mysterytoast

It's been a few days since the end of Next Fest, but I needed some time to get through the last of the demos I already downloaded. I haven't run into any issues with demo access, though. I remember the days when Next Fest ended and suddenly my library was full of useless files...

I wasn't looking for any particular genre this time. I guess I wandered around the RPG, puzzle, and casual spaces for things that caught my interest and wasn't too heavy on my computer. Overall I managed to play 14 games, including a couple that technically aren't Next Fest demos for one reason or another (and excluding one that I just couldn't understand). Six of the games I'd call great and definitely keeping an eye on, five that were good and may or may not be something I'll follow, and three that I'll just give a pass. I'd say that's a pretty good selection here.

Great:

Tiny Glade

So actually I played this on the 8th before Next Fest, but they are featured here.
Getting this to run was a pain in the ass. I have a 4k monitor but the game would crash on startup until I swapped the resolution of the monitor to 1920x1080, somehow. The crash message wouldn't even show properly. Apparently the issue is that NVIDIA drivers don't play nice with their graphics engine and apparently the engine can't handle even the slightest deviation from what it expects on a computer. Maybe your graphics drivers need to be reinstalled (the exact same version, into the exact same place, the vibes were just wrong???). Maybe you've run Reshade one time for any game and knocked a bit astray. Maybe the game just doesn't like your specs. Maybe the game just doesn't like you. The updates they've pushed haven't fixed my specific issue, but it did at least let me see the crash window, so that's nice.
The game itself is fantastic! If you know Townscaper, it's that but even better, with multiple pieces like scalable buildings and walls and landscaping, and a lot of features and synergies between tools. It just works. It genuinely just works. It seems like a good reference tool for artists, too, with a camera that you can "walk" around in first person.
If the devs can fix the fragility of the game, or release it on Switch or something, I will pick it up in a heartbeat. As is, I can't really use it for my intended purposes (making reference images). But it is an enjoyable experience if you can run it.

Fantasy Village Simulator

Not sure how to describe this. Roguelite colony sim tower defense/tactics RPG with deckbuilding elements? Vampire Survivors if it was a strategy game? You select a deck of buildings and a race, and you survive waves of enemies and can set new buildings (choice from three in your deck) between waves. You can upgrade between runs and I presume you unlock new races and buildings? There's a lot of customization with the building deck to the point where it's kinda overwhelming.
I think there needs to be better balance with villager growth - you need fighters to survive, but fighters can't produce in other buildings, but your ability to increase your non-fighter population is limited to how many houses you include in your deck, but more houses reduces your ability to produce fighters and goods to keep everyone alive... The thought that you can screw yourself over with the wrong setup before you even start a game is intimidating.
Also, it's not easy to determine what you need to produce items and upgrades - it tells you the items you need, but not the quantity, but it won't say you don't have enough items until you finish a round of production. You also need specific tiers of items, and if you don't have the right tier, you need to trade or make a new building, both of which are only available between waves. I feel like I spent a lot of time with villagers in unproductive slots.
The base concept is fascinating. If the game had better tools for deckbuilding (a variety of defaults and the ability to share decks), more clear info, and a bit of balancing, it would be an amazing game. It really has potential to be amazing. It has potential to be the next Vampire Survivors, or at least a hidden gem.

Machinika Atlas

Apparently I have the prequel to this in my library. Who knows when I got it (2021 game, but not in any of my bundle collections...?).
Anyway, point and click puzzle game, very much in the genre of escape games (which I love). I love the ancient-steampunk-in-space aesthetic. I think real life could use some papyrus scrolls with digital displays. The game feels rather slow, in an intentionally atmospheric way? It's a little bit too slow for my tastes, but that means it's probably ok. The puzzles feel a little simple for my tastes but they can easily increase the difficulty as it goes on. Considering that, I really like what I saw and tbh I need to get around to playing the first game. Will keep an eye on this one.

