“So, you’ve fallen off a mountain,” strikes me as a brilliant book to write and then stock in every mountainside gift shop across the land, purely for the image of a falling climber rapidly scanning the pages as they tumble comically to their doom, searching for the one piece of sage advice that might alleviate their predicament. If you, personally, are reading RPS while falling off a mountain at this very moment, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Luckily, if you bonk your head on Steam on the way down, you’ll find a demo for stylish open world climbing game Cairn, which should hopefully distract you from your imminent pancaking.
Cairn is from The Game Bakers, of Furi and Haven fame. We first saw it at the Day Of The Devs this year. I was fresh off the lovely Jusant at the time. “Ah, another relaxing and whimsical French game about mountain climbing!” I thought. I was a fool. It’s far more intense, this one, although there are dashes of Breath Of The Wild and Death Stranding to add some whimsy and wonder to your Sisyphean struggle. Plus, it's very pretty. Here’s some new footage, or possibly some old footage depending on badly the embargo has messed up my schedule.
]]>We've been distracted by Gamescom, several game releases, the rapid dwindling of the British summer. Or I assume we have, for why else would we not have yet posted about the Steam Rhythm Fest, which began on Monday and runs until August 26th at 10am PT/6pm BRDST*.
]]>JDM: Rise Of The Scorpion is a free prologue for JDM: Japanese Drift Master, a racing game about - who could guess - drift racing in Japan. It's got an open world set in rural towns to burn rubber around as well as several story missions to play. You can download it from Steam now.
]]>Demos were once a cornerstone of PC gaming and they arguably will be again thanks to events like Steam Next Fest. The latest update to Steam seeks to make those free slices of potential delight easier to find for players, and easier to promote for developers.
]]>There aren't many ways left to put a twist on Stardew Valley, but suffixing it with "in space!" oughta do it. Little-Known Galaxy is out in a week, and currently has a demo on Steam, where you can sample many of the delights that you're used to from a Stardewlike when you're new in town: meeting the locals, growing potatoes, and tidying up the place. Also, raising alien pets, seeking out new life, and new civilisations... It all takes place on a spaceship, you see, and this has some ramifications to playing the game beyond reskinning everything to be shiny metal instead of picturesque mud. It's an intriguing proposition.
]]>You know me and Soulslikes. We're not particularly best buddies most of the time. We've had a couple of successful outings over the years with the likes of Death's Door and Hollow Knight and company, but anything with pure FromSoft blood running through its veins has always left me cold. Void Sols, however, is an upcoming Soulslike that feels like it might be able to satisfy both sides of the 'git gud' camp, appealing to nervous dodge-rollers like myself while also giving hardened Elden Ringers a run for their money. It's all down to its plentiful supply of approachable customisation options, allowing you to ratchet up the difficulty if you're finding things a bit easy, or knock it down, reapply your stat points, and even create whole new loadouts - each with their own individual stat combinations - to win the day. It's all wonderfully considerate, and having played the free demo that's just launched on Steam, I'd strongly recommend giving it a go if you're feeling in need of a little training ahead of Shadow Of The Erdtree coming out.
]]>If you're keen to try out Sand Land, an upcoming action RPG from the developers of One Piece Odyssey and the creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama, then I have some great news. There's a demo out right now that lets you explore a portion of the sandy map, try out a handful of the characters, and ride some rusty vehicles ahead of its release next month on April 25th.
]]>What do you reach for when you're waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting in a shop doorway for the rain to stop, or even while you're waiting for a game to finish downloading? I don't mean to assume, but let's face it, it's probably your phone, where some idle doomscrolling likely awaits you, or some other, time-wasting distraction that will help fill the dead air between one task and the next. Well, While Waiting is a game that delves into precisely this fundamental human question: what is the best thing to do while waiting for something else to happen? It's from the makers of the very good puzzle game Moncage, and its newly released Steam demo is a pure, fidgety brilliance.
]]>Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom already has a descriptive name, but its new trailer omits it in favour of a better encapsulation of its pitch: "You're a N64 taxi and there's no jump button?". The video itself is sixty seconds of pure, colourful joy, and it ends on a release date: April 9th.
]]>Turbo Kid is a 2015 movie set in a post-apocalypse in which a comic book fan battles a local tyrant, with gory, comedic, '80s-pastiching results. It was not a film I expected to get a metroidvania sequel, but here it is with a new demo and an April release date.
]]>I've entered a stage in my life during which I have enormous nostalgia for the PlayStation era, and most of that nostalgia is focused on racing games and drum and bass. Enter Night-Runners, a racing game set between 1990 and 2009, scored by drum and bass, smeared with VHS filters, and just for good measure, set on and around the expressways of Tokyo.
There's a Kickstarter for the project now, but also a substantial prologue demo on Steam that's worth your time.
]]>I respect a game with wild ambition. Declaring your game "the spiritual successor to Freelancer" is bold and ambitious, considering how the spaceship sim is still so beloved after 20 years that our readers voted it your 16th favourite space game of all time. This ambition is wild when the tiny development team is led by someone best known for replacing Skyrim's dragons with Thomas The Tank Engine. So while I'm not much of a spaceship sort, I had to check out the demo for Underspace, which aims to combine Freelancer shoot-o-trading space action with a dash of Lovecraftian horror.
]]>In the event that I walk in front of a particle accelerator, get converted into digital data and am promptly isekai-ed into a gameworld, I hope that gameworld is the opening port town from the original Grandia, released on PS1 way back in 1997 (and ported to PC in 2019). There's something about that game's isometricky vantage point and precise combination of 2D pixel characters and 3D environments. The last sentence describes many virtual worlds of the late 90s, but none have stuck in my mind like Port Parm: that hodgepodge of green and rusty roofs, the canals cutting through the cobblestones, the smoky chimneys and people filling the alleyways. Bliss. I can still hear the seagulls blowing around the screen.
Oh sorry, I rhetorically lost myself for a minute there! I'm supposed to be telling you about Terra Memoria, a new RPG featuring time travel, magic crystals and animal wizards. Here's a trailer.
]]>One of the best things in games is the freeform ability to type commands for another character, then having them respond with voiced dialogue recognising your weird directions. That's one of the joys of Cryptmaster, an upcoming typing-driven dungeon crawler where one of the first things you can do in the demo is get your disembodied necromancer pal to lick a mysterious metal object to help identify it (it's a helmet). He's like if Hand Of Fate's dastardly dealer was a bit of a dingus and also your only hope of escaping the underworld. I love this guy.
