>>1075054 >Stygian: Outer Gods A 20 gig download for 15 minutes of gameplay. Apparently this isn't the first time the devs have pulled something like this. https://steamcommunity.com/app/2581410/discussions/0/595141926473205077/ >Tempest Rising It looks pretty and it clearly wants to be a successor to C&C Tiberium but I dunno. It's missing something. Having to rely on unit secondaries is too much of a Red Alert thing. >Total Chaos Survival Horror from Turbo Overkill devs. It's too dark for my liking. Didn't find any monsters in the 15 minutes I played it. >Wanderstop From the dev of Stanley Parable, he made this cause he was feeling burn out. You're supposed to run a tea shop but I dunno, this one isn't getting me. >Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall The first game was more a "Choose your own adventure" rather than an actual management game. This seems to continue it. The sprite work is nice at least.

>>1075059 >New Life in Old Town. A Chinese game where you look after a retirement village I think. I wanted to play it but the english text didn't work. I love the art for it. That's it. Hope you found something. I know I did. See you next time.

Gonna have to pick up the pace if I wanna be done before the end of the thing >Haneda Girl Pixelshit precision platformer / stealth game, has neat ideas to spice up the formula of fast paced precision platforming, feels really great to play and is easy to pick up while being very obviously hard to master, going fast feels really good too so it's likely to be an enjoyable journey to try and master the game, worth a look if you like rage platformer >Advent NEON This is basically 2d sonic with combat, kinda like Spark the Electric Jester or Freedom Planet (shame I've played neither so I can't compare directly), seems the combat focus is rather heavy as a bunch of place lock you into arenas and you get dodge (with time stop on success) and counter mechanics as well as the combat being one of the main way you go "Super", shit feels good but the demo is lacking in true challenge (though that one boss chase is just right when it comes to having combat and fast at the same time) so it's all up to what the devs are planning (or what the community does with it if there's plan for level editors) >Ghost Hand This feels great but I think the game is a bit all over the place, you're thrown directly into what is basically an air section from Drakengard, then it become a more classic action platformer except you go sanic once you hit what is a rope bridge that makes a loop, the game also has combat with a combo meter that seems way stricter than I'm used to (think DMC3/4, complete with the need to actually vary your moves). Graphically this is also all over the place, it's Saturn low poly + pixel art with Mode 7, it sorta works for me but I'm not sure everyone will like it >Double Whammy And here I though the last one was all over the place, so we have Hifi rush meets helskate (you can grind rails with your weapon, which is a guitar), also has a good complement of platforming controls (jump + hover, grappling hook) though no platforming I've seen when I played but then the other half of the game is a shop sim with minigames, it might definitely be a cool game but the fact that the combat has a rhythm game element means it's a hard pass for me and the shop sim side doesn't help me wanna overlook that either I do see there's a good effort from the dev to stick around the electric guitar theme the whole game seems to wanna go for (even has a create your own guitar and download guitars from others thingy) and the other costumes do look neat (fully modeled pantsu as well) so definitely a game someone around here might wanna play. >My Chandroid Sweetheart Some fucking asshole just damaged and stole the battery (which are inexplicably also the storage device, that's some ass fucking tech design if you ask me) from your sweet robowaifu you just spent a minute building (that's an actual in game thing too, and you have customization for her a bit latter, and there's jiggle physics and a butt + boob slider), go solve puzzles with your now slightly amnesiac and less autonomous robowaifu (which is basically a weighted companion cube with a follow + go there command, and massive fucking tits should you want them to be so) >FEAR FA 98 It's literally FIFA 98 meets Silent Hill, not exactly my thing but I personally know a few people might enjoy that. >Axyz It's literally Kula World / Roll Away from the PS1 with a vaporwave aesthetic and chill d&b soundtrack, also I'm pretty sure this is geared towards veterans because it starts way harder than the original. Bonus points for the fake SONY brand being "PHONY" and the very nostalgic desktop on the interactive menu computer thing. >Twilight Monk I can't believe it's not Hollow Knight, though here the level of quality and polish is really close to HK, so maybe a great game in waiting Main thing I see different is the fact this has levelling but otherwise it's HK with a coat of paint. >Angeline Era Really old school isometric adventure game, which uses the bumpslash system instead of pressing a button to attack (aka run into things to kill which is iirc a staple of older JP adventure games), it feels like something I could've been playing on the PS1 in both a good and bad way, even the demo is cryptic and does not care to hold your hand much I can only imagine the full game will catapult itself straight past Alundra (US release) in terms of obtuseness and difficulty, I still think I'll give it a chance once it comes out however >Scarlet City of Devils Simple action metroidvania, this has a big "my first game" feel and the animated cutscenes are way better looking than the in game ones, but the combat is serviceable (simple combo with a cancel button and a dodge that induce time slow on close calls and I'm seeing some cool ideas from the dev like environmental damage being a thing you can do in the first boss fight (and it's done in a way that show someone actually thought about the game design of it), also monster girls and big anime titties not super well drawn but hey you take what you can get from western indies >>1074937 >Also tried MechHavoc. That was on my temp list but didn't pass the "will I really play more than a couple hour" test from a second glance Might revisit that decision however Also surprised you went for the 2D mech game but not the multiple full 3D ones that I've found (only two really worth a try though because Mecha Break decided to add cancer to their game in the form of a shitty AC) No issue I'll give them a play latter and post about it. >>1075054 >Poem Ex Machina Saw that one too, looks pretty cool, can't wait to see how it plays. >>1075059 >Survival Horror from Turbo Overkill devs. It's too dark for my liking. Didn't find any monsters in the 15 minutes I played it. It's also a remake of the Gzdoom mod you can go play right now, for free, and you should if you're into horror.