Museum No. 9

The gameplay loop is very fun, and there's a lot of gameplay to try. You design and run a museum exhibit during the day, and at night you go into a dungeon to fight mobs and gather materials and artifact fragments, which you then piece together with a mini-puzzle for new exhibits. Artifacts range from classical (largely Chinese) art and artifacts to modern items like a literal GPU. You can also upgrade artifacts by completing given tasks (but some of these tasks are really unclear). One upgrade involved an interactive flashback scene to reveal the memories associated with the artifact and that was cool, but I don't know if everything gets a similar scene.
What I really liked was the lack of day-night cycle - you have time limits in dungeons, but in the overworld, you can take all the time you need if you want to fully redesign your museum. You get a fixed number of visitors (that you can upgrade). It's just a really nice QoL that neutralizes my "gotta minmax my time!!" instinct for day cycle games.
I'll definitely keep an eye on this. I just hope they get editors for the translations. The English translation is MTL'd to the point where dialogue feels stilted to nonsensical, lines get cut off, and plain language terms are inconsistent. I can feel lore going over my head (and I can't read simplified Chinese at the needed level), and that's a shame, because it seems the devs put time into the lore.

Tiny Bookshop

I guess it's not actually a Next Fest demo, this was from the Wholesome Direct. They released it in the same time frame though.
Neat little mini-shop management game about selling books in a small town. The demo lets you do two days, and introduces you to a lot of its mechanics and customization in that time, which is rather impressive! It's very slow though. Usually a management game has more to do during the day, but here most of your work is done in prep. That's not necessarily bad - having unlimited time to set things up is good in my eyes, though it feels like most of the actual day I'm just waiting. Unfortunately, since this is a "wholesome" game, I think the slowness is the point and there won't be a speedup option.
The artstyle is very pleasing. Fern and Tilde are cute. The integration of the newspaper is neat. You can stick a fish on the ground. My first non-NPC customer was in a wheelchair and I like the casualness of that. I'll keep an eye on this one and I think it'll go far, though ultimately its pacing likely won't be for me. Which is a shame, because I wish it was.

Townframe

Cute little puzzle game about replicating descriptions of landscapes. I think there could be a little QoL with the building selection? Maybe right clicking to open the radial menu, or letting you use the scroll wheel to quickly swap buildings. As is, needing to hold down click and radial drag to the right building made my wrist sore in all of 10 minutes. But otherwise I think it's a nice game.

Good:

Galaxy Burger

It's another one of the cooking/assembly games but with co-op, I guess? It's Papa's Pizzeria but multiplayer. The art is cute and the game feels good to play, even if it lacks keyboard shortcuts for panning the map and pulling up order tickets. It's nice that the standard cookbook is in the pause menu, though navigation is still a bit awkward. I didn't try co-op, but I imagine more complex menus or faster customer turnover would make it chaotic and hopefully fun.
However... despite the space theme, the actual ingredients play it excessively safe. I looked around and the only ingredient I would call even vaguely non-Earthlike are black burger buns (but then squid ink dyes are on Earth, so really it's just a hipster gimmick bun). There's not even a weird onion here! And what happens is that the cookbook feels like a real life burger cookbook. The trailer's cookbook shows "caloric content" and "cooking time" lines, so that might be intentional? But again, excessively safe for a space game, even to the point of wasting the concept. There are ways to make recipes Earth-accessible while also embracing the worldbuilding potential of a space game.

Neko Odyssey

I've been following this one for a bit. The demo is a neat look at the world and the cat pics gameplay, but there's nothing else to do besides walk around and take photos. What I did get to see of the gameplay was... kinda dull, tbh. There's only so much excitement in taking pictures for fake social media and waiting for fake engagement numbers to go up. Sometimes things in the environment change at different times, but there's no puzzles or story hooks for the full game, it's just a blank world with placeholder dialogue.
I do like the graphics though, and the cat pic art is very cute. I'll keep an eye on this one at least.

Paper Kingdom

According to the dev disclosures, they generated "card textures" instead of having an artist do it. Which, y'know. Was it really that difficult to pay an artist to make their damn graphics?? The part you spend 90% of your eyesight looking at??? Presumably they have an artist for banner and milestone art, they're just stingy about paying for labor.
If not for the AI I'd stick it in the Great category. Because this one was a lot of fun. It's a colony sim/resource management game where everything is represented by cards (kinda like Stacklands, but Stacklands has an art style and direction). You only get access to people/tools/buildings and not combat or vehicles in the demo, and I'm wondering if there are any NPC encounters to vary up gameplay, but I can see how it scales in complexity.
The algorithm for placing new cards could use work though - a product card will only place itself within a certain radius of its producer and it can and will shove cards out of the way and ruin your layout. It would also be nice to have "empty" resource cards so you aren't constantly worrying about ruining your layout again.
I'll keep an eye on this since I want to see how people like the later game loop, but if they stick to the AI graphics then I'll be stingy about paying or supporting them too.

