I always enjoy checking out the demos from these events. Has anyone else tried any yet? Would love to hear about any fun demos you’ve found.
I always enjoy checking out the demos from these events. Has anyone else tried any yet? Would love to hear about any fun demos you’ve found.
Tried out a lot of demos today, here’s some reviews!
Jusant A very nice looking game about rock climbing, from Don’t Nod (Life is Strange devs), seems like a departure from their usual stuff. The gameplay in the demo was pretty good, the climbing is a lot more involved than the press forward climbing you’re probably thinking of from most games. You individually control each hand’s grip (think GIRP or Mount Your Friends, but less awkward), and can freely place spikes in the wall to attach your rope to which can save you from falls or give you places to swing from. You’re exploring this abandoned cliffside village, and there’s notes and stuff to piece together the stories of the people there, I didn’t pay too much attention to them in the demo because I’d probably just forget and read them again in the final game but it seems not bad as far as that kind of thing goes. Main complaint is that the performance was pretty bad, hopefully that gets polished up by launch.
Alien Hominid Invasion I always look forward to anything new from The Behemoth, but was a bit skeptical about this one because I really did not enjoy the original Alien Hominid. It was brutally difficult while feeling quite shallow in gameplay. Thankfully, this is much better. I was immediately impressed by the movement, you get a dodge that turns into a long dive in the air, shooting in the air can boost you upwards, and a double jump that resets your other options. This doesn’t have the 2.5D movement of most beat 'em ups, which I’m glad for the lack of, and probably wouldn’t fit well with the chaotic pace here. The level structure is quite different as well, with bite-sized levels that you pick from a grid map for each mission, where you can select levels with varying levels of challenge and loot you can earn. You can use the loot to change your loadout, and it seems like there’s a bunch of different weapons, perks, and cosmetics. This mostly seems like it’ll be fun in co-op, and I did play it solo but the game gives you some AI companions. The level objectives seem like they could get a little repetitive, as I did see the same ones a couple times already in the demo, but maybe I was just unlucky or there will be more as you progress in the full game.
Sea of Stars This is a turn-based RPG from the devs of The Messenger. I was a little skeptical going in with the genre being very hit or miss for me, but I’m pretty impressed. The game looks amazing, in a way that I feel like doesn’t fully come across just from trailers or screenshots. The traversal is pretty fun, you’re able to climb up and down ledges and jump over gaps, and the world has a lot of verticality. There’s also puzzles that you solve through a combination of that “platforming” and stuff like pushing boxes around and flipping switches. That aspect doesn’t seem as good as something like Crosscode, but did feel a lot better than the similar platforming in Chained Echoes. The combat takes a lot of inspiration from both Chrono Trigger and the Mario RPGs. It has the positional attacks and combos between party members from Chrono Trigger, with the timing mechanics from Paper Mario and the like of button presses on attacks landing or while defending, with some more involved little minigames for special attacks. The dungeon you go through in the demo was pretty fun, the puzzles were a little basic but I liked the structure a lot, and assume it’ll build up in complexity. While it doesn’t have the full heal/mana restore between battles of Chained Echoes, it does encourage you to spend your resources a bit more than most RPGs by giving you a pretty generous mana regen from your basic attacks. There wasn’t really enough story here to judge that yet, but it didn’t seem bad. I also want to acknowledge this being the best structured demo of any in this group, it gets you right into the game, and skips ahead to give you some variety rather than just making you play through a full intro section.
Van Hellswing This looked like a promising little score attack arena shooter with some cool movement options. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed by the demo. You have some cool movement options like wall running, shotgun jumping, and a grappling hook. These really don’t feel natural to string together though, especially in the environment in the demo. I’m not sure if there will be more arenas in the full game but I felt like that really held the game back. There were a lot of spots to fall to your death, and one movement option not working exactly like you expected could kill you. There also seems to be only one weapon, and a severe lack of enemy variety. I’ve enjoyed a lot of similar games and there’s some good ideas here but I hope this one gets quite a bit more work before release.
