#isekat

Back at it again at Demos Steam

Goodnight Universe

From the creators behind acclaimed "Makes You Ugly Cry" webcam game Before Your Eyes comes Goodnight Universe. You play as a genius baby in a family with Problems. After awakening psychic powers you try to use them to help your family while also hiding that you are a psychic baby genius.

Like Before Your Eyes, this game can be partially controlled with the webcam. But it felt like a critical part of Before Your Eyes, while here it feels more vestigial. Blink to replace mouse clicks, head turns to replace mouse swipes, and facial expression reading I couldn't get to work. This may change in the final game, but for now I felt comfortable just using mouse and keyboard.

That isn't to say I wasn't enjoying myself. This team is still good at storytelling, and there's a lot going on in the demo alone. We have some hints at a greater scope mystery. Our protagonist's power was awakened by accidentally seeing strange symbols in their recently deceased grandfather's notebook, which our narrator says somehow looks familiar. There's a news story about a new project to find extraterrestrial life. A flash forward scene has us seeing an entirely automated research facility.

But beyond the outlandish, there's a good amount of grounded domestic problems being established in a short time. Our narrator is seemingly driven by guilt for existing, fed from a combination of the mother's somewhat troubling emphasis on us being a wonderful "normal" baby and the dad being overwhelmed by the cost of their second child, all the while he's pressuring his computer whiz daughter to follow the dreams he failed to fulfill. More is probably going to build up, and if they can juggle these moving parts right, this will probably be "The Webcam Game That Makes You Ugly Cry 2"

Isekat: Crushed By A Computer, My Beloved Kitten is Transported To A Fantasy World Where Its Typing Skills Save The Kingdom

I'd normally do the premise summary here but the title did it for me this time.

A speed typing game. Fight monsters by writing words. Block attacks by holding space. Navigate a Slay-the-spire-esque dungeon map, albeit with a lot of empty spaces, all while fighting the clock. It has a nice arcadey feel to it. The trailer shows some town building stuff, but it's not in the demo.

There's a lot of good small decisions that make this work. I like that holding up a block basically stops whatever word you're halfway through, so being able to type words in quick bursts is rewarded. You can see a timer on who is about to attack, so you can prioritize targets a-la typing of the dead. The demo's boss, a giant snake, throws you for a loop with throwing out words that have extended essess, so you can't as much rely on muscle memory.

My main complaints are twofold: first the dungeon map right now…doesn't really "do" much. It feels like I'd get the same from a linear gauntlet. Second, the only penalty for holding block is losing time. It was too easy for me to get my bearings by just keeping my shield up. I think block should either have a hold limit, or attacks should do chip damage. There needs to be more of a survival element. But that just might be because I'll good at typing.

Also.

That's a cute cat.

Riddlewood Manor

A comedy horror escape room game. Solve puzzles to explore a haunted as fuck mansion, and hopefully exorcise its spirits.

This game is really strong aesthetically. The art style is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. But it feels like it's missing a beat on both its tonal halves. The "comedy horror" tag just means "creepy cute halloween aesthetic" It's not very funny, and the horror is limited to the occasional jumpscare.

(Thankfully there's an option to give ahead of time warnings for when they're about to happen.)

The puzzles are cromulent. Basic adventure game item interactions and "find a pattern in one part of the room and input it in another part." Only hit a stumper near the end, but I was able to brute force my way through it.

Main issue is that…if you do something wrong, you can die. Which was funny. Until it put me back into the start of the room, and I had to redo a couple puzzles. Which was. not funny. But the 2nd time this happened, certain puzzles I completed stayed completed, so I'm not sure what the consistent rule is here.

Gnaw

Dinosaur Metroidvania. When strange meat meteors rain down on New Dino City, citizens and creatures alike start mutating and going on rampages. In this chaos, raptor detective Rip has been forcibly kidnapped, experimented on, and enlisted by a mysterious entity to save the world.

I feel really bad for metroidvanias this Next Fest. Everything will be experienced under the shadow of Silksong. And Silksong this isn't.

I'll get the positive out of the way first. I like the art direction and backgrounds. Some of the character designs are really charming. I'm not the biggest fan of how the tween heavy way they animate, but it works.

