be plugged into Rule the Waves 3 (or an eventual 4) to optionally simulate the air stuff in that, sort of like how Automation cars can export to BeamNG. Kingdoms, Dungeon, and Hero looks pretty deep to me, I managed to turn around the food situation in my first quick try, and then decided to come back later. Jousting Manager demo was pretty cool actually. Think of Total Extreme Wrestling or soccer club management sims except jousting, with the tournaments also being played by the player.

[Jopax]

Ones that caught my eye were Tiny Glade which is more a toy/sandbox builder thing where you construct idyllic scenes involving castles and other medieval architecture, looks gorgeous and is a super chill unwind thing.
Next one is Kaiserpunk, 20th century city/empire building 4x type of deal, very ambitious but also very promising if it ends up working.
You then have Super Fantasy Kingdom which is this city building autobattler base defense kind of game. Fairly simple at first but it has a ton of options and different things you can try, and the way you expand the world map is kinda neat as it kinda serves as a meta-progression of sorts where you get access to different resources and events earlier which can alter your builds in various ways. Real neat little game.
Afterwards there's Drill Core which is a take on the Dome Keeper idea, where you mine during the day for resources and progress while defending yourself from monsters at night. This one is more of a management and tower defense approach to the idea, as you train workers to dig the stuff you designate while building up a base and defenses on your massive mining rig. The goal of each run is to reach a certain depth and gtfo before blowing the place up. Well executed and has a real nostalgic Cortex Command vibe to it for some reason, looking forward to seeing what they have planned for the galactic map mode too.
And finally Megacopter which is essentially a twinstick with a neat theme of being a sentient attack helicopter that feeds on blood for some reason. Blow stuff up, fight bosses, upgrade weapons, etc etc.. Always been a sucker for a good shmup of any kind so this one is high on my list.

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

I found Voidwrought's demo interesting and also quite well polished. The premise is you're playing as some kind of thing (titled the Simulacrum by the store page) out to slay the gods and take their power. (Just the names of the controls - like replacing Dash with Twitch Fibers - ought to give you some idea of whatever exactly you're playing as.)
It is very cosmic horror-themed. Interestingly, you'll apparently also get the ability to start your own cult on the side of all the monster slaying (you can't do this in the demo, which ends after the second boss). The demo also has nice music.
Other things of note are that, at least in the demo, you can equip and use up to two Relics (I forget if this is the actual name for them in-game) at once that do active things (like summoning a spectral axe to attack your foes for a short time) and up to two Souls that grant passive bonuses (though I noticed that these may have been called Crests originally, because the tutorial text about them referred to Crests even though the rest of the interface calls them Souls).
It does have fast travel sites, though you have to unlock the ability to use them... and you activate them for the first time by possessing them.
You start able to dash, use both up and down attacks (down can only be executed in the air), pogo (bounce off an enemy by hitting it with a down attack), and slide horizontally - which does not appear to dodge through enemies or their attacks as best I can tell, and you don't start with a dedicated dodge (although the second boss has attacks you can avoid by sliding). Dashing won't dodge through attacks either, though you can use it for repositioning to avoid them. You don't start able to wall jump and you don't gain that ability in the demo, nor are you required to use it (instead, you gain and are required to use the ability to pull yourself to hooks hanging from the ceiling in some areas). I'm not sure what abilities you'll have in the full game, though I noticed two controls in the key bindings interface that looked like they would be tied to abilities that never saw use in the demo.
One quirk of movement in the demo is that when you grab onto the corner of an object you can stand on, you don't automatically pull yourself up over the edge and have to jump off that again to land on the surface of the object in question.
My only criticism so far is it's unclear whether the game supports mouse controls in its current state. The key bindings all start out as keyboard ones, so I took this as meaning that it probably doesn't although I didn't actually test trying to bind actions to the mouse.
I could have missed something (or a number of things) in the demo, so don't take me as an authority on all of this - this is just what I've experienced so far.