>>1075278 >jiggle physics and a butt + boob slider >and massive fucking tits should you want them to be so Figured I should illustrate

Tried Kalyskah. >looks ok >can customize appearance and tweak equipment/skills >vampire tits >lots of moves/abilities >cutscenes -fetish shit <lots of shit is placeholder/doesn't work <gameplay is janky as fuck <a lot of moves/abilities feel kind of pointless <voices are incredibly quiet randomly in cutscenes <cutscenes are janky <another UE5 game that runs like ass despite not looking like it should And then tried MechaKnight Legends >stompy mech in fantasy theme >cool dragon boos fight >destructible town >well animated and feels weighty >I like the mech design -only 1 fight against the dragon in the demo -view is really zoomed in <input delay is brutal if you button mash so don't press any more than you need to >>1075278 >Also surprised you went for the 2D mech game but not the multiple full 3D ones that I've found I pick my games mostly at random from the suggestions. I grabbed a few other mech games too though.

>>1075314 That is some of the worst aliasing I've ever seen

>>1075314 This is what gaming should be all about

>>1075433 >>1075482 The duality of man

Gonna play through a couple of these on stream, you're welcome to shit on my gameplay and poor tech skills: https://cytu.be/r/OldManGerpkin

>>1075514 pic didn't upload

>>1075515 quick summary: Duil JL Apps -Bad Dead Cells clone Nothing Beyond this point Dieuwt -Cryptic rogue-like, very pixel graphics, got soul to it, probably made a single person, crusty sound design. ROBOBEAT Simon Fredholm -BRM clone, wears it on it's sleeve, very stylized, pretty much as difficult to look at as BPM, very curious about my personal data for some reason. Wartorn Stray Kite Studios -Very clunky tactics MOBA/RTS wannabe, controls like ass, I can see where they were going with this, but it's just not good or way too raw for now. Voiceacting is terrible, along with recording equipment mismatch not doing it any favors. Everything is smudged in vaseline. Dragonkin the Banished Eko Software French ARPG that wants to be "Lost Ark" badly, almost fried my GPU, looks and controls fine, but the attack animations are slow, and you get swarmed by trash mobs all the time. Everything else seems like bog standard ARPG fare, it simply doesn't feel good to play.

