Queen's Domain is a clear attempt at a successor to King's Field, and I like the demo a lot. Crunchy old-school pixely 3D graphics, a great sense of exploration even in the small slice of the demo, gameplay seems reminiscent of old games but plays very smoothly, and it's just wonderfully weird in a way we don't often get in big games anymore. I'll probably pick this up when it drops on the 30th.

Nocturne is already out as of last month, but I still found the demo because of Next Fest. It's a pixel RPG that seems to take place inside a crumbling digital afterlife, and the combat system has you playing Guitar Hero to the battle music. This also seems really good, but I'm waiting to see if it gets a sale soon, mostly because I'm not great at rhythm games.

I was planning on making a standalone post with slightly more commentary, and I still might (let me know if there is interest in that), but I could give some short cliff notes here I suppose.

• Curse of Resthaven - Pentiment meets Euro-style board game, with a time loop setup and Lovecraftian setting. Fully voiced, beautiful hand-drawn art, feature complete, very promising and unique merge of narrative investigation and roguelike trading/city building game.

• Rain of Lead - Victorian Dieselpunk lesbian love story (or is it?) told as a 2D Katana ZERO-esque slasher/shooter where everything dies in one hit - both the enemies and you. Crisp, razor-sharp controls and super fast cocacine-fuelled combat with satisfying effects and gore that make succesfully clearing a room an absolute dopamine factory.

• Every Man for Himself and God Against All or, for a shorter name: TimeLeft - You're a prisoner on death row, playing Blackjack with the warden with seconds of your life as the stake. As the death clock is mercilessly ticking down, you have to try to solve hidden puzzles and explore the prison, each run maybe learning a little more about how to outplay (or cheat?) the warden.

• Walk-Off 199X - A charming baseball-themed roguelike deckbuilder created entirely from free (fully credited!) Creative Commons and Public Domain assets, instead of GenAI vomit. UI design is great, spinning a wheel to take a pitch is an inspired bit of design, the systems and mechanics work well and are dripping with flavour. The 90s VHS aesthetic is perfect, too.

• Mind Vessel - Build your own little Rube Goldberg machines in this roguelike creature collector/autobattler. A very flexible body part system allows for great customization for your creatures, and the way combat works (first your left creature goes, then your right, then you multiply their scores) combined with all the effects you can reorder and reorganize within each creature lets you set up fun chain reactions and sequences of combos that really run your score up.

• Dictatorship Simulator - Armed with a smartphone and a cigarette case you're undermining democracy one Bullying, Heckling and Blackmail Dossier at a time, looking to eventually become a dictator. The combat has a unique spin where you only damage your enemy indirectly. By attacking nodes such as "Contentment" or "Their Following", you can eventually start wearing down your opponent through indirect damge. Cards are very flavourful in both name and art and I like the overall presentation. A "No GenAI" sticker on the store page also helps sway me, as does the promise of part of the profits being donated to the Godot and Blender foundations.

Yeah I've been playing a bunch. I've learned how to find the good stuff among the dogshit. I'll share some of the good ones I've seen so far, along with some notable bad ones that pissed me off.

• Undershroom - It's pretty obvious that this is going to have a story kinda-sorta like Layers of Fear. That said, the Bog is fun to explore. "Watch out for the Wild Teeth!"
• MIA: Memory Fragments - This is a game that attempted to silence talk of its AI usage. I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure this dev put up AI disclosure on the main page after I exposed him during Next Fest. Demo still doesn't have AI disclosure though, so there's that too. It's also a shameless MiSide ripoff.
• Magical Girl ER - Very excited for this one. After Tsumimi Time turned out to be a flop, I feel immense confidence that this one will turn out to be good. I explained what I liked about it in a previous post, so you check that or the game out if you're interested.
• Shadow Mate - It looks like Dead Space but anime girls. It's a third person shooter where you gun down supernatural beings. The boss fight in the demo is rather fun, though the lag is pretty annoying.
• Quest for Choices - I don't even know if I can call this one awful. The story in it so far is just people having a product meeting before getting ready for a QA test. Very mundane.
• Bit-Broken Identity - Skynet evil humans good, but Skynet is an anime girl who wants to mess with the MC in particular. Plot feels like a joke so far, though I like the art quality.
• 1999 Tokoyo Building - Anime people amusing themselves in a supernatural building. I must say, I enjoyed provoking the easily angered anime girl in this until she deconstructed my skull. The game's alright, though it's a visual novel mixed with some short dungeon crawler segments.
• The False Alice - Visual novel of fanfiction incarnations of Alice (yes, that one) who think that wiping out the others will make the winner the Alice of the IP reboot. It makes me want to see Harry Potter fanfiction characters fight to the death to see who gets to be canon. It shows some promise.

Just tried one so far - Hela: of Mice & Magic https://store.steampowered.com/app/3161310/Hela_of_Mice_Magic/

I felt like something low stress with a beautiful environment, and this is certainly that. You are a mouse and wander around a forest completing a couple of simple quests.

A bit niche I imagine, but Melvor Idle 2. I'm a fan of idle games, and the first Melvor Idle is my favorite. The second game, from what I've experienced so far, feels like a direct upgrade in every way. A lot of smaller improvements make the various skills feel more unique compared to each other. At least so far as you can reasonably make them in a game where you click a button and watch progress bars go up.

Idk if it debuted in this next fest but Derelikt seems pretty cool, the demo could have been a bit longer but what I played was intriguing.

Edit: demo instead of dome. (Ty autocorrect)

I've got a few more downloading now, but I've tried Shimoda Drift, where you drive a moon rover over difficult platforming. Pretty cool, and quite hard. Also Symphonia, a platformer that I haven't really gelled with. I haven't tried it yet, but Slam Tank looks completely insane and great.

I was a bit gloomy going into this Nextfest because of all the AI doomerism surrounding it, but it turned out to be one of the better ones I've experienced tbh.

Some games I appreciated:

ROBIN: Chill tile-laying deckbuilder.

Ballistic.exe: "ARMA without the fun", interesting and strongly stylised ballistics simulator / gun building game.

Kopernicus: Incremental Suffering: Surrealist horror-game. Check it out if you like surrealist titles like Hylics or Brutal Orchestra (/ anything else Talia Mair has worked on)

Probably Stolen: You run a stall in a Cyberpunk dystopia, would recommend.

Dungeons & Dynasties: Meta-DnD, you run an adventurers guild in a simulated world based on DnD (had performance issues in this one on Linux)

All I've played so far is Moltyn, which is like Noita but superhero instead of wizard. It's pretty fun, but idk if there would be too much more content besides what's in the demo already, but I'm always up for more superhero games so hey.

I got some other demos but haven't tried them yet as I'm still in the middle of my Tainted Grail run.

I tried Wyldheart. Not sure if the demo was released for Next Fest though. It has potential, it'll be interesting to see how they build it out (it's very much in alpha). They still need to develop its potential a lot to make it compete with what's already out there.

So I've tried a few more now, and Appulse is probably my favourite of the bunch. It's a roguelite pinball shooter. Very unique gameplay. It's pinball, but your ball can shoot, aiming with the right stick, and your shots have recoil, so you can direct the ball with them. Very fun.

Emberville. Quite enjoyed it but the demo felt quite short. Sort of an action RPG with weirdly cosy vibes.

Gravhounds has been a very fun coop DRG-like, very focused on turret defense. By completing objectives, you earn up credits to build turrets, or find turret modules by exploring. It has a lot of little inventive systems based around Gravity Guns each player gets.

Some objectives were a bit confusing, but fun to figure out. Might be nice if they can introduce a lower-difficulty mode for some coop partners.