]]>Steam Next Fest may be over for another few months, but dozens of demos are still alive and kicking, it seems - which is good news for me, who still has a good half dozen on my to do list, and also good news for you, as it means you still have time to check out the really quite good demo for Stand-Alone, a fast, 2D hack and slasher where you play as a robot-powered sheep packing a very large sword. Wolves have broken into your home and murdered all your friends, but you play as the one sheep who got away - or rather, a sheep that's been fused with a surprisingly powerful robot capable of producing a honking great greatsword to make their escape with. Thus begins the wolves' hot pursuit - not least because this robot also seems to be kind of sleeper agent for them - and your roguelike-shaped quest to avenge your fallen friends.
]]>When I first saw Never Grave: The Witch And The Curse rising up the Steam Next Fest charts at the end of last week, I thought, "Oh! That's a neat Hollow Knight-looking Metroivanida roguelike, I'll definitely give that a go." And having played its demo over the weekend, I can confirm: it's certainly an intriguing little thing that I'll be keen to keep an eye on when it launches into early access, possibly sometime next month.
The biggest surprise was that, despite its very Hollow Knight-looking visuals, it actually plays more like Dead Cells in practice. Instead of being a sentient lump of flesh able to inhabit infinite bodies, you're a magical witch's hat that can possess, discard and rematerialise your chosen sack of limbs at the touch of a button. The second thing that surprised me was that it also has quite a substantial base/village building aspect to it on the side, and the third - well, perhaps this isn't so much of a surprise given everything I've just said, because it also turns out this is the next game from Palworld developers Pocketpair. Yep, it all makes a bit more sense now.
]]>Take your protein pill and put your headphones on for the free demo of Asterism, an "interactive music album" exploring a solar system one song at a time. Each visit to a planet lasts as long as the song, whisking us through scenes reflecting the lyrics and mood, rendered with a mix of 3D computer art and a range of handmade physical mediums. I was delighted from the first twang. And impressively, it's mostly the work of one developer, Claire Morwood. Do have a look!
]]>Ah sure I've enjoyed the nostalgic resurgence of Quake/PlayStation-grade 3D art in video games, but I am fully blown away by indie game Fragrance Point looking like the truest classic 3D computer graphics: the shiny pre-rendered CGI from TV show transition cards, adverts for double-disc dance music compilations, and Windows Media Player skins. My eyes are still reeling from the gloss and glitz and pulsating lights of the Steam Next Fest demo, and I welcome this pain. Grab the demo now and set out to explore a space station as a bopping security bot with snazzy boots and endless projectile lipstick.
]]>First spotted when James and Liam (RPS in peace) covered the PC Gaming Show 2023, Mullet Mad Jack is a roguelike FPS with a Steam Next Fest demo out right now. And my goodness me, it rules. The retro anime aesthetic is cool, sure, but I particularly love its setup, which forces you to blast through corridors as fast as you possibly can. Yeah, this is extremely a bit of Edders, and it's gone straight on the wishlist.
]]>The success of Baldur's Gate 3 is a double-edged sword for other CRPGs launching in its wake. On the one hand, there's arguably a hungry new audience for such games; on the other, you're going up against one of the best RPGs ever made. Expectations are high, but Tiny Trinket Games' co-founder Stefan Nitescu remains unfazed as his three-strong team prepare to release Zoria: Age Of Shattering on March 7th. Zoria is carving an altogether different path through the RPG landscape, fusing isometric exploration with XCOM-like combat and 50 playable characters who are more like unit classes than personalities. The latter is a decision that comes with its own "repercussions", says Nitescu, but he's confident that it will help Zoria stand apart, with character abilities being unusually central to exploration.
]]>I've long been enamoured with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, from the Douglas firs and waterfalls of Twin Peaks to the redwoods I once swam beneath on a road trip. Thanks to Pacific Drive's Steam Next Fest demo, I have now also barrelled through the woods and backroads of a spooky alt-history PNW in a banged-up car which is itself a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque artifact. I've had my eye on Pacific Drive for a few years and after playing the demo, I am delighted by parts of it but not entirely sold on its roguelikelike survival scavenge-o-rama structure. Hmm! Give it a go and tell me what you think.
]]>Good news, star admirals with decent CPM! Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive's strategy escapade Homeworld 3 has a demo on Steam. It's been live for a few days, actually, but whether due to the bombardment of other Steam Fest goodies or my being led astray by the similar-but-nerdier Nebulous: Fleet Command, I didn't try it till last night. The demo includes a tutorial mission, four maps and the War Games mode, a one-to-three player affair which essentially turns Homeworld into a roguelike - pitching you up against unpredictable opposition while unlocking new fleets and doling out Artifacts that augment your vessels.
]]>If you played and liked last year's excellent slice-of-life adventure A Space For The Unbound, stop what you're doing and go and download the Steam Next Fest demo for Until Then. Go on, I'll wait. Right, sorted? Let's continue. Like A Space For The Unbound, Until Then is a coming of age story where the ups and downs of everyday high school life start intermingling with strange, supernatural occurences.
]]>Aldi and Lidl are two all time greats of the supermarket genre. I love their legally distinct take on many of the biggest brands, like the "Racer", which is basically a Snickers bar. Except I actually prefer the Racer! I can't remember if it's Aldi or Lidl that do them, but the "Mini Delight" chocolate sticks are also exceptional. Anyway, Armored Core. Or should I say, Exterminator? Yes, there's an Aldi Armored Core that's just opened up in town and it's actually not half bad. It's definitely not Racer good, but I applaud the effort.
]]>Dusky Depths - what a pleasant name for a game. It makes me think of sleepy suburban soap operas, slightly worrying brands of shampoo or chocolate, and easy listening radio shows on long-haul train journeys. It doesn't make me think of getting vapourised by laser beams in an exoplanetary cave system, which is what happened when I gave the demo a try.
]]>A story about a girl who has a ghost best friend nobody else can see, and has to juggle that relationship with her interactions with living people? Sounds fake. Haha, but seriously folks. There's a demo for Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open in the Steam Next Fest, and boy howdy did I like just looking at this game in motion. The clue is in the name, as all the characters look like 2D paper cut out dolls, and all the environments are like papercraft models. It's pretty gorge.
Third Eye Open, out this year, is inspired by the Joss-Papercraft of Southeast Asia (indeed, the start menu is a stage). You play as Ting, a pre-adolescent girl living in Malaysia with her parents. Ting discovers her supernatural ability to see ghosts at a camp, where she meets Xiu, a ghost girl about her own age. The two become friends, and the demo starts in media res when the two are back home.
