Hello everyone! Hope you’re enjoying this steam festival, I really liked the first of these that Steam did, but did not participate when they decided to bloat everything and ensure as few games get any attention as possible, this time however, it looks a lot better organized thanks to the (basic) category options, so I figured i’d give some games a go. These are the games i've tried so far. My main standard for a recommend is; Did I want to keep playing after the demo was done.
1. Tunche
This is a revisit for me, Tunche was a game I felt very conflicted about when I first played it and having returned to it, that hasn’t changed since last year. It’s a retro style beat em up with a gorgeous art style and fantastically fluid animation. The combat itself feels nice, it still reminds me a little of a 2D Dynasty Warriors due to the combos. My only minor gripes in this regard is the button presses for certain combos require precise timing which is kinda annoying, as well as the fact that it could use a few more combos. It is a very promising game, yet, it feels like very little has been done when it comes to the main issue I had with the game;
Even the most basic of enemies are bullet sponges.
I know difficulty in games has become a pretty divisive topic these days (for mostly stupid reasons really) and I get what they’re trying to do, but here’s the thing, I like it when a games difficulty is more skill based and less about endurance against an enemy with stupid amount of health (and you can barely take a few hits), it’s just not fun for me. I hope they change the balance of the game (or give us some difficulty options) because it really is nice to look at, the characters are filled with expression with every single attack, I actually really want this to become a hit because the artwork and designs are just that good in my opinion.
But unless they focus on balance and gameplay, I just don’t think i’ll be returning to it, which would be a pity. So I can’t say I recommend it based on the demo.
2. Foregone
It’s like Dead Cells, if it were a structured metroidvania instead of a roguelike… I LOVE IT!
Forgone is a game where you play as an “Arbiter”, the world has been thoroughly wrecked and you are sent back in time to fix it. The main character is voiced and I liked how she would occasionally share her thoughts on things.
Judging from the visuals alone, it’s very easy to compare to Dead Cells, another 2D sidescrolling metroidvania with a heavy emphasis on finding loot and great combat. I have no doubt this isn’t intentional as Forgone takes a lot of ideas from Deadcells and implements them seamlessly into a game with structure. Which is funny, because I stopped playing Dead Cells after 10 hours for that exact reason, I just started to want a mode where I can have some bloody checkpoints!
Which is not an issue here at all here, I won’t say the combat feels AS GOOD as Dead Cells, as Dead Cells is noticably faster paced in a way you can get away with in Rogue likes, it is however very similar and plays with many of its ideas.
For one, you keep all the weapons and loot you find, so when you return to your hub (which you can do easily whenever you find a checkpoint) you can even sell it.
This game also does what Dead Cells does quite well, which is to encourage you to play around with your equipment. Weapons are rarely obviously better than another, allowing you to mix and match in a way of your liking.
Even better is you get a dedicated ranged weapon, you get to use Bows and Arrows, as well as a variety of guns, heck, you can even get a goddam shotgun! The melee weapons also get pretty ridiculous, with one of my favourites being a pair of nunchucks with guns attached to them.
There’s other mechanics, but I don’t wanna dive too deep into it, the demo is currently available, if you like Metroidvanias with good combat, give it a go!
So yeah, definite recommend from me, I kept wanting to play it and was sad when it stopped
3. Hazel Sky
… maybe interesting?
I’m having a hard time coming up with things to say since the Demo is very very short.
The protag is left on an island until he figures out a way to get to a flying city in the sky (if this is anything like Bioshock Infinite, he’s better off on the island). There’s a lot of pages and written backstory littered all over the place and the first puzzle you do is fairly simple, it also does that weird “inspect object with your hand” that’s fairly common in walking simulators and horror games, it's a little weird here since this is a 3rd person game.
The control when climbing and moving about felt off somehow, i’m not sure if it’s just me, but something tells me moments that will require precise platforming might be a tad frustrating. Fulfilling the puzzles also required the use of a weird form of quicktime event, except you’re in no rush and the button prompts isn’t shown, leading you to have to guess which button or joystick movement you need to do, it felt a little weird.
All in all I just don’t have enough info to recommend the game or to tell how the game might end up being, the demo was just a tad too short, I didn’t feel a pressing urge or desire to keep playing but is that fair to a demo so short? I dunno, some of the demos i’ve played i’ve spent less time with and got the main picture, not so much with this one because the game by its very nature appears to be more of a slow burn.
4. TASOMACHI: Behind the Twilight
Prepare for some joyfully Janktastic platforming!
