In my last post (it wasn’t quite last week, but close enough) I talked about my plan to start refactoring Watch Out for Goblins! and that most of this blog would be focused on that for the next bit. That’s still the plan- but before I do that I realized I need to chill out for a bit.
Next Fest is now upon us. WOFG! The Demo! is out in the wild. People are playing it, some people even seem to like it a bit. We’ve been working very hard to complete and polish up the demo in time for this. Most of my free time over the last couple of months has gone into it, and now that it’s here I feel weird. I think, before jumping back into the project, it’s a good time to take a step back, be proud of what we’ve accomplished, and think about things that aren’t goblins for at least a couple of days.
Okay, but I still want to put something on this blog. Next Fest is happening for more than just us. There are so many cool looking games that people have worked hard on. I’m going to spotlight some of the demos that stood out or surprised me most. Starting with…
Chicken With Robot Legs
It’s an auto-runner. It’s also a metroidvania. It was cool to see handcrafted levels in a genre that usually hinges on procedural generation. The titular Chicken (the one with robot legs) can speed up, slow down, jump, duck, and kick, but can’t turn around. You navigate the level by bumping into walls covered in grass which lets the chicken go the other way. Bonking into other walls kills you, but checkpoints are everywhere in the demo level. As a fan of precision platformers I really liked this. I think the pixel art is charming, and the spooky lab the demo is set in makes me think there’s a deeper mystery to uncover. I like it.
Arcanum Fortuna
This is a deck building roguelike with a tarot theme. It looks great- the pallet is muted and earthy and the card/character art is cohesive. There’s some interesting design in the game mechanics: you can play as many cards as you want on a turn limited only by the size of your hand and the number of open spaces on the board. The catch is each card has a karma value, some positive some negative, when you end your turn all the karma is added up if it’s negative it subtracts from your HP. I like this idea there’s some strategic choices to make in card selection to try to balance your karma as best you can. The issue is that the demo is way too easy. Your cards auto-attack each round a la Inscryption, also like Inscryption you can see what cards your opponent is about to play and where. This makes it super easy to counter anything the game throws at you. I think with a bit of balancing there’s interesting design space in the karma system. There’s also bits of dialogue spaced between the battles. It’s strange, poetic, and philosophical- I quite enjoyed it. You are guided through by a dog and I quite enjoyed that too. Dogs are the best.
Alright that’s all from me today. If I run into any more demos I think are worth shouting about I’ll share them here. Until next time.
SQYD.studio 
Leave a comment