]]>You know those wee indie games about opening boxes and organising items and assembling furniture and they're all very cute and colourful and fun and "wholesome"? Miniatures is not one of those games. Oh certainly you will open boxes and organise items and assemble furniture in its Steam Next Fest demo, but it's not cute or colourful or wholesome. Miniatures is more of a psychological horror game, laden with tension and uncertainty. For such a short demo, it built a great mood, and I'm excited for the full game to come later this year.
]]>Many a Survivors-like has come and gone over the last couple of years, but Bore Blasters might be the first one that's really struck a chord with me. Or maybe that should be struck gold, as this mining roguelike is all about collecting little gem-like nuggets while boring deep underground for treasure and fending off all manner of flying eyeballs, bats and other unmentionable horrors with wings. I've been playing its Steam Next Fest demo this morning, and my initial impression is that it's a little bit Dome Keeper, a little bit SteamWorld Dig, and very, very good. Even better, developers 8BitSkull have just announced it's coming out in full next month.
]]>According to Steam, I've spent about 2000 hours playing factory games. Terms like throughput, modularity, and automation are like dog-whistles to me, so when I heard that Shapez 2 was getting a demo for Steam Next Fest this month, I knew my weekend plans were instantly sorted. Well, here we are in the new week. I've finished the Shapez 2 demo twice and logged 10 hours into the game. I see conveyor belts of circles and squares behind my eyelids and the reward system of my brain has been well and truly hijacked. The only way I can continue to do my job effectively is by making my job be about Shapez 2. So here I am.
]]>If you've been dreaming of a hyper-agile FPS set on the sky islands from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Echo Point Nova could be your jam. It casts you as a space pilot who crashlands on a floating archipelago planet during a research expedition. I'm not sure what you're researching, exactly, but going by your character's loadout, it's the Science of Sick Moves.
]]>Apologies if I'm starting to sound like a broken record these days, but here I am, back with another edition of "Have you heard about this cool new roguelike deckbuilder?" I swear I'll find a new/another niche one of these days, but listen, Pyrene is very cool indeed, and I lost a good hour to its free demo last week on Steam. On the surface, this might look like your typical fantasy dungeon crawler, but Pyrene has some neat tricks of its own, combining its own blend of resource gathering and roguelike citybuilding with Inscryption's number-crunching battles and a dash of Foretales' card-based exploration. And it has a lovely piano soundtrack to boot, too.
]]>The first Steam Next Fest of 2024 is officially upon us, though this year there have been so many demos going live early that you may well have played a bunch of them already without even knowing it. Still, in case you need a helping hand cutting through the many hundreds, if not thousands of free demos that are currently jostling for your eyeballs on Steam, we've put together this shortlist of recommendations to get your started.
There are 15 picks here, covering everything from citybuilders to horror games - and a lot of these are games we've never written about before, either. But, in case you are looking for demos of more well-known PC games, we've also listed some of the big obvious choices you might want to check out as well (and all the other demos we've written about over the last couple of weeks). You know, because we're nice like that. So come and join us for 15 (plus!) Next Fest demos to get you going.
]]>If you'd told me back in 1999 that a rudimentary grasp of sound editing software would stand me in surprisingly good stead as a strategy game player, I'd have asked you who the hell you are and what you're doing in my house. But in the years that followed, after you'd been sent to the slammer for crashing through my window bellowing about cheap Audible subscriptions, I might have checked out games like Ghost Trick and Phantom Brigade - each sort of an exercise in placing actions on a timeline like audio layers to produce a winning composition - and thought "hey, that hysterical burglar was onto something".
I wouldn't say there's an abundance of games in which you place actions on timelines, mind you. But those that do exist are neat, as Marge Simpson would say. Take Tarnished Blood.
]]>Final Factory seems expansive as far as factory builders go, given that it features not just the sprawling bases you expect but also spaceship construction, interstellar exploration and fleet combat. On the other hand, as far as 2D, topdown space games go, it seems much more approachable than most.
There's a demo available right now.
]]>Steam Next Fest doesn't officially start until next Monday, February 5th, but what the heck, everyone's putting their demos live early this year, it seems, and another one that's just popped the cork ahead of time is Pepper Grinder, the excellent-looking pixel platformer where you're burrowing through bedrock with a heckin' great drill in your hands as you attempt to steal back your treasure from some pesky pirates. I was instantly smitten with this one when it was first unveiled at the end of 2022, and the more I've seen of it, the more it's risen into becoming one of my most anticipated games of 2024. Happily, its Next Fest demo doesn't disappoint, as it not only feels wonderful in the hands, but ooof, it really knows how to do a good plinky plink coin jostle. My word.
]]>They say ammo scarcity is an artform in FPS games, but I'd argue no game makes a single sniper bullet work harder than the freshly announced Children Of The Sun. I mean, why waste them when you're a young telekinetic hellbent on getting your revenge on the cult that raised you and held you hostage for your entire life? One bullet goes a long way when you can alter the path of its trajectory with each fresh kill you land - as long as they're visible in your immediate eyeline, that is. There are no swoopy swerves going on here, and the thrill of each level is working out the best (and quite literal) angle of attack to take down every last target. I've been playing the first handful of levels of Children Of The Sun over the last week or so, and no word of a lie, this murderous mix of Hitman, Holedown and Sniper Elite has shot straight into my gooey, beating heart.
]]>I've played certain demos for longer than I have many full games, eking every last atom of enjoyment out of a single level or character, to the point that the final release felt like unnecessary bloat. I am already concerned the same might be true of Arco's demo, which is now available on Steam. You've hopefully read Katharine's breakdown of this "triptych of revenge stories set across the deserts, plains and forests of a fantastical, South American-style landscape". Well, now's your chance to get to grips with its nifty combat system, which is broken into turns with each turn's actions unfolding in real time.
]]>Graham has been bandying Abiotic Factor around the Treehouse as "Half-Life designed for co-op survival japes", which is obviously a noteworthy combination of words, so let's have a look at the Steam page, trailer, and gosh, there's a demo here too. That's Friday night sorted.
]]>Berserk Boy first appeared on Steam in 2022 and immediately impressed as a fast-paced action platformer inspired by classics such as Mega Man. Then it vanished from Steam - and re-appeared, and vanished again, and so on.
It returned last year for a seemingly final time, and today it has a new demo and a release date: March 6th, 2024.