Tasomachi is a 3D platformer and while calling a 3D platformer weird is like calling water wet, this one is weird.
You start off flying an AMAZING hot air balloon, only for it to break, leading you to the games first “dungeon” which is a gauntlet of 5 platforming levels.
Now for a 3D platformer, a really important aspect needs to be; the platforming, obviously, and here it’s a little hard to describe as anything except “jankey”, your momentum has a lot of impact on where you will land, you know what it kinda feels like? (and this will sound odd), but it feels a little like how the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time’s moon jump cheat feels (shout out to those who remember Action Replay! XD ), you can still change direction mid-air, but not much.
But you know what’s even weirder?... It works! sure I fell a couple times but who cares, recovery is quick and it’s pretty functional. Then again it may have something to do with the fact that I am goddam amazing (*cough* halfway decent at best *cough*) at third person 3D platformers *flexes non-existent muscles*
What was wonderful is after completing the gauntlet, you get to explore and interact with a little island town, filled with classic 3D platforming collectables and little adorable cats wearing clothes that give you quests!
I also completed a quest by accident, I say by accident because currently the game is in Japanese only, but it didn’t really matter.
The demo has a 15 minute time limit, so the faster you are the more you’ll see, give it a look if you like 3D platformers, i’m curious to see where this is going. I sure wanted to play more of it, if only to see more of its strangeness
5. Tower Princess
Feels wacky and light hearted, feels a little cheap too.
In Tower Princess you play as Solaire from Dark Souls… okay, you don’t but shut up, I was roleplaying.
Your task is to navigate a tower filled with miserable traps and defeat bosses with your Princess or Prince escort, for the Demo you’re stuck with the Vampire Prince. The controls feel basic, this game has a “3D platformer” tag in it, which is inaccurate, it may have some 3D platforming in it, but the jump is by no means designed for decent feeling jumping, requiring you to get to the eeeedge of the platform you’re jumping from, otherwise you’ll drop like a brick. It also took me a couple attempts to do a lock on with the targeting function.
For some reason the control layout they showed was incorrect for me, maybe a bug? I dunno.
Now i’ve actually been following this game for a while now, because of this main premise: The Princesses and Prince give you special abilities and change how you’ll interact with the game, for example; the Prince who is a Vampire, can drain blood from your enemy and heal you with it.
It’s a cool concept and I wonder what the other Princesses do… I just wish this didn’t feel so cheap.
Either way, i’m cautiously optimistic with this game, it’s certainly nailed the humour and cartoony look, give the demo a go, it took me about 17 minutes.
6. Shady Night
Like Superhot and Mirrors Edge with swords and barrels
Yiiiikes am I bad at this pretty solid game.
This game combines first person parkour and melee combat into small tight levels you need to beat as stylishly as possible (okay you don’t NEED to, but where’s the fun in that), the controls are very tight but… okay I got a confession to make, I HATE the Keyboard when it comes to controlling games, so when i’m forced to move while combining keys like shift (which requires my pinky), I get confused and in a game where I need split second timing, I fail, that’s not a slight against the game, that’s an issue I have with Keyboard and mouse, people can argue (correctly) that mouse is the best way to aim, but the keyboard sure as heck isn’t the best way to move.
So I rebound the inputs to a Dualshock 4 and used a combo of the Joystick and the Gyro for the mouse.
Then I beat the demo (HA!)
This game feels amazing to play, I was zipping around like a sugar fueled robin hood, you can steal swords, bows, pick up and toss arrows…. Oh and did I mention the kick? The amazing Spartan Might and Magic Messiah kick? Because it’s SO GOOD, kicking enemies into objects is an easy way to cause lots of damage, if not outright killing them. One of my favourite kills to do is to kick a door open so hard that it’s sent flying into an enemy, knocking them off the map, it’s SO satisfying.
YES I recommend this if you like fast frantic action, especially if unlike me, you can handle Keyboard better than I can
7. Balan Wonderland
Not sure if this demo was out before the festival but I tried it during the festival and oh my god I'm in love. I was in a state of pure whimsey and I can’t wait to play the rest of this game.
This game is the cutesiest game i’ve played since a Yoshi or Kirby game, it’s filled with such utter joy and sense of wonderment, I can’t say i’ve felt this way since I was a kid, I was moved emotionally far beyond caring that the jumping doesn’t feel amazing or that the main male character goes “Tofe!” while jumping, I had a nursery of adorable baby bird blobs to take care of and I loved every second of it. Also that soundtrack *chef kiss* fantastic, I love it and can’t wait for the full game to come out.