[Duuvian]

Scramble: Battle over Britain Demo

This demo is outstanding if you know what to expect from WWII era airframes as far as stalling and other things like pilot blackouts. It seems easy to learn if not, stall risk and blackout risk is clearly shown when the flight path would cause them.

It would make the air part of RtW better if it could be plugged into it to handle air units when they are close to target or intercepted or such, but I guess that is unlikely even if they share the same publisher.

It's basically turn based dogfighting, where you control the flight paths of the planes for the next I dunno 5 seconds, sort of like Rule the Waves does for ships. I thought it would be really clunky, but it's actually pretty smooth.

It also makes some sweet cinematics at the end, the sort I wish Hollywood would watch before makiing (most) movies about airplanes.



First try!


First Dwarf Demo
It has three characters to play as. I think it has a co-op mode where another person can play as another of the characters. The screenshot is the dragon character. I forgot to take more. The other two characters are a dwarf on foot and his mecha suit. I'm not sure if the suit can be used without the dwarf riding in it. Due to the co-play, this might be suitable for gamers with spawn of their own.

It seems to be a basebuilder where you are the first dwarf, because you don't need 6 other dwarves if one dwarf has a mecha suit. You build a base and some defenses in the demo, and then other dwarves come live there. It also has you run around doing quests and whatnot.




Fata Deum Demo
I never played Black and White but I think it would be similar to this game. You play a deity who is trying to influence humans into worshipping you. This gives you more mana with which to smite or reward with. It reminds me a bit of Dungeon Keeper because you can pick the humans up and throw them, or slap them with a divine fist that you can charge up to full divine wrath.





Kingdom, Dungeon, and Hero Demo

Here, just look at it. It looks pretty deep, lots of stats everywhere. Of course, a game like this would depend on good ai in single player, and that is disabled in the demo. It seems like a contender for multiplayer if it has that capability, a bunch of nations to choose from in the campaign map.

[Il Palazzo]

Heart of the Machine is good. It's being made by the AI War people. You're a newly-sentient AI in a futuristic megacity. You take control of a few city droids at a time, and sneakily build up your base while interacting with various human corporations and factions in the city. There's turn-based combat, lots of customisation, and a multitude of systems that at this stage don't always gel together or can have dodgy UI. Oh, and the city homeless seem to be some sort of a resource - you can build them houses and feed them. But five hours into the demo I'm not yet sure if that's to later made sausage out of them, turn them into an army, collect taxes, or whatnot.
Looks very promising.

[Yoink]

I'm just here to say how much I appreciate this focus on playable demos. Feels like peeling a demo disc off the front of an old-timey games mag, one demo at a time.   
So far I've probably liked Goblin Camp the most out of the handful I've tried, which is maybe a little since it's not exactly breaking new ground besides a few neat features. At first it seemed janky as all hell, but I actually found it a lot easier to learn than a lot of these Dwarf Fort-alikes, and it didn't take me too long to realise the stock manager feature was actually a massive help rather than hindrance. I had a pretty cool li'l settlement going before the life was brutally crushed out of it by the demo abruptly ending. Oh well, my weird, Finnish goblins angered the weird, Finnish gods, I guess.   

A couple of other ones I tried didn't run on my machine. Whether that's due to my computer being cobbled together from outdated secondhand parts or an issue on their end, who can say? Of those I could run, Soulash seemed basically just like a barebones Adventure Mode from years back when there was still nothing to do, and Closer the Distance seemed kiiiiiiinda boring, but I could see the visual style and gorgeous soundtrack winning me over if I gave it a proper chance. Reality Rash was pretty disappointing, since I've been hoping for a decent beat-'em-up for ages and it looked cool at first glance. Maybe if they scrap the opening cutscene and un-jankify it a lot, but I'm not particularly hopeful. I feel like I might be forgetting a game or two, since I already uninstalled the ones I couldn't run or didn't like...   