Some thoughts from demos I played. I downloaded more, some due to mentions in the thread, but haven't had the time to go through them yet. >Void War Shameless FTL clone set in totally not Warhammer 40K. Gameplay is literally just FTL, there is more unit level detail with individual abilities/gear and stuff like daemon ships with organs instead of systems, boarding also seems more central to the intended gameplay but thats about it for differences. A whole lot of content seems to be locked out of the demo but I can't really tell how signficant or unique it is. >GAL GUARDIANSO: SERVANTSU OF DARKNESSU Not being able to attack upwards at all is incredibly awkward until you manage to get (back) into that original Castlevania mindset, which is definitely what the game is trying to emulate. Green acts cutesy and I spent most of the demo as her since she can attack without using up any resources unlike Purple but watching Angel Beats gave young me a strong thing for Kuuderes so I'm going to have to nominate Purple as the better sister. If you press character switch while sitting in the save room you can move the other sister into the open chair and have a nice tea party rest sequence with special animations ala the fairy singing to Alucard. >Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade For some reason I wasn't expecting the game to be as Hades-like as it turned out to be until I entered the first combat room. The game has good sound design, which it drew my attention to by telling me to put on headphones as part of the use-a-controller splash screen during boot but it seems to not have voice acting for the story segments which I hope is a demo thing because it's really awkward. Main MC is a funny hungry retard savant with the classic hidden choosen-one setting, the other PCs use the same set of NPCs (and thus the same game assets) to tell different stories set in different settings/timelines: Shigure has the story the game's store description is talking about while the demon girl has a disgaea-like comedy plot and the tiger man is running a samurai period drama. Having you choose between them at the start and Shigure's Okami like story intro probably contributed to the more linear feel I was expecting until the game immediately gave itself away with the Hades upgrade orb. Was fun to play overall, at the very least made me bother to complete the demo with all three characters a few times so that I could unlock all the available weapons.The weapons (you choose two per run) interact with eachother nicely but Tigerman has the least unique weapon combos because his gimmick is ranged attacks and they probably didn't have any good ideas for that in time for the demo, Shigure's gimmick is iado charge attacks setting/triggering conditionals on the blades and the demon girl dual wields the weapons while spamming dash. >Dolls Nest I had initially played the demo before the next fest started. That version had some bad tuning with the overheat/energy mechanic where you had to micromanage it super hard and the game just felt bad but they seem to have patched up the numbers on that end so that doesn't seem to be an issue anymore, would have liked it if boosting on the floor consumed even less energy/you could get the stall cooling bonus midair though. Gameplay is good overall but they need to think some more about how they want to integrate the more souls parts of their level design, you can only equip items at the funny tree so finding something new feels awkward where you either ignore it for now and risk forgetting about it or open up the menu to look at it and read descriptions without being able to actually try it out. The equipment menu also doesn't give you non-numeric details like fire mode even though it has all the numbers so you need to go back and forth to get the full picture. Damage falloff on the weapons is very high but there is no indicator on the hud as to whether an enemy is in range or not unless you remember your weapon's range value. Melee is also quite awkward in that it's implemented as a weapon with one shot in the clip that uses core energy to fire and has even less obvious range. Game gives no indication that overheat stops you from swinging unlike other weapons which you can still use so it took me a while to figure that out. Demo had one classic souls game NPC that you hand an item to from between bars that will probably end up dead later but nothing to spend currency on or any bosses so I can't comment on those parts. You don't seem to be able to re-gain lost currency after death as there is no corpse run/bloodstain but since we don't know how the currency is spent it might not be a big deal. The doll customization screen put heavy load on my GPU for some reason so I couldn't mess around with it too much and the nice jacket I found in pic related had it's cloth physics settle weirdly when in the actual mech frame so I ended up having to switch back to the battle suit but the mech-girls are still cute. >Metro Gravity Was watching the devlogs for this before, has some cool gravity puzzles and the environments look nice in that low-poly way but the combat is the type of rythm gameplay I'm not ok at so I bounced off of it. Dev did tell someone to fuck off when asked to make the player character's hips smaller so that was nice. >Genokids I think this is an old demo but it was in the nextfest banner so might as well. Devs used to post on /agdg/ way back when. It's got the makings of good character action but the moveset variety is a bit too limited for my taste, having four characters to live-switch between instead of the demo's two will probably shore that up a bit but I'm not too sure if it will be enough as is. >The King Is Watching Another old demo that they stuck into next fest, the demo had enough content that I sometimes used it as the thing I mess with while listening to programming conference talks. It's kinda like old flash games where you spawned units that crashed themselves against incoming waves but you have base building where only a limited part of the base can function at once so you need to either move shit around or think postioning through a bit.