I'll add to this if I play anymore, did anyone play anything else?
1. Tunche
This is a revisit for me, Tunche was a game I felt very conflicted about when I first played it and having returned to it, that hasn’t changed since last year. It’s a retro style beat em up with a gorgeous art style and fantastically fluid animation. The combat itself feels nice, it still reminds me a little of a 2D Dynasty Warriors due to the combos. My only minor gripes in this regard is the button presses for certain combos require precise timing which is kinda annoying, as well as the fact that it could use a few more combos. It is a very promising game, yet, it feels like very little has been done when it comes to the main issue I had with the game;
Even the most basic of enemies are bullet sponges.
I know difficulty in games has become a pretty divisive topic these days (for mostly stupid reasons really) and I get what they’re trying to do, but here’s the thing, I like it when a games difficulty is more skill based and less about endurance against an enemy with stupid amount of health (and you can barely take a few hits), it’s just not fun for me. I hope they change the balance of the game (or give us some difficulty options) because it really is nice to look at, the characters are filled with expression with every single attack, I actually really want this to become a hit because the artwork and designs are just that good in my opinion.
But unless they focus on balance and gameplay, I just don’t think i’ll be returning to it, which would be a pity. So I can’t say I recommend it based on the demo.
2. Foregone
It’s like Dead Cells, if it were a structured metroidvania instead of a roguelike… I LOVE IT!
Forgone is a game where you play as an “Arbiter”, the world has been thoroughly wrecked and you are sent back in time to fix it. The main character is voiced and I liked how she would occasionally share her thoughts on things.
Judging from the visuals alone, it’s very easy to compare to Dead Cells, another 2D sidescrolling metroidvania with a heavy emphasis on finding loot and great combat. I have no doubt this isn’t intentional as Forgone takes a lot of ideas from Deadcells and implements them seamlessly into a game with structure. Which is funny, because I stopped playing Dead Cells after 10 hours for that exact reason, I just started to want a mode where I can have some bloody checkpoints!
Which is not an issue here at all here, I won’t say the combat feels AS GOOD as Dead Cells, as Dead Cells is noticably faster paced in a way you can get away with in Rogue likes, it is however very similar and plays with many of its ideas.
For one, you keep all the weapons and loot you find, so when you return to your hub (which you can do easily whenever you find a checkpoint) you can even sell it.
This game also does what Dead Cells does quite well, which is to encourage you to play around with your equipment. Weapons are rarely obviously better than another, allowing you to mix and match in a way of your liking.
Even better is you get a dedicated ranged weapon, you get to use Bows and Arrows, as well as a variety of guns, heck, you can even get a goddam shotgun! The melee weapons also get pretty ridiculous, with one of my favourites being a pair of nunchucks with guns attached to them.
There’s other mechanics, but I don’t wanna dive too deep into it, the demo is currently available, if you like Metroidvanias with good combat, give it a go!
So yeah, definite recommend from me, I kept wanting to play it and was sad when it stopped
3. Hazel Sky
… maybe interesting?
I’m having a hard time coming up with things to say since the Demo is very very short.
The protag is left on an island until he figures out a way to get to a flying city in the sky (if this is anything like Bioshock Infinite, he’s better off on the island). There’s a lot of pages and written backstory littered all over the place and the first puzzle you do is fairly simple, it also does that weird “inspect object with your hand” that’s fairly common in walking simulators and horror games, it's a little weird here since this is a 3rd person game.
The control when climbing and moving about felt off somehow, i’m not sure if it’s just me, but something tells me moments that will require precise platforming might be a tad frustrating. Fulfilling the puzzles also required the use of a weird form of quicktime event, except you’re in no rush and the button prompts isn’t shown, leading you to have to guess which button or joystick movement you need to do, it felt a little weird.
All in all I just don’t have enough info to recommend the game or to tell how the game might end up being, the demo was just a tad too short, I didn’t feel a pressing urge or desire to keep playing but is that fair to a demo so short? I dunno, some of the demos i’ve played i’ve spent less time with and got the main picture, not so much with this one because the game by its very nature appears to be more of a slow burn.
4. TASOMACHI: Behind the Twilight
Prepare for some joyfully Janktastic platforming!
Tasomachi is a 3D platformer and while calling a 3D platformer weird is like calling water wet, this one is weird.
