It’s Next Fest time, and you know what that means! Demos. Lots, and lots of demos.
Though, it pains me to admit that I’m no longer capable of getting my thoughts about my favourite demos out within a timely manner. The overwhelming majority of the demos that I tried during this Next Fest ran over an hour, which completely knee-capped any momentum that I thought I might have going into the event.
Either way, there was a ton of great stuff on display this Next Fest, so let’s get into it.
Navigation
Puzzle Games
Tiling Town
Well, I spent a solid 4 hours on the demo for Tiling Town, and only stopped when it asked me to redo all of the puzzles while considering an additional rule. That might sound a little annoying – it was – but I wouldn’t have spent so much time solving all of the puzzles in Tiling Town’s demo were I not having fun.
Regardless, the gist of Tiling Town is that you want to place a single contiguous road that fills all of the available space into each section of the map. However, this proves quite difficult with your limited selection of starting tiles. As such, you’ll need to explore around the map, creating smaller connecting roads, until you happen upon an area that you can solve with your current tile set. This will unlock an additional tile, which restarts the whole process until you’ve filled in the whole map.
It’s exactly the sort of thing that’ll be intensely enthralling for the right type of person. And I happen to find myself within that group. Recall that I still do the NYT Sudoku, so looking for patterns is right up my alley.
If you, like me, enjoy slowly plunking away at logic puzzles then Tiling Town is probably worth a look.
Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times
Are you familiar with how all of the recent Zelda games have made use of highly systemic mechanics, and open-ended problems? For example, in Echoes of Wisdom if the player needs to cross a gap then they could build a bridge by conjuring, and stacking furniture. This isn’t necessarily the intended solution, but rather it is one of many potential solutions that the player can derive from their available tools.
Now, imagine a game built upon the same principles, but with a far greater variety of tools, and a more diverse range of challenges. That’s Rhell. It might sound crazy to say after playing a relatively short demo, but Rhell showcased a ton of potential in said demo.
The core mechanic of Rhell is that you’re able to craft your own spells to solve problems. You do this by combining up to 5 parameters, which alter the effects of said spell. For example, you could use 3 push, and 2 lift parameters to cast a spell that sends the target flying through the air. Alternatively, you could use 2 twists, and 3 pulls to grab an object from far away, while spinning it around to face Rhell. Or you could just use 3 pulls. Or 1 push. Whatever you can come up with is valid. That’s the sort of flexibility that players are working with.
My personal favourite spell from the demo was one where I summoned a scarecrow that would summon another scarecrow. This continued indefinitely, I think? I don’t know. I used the pile of scarecrows to reach the top floor of a library, and opted to explore deeper into the building instead of sticking around to see how long my spell would continue to repeat.
Regardless, I feel as though most people will already know if this kind of thing is for them, or not entirely based on my provided examples. Personally, I love this sort of puzzle design. It always makes me feel smart in a way that cracking an authored puzzle (like the NYT Sudoku) doesn’t since I had the opportunity to create, adapt, and implement my own solution.
Gosh, when I put it that way, it almost sounds like coding. No wonder I enjoy this sort of Puzzle game so darn much.
The Mermaid Mask
Okay. Full stop – I’m cheating with this one. I didn’t actually play the demo for The Mermaid Mask during the current Next Fest. Rather, I played an older version some years back when the game was first announced. That said, I enjoyed what I played, and have been looking forward to the latest Detective Grimoire mystery ever since.
I’m of the mind that Detective Grimoire’s biggest claim to fame is still how it handles deductions. Players are made to choose from several clues and phrases in order to form a deduction, which feels a little more involved than the fill-in-the-blank systems that are present in other Detective games.
Couple that with strong art-direction, full voice-acting, and great puzzle design and you’ve got yourself a soup.
Puzzle Spy International
Admittedly, I thought this was going to be a Detective game when I downloaded it, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, Puzzle Spy International is closer to an Adventure game. Not in a literal sense though. I mean to say that it features several different logic puzzles that have no mechanical consistency, whereas Puzzle games typically feature some kind of throughline that unifies the whole experience.
That said, Puzzle Spy International does have decent puzzle chops with the demo showcasing a properly good cryptogram. I quite enjoyed solving it alongside Mir, and, I believe, we’re both looking forward to cracking more logic puzzles in the full release.
Editor’s Notes: I checked with my wife, and she is indeed looking forward to cracking more puzzles with me. Yay!
Though, I do wish I had more to say about the story. The demo only featured a handful of lines from either of the introduced characters, so I couldn’t really get a firm grasp of what the developers were going for. If I had to guess, it’ll be something akin to Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell, or Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series. Albeit, with more of a James Bond twist given the game’s main character is a British spy.