>>1075605 Thank you anon

>>1075605 I'm gonna try Yasha out now, looks good >Doll's Nest The shittiest mechanic in that game I discovered is you have an arbitrary amount of total ammo you can use with any gun before you have to go back to that white tree to restore it. Shouldn't be a thing when there's already an ammo counter.

Tried Knightica. >mildly addicting >simple but with a lot of variation you can do for builds >units are simple looking but everything looks nice enough -feels like a game I would enjoy more on my phone <balance can be hit or miss <roguelike shit can fuck you <unit targeting priority gets fucked on bossfights which can end your run when they go retarded And the other game I tried was Nice Day for Fishing. >pixel shit looked alright >simple combat focused on fishing with a parry to block fish attacks >alternate lures and support spells -apparently was based on some jewtube parody series that I know nothing about <a lot of button mashing

And maybe the last batch unless I get lazy >Dolls Nest As someone who enjoys Armored Core a lot (though only really gen 2 & 3) this feels pretty nice, not sure if having a "Souls" level structure works well for it but that isn't something the demo can really demonstrate sadly as the limits of the design would only show in latter areas I quite like that there's actual rewards for exploring which helps the relatively empty world not feel too boring, though I assume a bunch of the items are a demo thing only I think the color customization is bugged as some of the colors result in super black (especially funny on the skin color) Shame this has the usual Unreal Engine shit, stuttering is especially bad. >Hypogea An attempt at 6th gen adventure/platforming/puzzle solving game, the platforming is rather jank and the pole mechanics are all but fluid and precise while the actual platforming is rather demanding, so while the game does set up something I want to explore it does not give me tools to make it feel good enough to actually do so, also no indication of combat or anything so might also be too much of a "walking" sim anyway. >Moadra Super Metroid + scanning and lockon from Prime with a sort of lovecraftian horror thing going on. At first it started rather meh because the movement felt slow but I kept at it until I got to the actual start of the game where you do actually move more like you'd expect. I think it's the first game where the blur / DoF and TAA artifacts actually complement the visual style to a degree (all of that can be disabled however), game seems unusually heavy for 2.5D but considering the level of details and the number of effects it's understandable. >MechaKnight Legends Medieval mech doing medieval mech stuff, feels really good though more slow and methodical akin to soulslike, not sure where the dev is going with this, bossrush game would be a shame but understandable from a one man team, a full on game with actual level and regular enemies I would probably get instantly. Gonna change name because another dev with a game called Mecha Knights: Nightmare got upset (it's an okayish EDF lite btw). >Skin Deep Might have the potential to be a good first person stealth game, but I have a bad feeling about the style of humor and writing this is going for sadly (not zoomer garbage but "le quirky reddit maymays" style) so probably dropped, shame. >Haste: Broken World I would've though a free runner game like that would interest me but I dunno, it does a lot of things right but I think I'm just not getting the primary mechanics right in my head because it feels like landing are randomly ranked and some of the mechanics don't behave like I would expect them to, I'm gonna wait and see if there's changes or better explanations before I dive back again on that one. >东方异域见闻 ~ Touhou Dystopian Yet another roguelite that slipped through because I thought I saw something, and to be fair it's quite decent but since it seems to require actually getting good I couldn't really get all that far (and I don't wanna grind a demo for hours), guess I'll revisit via piracy before getting it or not. Considering this is a