]]>When I sat down at my desk after lunch today, I thought, I'm just going to give this demo for Balatro a tiny go, just to get my head round its poker-based roguelike deckbuilding. Cut to several hours later and I've had to forcibly shut the game down and wrench myself away from it just to write this post, because listen, you need to go and play Balatro's demo right now, because hot damn this is the good stuff if you're into roguelike deckbuilders. I also say this as someone who's never played or understood a game of poker in her life, because let's face it, regular poker is quite boring. Balatro, on the other hand, is poker that's turbo-charged with magic Joker cards, tarot card multipliers, and blind conditions that make a successful hand increasingly tricky to pull off. And it's coming out in full real soon, too.
]]>Who'd have thought toilet plungers would make for such good jumping assistants when it comes to propelling yourself over big, thorny brambles and angry animals? Well, clearly the trio of developers at Phoenix Blasters did, as their upcoming platformer Telmari puts them front and centre as its main form of traversal. Your titular tiny heroine can't jump very far on her own, you see, so to save her beloved sunflowers from the spiky thorns of an ominous-looking tree, she'll need to fire them around the environment to help hoist her over obstacles to get to the, err, root of the problem. I've been playing its Steam demo this morning, and while it's a little rough around the edges, there's definitely something here for those trained in the Super Meat Boy school of pixel perfect platforming.
]]>As much as I love looking at and admiring sandbox citybuilders like Townscaper, I am terrible at actually playing them. I get the same kind of blank canvas choice paralysis I do in games like Minecraft, or anything where there's no real clear objective for what I'm meant to be building. I sit there with a big toybox of lovely things to stick together, but always end up deflated and disappointed with my own lack of imagination. But Summerhouse, the sandbox citybuilder (or townbuilder, more like) from solo developer Friedemann is just teeny-tiny enough to give me a sense of creative satisfaction. I've been playing its gorgeous little demo this week in between Palworld sessions, and yes, more of this please, this is utterly delightful. Happily, we don't have to wait too long for the final game now either, as it's coming to Steam on March 8th.
]]>Basically the only sort of strategy games I like are city builders, so I was interested in the playtest for El Dorado: The Golden City Builder, which casts you as the leader of an ancient Mayan-ish city. The playtest is only the prologue, but the eventual goal is to take over the Yucatán peninsula, and if nothing else it's refreshing to see a city-builder that doesn't feel overwhelmingly European. It also has a complicated system of religion. Whereas in a similarly polytheistic game like Zeus, the gods would turn up to stomp on buildings and/or bless them, at fairly large intervals, in El Dorado I was getting a home immolated every few days. Building shrines that have an area of effect, and that require resources to run and protect your town, is its own supply chain in El Dorado. This is a very interesting idea that I liked.
But. The aforementioned deities are figures from Maya mythology, and the Yucatán peninsula is the bit where the Mayans lived, so I just find it a bit sus the word "Mayan" does not appear anywhere on the Steam page or in the press release materials. Sometimes said materials say "the Yucatán peninsula", and sometimes "the mystical land of Jukatan", which could well be an innocent translation mistake, but doesn't make me less sus. I've hedged my bets by saying "Mayan-ish" - just as an uncharitable person could say the devs are doing...
]]>When Edwin popped the reveal trailer for new Metroidvania Deviator into The Maw this morning, he really wasn't kidding about it looking a heck of a lot like Hollow Knight. You've got a small, diminutive hero with a nasty little blade up his sleeve, a haunting and melancholy piano score, a beautiful hand-drawn animation style, and lots of mean-looking creatures to fight. Then again, the trailer also makes it clear there are lots and lots of spikes and traps to navigate here, which puts me more in the mind of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Either way, I'm well up for another platforming-Metroidy hybrid, and developers Gami Studio have announced that there's Steam demo coming in February.
]]>Given the sheer quantity of games releasing on Steam these days, having a neat little elevator pitch for your game can be vital in helping it stand out. For example, if I get an email saying a game is like "Obra Dinn meets such and such" or "Into The Breach but a deckbuilder", that's like personal catnip to me, and can be a handy indicator of whether I should investigate further - maybe watch a gameplay trailer for it, say, or see if it's got a demo. Case in point: this is exactly how I stumbled upon the upcoming Donkey Kong Country-esque platformer Windswept last week, although instead of an email, I saw it on the growing "Your game is too much like..." thread over on Xwitter - which is definitely worth a browse if you have very niche interests in need of a good scratch.
]]>Listen, I know we've spent the better part of the holidays harping on about all our favourite games of 2023 (and many more besides as part of our bonus Selection Boxes), but here's another one for you that I mainlined in a single day over Christmas and absolutely loved. It's Makoto Wakaido's Case Files Trilogy Deluxe - a collection of not three, but four detective stories in which you go about solving grizzly murders across different towns and villages in Japan. In short: if you like the investigation bits of Ace Attorney and need something to whet your appetite before the Apollo Justice Trilogy comes out on January 25th, this will be 100% up your street. It's currently just over a fiver in the Steam Winter Sale, and there's a free demo you can try as well for good measure.
]]>Spare a thought for any game attempting to compete with GTA 6 today. It can't be easy when big hitters like that inevitably suck all the air out the room, but bless the folks at Hollow Ponds for poking their heads above the 4K flamingo parapet anyway by releasing a lovely new demo for their upcoming critter collect 'em up Flock today. I've just been giving it a go over lunch, and it is truly a very relaxing way to decompress after a morning of poring over GTA gubbins.
]]>Immortals Of Aveum never looked like it was going to be successful, and it wasn't. I root for it, however. In an industry where big budget blockbusters are most often sequels, or boringly safe, Aveum feels comparatively bold just by being a self-evidentaly daft first-person mashup of Call Of Duty and Doctor Strange magic powers.
Now it has a demo, so you can try it for free.
]]>Recruit an army of soldiers, accountants, demons, dogs, dog-catching robots, nanite grey goo, zombies, priests, slimes, whales, fires, nuclear bombs, vampires, and other oddities to liberate the United States in Million Monster Militia. It's a roguelikelike deck-building strategy game where you draft units who drop onto a grid in random positions, enabling all sorts of abilities and combos depending on where they all land. It's kinda like the roguelikelike slot machine Luck Be A Landlord dressed for a Halloween party in a turn-based tactics costume. Million Monster Militia is ropey in its current early access stage, but I have enjoyed discovering weird builds and I am cautiously curious about its future after some updates.
]]>I love it when game names do what they say on the tin, but I love it even more when they contain hidden depths behind that initial simplicity. Hermit And Pig is indeed a game about a reclusive old hermit and his truffle-hunting pig, but this charming adventure RPG also has one of the most involving turn-based battle systems I've come across in a while.