Beyond Sunset A boomer shooter made in the GZDoom engine, though don’t let that set your expectations for how it plays. Pretty movement heavy, with a fair bit of platforming and dashing around during combat. Your first weapon is a katana, and while you do get guns pretty quickly, you’ll be using melee a lot and it uses a system similar to modern Doom of special execution kills being your most reliable way of recovering health. The difficulty is kind of brutal, and even as a veteran of this type of game regret playing the demo on hard. I didn’t love some of the enemy types, but the combat is still pretty fun overall. It’s also very cool looking, I love the look of this engine and this is very unique to anything else I’ve seen made in it.
Unidentified Falling Objects The spiritual successor to Super Puzzle Platforming Deluxe, an old favorite of mine that I think about 5 other people played. It’s a falling blocks arcade puzzle game, except rather than control where the blocks fall, you control a little guy who platforms on top of them, can kick them around to set up combos, and shoot blocks to break them. The core gameplay still feels quite similar to the previous game, which is not a bad thing, but the main new thing here seems to be a meta progression system where you unlock new weapons and abilities to create a loadout. Didn’t play a ton of this one because I was already pretty sold just from loving the previous game, but it seems good so far.
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew A new game from the devs of Shadow Tactics, which I haven’t played but have heard very good things about. This seems similar to what I know of the gameplay from that, but with a pirate theme and magical abilities. The gameplay was fun, it’s good about giving you full information so it’s more puzzle-like, and the built in quick save system works well to remove the frustration of any trial and error. You also have some fun abilities like being able to teleport to enemies and being able to freeze enemies in time to sneak past them. It makes your character feel very powerful, but sets up scenarios that are still puzzling to solve. There was too much focus on story in the demo, which I mostly ignored as I just wanted a taste for the gameplay and will pay more attention to that in the full game. Not the best structure or pacing for a demo, but the game itself seems fun.
Ebenezer and the Invisible World A metroidvania where you play as Ebenezer Scrooge is such a ridiculous concept that I had to check it out. Unfortunately, it’s pretty rough. It opens with a movie length cutscene setting up an unnecessarily convoluted story, after which NPCs still constantly interrupt you with dialogue. The gameplay feels very clunky, the movement and attacks aren’t fun, and the enemy types are very frustrating to fight. I did get one movement ability that seemed potentially fun, but you could really only use it in predetermined spots and there wasn’t that much creative to do with it. It also had some very frustrating backtracking. Not the smart metroidvania kind where you get a new ability and go somewhere you remembered to use it, but the kind where it’s unclear where to go and you hit a lot of lengthy dead ends.
En Garde! This sword dueling game is just as lovely as it looks. You can immediately tell the effort that went into the animations, everything looks and feels great and there’s a lot of character to it. The dialogue is short and amusing. There’s some light platforming, which feels pretty good, but the main focus of the gameplay is the sword fighting. At first I thought it was going to be too easy, with a very generous parry timing and easy ways to stun enemies, but the game pretty quickly started kicking my ass. The fights get pretty chaotic with multiple enemies involved, but in a way where it doesn’t feel unfair and when you do execute everything successfully it feels great. There’s a lot of fun options to use the environment to your advantage, like kicking crates and barrels into enemies, knocking enemies off of cliffs or into hazards, throwing a bucket over an enemy’s head, etc. It really makes the combat stand out from similar games that you need to be running around the arenas a lot, sliding over tables and kicking things into enemies. Fighting dirty is encouraged and it’s very fun. Really loved this one and will 100% be playing the full game.
ArcRacer I’ll play any new anti-gravity racer that comes out, and I somehow hadn’t heard of this one until now. On the F-Zero to Wipeout spectrum it definitely leans towards the former. The standout differentiating feature seems to be how your boost works, there are little orbs around the track you collect and you can spend all of them that you’re holding for a boost with the intensity depending on the amount you had. This adds some decision making to your racing lines of whether you want to go for the mini-boost pads or gather orbs for a larger boost. These are also shared between all the racers, so if someone is in front of you they can grab all the orbs. This seemed to give a little too much of a snowball effect to first place, but the game is only focused on singleplayer so it’s probably not a huge deal. The handling of your ship also feels a bit looser and more floaty than most games in the genre, I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing, just different. The visuals are decent, not as standout as F-Zero GX or BallisticNG, but not bad. There was only a tutorial, one track, and one ship in the demo, so not a lot to judge there but I’ll probably check out the full game.
Thanks for the great reviews! You definitely got me interested in a few I probably would have looked past previously.