Anyway, next I'll probably try BUS, since it looks like it might scratch the same 4-player, easy-to-pick-up co-op itch as Death Road To Canada, which is a firm favourite on our occasional games nights. Then Tactical Battle Wizards. Then maybe Pawn Planet or Republic of Pirates? And of course, these ones are just off the front page - looks like there are lots more to dig through.   
Oh and Hollywood Animal of course, but that's one I've actually been interested in for a while after seeing it advertised. Maybe I'll try Kaiserpunk, too, even if the "-punk" suffix pisses me off.   

[Eric Blank]

Im pretty impressed with Planetary Life tbh. Its entertaining enough to watch the little guys wander around and spread and then change on their own. Can't save a game yet in the demo, though.

[Great Order]

Yeah, I was about to make a comment along those lines. It's one I'll keep an eye on, I do like my evolutionary games.

[Duuvian]

For Planetary Life, I thought it would be really incredible if the beasties could be viewed in a biome like the ancient but uniquely great Odell Down Under did with the Great Barrier Reef. Each of the globe's tiles being a biome that could be zoomed into. Also, it looks like the demo was updated yesterday: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2471970/discussions/0/4522261847578248803/
Cell stage will be in the next update.


Here are a few other demos I tried. I think they are still up, I still have the Play rather than Purchase button on most of the big batch of demos from the Nextfest (EDIT: most of these are now down, Play button gives error message with no liscences notification):

All in the Game - strategy game about gangs and crime built for multiplayer mostly. You spread influence and do crimes to supplement collecton monies from the territory, and buy buildings to set up enterprises in and launder dirty money from. You send lieutenants out to do stuff, these become temporarily visible if they do enough stuff and have a simple perk tree to advance in. The gang organizations also have perk trees to sort of describe an agenda of sorts using mutually exclusive trees. It also has a great music soundtrack and this is a big plus. I don't know if robots made it or not, but one beat in particular was excellent. I couldn't get the screenshots to upload to Steam for this demo for some reason.


Bedroom Battlegrounds - you move and fight units around a bedroom map. The demo computer player wasn't very good, but it's a demo after all. It could be viable for multiplayer I think.

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Beyond These Stars - This one was really cool. It uses hexes and has some terraforming and stuff in it, where you can raise or lower elevation of hexes. The area is the back of a giant space whale. You build a colony on it's back. The spacewhales are kind of jerks who eat planets so that's why.

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Eve of Calamity - This one reminded me of a modernized Final Fantasy 5, with classes and what-not. It seemed solid in design. I had a bug where the XP distribution screen usually did not proceed and required an alt-tab to kick it into working again. The dev said it's an RPGmaker thing, because that program is really old, that it's probably a hardware related thing, and that it will hopefully be fixed after release. Other than that, the demo was fine though I couldn't take screenshots.


Heart of the Machine - The story is that an ai became sentient and hid inside a robot during a dystopian future. It can take over multiple other robots and eventually builds a big spire on accident that alerts all the humans. It looked like you could be a bad robot or a nice robot if you preferred, and choose to improve or destroy all humans.

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The robot statbox to the left is for the playable robots. This big one looked good and stompy though...

Last Dream Fishing Arcade - This is more like a mobile game but it shamed me with how addictive I found it despite it's relatiive simplicity.

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Metal Slug Tactics - I tried this in a bad mood so I didn't screenshot it. However if you have ever seen other games with "Tactics" in it, it is of that genre. I haven't played those much, or any Metal Slug games, so I didn't spend much time on it, but it seemed pretty good from what little I know.


This Grand Life 2 - This was an awesome game. This should be part of the hypno-pods of the future, America. I hope there a bazillioon wacky mods for it too.

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Wardens of Chaos - This is classic Might and Magic

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[ZebioLizard2]

Saw an interesting one in Whispers of the Eyeless. Essentially a strategy turn based cult growing game.