Taking place in first person a la Dragon Quest, Hermit must deal with all sorts of mad and angry wildlife as he hunts for his favourite forest mushrooms, and their scowling (and endearingly daft) expressions are just the tip of this excellent iceberg. For you're not just choosing from a list of moves and watching them play out onscreen. Oh no. Each attack also comes with its own three-button fighting combo, and you'll need to input the right one (often at the right time) to deal the most damage. It's a brilliant system, making Hermit And Pig easily one of this year's highlights from EGX's Leftfield Collection.
]]>Silence Of The Siren is a name I'm perpetually going to get mixed up with fellow strategy games Songs Of Silence and Songs Of Conquest over the next couple of years, but there's certainly no mistaking what this sci-fi, tactics explorathon looks and plays like when you see it in the flesh. Made by the same team behind 2018's Project Hospital, Silence Of The Siren is an homage to Heroes Of Might And Magic where several different alien races are fighting to control a distant alien planet. It's a little bit 4X-y, but not massively so, and I had a very fun time indeed with its EGX demo over the weekend, which I think I played for almost a solid hour and completely forgot about the growing queue of folks behind me. Sorry about that…
]]>The EGX demo for magic school adventure Leximan was perhaps only ten minutes long, but that's all it really needed to confirm that this wordy spell-caster is a riotous delight of a thing that should absolutely be on your radar. Built out of a game jam prototype from 2020, Leximan casts you (sorry) as a would-be wizard who's struggling to make an impact compared to his more verbally proficient schoolmates. In this particular demo, he's woken by a friend to go and assist the school cook with preparing breakfast, but things go horribly awry when a pesky fire elemental turns up to spoil it all.
]]>I'll admit I've been a bit sceptical of Loco Motive since it was first announced a little while ago. Any point and click adventure game that makes a bid trying to be funny like the good old days has a very real chance of being painfully unfunny in my experience (looking at you, Deponia), and I was worried that Loco Motive would fall into the same try-hard pile as other so-called comedy adventures that have come out recently (see also Turnip Boy - yeah, I went there, fight me). But having played a timed 20-minute demo of it at this year's EGX, I'll hold my hands up and say, yep, I'm the one who's been slapped in the face with a giant custard pie here, as Loco Motive is genuinely really quite good, folks, and I'm pleased to report the good old days are still very much alive and kicking. Well, except poor old Lady Unterwald, who carks it within seconds of the game starting, and whose murder you end up getting framed for.
]]>Ever since rocks and sticks formed the first proto-drumkits, mankind has understood the uplifting power of a good bop. So too does Billie Bust Up, an upcoming 3D platformer that’s just as much of a Disney-style cartoon musical.
]]>When I see dirt, I know what I must do: clean. Whether it's in my own, real-life home or in a game, I am compelled to scrub, wipe and tidy - and the oily, purple globs of gunk clogging up Loddlenaut's appropriately named region of Flotsam Flats are just begging to be zapped by my little diver's handy laser gun. With just a single squeeze of the trigger, he sets to work, moving his arm automatically to neatly attack each neighbouring blob without any further prompting or manual aiming. All I need to focus on is getting him close enough to the gunge and he'll take care of the rest. Sure, it's perhaps not quite as involved as your PowerWash Sims and other polish em ups, but the combination of Loddlenaut's lo-fi visuals, comforting score and surprisingly soothing controller rumble all work to give it its own kind of zen-like charm - and it was enough to make me forget the surrounding din of the EGX Rezzed Zone for a very enjoyable 20 minutes or so.
]]>Sometimes, the ability to push over a tree was inside you all along. Retrieving woodland traversal skills from the depths of memory is key to Pine Hearts, an easygoing adventure/exploration game that I've spent a very relaxing half-hour with in the EGX 2023 Rezzed Zone.
]]>Pitched as "a racing game for people who don’t like racing games," Resistor shows an immediate disinterest in tracks, time trials, or even really the cars themselves. This racing game, I’m told as I sit down to play a demo in the EGX 2023’s Rezzed Zone, cares about the person behind the wheel – and their burgeoning camaraderie with a roughneck pit crew.
]]>EGX 2023 is upon us, and you may recall that RPS is sponsoring the Rezzed Zone this year. That means we'll be tucking into the 50+ indie games that will be there over the coming days, and we can now confirm the full and final line-up of what's going to be on the showfloor. Most of these are only playable at the show, but you may still find some of them have demos available on Steam thanks to this week's Steam Next Fest. In any case, read on below to come and see what's coming up.
]]>We recommended a dozen Steam Next Fest demos out the gate but that barely scratched the surface of the demo-o-rama. So after diving back into the demo pile myself, I have another recommendation for you: adventuring across the galaxy in roguelikelike spaceship deck-building dungeon-crawler Cobalt Core. If you enjoy Slay The Spire and FTL, do have a look, though I might argue that FTL's follow-up, Into The Breach seems a stronger influence. Ah, play the demo and see for yourself!
]]>The latest Steam Next Fest is upon us, bringing with it a freshly packed week of new, free demos to try until Monday October 16th. There are literally hundreds you could try installing if you were that way inclined - you can view the full list right here if you'd rather browse through it at your own leisure - but we've been playing some of these demos in advance to help make wading through its torrent of shiny new games a little bit easier. Below, you'll find 12 of our favourites so far, ranging from snazzy-looking shooters and big RTS games to neat little autobattlers, indie immersive sims and retro puzzle platformers. If you're in need of some guidance this Steam Next Fest, read on.
]]>Airhead is one of those platformers I really want to like. Freshly announced at tonight's THQ Nordic Showcase, I've been playing an early, hour-long demo build of it this week, and while there are certainly things to admire here, I'm not overly convinced it's going to be one for the ages. Its colourful visuals and contrasting colour palette cast its deep caverns and sun-drenched mountains in a beautiful, but eerie kind of light, and its strange, scuttling creatures put me in the mind of the night horrors from Dredge and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. But its central premise of you being a headless body carting round an inflatable head to presumably escape to goodness knows where isn't quite the breath of fresh air I hoped it would be.
]]>I can feel all my Cool Culture Critic points dribbling out of my ears as I type this, but I've never actually watched Twin Peaks, David Lynch's acclaimed paranormal smalltown TV show. The nearest I've come to doing so is that one episode of the Simpsons. The major things I am given to understand about it are that it is very confusing, sexy in a ghoulish way, and 100% comprised of memes in the same way that Hamlet has retrospectively become a book's worth of quotations.