touhou game it's rather noob friendly lore wise, playable chars are Youmu and Flandre in the demo + Marisa and Mokou in the full game, not exactly the rarest choices out there but still better than yet another Reimu + Marisa game. Combat is standard fare musou with a ranged attack and a dodge (and the whole perfect dodge thing, this time giving you extra energy for special attacks), graphics are good but there's a sort of shitty blur filter I can't disable that comes and kinda shits on the actually good looking game that's underneath, it's also extremely heavy (my 4080 was actually starting to break a sweat at just 60 fps), guess that is the price to be paid for fully modeled pantsu. >Beyond the Ice Palace II Don't need to have played the first game you get the short version as the first half of the opening cutscene (might want to but since it's a 2D sidescroller from 1988 that was only on computers so expect jank and fuckery aplenty) Metroidvania that's more Castlevania than Metroid (no map, mostly linear from what is shown), a bit rigid in the controls, the graphics are rather nice with the exception of the one shader effect that clashes real hard with the pixelart nature of the game (and I know the very effect can be done well in pixelart form even if it's faked via shaders and using smaller "pixels"), the grappling mechanic is oddly specific when it comes to the autoaim (or lack thereof), having to execute enemies is a bit of a chore. Guess >Cybertaxi: Lunatic Nights This is supposed to be a modern take on Quarantine, however this is really discount quarantine running on UE5, this game has no right to be that heavy on my hardware (both in size and ressource used, shit is 40GB and I can't maintain over 100fps on a 4080), I got stuck in a wall several time trying to exit the intro area, really this isn't doing it for me at all. >Robot Fury: Mech Combat Simulator Seems to be a Mechwarrior clone that is way too barebone at the moment for me to make any real judgement on it, it looks and runs okay I guess, there's bug and it's a bit jank probably not worth it unless the full game has way more stuff than the demo (whiuch it probably won't since it's one man devteam) >Blade Abyss I got tricked by tits again, this is just a meh UE5 asset flip which might be worth checking if it wasn't for the fact that it sets my GPU on fire just trying to run

I got lazy then I changed my mind >Nitro Express This gave really good vibe as a run, Gun but then I saw PixelGame Maker UI which is a bad sign (it's always jank in bad ways), then saw the game locked at 30fps which is a very bad sign and then I got around to the controls which really don't help making the game enjoyable, and despite all that I still want to play it because once you get aroudn to the controls it works and it looks and sounds really good, hopefully in a better state by the time of release >Ninja Brigade ft. Jonathan Weingarten First off, whoever he is he does not talk within the game only the trailer so that automatically makes it way better. If you're german this is your tax money at work. Pixelshit metroivania, very standard, nothing spectacular, except there seems to be a metric fuckton of things to do from menu spoilers, the music is the highlight (as expected from a game featuring a musical artist), I might just get it as a weekend filler if it's not too overpriced. >POEM EX MACHINA Hyperfast parkour + DMClite, a bit jank to control (rails tend to spit you the wrong way, getting wallrides to proc is down to luck, walljumps sure do exist and are totally useful I swear), the style and music are pretty good and the game runs beautifully while being very light, pretty sure if they get the kinks worked out this'll be a great game, the dev has some other kinda cool games that might be worth a play >Metro Gravity Cool low poly puzzle platformer with a cool gravity locking gimmick (unlocked means any surface you go towards become your down direction, locked means touching stuff will not change the direction of gravity anymore), surely gonna break my brain in half since I couldn't even get to the combat in half an hour

