Steam Next Fest 2022 Recommendations

Last year I had a ton of fun with Steam Next Fest, a summer showcase event featuring a huge number of playable demos from indie developers. Unfortunately, the event only lasted a week, and not being prepared, I didn’t have time to try out everything I wanted to see. Now that Next Fest has come around again, I’ve had a little more free time this week, so I’ve been able to check out a lot more demos from this new crop of indie games. Below are my recommendations.

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Escape Academy

This game was the highlight of all of the demos I played so far, and I was happy to find out it’s slated to come out in July, so there won’t be much of a wait. The game is basically a series of escape rooms set against the story that you’ve been inducted as a student into a secretive school that trains master escape room escapists. Why such a school exists is not really explained in the demo, but even if the story ends up being nonsensical, I think I’ll enjoy solving these puzzle rooms enough that it won’t really matter.

My only issue was that the game didn’t really run that well on my decently-powered PC. The frame rate was quite choppy while playing. Normally, I wouldn’t be so concerned with a game’s performance from a demo, but with it releasing so soon, it does make me slightly uneasy.

And as a heads up, there is another game with a similar title in the event called Escape Room Academy. Don’t get this confused with that!

Rog & Roll

I actually played this one last year and thought it was merely “okay”. I almost didn’t try it again this year, but I’m glad I did. This new demo shows that the game has made considerable leaps since last summer. Rog and Roll is a sidescrolling platformer that combines sprite-based characters with simplistic polygonal environments. The way it looks sort of reminds me of Kirby.

What I like about Rog and Roll is that it is a fairly straightforward platformer. Most platformers made by indie developers try to have something “extra”, like it has a heavy focus on puzzles, or it tries to tell a heartbreaking story, or it cranks the difficulty way up. Rog and Roll really just has a focus on platforming – running and jumping – which is not to say that it’s easy or lacking in intrigue. It has a difficulty level that is reasonably challenging, but nothing extremely tough, and the levels have enough branching paths and secret areas to make them interesting to explore.

Along with Escape Academy, this game was the highlight of the event. Can’t wait.

Ghost Song

At first, I didn’t really think much of this game – it’s another game wanting to be Super Metroid – there’s like ten of those released on a weekly basis. But it really grew on me. The combat is a mixture of melee and ranged shooting, and there is an interesting mechanism through which the game encourages you to mix it up between those two types of attacks. While it didn’t immediately feel particularly special, I think the lonesome atmosphere of the game eventually grew on me. It’s very very much like Super Metroid – a sci-fi warrior exploring a hostile, lonely plant – but with elements of Dark Souls and anime cyberpunk shaded in. I’m definitely intrigued.

Anger Foot

An indie first person shooter(/kicker). There are a lot of indie first person shooters coming out right now, but most of them are inspired by games like Doom or Quake and use graphics that strongly resemble those inspirations. Anger Foot looks quite a bit more modern. Playing the game reminds me of Hotline Miami in how the player is expected to just bust through the levels, making their way through using a combination of speedy aggression and trial and error. Enemies can do a lot of damage very quickly, so it often takes some experimentation with how to tackle the level before you can complete it. That said, the game is so fast paced that dying a few (or several) times doesn’t really become aggravating.

Selaco

In contrast to Anger Foot, there is Selaco, which is totally one of those Doom-inspired games I was talking about. It’s even built in the GZDoom engine (yet it still looks really cool despite the vintage software). That said, it was a cool run-and-gun game with a setting that reminded me of System Shock 2. Very interested to see how this one will turn out in the end.

Frogun

This game bills itself as a 3D platformer in the style of those that were on the N64 and PSX. Certainly, it looks a lot like a PSX game, but when I think about comparable games on the N64 and PSX, I think about stuff like Banjo-Kazooie and Spryo the Dragon, and this game is very “flat” when compared to those games. The “frogun” concept is that the character has a little gun that shoots out a frog tongue that can be used like the grappling hook in Zelda – it can pull the character to distant surfaces or be used to pull enemies and objects toward the character. It was kind of fun, although I worry that the gameplay might not have enough depth to sustain my interest through a full game. Still, I’m definitely interested to see how it turns.

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I’ve played quite a few more Next Fest demos than what I’ve mentioned above, but these were the ones that I specifically wishlisted on Steam so that I could check them out when they release. The Next Fest event ends on Monday (6/20). I think it’s really unfortunate that they only let this event last for one week and not longer. There are just too many demos to try and one week doesn’t give me enough time in my busy schedule to check out everything. I’m squeezing in time whenever I can to try more of these, though.