Submitted 1 day ago by silverchase@sh.itjust.works to games@lemmy.world
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest
This Next Fest runs until October 20, 10 am Pacific.
I haven’t tried the Next Fest demo yet but I’m going to shout out Road to Vostok. It’s kind of like a single player version of Escape From Tarkov. You have a hideout/shelter, you go out to looting and then you get to come back and improve your hideout. The hideout customization is excellent. Outside you have to deal with enemies, environment, food, hydration, energy etc. and if you die outside you lose what you had on you.
Bonus: It’s made in Godot and the dev has an interesting dev blog where he shows off how the game works.
Just tried it out. I’m unfamiliar with the extraction shooter genre, but it was interesting, I’m not necessarily opposed to tactical complexity for its own sake. I died to a minefield, and then on the next go didn’t have a weapon; so some of the mechanics come across a little bit unclear.
It’s not a pure extraction shooter, but the general idea (that is kinda a core concept to the genre) is that if you die you lose whatever you took with you when you went outside your shelter. When you die the game respawns you at your shelter and in theory you should take another set of gear you’ve stashed in your shelter to go out again. Alternatively you can go out with nothing and do what is considered “zero to hero” as in you use whatever you find in the wild.
It’s a learning curve when you’ve never played extraction shooters because it requires you to think about your actions in a way you normally don’t need to think about. In most games you can just take any fight to see how it goes u because it if goes bad you just reload and nothing is lost. But because there’s no reloading in an extraction shooter you have to think about if it’s a fight you’re willing to take, if it’s a good idea to push forward or go back to store what you’ve found. There’s a constant question of risk vs reward.
I would recommend starting a new game every time you die until you feel comfortable with bringing back gear into your base and then restocking from your stash when you die. There should also be a trader somewhere in the first area who might be of help when you’re looking for specific gear.
Oooh. Grabbing.
But one major nitpick
It’s kind of like a single player version of Escape From Tarkov.
Yeah. That is called STALKER. Especially since, based on the store page, this is more of a zoned open world than an instanced extraction shooter?
The game is somewhere between Stalker and Tarkov but I’d say it’s more Tarkov than Stalker. Stalker is more focused around mutants, anomalies and artifacts, none of which are in this game. The only things that separate this game from Tarkov is the lack of online component and no map timer. Tarkov is also moving towards a zoned open-world so I think the comparison with Tarkov is perfectly fine.
And the developer has mentioned both as inspiration:
In terms of other games, Road to Vostok takes inspiration from titles Stalker Anomaly, DayZ, Project Zomboid and Escape from Tarkov.
It’s not something I found in Next Fest, but if we’re talking demos, Trails in the Sky is something I’ve been having fun playing recently. The demo is surprisingly long too.
I love those demo’s, but it’s on purpose! They want you to play enough so you get hooked enough to want to buy it once it ends. A few hours into an rpg is nothing, but once you invested that much, there’s probably a higher chance you buy it to continue playing.
I feel like demos have become longer recently than they used to be. It used to be that you could only get through the equivalent of a level or two, now it’s more like they last up to 2 hours - the same period you might play and steam refund a game to demo it that way.
Seems like a very healthy development in gaming.
That’s literally the entire purpose of a demo
I’m glad it has a demo because I know a lot of people don’t enjoy characters like that; there’s some great heartfelt conversations once you get to know the characters, but you have to be able to stand 20+ narmy and overly polite banter sequences to get to the moments where each of them surprises you. If you get that far, you usually get invested.
I REALLY like what they’ve done with the combat in this one. Even on normal, I was losing early boss fights for playing without consideration and using nothing but the enemy’s elemental weakness. I just finished Chapter 1, and I especially liked having moments where half the party was dead, and attacking was actually a good option to give my team a moment to revive each other, thanks to the stun/delay systems.
I also really enjoy the combat. I like how you can chain the quick combat into the turn-based combat to start with an advantage by stunning enemies. And since you want to abuse weaknesses in turn-based combat, neither forms of combat overshadow or weaken the other despite quick combat being inherently easier and safer. It feels very fluid and well designed, to the point where I was surprised to learn quick combat wasn’t a thing in the original game.
So far the only thing I don’t enjoy is missions where you need to protect people. Like one of the first few missions where you need to protect the kids as you fight off the group of cats, I’ve lost many a battle purely because of bad RNG where they just all beat up the kid three turns in a row and there’s nothing I can do about it. And since you can’t use quick combat to get an advantage on story encounters like that, it really is all down to luck. And good fucking luck if you run into an enemy that explodes on death later down the line.
Admittedly I’m (stupidly) playing on the hardest difficulty despite not being great at turned-based combat, so that’s probably mostly a me issue lol.
Everwind is fantastic. Fixes just about every complaint I have about Minecraft, and I say that as someone who bought Minecraft back in alpha. There are things that could be improved, but even where I think there’s room for improvement the baseline always seems to be “It’s already better than Minecraft”. For example I really feel like the combat could do with a dodge mechanic and harsher stamina management, but that’s based on comparing it to stuff like Dark Souls. Even in its current state it absolutely clowns on Minecraft’s combat.
The artstyle is lovely, the building and crafting feels really good, the range of furniture and decorations you can build is massive, and you get to build and fly an airship. And that’s not an afterthought, it’s a core part of the game and feels really, really good.
Maybe I’m suddenly shite at games but parrying feels like happenstance rather than a technique. The block windup is too long for me to react to the quick strike they throw out. It feels like Skyrim combat, from a “battle flow” standpoint.
Yeah, parrying needs serious work. I don’t think I’ve been able to make it happen even once.
Skate Story was a real trip. Aside from the fun surreality of the thing, it may be my favorite skateboarding game apart from Tony Hawk.
So stoked for this game after the wet fart that was EA’s “lowercase skate period”.
RogueJack21. Basically Slay the Spire meets Black Jack. Very fun, the UI is great and the animations are super smooth.
Final Sentence has been great in short sessions - it’s a keyboard typing battle royale with a gritty 1940s atmosphere
As usual, I haven’t even played anything yet. I’ve just been thoroughly browsing for games to put on my list, and it’s a long one this time. At the top of my list of games I want to try are:
Roughly ordered by my interest levels:
FUNKYHEART: In which the people who wrote that bunny-hopping script for Half-Life 2 speedrunning made a video game, in which they’re also strange cyber demon lesbians.
It’s not Next Fest specific, but the Ball X Pit demo has absolutely grabbed me by the throat and won’t let go.
I’ve played like 5 hours of just the demo alone and I cannot wait for the full release.
Releases in like 20 hours from the time of this comment!
Great demo although I played it months ago. Full game launches tomorrow.
Oh, and Dog Pile is fun too. For a suika like deck builder. I’ve had some good easy fun with that one too
G-Rebels demo is back. I just love how nimble the ship is in this one. Fully upgraded you can get up to insane speeds with it darting around the cyberpunk style city. Personally I think they should make more of that, so that you can fly through more narrow gaps and maybe even underground tunnels. Also I've been watching their Discord for a while and they seem to be really going full steam ahead (no pun intended) with this one. Can't wait for the full game 🙂
Million Depth demo is pretty good.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3991920/Million_Depth_Demo/
rome burns and nero fiddles - i’m no exception
vane@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
For those who don’t know you can see the games people are playing during that event in steamdb
I played so far.
Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era - nice demo but the graphics map interest points blends with background and it looks like it’s unbalanced.
Alchemy Factory - automation game / shop simulator - also nice demo but the controls are a little clunky and hard to get used to.