Accessed Archive: Nextfest Hall of Fame
Welcome!
This is a special collection- the short list of games I picked up as a demo and ended up playing out in its entirety. After seeing everything it has to offer, these are my full thoughts on the experience of each.
If you want to see how my thoughts changed form the original demo, click the dropdown for each game to see my thoughts during its Nextfest debut.
To the right person, I reccomend everything on this page. Click the thumbnail to check out its full steam page.
▼ Cobalt Core
I've never cared for deckbuilders. The high-level strategy of the likes of Slay the Spire and Monster Train never quite clicked in my brain, although I certainly understand their appeal. So why did this little roguelike deckbuilding game in space become the greatest success story of all of nextfest for me?
It's hard to identify just what gave Cobalt Core the secret sauce for me, but there are a few things it has going for it that really do make it feel distinct from the peers in its field. At its core (heh), the game is a roguelite where in each run, you engage in a series of ship-to-ship combat encounters to build up both your deck and the ship itself to prepare for the gatekeeper of the time loop you find yourself in, rewarded with just a little bit of the characters' story after each succesful run.
The main elegance of the game is in the card design itself and how that interacts with the ship. Positioning is extremely important in this game- aligning your weapons to hit the enemies weak points, or making them miss by repositioning to place an empty piece of scaffolding in front of their incoming shot. The cards simply feel like the buttons to actually *use* the tools available on your ship, and that affords them the luxury of being straightforward to understand- most cards, especially in the early game, have little to no text at all and instead fit within a small number of neat systems. There's an approachability that comes from using card-based combat to fuel something that feels faster-paced that I haven't really seen before. The ship itself is a major player in how the game feels, and the various upgrades within a run and unlockable alternate layouts really spice up how the game plays.
Beyond all of that, however, Cobalt Core demands praise for its impeccably crafted atmosphere- a massive part of what makes the game as grippy as it is. The brightly coloured, crisp pixel art just makes you feel at home. Add an extremely memorably cast of excellently-written characters making up a more personal story than one might expect from a space-faring timeloop, and Cobalt Core just… knows what it is. And it's damn good at it.
…I think I'm gonna go do a run now. You should too.
Play if you: Easily get attached to possums with daddy issues
Feels Like: FTL, Shogun Showdown, Arcade games you played waiting for laser tag
▼ While the Iron's Hot
Original Review
This game really surprised me. An energy management crafting-exploration game with a lovely pixel artstyle, you play as Lucca, the apprentice to a village smith. This game has the most fun crafting mechanics I've interacted with since Spiritfarer, with unique minigames and challenges for each type of activity that makes the act of crafting itself enjoyable. The world is fun to explore and find resources and recipes, and the energy system is well implemented to make you think about what you're doing each day without being stifling. You can upgrade the village, your home and forge, and develop relationships with the people in the world through your practice. I played for a full hour and audibly said "No!" When the screen came up that said the demo was over. If they expand on the mechanics here they've got a really unique game on their hands.
Score: 7.5/10 Tags: 2D, Crafting, Adventure, Puzzle Written: 20/06/2023
Despite a very simple game loop, WTIH is probably the most fun I've had with a crafter in a long time. You are a travelling blacksmith apprentice, travelling a world I found more compelling than I expected as you find new recipes and craft goods to meet villagers needs and build up your resources. And that's basically it. You use the same three crafting stations the whole game and there's limited extra complexity that builds in the loop.
It ends up being strangely meditative, in a way- you do what you're good at day in and day out, help people out, and play a small role in a story that feels grounded but still bigger than you. Energy systems are something I often feel provide a lot of friction in games, but I actually think this one is well implemented- you find yourself compelled to plan out the phases of your day effectively, without feeling like mistakes will meaningfully cost you. I think it could overstay it's welcome by the end of the game, but I found a bit of an exploit that takes away a lot of the grinding that otherwise might have dissuaded me. WTIH isn't trying to be anything crazy, but it’s a good time if you enjoy this type of game.
Play if you: Feel like your 9-5 lacks whimsy
Feels Like: Inexplicably, TerraFirmaCraft
▼ Wildmender
Original Review
This game is a treasure. In a garden sim meets survival, you wake up next to a small oasis in the middle of a desert. By gathering and planting flora, reshaping waterways, and connecting with the plants, animals, and spirits of the land, you slowly make the world around you more and more habitable, enabling you to push farther into the depths of the desert to explore gorgeous ruins, meet and learn from spirits of the past and find new wellsprings to bring back to life. The atmosphere and art direction are gorgeous, and the world totally transforms from night to day. There is a story of some kind, but in the hour or so I played (I will be playing this demo for days, I think), I found myself spending plenty of time just running around and finding seed, expanding my arable land, and crafting structures to make my oasis feel like home; and given what's possible in the steam trailer, I've only scratched the surface. Your relationship with the garden you grow is not simply cosmetic or for food, either- at night, plants you care for produce a magic essence that you use to learn from spirits and harness magical abilities, allowing you to influence the desert and its inhabitants and respond to dangers. This is a truly unique experience that offers something I've always wanted from a sandbox and nothing has ever quite provided, and I'm extremely excited for it. My only current complaint is that some of the controls while menuing are a bit clunky. Overall, I'll be watching it closely.
Score: 9/10 Tags: Sandbox, Exploration, Gardening, Co-op Written: 22/06/2023
Man. Wildmender has come to have a very complicated place in my heart.
I've always had a real soft spot for games where you get to restore a broken world. The feeling of responsibility when you see things measurably improve hits something deep for me, but so many of them end up feeling checklisty- meet a milestone, a whole bunch of shit happens at once. Wildmender filled a space I always wanted but could never have- one where that growth and healing of the world is slow, natural, and progressive.