No harm either way – I get the impression that the puzzles are the focus, so I appreciated that the demo stuck to showcasing that aspect of Puzzle Spy.
ShantyTown
You have no idea how happy I was to stumble upon ShantyTown while looking through the available demos for Next Fest. I’d just published my article on cool vertical villages, and here was a game entirely dedicated to creating exactly the kind of spaces I’d spent a thousand words raving about!
That said, I wasn’t expecting ShantyTown to be so darn puzzley too. I say this because the different shops, and houses that you place will upgrade into visually superior buildings when they are surrounded by a set number of specific amenities. For example, apartments need 3 light amenities like windows or street lamps, and a decorative amenity like a potted plant. As such, I was considering my placement of different objects based not only on their visual appeal, but whether they’d help upgrade a nearby building. The resulting gameplay was akin to Dorfromantik or Islanders, which are also games I rather enjoyed.
Though, I will admit that ShantyTown was a lot more interested in letting my creativity run the show as there wasn’t any scoring system like those aforementioned titles. However, that didn’t stop me from trying to make visual striking, and fully upgraded spaces across the demo.
Role-Playing Games
Alabaster Dawn
Full disclosure, this is another game where I cheated, and didn’t actually play the latest version of the demo. I wrote a whole Demo Dive for Alabaster Dawn back in September of last year, and was totally enamoured by it. As such, I wanted to include it here since the latest updated version of the demo was included in Next Fest.
That said, if you wanted a short version of my thoughts:
- The artwork is even more gorgeous than Radical Fish’s previous game CrossCode
- The combat feels better, and has more mechanical complexity
- The puzzles, dungeon design, and writing showcased in the demo are on-par with Radical Fish’s previous work
- It’s a sequel to CrossCode – did you really need to know more than that?
If you’re only going to play 1 demo that I’ve recommended then let it be this one. It should go without saying, but I have very high hopes for the future of Alabaster Dawn. It is easily my most anticipated game of the lot covered here, though part of that is predicated on how much I enjoyed 2018’s CrossCode.
Ardenfall
Confession time: I’ve never played an Elder Scrolls game. I caught a lot of shit for it in college when everyone was playing Skyrim, while I was playing Maplestory. As such, I’ve largely continued to avoid Bethesda’s Role-Playing output entirely out of spite.
Yes – I really am that petty.
I mention this because I’ve seen several people compare Ardenfall to Marrowind, which is a statement that I can neither confirm, nor deny.
What I can tell you is that Ardenfall feels decidedly old-school in its approach to Role-Playing. I think the clearest example of this was how my character couldn’t properly wear armor that I found lying on a corpse because I didn’t have enough points in the relevant skills.
That might sound annoying, but I really liked it since the skills I did have felt a lot more valuable as a result. As such, once I found a magic robe, ice staff, and a spell that let me summon a quadrupedal underling, I was off to the races.
It wasn’t just how skills worked that made Ardenfall feel decidedly old-school: the quest, and world design also hearkens back to a bygone age. There were no map markers for quest objectives, I’m fairly certain that I could kill every NPC, and basically any solution I could imagine was on the table for solving quests. The demo only showcases a small portion of this within a tutorial area, but it gave me the impression that the whole game would be well worth sinking dozens of hours into.
Esoteric Ebb
I decided midway through writing this post that I was going to ditch my old format where I pitched each game before sharing my overall thoughts on the demo. Having said that, I think what I wrote as the pitch for Esoteric Ebb accurately captures the game in a way that I’d be hard pressed to emulate with a longer description:
What if Disco Elysium, but Dungeons & Dragons?
Right out of the gate, Esoteric Ebb hits players with the same sort of writing that was present in 2019’s (arguably) best game: Disco Elysium. I mean that in terms of both the quality of the writing on display, and how the writing is presented. Similar to Disco, your thoughts are conveyed by different parts of your psyche. However, in keeping with the Dungeons & Dragons theme, each of the voices is assigned to one of your character traits. For example, Wisdom speaks largely on behalf of empathy, while Dexterity speaks for cunning. The result is a stew of internal dialogue that will pull players in several different directions, which is analogous to my playtime with Disco Elysium.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I couldn’t actually finish the demo since you’re free to play through about 7 hours of content. That said, the 2 hours I spent mulling around the lower city have convinced me of Esoteric Ebb’s quality, and I firmly believe that it needs to be on everyone’s radar.
It comes out tomorrow (March 3rd), and progress from the demo carries over to the main game, so…you know.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection
Okay. Okay. I know.
Yes, normally I exclusively cover indies in this block, and yes Monster Hunter Stories is very obviously the antithesis of an indie title. It went from being a side-grade spin-off of Japan’s favourite video game franchise, to a fully-fledged AAA quality RPG. The production value on display in the game’s opening cutscene is evidence enough that Capcom put substantially more money behind this project than either of its predecessors.