The biggest problem so far is the combat. Your standard attack is an incredibly close range bite, but there's barely any hitstun or pushback, so getting into range more often than not means eating a hit. Your slow walkspeed isn't exactly conductive to spacing, and your dash is kind of piddly.

Watching the trailer, it's easy to see the reasoning behind these decisions. Your main attack, at some point, seems to turn into a projectile. The movement seems balanced around keeping enemies at bay. But that upgrade was never in the demo. We just got an unwieldy and easy to miss grenade.

Other small hangups: while I did enjoy the backgrounds, their level of detail means that sometimes interactables could blend in. While this is probably a problem of personal taste, something about the freeform-jazz-ish soundtrack got grating after a while.

Million Depth

Time Loop Cave Diving Crafting Superhot Roguelike? I guess?

In the far far future, the surface of the earth is uninhabitable. The surviving humans either fled to space or fled deep underground. You play as Moma, a scientist and the last survivor in space after an epidemic wiped out the rest of the station's inhabitants. The one lifeline keeping her sane was an online friend from the depths. But he disappears, leaving a cryptic message warning her not to follow. She disregards this entirely and plunges the Million Depths.

I do not know how to feel about this one.

The way combat works is that the left stick/keyboard controls Moma, while the right stick/mouse controls her weapon, which flies around the stage. Time stands still unless you move either of these.

You build the weapon by placing blocks on a grid. Arranging them in certain blueprints will lead to specialized parts which have their own mechanics. Large weapons cover more space and do more damage but move slower. You create a build by scavenging semi-random blocks, trading with the occasional shopkeeper, and finding upgrades after tough enemies.

There is real depth here! I like that Moma can dodge via jumps and dashes, but they have substantial startup, so you need to do it predicatively. It works well with the time manpulation. I like the large amount of variation the weapon building system has. It's just, maybe it's because I haven't mastered the systems/found a good build yet but...

Everything feels slow. I know, the Superhot timestop, but Superhot never FELT the heavy way this game feels. And the later enemies feel like damage sponges, although that might just be me not keeping up with the damage curve.

The story so far is...not that interesting. Moma is kind of flat right now, and the cutscenes so far have been "she sees something weird and then says Important Lore Proper Nouns." There's some timeloop/timeline stuff going on, but I never got to it, either because it's not in the demo or only revealed after a successful run.

Clever Girls

(I honestly don't know if this is registered in the current next fest, I just saw it had a semi-recently uploaded demo and grabbed it.)

Sealth Tactics Dinosaur Game. One dino themed game deserves another today I guess.

In the far flung future of 199X, scientists brought back dinosaurs and then gave them large-brain, teaching them about the outside world. Their parent company pulled the plug on the project, and rather than let them be a terminated assets the scientists let them escape. Now they are on the run from the company's poachers.

They've got a really good dynamic here with the squad of characters you control. Each one has wildly different sizes and movement abilities so they all have separate routes and different needs for hiding spots. The level design has been good at giving everyone different "lanes" to take advantage of.

You aren't just avoiding enemies. Characters have multiple abilities that let you direct enemy attention, such as Daisy's "Intimidating Roar," which puts all nearby eyes on her, or Prati's "ventriloquism" which can get an enemy to investigate a spot of your choosing. When it works, there's a lot of good back and forth team tactics.

The problem is, and this just might be because it's a demo... the poachers don't feel like a threat. Their shots didn't do the expected amount of damage, so as long as I wasn't suicidally rushing into the fray, I could eat mistakes. It made the team coordination feel less necessary and killed some of the tension. But that just might be due to this being an introductory demo.

The character writing is cute so far. Not much more or less. Despite the characters being on the run for their freedom/lives, the dialogue is played mostly for friendship and levity. Although this might just be because it's a demo exclusive side story.

There seems to be a relationship system planned for the full game, with the options being Friendship, Rivalry, and Romance. While the system isn't in place yet, it looks like it'll be shifted by in-battle-actions and between battle choices. So if you like your dinosaurs lesbians, this game has you covered.

That being said, the romance support action is healing, and with the aforementioned low difficulty...