Next Fest!
Feb. 26th, 2026 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietTaking time off from the horrors to play some demos.
Anyone play anything good this round? Here's what I've tried.
Anyone play anything good this round? Here's what I've tried.
Until the North Ends
Basically a "We have Valheim at home" with minecraft crafting. Instead of over the shoulder it's sort of a top down third person. If you love Valheim you might be mildly entertained by some segments of this but it's very janky and lacks the atmosphere and little touches of personalization that make Valheim such a pleasant game to keep at over and over again. Worth the couple hours we spent with it but not more unless you like grind without innovation.
Don't Panic! It's just turbulence.
Basically "Keep talking and nobody explodes at home." One player is on a plane and the other is in the control room. There are puzzles. There are time limits. The puzzles are not as good as keep talking and the controls are also a little jankier. We only tried about four rounds including the tutorials which were not much of a challenge. I probably could have gone a few more rounds myself but at the same time I don't know if any of the puzzles we didn't see would have been any better.
Catmarine
A co-op similar to Lovers in a Dangerous space time, but to activate any given ability you have to type the word displayed at each station. And when there are enemies you need to type the words above them to get rid of them. We played this as a three-man and it was pretty fun. Less demanding than LDST in terms of obstacles but this was because of the added difficulty of the typing. I am never good at those frantic prioritization games because I literally start daydreaming in the middle of them lol and do not make a great teammate. This was a polished game and the controls worked well and there was no jank, so worth trying if you like the genre.
Far Far West
A co-op objective based shooter where you're running around a sci-fi/fantasy western, completing objectives at a frantic pace. A little bit like Deep Rock Galactic, but much flatter, and much more movement based. There are dashes and hops and mounts and if you get your timing right you can fly over ravines, which was very satisfying. The quests are more mini game like. One involved trying to find all of the little targets in a given area, which took us a little bit. Unlike Deeprock it doesn't seem like there is too much of a timer where difficult starts to ramp up, at least not in the quests we did, so it was more casual, but because the speed of everything is almost double it feels more frantic.
Clicky Islands
Oh god. This one is too addictive. You just build up islands again and again with a combo of Clicking (thank god you can hold down the mouse) and automated workers. The ramp up is too satisfying as is building up the island and I lost 2 hours to this fucking thing. There is no tactics or thinking really involved. Beware the time sink.
Cargo Hunters
Some sort of looter shooter single player? I don't know. Zero onboarding and the interface looked like something only someone who played a fuck ton of whatever sort of FPS subgenre this is would understand. Tried to identify if I had any health and couldn't, but did definitely die and then immediately quit.
Puppergeist
A very simple rhythm game. It's cut and colorful. The MC is going through doggie heaven looking for their dog and playing with all the dog ghosts to get there. But I'm not a huge fan of this sort of rhythm game, where it's mostly just a bit hard to know when your turn to play comes in and once you've got that it's barely more complex than hitting a couple eight notes once in a while. Nice if you want the cute, not interesting if you want rhythm.
Rhythm Animal Cafe Demo
See above.
Neon Dash
Just a scrolling jumper. No real graphics to speak of, one error and you lose. Kind of reminds me of Robot Unicorn Attack but not fun.
Alabaster Dawn
A game I'm actually excited about. Strong JRPG aesthetics and story writing but with ARPG gameplay. You've got loadouts and do a little bit of puzzle solving as you kill groups of enemies in the world you explore. The gameplay felt smooth. Maybe not Hades level or anything but fun to dodge and fight in. My only issue was that I struggled to get the parry down (felt very darksoulsesque in some of its approaches to combat) and at the very end of the demo the framerate completely collapsed, so there's some question about optimization, but even so this was the first game I wishlisted.
Basically a "We have Valheim at home" with minecraft crafting. Instead of over the shoulder it's sort of a top down third person. If you love Valheim you might be mildly entertained by some segments of this but it's very janky and lacks the atmosphere and little touches of personalization that make Valheim such a pleasant game to keep at over and over again. Worth the couple hours we spent with it but not more unless you like grind without innovation.
Don't Panic! It's just turbulence.
Basically "Keep talking and nobody explodes at home." One player is on a plane and the other is in the control room. There are puzzles. There are time limits. The puzzles are not as good as keep talking and the controls are also a little jankier. We only tried about four rounds including the tutorials which were not much of a challenge. I probably could have gone a few more rounds myself but at the same time I don't know if any of the puzzles we didn't see would have been any better.
Catmarine
A co-op similar to Lovers in a Dangerous space time, but to activate any given ability you have to type the word displayed at each station. And when there are enemies you need to type the words above them to get rid of them. We played this as a three-man and it was pretty fun. Less demanding than LDST in terms of obstacles but this was because of the added difficulty of the typing. I am never good at those frantic prioritization games because I literally start daydreaming in the middle of them lol and do not make a great teammate. This was a polished game and the controls worked well and there was no jank, so worth trying if you like the genre.
Far Far West
A co-op objective based shooter where you're running around a sci-fi/fantasy western, completing objectives at a frantic pace. A little bit like Deep Rock Galactic, but much flatter, and much more movement based. There are dashes and hops and mounts and if you get your timing right you can fly over ravines, which was very satisfying. The quests are more mini game like. One involved trying to find all of the little targets in a given area, which took us a little bit. Unlike Deeprock it doesn't seem like there is too much of a timer where difficult starts to ramp up, at least not in the quests we did, so it was more casual, but because the speed of everything is almost double it feels more frantic.
Clicky Islands
Oh god. This one is too addictive. You just build up islands again and again with a combo of Clicking (thank god you can hold down the mouse) and automated workers. The ramp up is too satisfying as is building up the island and I lost 2 hours to this fucking thing. There is no tactics or thinking really involved. Beware the time sink.
Cargo Hunters
Some sort of looter shooter single player? I don't know. Zero onboarding and the interface looked like something only someone who played a fuck ton of whatever sort of FPS subgenre this is would understand. Tried to identify if I had any health and couldn't, but did definitely die and then immediately quit.
Puppergeist
A very simple rhythm game. It's cut and colorful. The MC is going through doggie heaven looking for their dog and playing with all the dog ghosts to get there. But I'm not a huge fan of this sort of rhythm game, where it's mostly just a bit hard to know when your turn to play comes in and once you've got that it's barely more complex than hitting a couple eight notes once in a while. Nice if you want the cute, not interesting if you want rhythm.
Rhythm Animal Cafe Demo
See above.
Neon Dash
Just a scrolling jumper. No real graphics to speak of, one error and you lose. Kind of reminds me of Robot Unicorn Attack but not fun.
Alabaster Dawn
A game I'm actually excited about. Strong JRPG aesthetics and story writing but with ARPG gameplay. You've got loadouts and do a little bit of puzzle solving as you kill groups of enemies in the world you explore. The gameplay felt smooth. Maybe not Hades level or anything but fun to dodge and fight in. My only issue was that I struggled to get the parry down (felt very darksoulsesque in some of its approaches to combat) and at the very end of the demo the framerate completely collapsed, so there's some question about optimization, but even so this was the first game I wishlisted.