You begin in a broken desert, unlocking flexible terraforming tools and plants with symbiotic relationships to slowly bring it back to life by bringing the water back to the surface and spreading it from nodes across the landscape. You can easily sink dozens of hours into a detailed garden, but in that way, it really captures the pride I've wanted from a game like this. I really bought into the daily loop of feeding off of your plants at night to expand your garden in the day, discovering new species, and seeing how far you could stretch a single spring. From the games I've played, it's best in class in the rewarding process of healing a world and natural terraforming. I played in a group of 5, and each of us found different parts of the game to latch onto when we built out our areas.
Wildmender is the game from Nextfest I have put the most time into, ever. However- some parts of Wildmender have a bit of an identity crisis that, unfortunately, sours my memory of the game. The story is thin- really more of a backdrop for the gameplay and progression than a feature in its own right. When it tries to step in and shape your experience, it becomes clear that Wildmender desperately wants to be something other than what it is and what it's good at. I've never seen a game trip over itself the same way Wildmender's finale does- in an attempt to have something to say about the nature of life and death, it ends up actively and irreversibly undoing many hours of your work (in my case, about 30) for a weak message that simply does not land. If it's any consolation, the singular member of our group that wasn't there to be embittered at the finale continued on to have a great time with the game on their own. If you embark on this journey, make sure you take a backup before engaging with the finale. I absolutely adored the first 95% of Wildmender, but the final 5% was so catastrophic that it permanently placed an asterisk on this recommendation.
Play if you: Show your friends progress pics of your tomato plants on the weekend
Feels Like: Nothing, really- for better and for worse. Surviving Mars, maybe?
▼ Locomoto
Original Review
Sometimes, all a game needs to be is cute. I'm a big train guy, this is no surprise. Locomoto is a charming train manager where you work your way through a small but memorable world of likeable characters, transporting passengers, mail and cargo on a customizable train, gathering materials to upgrade your tools and engine as you go. The gameplay loop is simple and satisfying, and I have high hopes that it'll stick the landing as it goes deeper. There seems to be a story to the whole thing as well, but the demo doesn't go far enough to show you too much of that.
Score: 7.5/10 Tags: Train, Management Written: 03/03/2025
Alright, if you know me, you know that at least one train game was going to end up on this list. Honestly, in some ways, I'm surprised this is the one that made it. I had a good time with the demo of Locomoto, but my expectations for the full game were relatively mild. The gameplay loop never really changes- go to parts of the world that have the resources you need, carry packages, carry passengers, upgrade your train. It's fun, but nothing particularly innovative that would, on its own, earn a place in the hall of fame.
The main thing Locomoto does is make you care. the soft, simple world contains a cast of characters and stories that seem genuinely heartfelt, and it's hard not to develop some attachments as you go along. On top of the characters you travel with, one thing it really excels at is making you care about your *train*. The customization is really fun, led by a key mechanic- everything you make reflects the different materials you can mix and match to make it, and these materials are only found in certain parts of the world. This adds a lot of connective tissue to the game that makes each trip feel rewarding. The game is slow, but the story keeps a gentle hand on your back pushing you forward. Despite this, I found myself taking ample time to do side journeys- I wanted this experience to last longer, not go faster. Locomoto gave me some quiet moments of simple joy at a time I needed them, and I'm grateful for it.
Play if you: Ran aimlessly around the hub worlds of your wii games for hours on end
Feels Like: Here Comes Niko!, Animal Crossing, taking a nap on a long road trip
▼ Wanderstop
Original Review
This was made by the creator of the Stanley Parable- master of doing the same thing again and again and making it feel meaningful. His new studio, debuting with this game, is Ivy Rose. It was published by Annapurna. Music is composed by C418. You couldn't advertise this better to me if you tried. Wanderstop is a game about a very intense woman bulldozing through her life and being forced to stop and slow down at a whimsical tea shop called the Wanderstop. It's a slow pace, but in a way that feels very intentional. This game makes you breathe, and the design of the Wanderstop itself is delightful. I'll be picking this up for sure.
Score: 7.5/10 Tags: Job Sim, Story Written: 01/03/2025
I've learned something about myself through a few of my favourite nextfest games. Sometimes, I simply will not take the time to breathe on my own, but when an experience forces me to slow down, really slow down, and just breathe it in… god, does it work for me. There are touches of this in other items on this list- While the Iron's Hot, Locomoto, and some, admittedly, that I couldn't slow down enough to hear out,. But nobody does it better than Davey Wreden and the team at Ivy Road that put this masterpiece together.
Alta, your character, has never slowed down a day in her life, and arrives at this endlessly patient place with nothing for her to do *except* slow down. The Wanderstop feels like home in a way few game hubs do. You progress through a raw and emotionally driven story by simply making tea in the most whimsical way you could imagine. Ivy Road strikes a difficult but important balance- the game is just repetitive enough that you are likely to share a hint of Alta's antsiness, but it always gives you just enough to keep you going- whether that's the customers you serve, a key moment in the story, or a twist on your brewing routine. Wanderstop is a warm blanket that gently wraps around you and takes you to the place it wants you to be while completely acknowledging whatever emotional space you may start this journey in.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I think about it a lot.
Play if you: Find yourself browsing your phone waiting for the water to boil
Feels Like: Little Inferno felt in 2012
Original Review
Wow. This game has SUCH a clear vision of what it wants to be, and has much more polish than I expect from these demos already. Cobalt Core is a deckbuilder that plays like FTL but with cards. The strategy is a blast and the cards feel both digestible and diverse. I'm not normally a huge fan of deckbuilding games, but something about this one has me hooked. The artstyle and characters are really charming, and I honestly can't wait to play more.
Score: 9/10 Tags: Roguelike, Deckbuilder, Strategy Written: 15/10/2023