It’s time for round 3. I’ve played yet more demos from the October 2024 Steam Next Fest, and have some thoughts. If you’d like a recap of the demos I covered yesterday, then you can find that here. That post covers the following titles:
- Warside
- Knights in Tight Spaces
- StarVaders
- Sliding Hero
- Sorry We’re Closed
Alrighty. Let’s get into some more demos.
Dimensionals
Elevator Pitch: a Rougelike RPG with a strong Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe.
Frosti’s Thoughts: It’s alright, but I didn’t find myself particularly drawn into Dimensionals.
For what it’s worth, I think a lot of Dimensionals is really well put together. The combat is snappy, despite being Turn-Based, and that makes combat encounters a lot less tedious than other Turn-Based games. There’s also a bit of depth for players to muck around with by combining different hero abilities to create strategies that feel completely broken once they start to pop-off. In that regard, Dimensionals almost feels like a Deck-Builder, and that’s great.
However, when I think about if I want to play more of Dimensionals, I can’t say that I do. Normally there’s some aspect of a game that makes me say, “damn. I’ve gotta play more of this.” With Dimensionals I never really found that thing. I think the roster of charming characters is meant to be the game’s hook, but that doesn’t really do it for me.
Wishlisted: no
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Elevator Pitch: A Sci-Fi RPG where your choices affect future opportunities, and the outcome of your story.
Frosti’s Thoughts: I loved it.
Citizen Sleeper 2 was one of the few games that was already sitting on my wishlist before the October 2024 Next Fest began. I absolutely loved the original Citizen Sleeper, naming it one of my favourite games from 2022. It manages to realize its setting through some absolutely fantastic writing, and the use of a few Tabletop RPG styled mechanics. What’s truly remarkable is how personal, and affecting the story feels entirely because Citizen Sleeper gives the player so much agency over what happens.
Based on the 2 hours I spent with Citizen Sleeper 2’s Next Fest demo, I can safely say that the folks at Jump Over the Age are set to deliver another story that is just as compelling as the first. The demo immediately sets up a narrative hook, and I’m deeply upset that I have to wait until next year to continue playing more. That, to me, is the sign of a successful narrative driven experience.
It also appears that some changes have been made to address the biggest pitfall of the original Citizen Sleeper. Namely, players can no longer tech their character out with every single skill in the game. Each of the starting classes begins with different proficiencies, and they’re also completely locked out of an entire branch of the skill tree. I think this is a net positive change as it means that your Sleeper will actually have well defined strengths and weaknesses for the entirety of your playthrough. Being completely proficient in every skill by the mid-game robbed the first game of having strong character identities, and also made repeated playthroughs somewhat superfluous. As such, I’m glad Jump Over the Age have made this change, and I look forward to delving into Citizen Sleeper 2 multiple times when it releases next year.
Wishlisted: yes (it already was)
Wilmot Works It Out
Elevator Pitch: a relaxing Puzzle game where players help Wilmot assemble puzzles that he receives in the post from a puzzle club that he’s joined.
Frosti’s Thoughts: It’s a good bit of fun, but strikes me as something you need to be in the mood for.
I skipped playing the original Wilmot game, Wilmot’s Warehouse, because it looked way too stressful to me. I have no problem playing others in Fighting games where both players are expected to make hundreds of split second decisions throughout a match. Ask me to clean-up, and organize an entire warehouse of goods, while delivering said goods to customers? Good lord, no. That I can’t do.
Thankfully Wilmot’s latest outing is a lot more laid back. It appears to be using the same set of mechanics as the original game, but players are now assembling puzzles instead of organizing shipments of items, and selling them. This means that the focus is entirely on the player’s pattern recognition skills, and there also isn’t any time pressure to the proceedings. As such, Wilmot Works It Out is a good bit of relaxing fun.
One thing that has me somewhat intrigued though, is that there appears to be a narrative to Wilmot. The player can chat with the lady who delivers Wilmot’s mail, and the demo uses this as an opportunity to drop a story hook. I think that I’m just curious enough after finishing the demo to want to see where Wilmot and his puzzles go once the game releases in a few days.
Wishlisted: yes
Zero Order Tactics
Elevator Pitch: An Into the Breach style Tactics game where players terraform the battlefield to guide their soldiers to victory.
Frosti’s Thoughts: Very interesting, albeit a little frustrating.
The central conceit of Zero Order Tactics is that the player is an omnipotent God who doesn’t have the time, or patience for mortals. As such, they’re not able to directly control any of their soldiers. Instead, players have to change the composition of the battlefield to guide both their soldiers, and enemies in a way that allows for victory. For example, Outlaws prefer ambushing from the protection of forests, and swamps so they’ll deliberately stick to the shadows while moving, instead of exposing themselves in an open field. Knowing this, the player can guide said Outlaw to an enemy by giving them a clear path of swamp tiles to move along to their target.
This focus on trying to figure out how exactly to move everyone in the most effective way ends up giving Zero Order Tactics the feel of a Puzzle game. And to its credit, it was incredibly satisfying whenever I actually managed to get everything to go exactly where I wanted, and do all of the actions I’d anticipated.
However, the same lack of control that makes Zero Order Tactics so interesting to play, also makes it a little frustrating. There were more than a handful of times where I couldn’t line things up to have a soldier go where I wanted them to, and I wasn’t totally sure why. There’s also times where I’d look at the game board, see all of the sensible actions I’d like to make, but realize I didn’t have enough actions to actually convince everyone to do the needful. That felt pretty bad, but it’s a natural consequence of how Zero Order Tactics is designed.
Honestly, I’m not sure where I’ve landed with Zero Order Tactics. I really like how different it feels to play, but there are times where I wish I could smite some of my soldiers with a lightning bolt. Ultimately, I think I’m going to keep an eye on this one because its premise is incredibly novel.
Wishlisted: yes
That’ll sort us out for day 3 of my coverage of the October 2024 Steam Next Fest. I’ve got a few more demos I want to play through before things wrap up on Monday, but I’m not going to promise that I’ll have my post for them out before the event ends. It turns out that playing through over 20 demos, while still trying to maintain adult life is a fairly difficult task.
Regardless, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you in the next one.
Frostilyte Writes 