That said, Monster Hunter Stories 3 did participate in the Next Fest, and I really enjoyed the demo.
For what it’s worth, the game doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it is a satisfying mash-up of 2 things that I really enjoy: creature collection (read as: Pokemon), and Monster Hunter. The inclusion of monsters from the latest few entries in the mainline series (Rise, Sunbreak, and Wilds) were also a nice touch.
All said, if you like Monster Hunter, and don’t mind turn-based RPGs, or you’re looking for a decidedly more involved combat system than what Pokemon offers (during the single-player campaign) then Monster Hunter Stories 3 might be worth a look.
Action Games
Enter the Chronosphere
In a sea of games that feel like they’re trying to emulate the success of Vampire Survivors or Hades, it was incredibly refreshing to find a Roguelike that felt like it had something new to say. Granted, Superhot already explored the idea of time only moving when you do, but Enter the Chronosphere seems as though it wants to push that concept further.
My main reason for thinking along those lines is that Chronosphere’s levels feel less like a scene from John Wick, and more like the hallway fight from Oldboy. Despite having as long as you need to think before you act, Chronosphere still manages to feel tough as nails. There’s so much shit flying at the player, and it was everything I could do to stay on top of oncoming baddies, and bullets.
That said, it was extremely exhilarating to make it through an entire floor completely untouched. Though, I’ll fully admit that was an unexpected rarity across my time with the demo.
Before I move on though, I wanted to touch on the writing. I wasn’t able to see much of it from the demo, but I liked what I saw. There’s hints of PTSD related trauma, or guilt in one of the characters, which could result in a fairly very compelling narrative.
Plus, it’s doing the Hades thing wherein you get little crumpets of narrative between each run, so you’re rewarded with something for playing regardless of the outcome. That’s an especially nice concession when you’re dealing with a challenging Roguelike such as this.
MIGHTREYA
I don’t like relying on 1 to 1 comparisons even though I’ve already made several of those today, but MIGHTREYA is, in no uncertain terms, Devil May Cry. That’s a comparison I originally felt bad about making until I did a little digging around about the developer, Wazen, and found out that they worked on Devil May Cry.
Well…that makes sense.
That said, I haven’t played any indie Spectacle Fighters that could measure up to their AAA counterpart until I played the demo for MIGHTREYA. It genuinely feels like a piece of recovered lost media that was made by Platinum Games in the early aughts. The controls were simple, combat was very intuitive, and it felt fun as hell to play. It’s the kind of game that I’d be more than happy to play through multiple times while slowly improving my scores on each level, which is likely how MIGHTREYA is intended to be played.
That said, I think the real hook for MIGHTREYA is how your whole performance is live streamed. Not to real people – it’s streamed to a fictional in-universe audience. Regardless, this contextualizes the scoring mechanic as a representation of the audience’s enjoyment instead of just being a tool for players to judge how well they’re doing. I’m of the opinion that this adds a ton of additional personality to the title, and it helped MIGHTREYA stand out even more among the crowd of games that I played.
Denshattack!
Of the different games that I have covered here, I’m fairly certain Denshattack! will be the least surprising. That’s entirely down to how I’ve seen it mentioned on just about every list of must play demos from Next Fest.
And you know what? All of the people who recommended it were right. Denshattack! is fire.
As far as what it actually is: Denshattack! is an Infinite Runner with a trick system that’s vaguely inline with those found in the Extreme Sports games of the early aughts. It also shares a lot of the same energy as games from that era featuring an energetic soundtrack, and colourful, cell-shaded artstyle. Honest to God, Denshattack! looks like a long lost Dreamcast game that was recovered from the annals of history.
It was also very fun to play. Each level speeds by so quickly, but the varied obstacles, and challenges help to keep things engaging. Plus, there’s also a scoring system, and par time for each level meaning that players have 2 completely different vectors to approach from while replaying the game. That alone has the rat-filled part of my brain going bonkers, and I’m especially keen to sink some more time into Denshattack! when it releases later this year.
Nightmare Circus
I feel like I can’t explain the hook of Nightmare Circus any better than the attached trailer already has. You’ve got puppet strings, and you can use those strings in a variety of different ways while engaged in combat. My favourite was latching onto an enemy before slamming into them with such force that they were temporarily stunned. However, you can also lasso several of them together, or pull them into the abyss. It’s a surprisingly simple set of mechanics, but the player expression afforded makes Nightmare Circus quite fun to interact with.
Honestly, I feel like if you enjoy games like 2D Zelda, or Death’s Door then you’ll probably enjoy Nightmare Circus. It has a lot of the same energy in terms of the overall flow of combat, level design, and puzzles.