Next up was Break Arts III. >nice looking mechs >mech racing/combat >can choose how much assistance you get with driving or firing weapons >can customize, purchase, and build mechs <UI is extremely buggy <had to alt-f4 at one point because I was stuck in a menu <not the best performance Last on my initial demo downloads is Chaos Front. >sandbox approach to exploring the map and taking missions to advance the story >transport ships carry all your units which reminds me of those older Gundam tactics/grand strategy games that I can't recall the names of >your ships can fight too >artwork + animations look nice -some minor quality of life gripes <UI bugs out when using a controller at certain parts <English translation has some issues <looping music can get annoying

Something I've noticed is that JP devs are slightly better about demos this time around. I remember INTI CREATES took the demo of Gunvolt 3 off after Next Fest but Card-en-Ciel has stayed up and hopefully Gal Guardians 2 also stays up. Still, there are some fossils who insist on time-locking the demos. That's understandable when they're live services that are going to launch soon anyways, but some demos are just limited because JP devs still don't get that more exposure of good product = conversion into sales. In any case, I wanted to take it upon myself to start a new practice of pir-archiving the time-limited demos. https://files.catbox.moe/zqyycp.001 https://files.catbox.moe/rwdf5r.002 Above links are to Nitro Express. I'm going to see if I can continue this with other demos.

>>1076004 Wait, some of the demos are time limited? shit.

>>1076005 Yeah that has been my complaint for quite some time. A lot of the demos are time limited, and some get taken down before the steamfest even ends.

>Starless Abyss Strategy Roguelite deckbuilder with some of the best animations and pixel art i have seen, as well as great music. Unfortunately, none of this matters because the combat is really poor and unsatisfying. Can't really explain beyond its just not fun. Which is a shame because they clearly busted their ass on the artwork for this one. >9 kings another Roguelite deckbuilder, though this one is way more bitesized and basic. Very fun for short burts to try and get game breaking builds, though balance is poor, as the blood king just sucks ass compared to every other option. >Dino Ramen Express UE5 slop memebait game. You are in some sort of simulation running a ramen stand that you make deliveries for, with puzzels platforming and FPS combat. Unfortunately, it is clunky as hell, likely from garbage blueprint programing from the UE5 store. Also, the game has no optimization. 3090 TI and 7800X3d and i only got 32 FPS at 1440p.

>>1076004 Moar archived demos. Note: the Gofile links are not only temporary, the files within have been compressed with ZSTD so you'll need a decompressor that can handle the format and it'll probably take a while for them to unzip. >Break Arts III https://gofile.io/d/csxtil Get it while it's hot. >Yasuke Simulator https://gofile.io/d/5zZwLP jank >Shotgun Cop Man https://files.catbox.moe/3f9x9w.7z Why the fuck would you make demo levels exclusive to Next Fest? Unfortunately for a lot of titles since Next Fest ended a hour ago expect to see a bunch of them, mostly the online playtests, get taken down.

Just tried the Haste demo out. Really great and really promising, save what the anons before me have mentioned about the shitty character designs. Maybe they can be easily modded out with some white characters. Other than that, the mechanics feel fluid to me. I am eager to see what the full product looks like.

>>1073622 (OP) >Poke ALL Toads Why do I have the feeling this started as a Touhou fairy fangame.

Oh, I've missed it completely >>1076004 I've seen western game devs just having you download the full and entire bloated game of 50 GB, while locking away most of the game... and calling it a demo. Like holy shit, how do you even think of that?

>>1077894 I've literally seen Japanese developers do the same thing, it's not regional.

>>1077950 True

>>1077950 Thanks, Shartlus. Played I-can't-believe-it's-not-Shartsona for free and hated it.

Why do the touhou community only make shitty ripoffs of games that already exist but with dogshit generic animu females

>>1078651 Hopefully to piss you off

>>1078651 because fuck you

>>1078651 THE ENTIRE WORLD MUST KNOW OF ZUN'S GOSPEL Touhou RTS when?

>>1078651 >Birdup

>>1078681 >spoiler