The last of the demos for now.

[got_quiet]

I've had a minor game binge detox so I went back and finished up the Steam demos that I had put in my queue. Of course it's my luck that the three I played last were three that I thought were pretty good, after hitting a series of duds.

Overboss - The demo was a simple solitaire tile game. I felt like the mechanics remind me of a well known board game but I couldn't recall what it is was, and then when I looked it up I found out that Overboss /was/ at first a board game, and maybe this is just the official digital version, which is maybe why I thought the mechanics were interesting. The rules are very basic. You set down a series of tiles on a grid, the setup of the game tells you how many points each tile gives you, you count your total score at the end, the end. The vs. and campaign mode weren't available so I don't know if they're any good. I did think that the brief solo game I played was a nice casual thing, and I enjoyed the pixel art a lot.

Flamekeeper - The store page says this is like Hades which.... every actiony rougelike wants to be Hades. This is an actiony roguelike. It has a few interesting mechanics. You win each round by igniting a hearth, but the resource to do that is also your health. Thus how much you ignite and when can be strategic, and getting pummeled by enemies can slow down your progress by giving you fewer resources. The gameplay felt fluid and polished, but it was very simple. You have one attack to spam, and one special to cast on a cooldown, and that's about it. There wasn't much in the way of engagement or difficulty so it felt like a very casual game you could sleepwalk through. Would that be the case in later levels? I don't know. I kinda sorta liked this but kinda sorta thought it was too simple.

Chants of Sennaar - This game is aimed straight at my nerd core. It basically steals the concept of Inkle's Heaven's Vault for the language mechanics. You come across numerous gylphs, and are given an interface where you can type in your guess as to their meaning. Using those guesses you then work on solving puzzles. The art design is beautiful, minimalist and vector-like, and working out the language was fun. My main gripe was that the game also provides you with a hint system by way of a notebook, that shows you pictures and then confirms your guesses if you put the right glyph next to the right picture. The pictures themselves give away the game too much and then being able to brute force glyphs into this hint system to get free answers also sucks. There have been some requests in the feedback of the demo already to make it possible to hide this whole system so people can play without getting spoiled so easily, and I'm with them. Out of all the demos this is the game I might pick up. I considered getting Heaven's Vault when it came out, but the reviews complained of slow walking and tedious elements outside of the language deciphering so I haven't bothered. This game might be a nice alternative.