You start off flying an AMAZING hot air balloon, only for it to break, leading you to the games first “dungeon” which is a gauntlet of 5 platforming levels.
Now for a 3D platformer, a really important aspect needs to be; the platforming, obviously, and here it’s a little hard to describe as anything except “jankey”, your momentum has a lot of impact on where you will land, you know what it kinda feels like? (and this will sound odd), but it feels a little like how the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time’s moon jump cheat feels (shout out to those who remember Action Replay! XD ), you can still change direction mid-air, but not much.
But you know what’s even weirder?... It works! sure I fell a couple times but who cares, recovery is quick and it’s pretty functional. Then again it may have something to do with the fact that I am goddam amazing (*cough* halfway decent at best *cough*) at third person 3D platformers *flexes non-existent muscles*
What was wonderful is after completing the gauntlet, you get to explore and interact with a little island town, filled with classic 3D platforming collectables and little adorable cats wearing clothes that give you quests!
I also completed a quest by accident, I say by accident because currently the game is in Japanese only, but it didn’t really matter.
The demo has a 15 minute time limit, so the faster you are the more you’ll see, give it a look if you like 3D platformers, i’m curious to see where this is going. I sure wanted to play more of it, if only to see more of its strangeness
5. Tower Princess
Feels wacky and light hearted, feels a little cheap too.
In Tower Princess you play as Solaire from Dark Souls… okay, you don’t but shut up, I was roleplaying.
Your task is to navigate a tower filled with miserable traps and defeat bosses with your Princess or Prince escort, for the Demo you’re stuck with the Vampire Prince. The controls feel basic, this game has a “3D platformer” tag in it, which is inaccurate, it may have some 3D platforming in it, but the jump is by no means designed for decent feeling jumping, requiring you to get to the eeeedge of the platform you’re jumping from, otherwise you’ll drop like a brick. It also took me a couple attempts to do a lock on with the targeting function.
For some reason the control layout they showed was incorrect for me, maybe a bug? I dunno.
Now i’ve actually been following this game for a while now, because of this main premise: The Princesses and Prince give you special abilities and change how you’ll interact with the game, for example; the Prince who is a Vampire, can drain blood from your enemy and heal you with it.
It’s a cool concept and I wonder what the other Princesses do… I just wish this didn’t feel so cheap.
Either way, i’m cautiously optimistic with this game, it’s certainly nailed the humour and cartoony look, give the demo a go, it took me about 17 minutes.
6. Shady Night
Like Superhot and Mirrors Edge with swords and barrels
Yiiiikes am I bad at this pretty solid game.
This game combines first person parkour and melee combat into small tight levels you need to beat as stylishly as possible (okay you don’t NEED to, but where’s the fun in that), the controls are very tight but… okay I got a confession to make, I HATE the Keyboard when it comes to controlling games, so when i’m forced to move while combining keys like shift (which requires my pinky), I get confused and in a game where I need split second timing, I fail, that’s not a slight against the game, that’s an issue I have with Keyboard and mouse, people can argue (correctly) that mouse is the best way to aim, but the keyboard sure as heck isn’t the best way to move.
So I rebound the inputs to a Dualshock 4 and used a combo of the Joystick and the Gyro for the mouse.
Then I beat the demo (HA!)
This game feels amazing to play, I was zipping around like a sugar fueled robin hood, you can steal swords, bows, pick up and toss arrows…. Oh and did I mention the kick? The amazing Spartan Might and Magic Messiah kick? Because it’s SO GOOD, kicking enemies into objects is an easy way to cause lots of damage, if not outright killing them. One of my favourite kills to do is to kick a door open so hard that it’s sent flying into an enemy, knocking them off the map, it’s SO satisfying.
YES I recommend this if you like fast frantic action, especially if unlike me, you can handle Keyboard better than I can
7. Balan Wonderland
Not sure if this demo was out before the festival but I tried it during the festival and oh my god I'm in love. I was in a state of pure whimsey and I can’t wait to play the rest of this game.
This game is the cutesiest game i’ve played since a Yoshi or Kirby game, it’s filled with such utter joy and sense of wonderment, I can’t say i’ve felt this way since I was a kid, I was moved emotionally far beyond caring that the jumping doesn’t feel amazing or that the main male character goes “Tofe!” while jumping, I had a nursery of adorable baby bird blobs to take care of and I loved every second of it. Also that soundtrack *chef kiss* fantastic, I love it and can’t wait for the full game to come out.
I'll add to this if I play anymore, did anyone play anything else?
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