I have, however, played a surprising number of very decent games that are influenced by Twin Peaks - Zelda: Link's Awakening, Silent Hill and the amazing Lone Survivor, to pick a few that I know about for sure. So who knows, perhaps I won't be utterly bamfoodled and confluzzled by Twin Peaks: Into The Night, an unofficial PS1-style adaptation of the game that has just surfaced on Itch.
]]>A new demo invites you to marvel at a mysterious and alarming alien world in The Invincible, a video game adaptation of the 1964 sci-fi novel by Stanisław Lem (the Polish author also known for Solaris). It's basically Firewatch in space. I've not read the book but I did have a pleasant time strolling around shiny 3D space spaces while taking part in a BBC Radio 4 drama.
]]>Following phenomenally frightful survival horror game Darkwood, Polish team Acid Wizard Studio are now making... a football game? They've just released a free public alpha for Soccer Kids, inviting everyone to try their turn-based tactical footie game starring schoolkids in 90s Poland. This is extremely not what I expected next from the studio whose debut game made Adam backtrack to kill his own dog "because the world is convincing and I didn't want to leave suffering animals lying around the place if I didn't have to." Come watch the trailer.
]]>As Steam Next Fests go, I think the one this June has easily been one of the best Next Fests in a little while. Seeing all the great demos this week has made me far more excited about the future of video games than any of the notE3 streams did the other week, and I'm not gonna lie, a large part of my excitement stems from the brilliant Let's! Revolution!, a beautifully animated tile-based roguelite that has a touch of Minesweeper about it. I highlighted it in our big demo rec list at the start of the week, but 150-odd words simply wasn't enough to really get across just how excellent this is. So indulge me a bit while I tell you more about it.
]]>You know when the look of a game instantly captures your attention, and then you play a demo for it and it's even better? That's the journey I've been on with deckbuilding RPG Cross Blitz this week. I first heard about it last month back when word hit that it was coming to early access this year, and I was instantly taken with its chunky animal character sprites. There was something a bit Advance Wars about the look and style about its burly lion pirate captain, but just, you know, in a high seas card battle kind of setting instead of dealing with sergeants, tanks and air support. But its Steam Next Fest demo has really sunk its teeth into me this week, offering up turn-based card duels that scratch exactly the same kind of itch as Inscryption did for me a couple of years ago.
]]>"Olivia, get the bowls and chopsticks ready to eat dinner," my mum asks 10 year old me. I do as I'm told, taking them to the dinner table. In childish, whimsical fashion as a childish, whimsical child, I grab my pair of chopsticks and start hitting them together as if I'm a drummer. "Olivia, don't do that," my mum scolds me. "Your grandma always used to tell me off when I did that as a child." Sullenly, I put the chopsticks back down on the table.
Well, 10 year old me, you're in for a treat. If you wait a couple of decades, you'll learn of Nour: Play With Your Food, a game which allows you to bang together chopsticks. The game wants you to. Nour is a physics simulation of a variety of foods, where you can choose the ingredients for the dish and add various "effects" of a non-culinary nature.
]]>It's no secret that I love Dorfromantik. It opened my eyes to the world of tile-based puzzler strategy games, and I've looked out for similar ones ever since. Thankfully for me, there's been a fair few riffs on Dorformantik's formula recently - a focus on nature, a soothing soundtrack, and some good old puzzling. Growth is one of these, and I'm hooked on the demo that's playable as part of Steam Next Fest. Taking place on a hexagonal grid, the aim is to uncover the map using a range of wildlife, fertilising the land in the process. Each tile you reveal gives you points, and you'll have to navigate around mountains, water, and special landmarks.
]]>El Paso, Elsewhere, the Max Payne inspired shooter where you fight werewolves and vampires in a reality-shifting motel, has a demo now, and it's looking pretty promising so far. It's the next title on the docket for developer Strange Scaffold, a team whose projects just constantly have strong hooks (how good is An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs as a title though). El Paso, Elsewhere is no different, and you can even try it out now as part of this season's Steam Next Fest in a new demo. And yeah, the vibes are about as tight as you'd expect.
]]>Just in case your Steam wishlists weren't already stocked up from this year's Summer Geoff Fest bonanza, here we are with another edition of Valve's Steam Next Fest, which has unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of free game demos on us, starting from today, June 19th, until Monday June 26th. You can view the entire June Next Fest line-up right here if you'd rather browse at your leisure, but we've also been playing some of the demos in advance to bring you some curated highlights of what we've enjoyed so far. We haven't have access to every demo in this year's Next Fest, I should note, but think of these more as some initial tasting suggestions to get you started, rather than a complete overview of what's worth playing.
]]>You know me, folks: I love management sims, and I love people in physical distress. Wasn't I only delighted, then, to play a bit of Galacticare, an upcoming hospital management sim in the same sticky vein as the hospitals Theme or Two Point. The twist? These hopsitals are in space! Like those managment games, your task is to build a hospital that runs as smooth as some kind of alien baby's bottom (the alien probably has tentacles), where you want to treat people and prevent them from dying as much as possible, but largely because death is bad for your profit margin more than any altruistic impulse. I mean you can be altruistic if you want, I suppose, but if you run out of money it's harder to build more weird bone-fixing machines.
The tone - though Galacticare has strange diseases like being eaten from the inside out by a singularity, and wacky treatments including a sort of laser disco machine - is actually much closer to kind of satire-ish hijinks of spacestation management game Startopia than I had expected, thanks in part to the extremely dry AI helper offering input, and the many alien species who'll come to you for treatment.
]]>Saltsea Chronicles is a seafaring adventure set on a flooded world in which you choose which crew members come along on away missions and the story branches heavily throughout. It's also a bit like Star Trek, with art and writing reminiscent of its developer's previous game, Mutazione.
If that appeals, there's now a demo available from Steam in which you can visit an island full of cats.
]]>Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes is canny mixture of strategy and puzzle gaming in which your attacks and defences are shaped by match-three battlefield manouvers. It's getting a Definitive Edition, announced in April, and it now has a release date: July 20th.
Below you'll find a new trailer that explains how it works and what the Definitive Edition changes. You'll also be able to play the game next week, when a demo is included as part of Steam Next Fest.
]]>I've been itching to get my hands on League Of Geeks' new roguelike colony sim ever since I first clapped eyes on its 70s anime-infused visuals back in November last year. The good news is that you'll soon be able to do exactly that, as tonight's PC Gaming Show confirmed that Jumplight Odyssey will be getting a Steam Next Fest demo on June 19th. That's just over a week away at time of writing, and having played an early version of that demo myself, I'm pleased to report that it's shaping up very nicely indeed - even if my first attempt ended in catastrophic disaster after I was boarded by half a dozen crews of angry green alien lads.
