Nextfest - what I liked and didn't

This week was Next fest on Steam . If you’re unfamiliar, Next fest is a semi-regular showcase of upcoming games, particularly with Demos, and variety streamers on twitch often spend the week going through as many demos as they can in their genre (or more broadly) and playing and reviewing the demos. I enjoy next fest! I love to try new games, particularly as it’s hard to know about upcoming indie games unless you’re really plugged into the community.

Here are the demos I’ve played so far:

• Solar Punk - this was a good demo from a small team! a classic survival crafter that reminded me a lot of recent early access game Aloft, but you have a dedicated airship instead of transforming your whole sky island into a ship. I enjoyed this, but found the visual style fairly forgettable. I’ll be keeping an eye on this

• Mossfield Origins - I thought this was interesting! there’s two things happening in this demo. A fairly straightforward (but interesting) colony building sim, and strange occasional interjections of a story told through communication of two characters in the world. The overall vibe was a little disjointed, and I missed knowing things about my settlers after spending so long in Dwarf Fortress recently, but I’m excited to see where the game goes. The visual style is distinct and there’s interesting commentary to be had in the fact that the game lists server space as one of the 3 starting resources of your colony!

• Little Library - this is the most disappointing of the demos I tried this week. Along with Mossfield I played this on stream, and if you were there, or you check out the VOD, you’ll hear me talking about my disappointments at length. I do feel I was a bit harsh on the game, but the contradictory nature of the themes of the game and the dialogue, the too-perfect town I am always complaining about in “cozy” games, and the fact I was running into constant issues with the UX meant that I stopped playing before the end of the demo.

• Desert Angels - This game was fascinating! It felt home-made in a way that games often don’t. The 2D character portraits reminded me of the popular amateur manga styles of the 2000s (you know the ones), while the 3D world was full of mismatched but carefully selected free assets (all listed in the credits of the demo). The story had a lot of grounding, and felt extremely specific. Coming straight out of Little Library, I felt like this game had a real sense of heart and purpose that the former lacked. I played this one on yesterday’s stream as well.

That’s all I’ve tried myself so far, but I’ve watched several others on other people’s channels and I have a really clear takeaway that has stood out to me all week.

I think there’s a real lack of consensus about what makes a game ready to release a demo. Some demos feel like early access to the game (Solar Punk, Little Library), some demos feel like the first few minutes of the game (Mossfield Origins, Desert Angels) and other demos (not shown here) feel more like tech demonstrations, or proof of concept. Obviously I’m not a game designer, but it’s hard to know what to expect from a demo, and that’s something that doesn’t sit well with me. If I play a demo and it’s extremely buggy is that because it’s an unfinished game or because the game doesn’t have good quality assessment? If there’s a graphics choice that feels lacking or mistaken is that because it’s unfinished or because the devs are doing that as a stylistic choice?

It makes it hard to come away from a demo thinking “yes I’m definitely interested in this”.

As an example, last year during Next Fest I played a demo of a game (I won’t name the specific one here because I’m going to be fairly mean) that felt good, but lacked a little polish. When the full game released not long later I was surprised - I thought after the demo there would be an early access period or a longer wait. The demo had been for a game I was sure was unfinished. I bought and played it anyway because the demo had really grabbed me. The full game lacked features from the demo that I’d really liked, added aspects I didn’t care for much, and had not resolved any of the issues from the demo that had flagged it as unfinished to me. Not only all that, but there was a game breaking bug that caused me to lose all my progress.

I was so unimpressed I’ll probably never pick that game up again, and I’m unlikely to play anything else by the developers. They have since patched the game breaking bug, but I have so little trust in the game now, that I’d have to be in a really specific mood to play it again.

So now playing games where, for example, the UX is buggy and hard to use I have to sit there and think “there’s a chance this won’t be resolved in the full game, but there’s a chance it will be”.

Why would I then wishlist that game off the demo?

When I was younger we had an original Xbox. one of those clear ones where you could see the circuits and stuff. It was cool as hell. It came with a demo disk, and me and my brother played the demo for Halo over and over again, just running over aliens in the Warthog and having fun. The idea of a demo, in that context, was as a playable advertisement for a game that would be a polished purchasable product.

Now, when I play a demo on steam, I’m never sure if that’s going to be the case. I wish I knew. Clarity of state of the game’s development and the goals of the demo (some devs see a demo as a sort of soft early-access, they’re seeking feedback and bug reporting. Some don’t!) would be extremely helpful.

If you want to tell me about demos you’ve played this week, come join my discord!

If you’d like to support my stream and my games writing you can join my patreon, or tip me on Ko-Fi

Finally just a quick housekeeping note: my grandfather died on Friday. We weren’t close at all and I’m not taking time off to mourn, but it is a bit of a stressful time for my immediate family and I may need to cancel streams or miss a newsletter here and there as family things pop up. Keep an eye on the discord or my bluesky to know what’s going on. At this time though, everything is going ahead as planned for at least the next week.

Thanks all, have a great week!