Accessed Archive: Nextfest Winter 2023
Welcome.
These are all the demos I played in the 2nd NextFest, in Summer 2023. Note that all these reviews are as written at the time- some of these games might have come a long ways since then.
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Vulpis
A cute pixel art platformer where you are a fox. Rough around the edges for sure, certain systems feel flat or incomplete. The combat isn't terribly engaging and it doesn't do anything new with the genre but as a develoeprs first attempt at a game it has some charm. This game is giving me the 'not likely to ever get a full release' stink to me, but if it does, I hope they make some substantial changes before then. The biggest thing it has going for it right now is the art style.
Score: 4/10 Tags: 2D, Platformer
Koboo: The Tree Spirit
This is the first demo I had fun in this year! Koboo is a relatively unforgiving 2D roguelite where you face enemies much larger than yourself and collect new abilities as you face them until you die. It has a fun mechanic with rotating critical hit spots and the abilities encourage alot of movement during combat. I don't know if it has staying power but someone better at videogames than me might find it worth a few bucks. (Addendum: Someone better at videogames than me has confirmed it is probably not).
Score: 4.5/10 Tags: Roguelite, Hack and Slash
Moen
Characterless walking simulator, technically a 3d platformer. You climb a mountain and doing so is not fun. There's... really nothing else to say.
Score: 2/10 Tags: Multiplayer, 'Platformer', Bad Game
Cobalt Core
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: Rogelike, Deckbuilder, Strategy
Artificial
This is a physics puzzler where the main mechanic is that you can drag just about anything around, but it means the solution to basically all the puzzles is to... drag something around. Got tiring really quickly, unfortunately. In a world where there are so many physics puzzlers available, it's a tough sell to pick this up over something like Portal or Superliminal.
Score: 4/10 Tags: Physics, Puzzler
Score: 1/10 Tags: Walking Sim, Cat, Bad Game