]]>What if fairytale puppet Pinocchio had to kill a load of people and robots? You can discover the answer for yourself today in the demo for Lies Of P, launched live during Geoff Keighley's Level Up Pool Party. The demo offers the Soulslike's first two chapters, including letting the little would-be boy cut up bosses.
]]>Tetris is grand, but it could do with more chainsaws. Thus (presumably) went the thought process of the developers behind Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine, a Super Meat Boy spinoff about lining up colourful meaty blobs while dodging buzzsaws and other grizzly hazards. Think Tetris meets match 4 meets Meat Boy slapstick.
A demo came out in April, but publishers Thunderful Games have just announced you'll get to play the full thing on June 22nd.
]]>You know who you shouldn't trust? Hotel cleaners. Not in real life, I should add - where they are hardworking and one time one helped me catch and kill cockroach even though we didn't speak the same language - but in the game This Bed We Made, a third person mystery set in a slightly grimy 1950s hotel. The reason why you shouldn't trust this particular cleaner because it is, in fact, you, in the kitten heels of Sophie here, as you rifle through their belongings and ogle at their undies. There's a demo of one such room on Steam now, and it plops you right in medias of some juicy res.
]]>There's something very sweet about playing as a postal carrier. As we've seen in games such as Tiny Echo and Lake, it can be a relaxing and enjoyable job delivering mail in a small community, and that's the pitch-perfect tone that solo developer Kela van der Deijl has managed to capture in their cutesy mail-delivery game Mail Time. After playing the Steam demo, I can tell you that it's one of the most charming games I've played all year, and it looks like I'll be able to play the rest soon because Mail Time is out this week on Thursday April 27th.
]]>Steam Puzzle Fest kicks off today, offering tons of discounts on all of your favourite puzzle games. Really, though, one of the best experiences you can have this Steam Puzzle Fest week is by downloading the free demo for upcoming puzzler Viewfinder. Developed by Sad Owl Studios, I had a sneaky peek at this at GDC last month and was properly blown away by it. It might look like just another Witness-like, but don't be fooled. There are some real smart ideas in here, and I dare you not to go 'OooOOOooooOOOooooh' when you see the in-game photos you take come to life in all their full, 3D explorable glory.
]]>Falling-block puzzle games get a gory makeover in Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine, a spin-off from Super Meat Boy. Rather than dodging buzzsaws and baddies while platforming, here you'll be doing that while dropping coloured blobs into grids to match chains of colours and make 'em vanish. You can see that for yourself, as Mean Meat Machine now has a free demo offering a taste ahead of the game's launch later this year.
]]>The first chapter of Videoverse took me right back to the early 00s last night. I can still remember sitting at the family PC in our living room, begging my parents for more internet time because I wanted chat to my friend on MSN Messenger. We had to buy hours of internet in those days, and between my young teenage self and my three brothers, we absolutely devoured those meagre weekly limits, always pleading for more, more, more as we became absolutely captivated by this new world of the online.
Luckily, Emmett doesn't have to contend with such antiquated restraints in Videoverse, as his portal to the internet is built right into his enormous Nintendo DS-like home console, the Kinmoku Shark. As well as using it to play games reminiscent of old 16-bit classics, there's also a Nintendo Miiverse-esque social network on the Shark that Emmett uses to chat to his friends, post fan art of his favourite game, Feudal Fantasy, and feel part of something bigger. What hasn't changed since those early internet days, however (or indeed, the internet today) are the types of people he interacts with - there are trolls, of course, but there are also plenty of nice people here to support him, and the emergence of seemingly new user (and budding fan artist) Vivi quickly becomes the main subject of Videoverse's current free demo that's available as part of Steam's Storyteller Festival.
]]>Waking up in a room you don't recognise with a camera trained on you: the result of a heavy Saturday night, or the opening salvo in an inexplicable kidnapping? In The Tartarus Key, a PS1-style thriller/puzzle/horror game, it's definitely the latter. The free demo is out now, and throws you into the first couple of puzzles for the game as Alex, whose last memory is of being at home in her apartment. Now she finds herself locked in a weird study in a poorly lit mansion, with only a stranger on the end of a walkie-talkie for company. It was enough to staple this game right into the middle of my disorganised Charlie Day conspiracy board of games I'm interested in, I'll tell you that much.
]]>The next game from the developers of Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite is called Humanity, and it's an action-puzzle game in which you control a Shiba Inu and try to guide crowds of people around obstacle-strewn greybox levels. A bit like Lemmings, maybe, but presumably with a surprising emotional resonance. Watch the trailer below.
]]>Most great platforming games dabble with gravity at some point. It's one of those classic, age-old moments where you're suddenly walking on the ceilings and jumping over gaps upside down to further test your skill and overall dexterity. Gravity Castle, on the other hand, has seemingly made it its entire premise, making for a brilliant Next Fest demo that's still available to download on Steam right now. It also looks absolutely gorgeous, channelling Ico and the rest of Fumito Ueda's oeuvre in all the right ways.
]]>Steam Next Fest may be over for another few months, but luckily some game demos are still alive and kicking. This is excellent news, as it means you've still got time to give Roots Of Yggdrasil a go, a chill, Viking citybuilder that has such strong Okami vibes with its inky, cell-shaded visuals, strong black outlines, and flute and harp-driven soundtrack that I kept having to remind myself I wasn't just playing a spin-off of Clover's seminal Zelda-like. I swear, if it weren't for the smattering of autumnal trees in the tutorial level, its grassy plains, tall mountains and bright blue river would have been a dead ringer for Okami's Kamiki Village.
]]>Katharine and I were lamenting earlier today that Square Enix seem inconsistent when it comes to releasing demos of their games on Steam. Forspoken's demo only came to PC months after its console release, and Harvestella's demo remains exclusive to Switch. Likewise, the Octopath Traveler 2 demo which was released on console yesterday was nowhere to be found on PC.
Uh, until today. It's out on Steam now.
]]>I don't mean to alarm anyone, but I think Urbo might be my Dorfromantik of 2023. It's a chill, citybuilding puzzle game from the devs behind the altogether more violent Diplomacy Is Not An Option, and it's all about building tiny little villages on top of rocky outcrops. Except when you stick three of the same building type together, they all zhuup together to create an even bigger one. And a bigger one, and a bigger one. It's very satisfying. The smooshing lights up all the same parts of my brain that Threes did when I became obsessed with it about five years ago, while the tile planning hits scratches that big Dorfromantik itch, making for an excellent Steam Next Fest demo experience.