The Dragonhood

So first off, it's total bs that you're punished for not using all your action points. You'd think it would actually be a good thing, considering you can upgrade it with your starter money and oftentimes you *can't* use all your points because there just aren't infinite point dumps. But no, even when you're as efficient as you can, oftentimes you'll be hit with a 1-2% penalty.
I'm not a huge auto battler fan, but this one was pretty ok. It has dragons and I like dragons. You hatch and raise dragons and send them on expeditions to get upgrade materials (in addition to a daily income). There's also a dungeon in the demo where stats and teambuilding actually matters, which is neat.
Unfortunately, again, I'm not an auto battler fan, and this doesn't have much narrative or side gameplay, so that's pretty much the extent of my interest. Nice experience though. Dragons are cool. Maybe there are even more dragons in the full game.

Tiny Aquarium: Social Fishkeeping

You buy or breed fish and they generate coins per hour that you can use to buy decorations or more fish (that you then breed into more fish). There's also a feature to visit other players' aquariums - this is the "social" part of fishkeeping. It doesn't seem like you can care for those fish, you're only allowed to look, though you can also leave likes as of a recent update.
Notably, fish can die. Fish have a health bar, and there's a healing potion in the shop. I don't know if hp recovers naturally. And the concept of death is the game's biggest problem. First, because this game is intended to be opened "once or twice daily," but for like 1 minute per session, it's really easy to just forget and let them die. Once your fish die, any visitors will also find nothing but corpses in your tank. About half the tanks I visited were all dead! Including really developed aquariums with rare fish! And that's really sad! It doesn't encourage me to stay in the long term!
The time it takes for death to occur also seems really short. In comparison, Viridi, a similar "check in every once in a while" game with plants, lets you ignore it for weeks, and as long as you eventually water the plants, they will be perfectly happy to be ignored again. But in Tiny Aquarium my older fish are at 80% health and that was because I didn't open the game for 21 hours.
I think if they a) replaced the death meter with a happiness/productivity meter, b) let visitors take care of your tanks, or c) provided a way to revive your fish, the game would be a lot better. As is, I suspect the game will be dead in the water. Just like the fish.

Meh:

Cozy Designer

A "cozy" game about room designing, aka placing furniture in small rooms. Unpacking + Chill Corner but really egrigiously so tbh, and the epitome of "it needs work." For a game that proclaims it is cozy, there are a lot of issues that get in the way of "coziness" - the fully freeform placement (ie. it's like impossible to make things symmetrical), the fact that once you place the last item you're forced to complete the level and can't go back and fix things, the awkward camera that's hard to move where you need it to be. Some rooms feel too cramped. The piano room is way too cramped. The fireplace-TV combo places the TV too high for what seems to be a fake fireplace (since you can just move the set). If you move a table nothing on top of it moves and will float in the air. You get 10 stages in the demo which was nice, but I was so tired of the camera and having too much furniture in cramped spaces by the end.

Hogvalord: The Ranch

A very mid game. You raise creatures from eggs, feed them to raise stats, and evolve them depending on their stats. They also shoot out coins for income (in addition to buildings, which contribute coin/items). The coins have a physics system but there's no boundary box so sometimes the coin just leaves and you can't collect it.
Things just feel buggy and not responsive. If you try to destroy a building but miss, you need to click an additional time to close the build menu? And hitboxes glitch out all the time. It's... nice that it doesn't hold your hand through a tutorial, though? The tutorial pages are designed well! I still think they could hold your hand a little bit to show progression mechanics.
Overall, feels like a mobile game. Like a game you'd hand to a young kid to distract them. I don't think there's an overall narrative, and the gameplay is too shallow for me to engage with. It's just not for me.

Slime Farm

The shop reminded me of Petpet Park and I miss that game.
Cute for like 20 minutes, but there's not much going on. Keeping your slimes happy and fed is a bit hectic, and throwing babies off to be sold because you can't sustain the constantly growing population almost feels against the spirit here? It feels like a mobile game. It feels like a game you'd hand to a young kid to distract them. I don't think there's an overall narrative, and the gameplay is too shallow for me to engage with. Again, not for me.

Game I Didn't Understand:

Sail of Dreams

Yeah, I really couldn't get this one. It's a naval combat game except the gimmick is that... you have to run around your ship to do each aspect - from turning your ship to moving your ship to actually firing your cannon (you can only shoot to your left). It is incredibly awkward and in any other game this would've been streamlined, but here it's the entire game and I gave up after a couple minutes.