So while my brother and I have been waiting for his Animal Crossing preorder to arrive, I took the time to try out some Steam Game Festival demos that caught my eye for one reason or another.
It's a pretty interesting mix! Some more detailed comments under the cut:
Neon Noodles - A programming puzzle game a la Zachtronics. This one came to my attention a week or so ago and seemed right up my alley, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a demo. It took me a minute to get accustomed to the UI, but I like the concept and I think it's got a lot of potential.
Moncage - A 3D perspective puzzle. I recall seeing some early concepts for this one, but actually getting a chance to play it for myself has definitely sold me on the idea. It's extremely well-crafted, and really neat to figure out how all of the different components intersect and interact. Keeping an eye on this one for sure.
Garden Story - A sim game in the vein of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but with more emphasis on combat and dungeon crawl. The demo itself wasn't quite as polished as some of the others I played (fiddling with the graphics settings threw a couple things out of whack, and I actually got wedged between an NPC and a wall during a cutscene and had to restart), but the game itself seemed pretty charming overall.
Evan's Remains - A narrative-heavy puzzle platformer. I'll admit, this one didn't hook me all that much. The puzzles felt pretty basic, and the writing didn't do much for me. The demo took me about 20 minutes to finish, and I'm pretty sure at least half of it was spent scrolling through dialogue. Still, the visuals look nice, and the puzzles could get more varied later on, so perhaps it could be worth looking into when it comes out.
Filament - A top-down puzzle game; the closest games I've played that came to mind with this one were Cosmic Express (the main puzzle concept being to navigate and wrap around a single line that can't overlap itself) and The Witness (taking the main concept and repeatedly iterating on it, with an overworld/narrative that mostly functions as an excuse to traverse from Puzzle A to Puzzle B), which is not bad company for a game to find itself in. The complexity ramped up pretty quickly, too, so I'm interested to see where this one goes.
Röki - An adventure game that I'd describe as "point and click, but not quite" (something like, say, Grim Fandango). Not a genre I have a lot of experience with, but the setting and visual style was enough to carry my interest. Might keep an eye on this one.
Backworlds - Another puzzle platformer. A pretty straightforward idea (two parallel layers, which you traverse by "painting" between them), but the art style's nice and the demo does a pretty good job of showing off the different ways the concept can be used. And while we're on the topic of paint-centric games...
Chicory: A Colorful Tale - An adventure game from some of the same folks who worked on Wandersong and Celeste, two of my favorite games of the past few years. I have a lot of faith in this one, and so far it's done nothing to sway me otherwise. This isn't even the first time I've played it (got an early demo as a Kickstarter reward), but I wanted to play through it again since it's just a delight.
Spiritfarer - Another chill sim, and another demo that I've already played but wanted to revisit. Like Chicory, this one's been on my radar from the day it was announced, and, well... I adore everything I've seen of this game so far. The art and animation, the characters, the music, it's all so lovely and inviting and it's absolutely going to break my goddamn heart. One of my most anticipated titles, without question.
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And that's just the ones I actually got around to playing; nine game demos out of, what, a few dozen? Plenty to look forward to in the coming year.