]]>Some of my favourite games involve visiting a fantastical town, befriending the residents, discovering their stories, and trading with them. Too often those same games also have too-difficult turn-based murderfests in-between, though. Here comes Townseek to fix that. It's an adorable and "relaxing" exploration-trading game in which you pilot an airship, customise your balloon, and visit eg. some sort of bee kingdom, as per the screenshot above.
]]>Steam Next Fest is back with a veritable truck ton of fresh game demos to sample, and we've been plunging our eager little mitts into the latest batch of indie delights to unearth some handy recommendations for you to hit first. Running from now until February 13th, there are always oodles of demos to try in a Next Fest, so sometimes it's nice to have a helping hand in working out what's worth sinking your time into. Below, we've rounded up 16 of our favourites so far, and we'll be writing about plenty more demos we've yet to try over the coming week.
]]>Last week, developer David Moralejo Sánchez released Outpath: First Journey, a free "prologue chapter" for a first-person mix of clicker and crafting due in 2023. As of right now, it has an "overwhelmingly positive" rating on Steam and over 700 reviews.
]]>I can't think of a better place for turn-based fights than in the margins of medieval manuscripts. There's a wealth of weirdness to draw on, and Inkulinati seems admirably willing to dip its quill into messed-up cats and donkeys playing double-ended trumpets. We've been waiting a while for it, but we'll only have to wait a little longer, as developers Yaza Games have just announced they'll be launching on Steam Early Access on January 31st.
They've also sketched out a new demo to tide us over, and I've enjoyed my little poke at it.
]]>If our glowing Signalis review has you hungry for more retro-styled survival horror, do also check out the new demo for Heartworm. Inspired by classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Heartworm is neat even before you learn it's almost entirely made by one person. It offers good times exploring a spooky house, bad times possibly trapped inside a neighbourhood in a VHS tape, and a very cosy time hanging out in the safe room. It is a lovely safe room.
]]>You can check out the next game from Beeswing and Dujanah developer Jack King-Spooner with a swish demo launched alongside a crowdfunding campaign. Judero is its name, and a surprisingly action-heavy adventure through the Scottish Borders is its game. Expect folklore, witches, jokes, stop motion, and beasties to battle and mind control.
]]>Do you like first-person games where you operate complex machinery by manually typing commands into computers and fiddling with buttons and switches and gadgets? Check out the demo for Voices Of The Void, an upcoming game about running a space radio telescope array. Alone. In the woods. It has a pleasing manual process to find, target, and analyse signals, and a whole complex of servers and machinery to mantain. Plus, y'know, a whole feeling of creeping dread from gazing into space and wondering if anyone is looking back.
]]>When the mysterious sci-fi action shooter Scars Above was first unveiled during Geoffcom's Opening Night Live at the end of August, I thought it had big Returnal energy. Based on the reveal trailer, it certainly seemed to be riffing on several of the same themes as Housemarque's challenging PlayStation exclusive - what with its lone female scientist stranded on an alien planet schtick, third-person shooting, and big eerie alien monsters after her etc. - so when I saw it was part of this month's Steam Next Fest demo bonanza, I knew I had to give it a try. And while it certainly captures the same kind of atmosphere as Returnal, I'm sorry to say that's about as far as the comparison goes, as the rest of Scars Above is a much slower, more traditional kind of space action game.
]]>Somewhere at the edges of the galaxy in No Man's Sky lies a large, verdant planet with an abandoned, but functioning, starter ship on it. I left it there in 2016 after discovering a larger ship out in the wilds, but it's a decision that still haunts me to this very day. You see, I was so taken with my new set of wings that I failed to notice it didn't have a functioning hyperdrive attached, which is needed to punch through the atmosphere to visit another solar system. It also turned out that this particular planet didn't have any of the necessary resources to craft a new one either, leaving my only form of escape back in my tiny little starter ship – which, of course, was now nowhere to be seen. I spent hours looking for that little ship, but the planet was so vast that I never saw it again.
Upcoming aerial survival game Forever Skies doesn't have lots of large planets to lose your only means of transportation in, thankfully. In its Steam Next Fest demo at least, the only things I was able to land my makeshift aircraft on were tiny, rusty platforms perched atop decaying skyscrapers on an Earth ruined by disease and an ecological apocalypse. But that fear of getting stranded somewhere I shouldn't be has never left me, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a teensy bit scared of jumping down from my ship and finding I wasn't able to get back up to it again.
]]>In case September didn't add enough new indie games to your burgeoning Steam wishlists, Valve are back today with another edition of their demo-packed Steam Next Fest, and we've been playing some of its many, many, many demos to help give you a few pointers on where to start. You can view the whole of October's Steam Next Fest right here if you'd rather just dive in headfirst, but below you'll find some hand-picked highlights we've been enjoying ahead of time - including a new Return Of The Obra Dinn-alike, a first-person skeleton shooter, an underwater citybuilders and a platformer where your gun is also an umbrella.
]]>I only just realised, while mentioning the dev's next game, that we never posted about excellent indie horror game Mothered. Not to be confused with the unrelated Remothered games, it's the tale of a young girl returning home after surgery to find everything is weird and her mother is some sort of eerie mannequin. It might be my favourite horror game of 2021? Now's a good time to raise Mothered because: 1) it finally has a demo for newcomers; 2) for veterans, that demo actually hides a secret expansion continuing the game's story.
]]>Our undercover man has been compromised and you've mere hours to extract him from a nightclub using every tool in your agent's toolbox: deception, wisecracks, dancing, drinking puddle water, and baking pizza. That's Betrayal At Club Low, the latest game from Cosmo D, set in the same strange city as Off-Peak, The Norwood Suite, and Tales From Off-Peak City. This time, it's an honest-to-goodness RPG, full of skill checks, strange solutions, multiple endings, and so very many dice. And it's great. And it has a demo.
]]>Excellent roguelikelike dungeon crawler Backpack Hero launched into early access this week, and it's absolutely worth a go if you enjoy shuffle items around your inventory grid. Backpack Hero is all about arranging weapons and items inside your massive sack to develop powerful synergies, see. Some items buff items touching them, while others benefit from empty spaces, or some insist upon being in a certain grid row, and some even move around by themselves. The buildcrafting gets fiendishly fun as your critter delves deeper into dungeons in search of a giant hunk of cheese.
]]>.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "The Last Of Us Part II ידרוש חשבון PSN כדי לשחק במחשב, מה שהופך אותו לבלתי ניתן לשחק בלמעלה מ")
