Hello everyone! It’s been a bit, but I’m back and blogging again.
Steam’s summer NextFest happened this week. We’ve got our BACKFIRE Demo out in the wild. Go give it a play if you haven’t already. I think it’s pretty good. We haven’t done nearly as much promotion for BACKFIRE as we did for WOFG! The Demo, and maybe that’s why I’m feeling much more mellow about this event than the last one. There’s a bit more work to do to get BACKFIRE released (mostly Steamworks integrations- achievements and the like) but I expect that I’ll wrap that up in the next week or two. Then it’s back to work on our goblins- and I’m pretty excited about it after a month and a half away.
I’m going to casually share my thoughts on a few of the demos I’ve played this week, but first I just want to note that it looks like Valve is deemphasizeing NextFest this time around. My main evidence: the NextFest button isn’t in the main store banner, but is rather appears below the “featured games” block. That and also I didn’t get invited to a e-lecture with Steam’s team about the festival (or if I did I missed the email). My thoughts? This is probably good for smaller teams. Less focus on the festival means less people spend money to market around it, so the focus can remain on the demos. Anecdotally, the BACKFIRE Demo seems to be preforming about as well in the festival as WOFG! The Demo did, and we haven’t done anything to market it. What’s that mean? I have no clue.
Okay. Let me ramble for a bit about some of these demos.
Ball X Pit
Ball X Pit is Vampire Survivors meets Breakout with the atmosphere (and meta progression) of Loop Hero. That’s a lot of inspirations! You move and aim your balls twin-stick style- and the bricks (played here by a legion of skeleton warriors) slowly descend towards the bottom of the screen. You take damage when they reach it. Gotta grab the crystals to level up- which let you upgrade your balls, add new balls, or get secondary power-ups that interact with your balls. It’s pretty fun. It also looks amazing. I dig the blend of 3D and pixel art and this game nails the vibe. I’ll keep this one on my wishlist.
Indoor Baseball
Indoor Baseball is rough around the edges. It’s a bit buggy, it hides transitions behind a clumsy splash screen, and it’s low-poly style makes it look amateurish. I love it anyway. It’s filled with the kind of joy that can only come from a small team figuring it out as they go. So basically, Indoor Baseball reminds me of me. What do you do in the game? You play baseball inside. You bat and pitch and run the bases. You try not to trip over your toys on the floor. You try to catch the ball before it hits the ground. It’s baseball. Inside. Just like you weren’t allowed to do as a kid. That’s a fantasy I can get behind. Good (a bit janky) stuff, but I feel like they missed an opportunity to call it “Inside Baseball”.
Dispatch
Easy the demo I played with the biggest budget, by the most experienced dev team. I almost didn’t put it here because I think it’s going to be one of the “big winners” of NextFest. That said, I’m hooked. This is a fantastic demo. Part Telltale-esque adventure game (makes sense given the dev team), part plate-spinner. The demo is just long enough to show what the gameplay* will be and to end with me wanting more. Great characters, gorgeous animation. When it comes out, I’m going to play it.
Legends Of The Round Table
This has been on my Steam wishlist for a while. I want an RPG about chivalry that looks like the margin doodles of a medieval manuscript come to life. This is that. I will say, the demo is overwhelming. There are a ton of mechanics here that aren’t very well explained. It’s one of those very fiddly RPGs which could probably be great if you get way into it (but I’m not often patient enough). The combat animations are realistic but maybe don’t sell the mechanics as well as they could. The voiceover narrator also over-delivers their lines is a way that I found silly at first then irritating later. As much as I think this game nails the atmosphere, I’ll probably give it a pass- but it’s definitely the kind of crunchy out-of-the-norm rpg that will make some players very happy.
And that’s it. Thanks for reading. I’ll catch you on the next one.
* Plate-spinner is a genre I think I made up myself, so maybe I need to explain it. It’s any game where you have multiple thing that require your attention that are all on timers. You have to attend to them in a timely order to keep things moving. Games like Stacklands, Cultist Simulator, all those restaurant ones.
** A buddy of mine says that the gameplay in Dispatch is lifted directly from This is the Police– but I haven’t played that one.
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