Yet another Steam NEXT FEST is upon us and this time around I knew about it in time to check out several games instead of just three or four. And this time I could spend more than an hour in each of them before the demo-fest was over! š
The demos I chose to grab from this FEST are as follows:
- Aka ā a farm sim
- Against the Storm ā a city builder
- Soulstone Survivors ā a bullet hell
- Diluvian Winds ā a colony sim
- Earth from Another Sun ā an open world space sim
- ZERO Sievert ā a post-apocalyptic shooter
- DREDGE: CHAPTER ONE ā a sinister fishing adventure
- Aquatico ā a city builder beneath the sea
- Forever Skies ā a survival base-builder
...and possibly more if I see any more to my liking, but this is it for now.
I was going to do a massive post talking about all of these games, but as I started babbling I realised that this is too much, even for me. So this post will be the first of several talking about my first impressions in these games.
Soulstone Survivors
This one wasn't originally on my list, but my partner grabbed it and was checking it out and it looked interesting so I grabbed it too. Soulstone Survivors reminds me a lot of Vampire Survivors, but, to be fair, Vampire Survivors is the only other bullet-hell I've ever played so of course this is going to remind me of that.
There are several classes available, but you start with the Barbarian. You unlock other classes by purchasing them with the crystals you find in the maps.
There are several different crystals available, and they are a currency used for multiple things: unlocking new characters, levelling up your skill tree, and crafting items at the blacksmith.
The 'runes' are unavailable in the demo, but it's possible these crystals may contribute towards the runes, also.
I had a little bit of hitching when I first started the game. This game doesn't do so well when other processes are running in the background (I was downloading more demos). But once that was finished the game ran flawlessly.
You run around and kill mobs and collect their XP balls in order to level up and get new abilities or passive skills, and when you've killed a certain amount of beasties a boss will spawn. In this first map the goal is to kill 5 of these bosses.
Also around the map are several healing crystals and materials. By the looks of things different maps have different materials, so gives you a reason to keep returning to various maps to find certain things.
With all the crystals retrieved from the map, you can level up your global skill tree. This gives you such perks as gaining health when you level up, increasing your damage, movement speed, etc ā making you as strong as you can be!
Overall, this game seems pretty fun! I'm interested in finding out what the Runes will add to the game and I've added this to my wishlist to buy once it's released. If you enjoy Vampire Survivors, I feel that you will probably enjoy this too!
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Aka
Aka describes itself as a relaxing farming sim where you can find peace in a small, open world. But there's also a hint of darkness where it proclaims that demons from your past may haunt you.
It seemed interesting. Perhaps both cutesie and dark.
First things first, as I have become accustomed to doing with indie games, I checked the controls to make sure I could use a keyboard and mouse in this game. Yes! I can. Unfortunately, while it says I can rebind my controls... I really can't.
I wanted 'E' to be interact, and I wanted 'spacebar' to be jump, but alas, it was impossible to set, so I just dealt with default controls.
You play as a cute little fat guy who seems to be a warrior from a war now passed. An old friend has invited him to stay with him on his newfound island home, there is plenty of room as most of the islanders went off to war as well and have never returned. Sad.
We leave this battlefield behind, jump on a boat, and sail away to our friend's island.
The game has many, many loading screens. Some of which are interludes and have cute little hand-drawn images that separate one scene from the next. The amount of loading screens is a little bit irksome though. Within the first ten minutes of playing, I think I experienced maybe 7 loading screens. It's a bit excessive.
There are materials everywhere on the ground. One of the very first quests I found was to pick up all the hunting traps on the ground, as they could hurt the remaining animal-people of this little village.
We can then melt down the traps into iron and craft tools ā pickaxe, axe, shovel, hoe, watering can ā to begin our crafting adventures.
There's a blacksmith where you craft tools and an alchemist where you can craft potions with various reagents found on the ground: flowers, mushrooms, etc.
I received a quest from the queen bee to plant some flowers for her bees, so smelted the iron traps into iron ingots to craft some iron tools and got to work. But it was around here where I shrugged and just closed the game. The loading screens were annoying me and this game, overall, seemed a bit toooooooo over-simplified and hand-holdy for what it is.
It is a cute little game, but I just couldn't get into it. It's not a bad game by any means and I didn't experience any bugs or glitches, so I'm sure it'll be fine for other people. It's not for me though. A bit tooooo childish for my tastes.
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Diluvian Winds
Diluvian Winds is a game I cautiously put on my Steam wishlist a couple of months ago. "Cautiously" because I wasn't entirely sure if it was something I'd be interested in. It bills itself as both a Colony Sim and a rogue-like, so it sounded pretty spiffy and something I'd enjoy, but the method of execution was where I was umm'ing and ahh'ing.
We start off with the tutorial. It introduces your character, the lighthouse keeper, and two animal-people who are currently visiting.
Different animals have different abilities and require different foods, and they all have their own perks, traits, and goals while they're visiting.
After a hard day's work getting the beginning of this colony up and running, it's time for a feast.
And to keep the fire burning in the lighthouse for the next visitors to find their way.
The fire and food are the most important aspects of this game by the looks of things. If your lighthouse fire stops burning, you lose the game, and if you don't have enough food to feed your visitors they will be sad and have no morale to help work. Thus wasting any productivity for the day.
I was eager to get the tutorial over and done with and to see how the game actually plays once it stops holding your hand and telling you what to do. I felt as though I should start a new game though instead of having wasted 5 days of tutorial. It was a good sign though ā I wanted to start anew with my knowledge and play properly.
Diluvian Winds is your basic resource management game, but it manages to hold that "one more turn" appeal to it that entices you to keep going.
You need to manage your wood supply, your food, and you need to fulfil the wishes of your visitors to earn points. The goal is to reach 25 victory points. It seems easy at first, but it can be quite difficult and requires a lot of management.
You need wood to fuel your lighthouse fire, you need wood to build new buildings, you need wood to reinforce buildings before a giant storm dares try wash away your hard work, you will need extra wood in order to make the higher tier buildings. So much wood.
Whilst collecting all this mass amounts of wood, you also need to collect food so your visitors remain well-fed and happy, if they have low morale they won't work and won't give you resources, and if you don't fulfil their wishes before they leave you won't get victory points.
Overall, it's quite an indepth little game and keeps you focused on managing your little lighthouse village. I didn't alt-tab once to do other things like I usually would, and that's saying something for my ADHD jump-from-game-to-browser-to-app-to-game-to-browser brain.
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All in all, the three games I tried today for this first Steam NEXT FEST impressions post did quite well. Much better than the last NEXT FEST I had a look at.
The three games I showcased in this post are all quite polished and enjoyable in their own ways. Even if I didn't personally enjoy Aka, it was still a good game that I reckon a lot of people would enjoy, and I'm definitely going to grab Soulstone Survivors and Diluvian Winds when I'm able.
Looking forward to trying out the next handful of games tomorrow!
Until next time!! š
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 