That said, the demo does start a little slow. You don’t have any of the interesting powers for the first little bit, which means you’re stuck playing a bog-standard 2D Action game for about 15 minutes. So give it some time to get good if you tackle the demo for yourself. Trust me when I say the wait is worth it.
Voidling Bound
I tried a couple different Creature Collectors during the Next Fest, but the one that I was most impressed by was Voidling Bound. Admittedly, I think a lot of that stems from just how different it is compared to its contemporaries since it isn’t trying to be an RPG. Instead, Voidling Bound is going in a completely different direction, Third-Person Shooting, while maintaining the core appeal of what makes Creature Collectors so compelling: great character design.
Though, what really sold me on Voidling Bound was how evolution worked. You’re able to spend a collectible currency on either-or style augmentations that enhance your character’s abilities while altering a portion of their physical appearance. For example, one of the evolutions that I chose caused Nugget (that’s what I called my critter) to grow a magnificent plumage upon his brow, while giving him burst fire for his primary attack. It’s a small thing, but I really like having both a gameplay, and a “I can’t wait to see what this looks like” incentive for investing in, and evolving various creatures.
It’s also worth calling out that the evolution tree for each critter is absolutely bonkers. There’s several branching paths with unique abilities, so a single species can have a multitude of potential variants that are visually, and mechanically distinct from one another.
Honestly, I don’t know how my brain is going to respond to that much depth, but I loved what I saw of Voidling Bound in the demo. I’m quite keen to see more of it, if only to discover what other character designs, and evolution augmentations are buried within the bowels of the full release.
Darwin’s Paradox
Darwin’s Paradox reminded me a lot of the Oddworld games. It’s got a decidedly old-school approach to its platforming wherein the focus is less on mechanical depth, and more on visual spectacle and narrative.
As a quick example of what I mean, the opening of the demo sees players escape from a canning factory, which starts to fall apart as it explodes in the background. While this is going on, emergency vehicles can be seen crashing through the factory yard only adding to the ongoing chaos. It feels a bit pantomime, but does a good job of setting the tone, and expectations for what Darwin’s is all about.
That said, the demo was keen to highlight a few of the different stealth-based abilities that you’ll unlock throughout your journey including camouflage, and ink spray. Both were satisfying enough to use, but I still firmly believe that Darwin’s strength is in its comedic timing, and presentation.
The Rest (Assorted)
inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories
If you had told me that one of my favourite demos from Next Fest would be a game about working the late shift at a konbini, I’d have raised an eyebrow. However, I’m a little less surprised now that I’ve actually played inKONBINI.
The game itself reminds me a lot of 2015’s VA-11 Hall-A in that it sees you doing a fairly mundane job, but uses that as a framework to tell interpersonal stories about the lives of others. As a brief example, I’d forgotten to stock one of the items on the shelf during the demo, and that spiralled into a whole conversation with Chief, the only person who visits the konbini during the demo, wherein he surmised that my mistake was an act of providence.
I promise that conversation was a lot more grounded than I just made it sound.
Regardless, I was really impressed with how inKONBINI managed to respond to, and act on one of the mistakes that I made to throw in some additional lines of dialogue. Those kinds of flourishes are the hallmark sign of a team who cares deeply about telling a memorable, and compelling story, and I’m here for it.
Gloomveil
It feels like a bit of a cop out to say this, but Gloomveil is all my favourite bits of Dark Souls, and very little else. The demo begins with almost no direction, and players are left to explore, motivated largely by their own sense of wanderlust. That is very much my sort of thing, and I spent far too long combing through every corner of the demo, drinking in all of its wonderful visuals, as a result.
That said, I was also intrigued by the rage mechanic. As you slash down bugs throughout the forest, rage builds, which causes enemies to become more aggressive towards you. This naturally encourages players to avoid combat, which isn’t a huge deal since the player character isn’t particularly adept at combat themselves.
Though, this lack of emphasis on combat does make the few highly aggressive enemies absolutely terrifying. It had a lot of the same energy as encountering an enemy that you simply weren’t prepared for, like the smattering of Black Knights or Titanite Demons, in the original Dark Souls. That’s an incredibly refreshing experience in 2026. We’re so used to beating the tar out of games like this that it’s nice to be caught totally off-guard, and feel like running away is the only viable solution.
Also, just look at it. The claymation art style is gorgeous, and makes the whole of Gloomveil look like a stop motion film.
Vultures – Scavengers of Death
Disclosure: this is one of several games that I was emailed about prior to the start of the event.
Having said that, holy shit. What a demo.
In as few words as possible, Vultures – Scavengers of Death asks the question: what if Resident Evil 2 was a Tactics game? It’s not a question that I’ve ever personally thought about, but it turns out the result is like mixing chocolate and peanut butter. That is, it’s the kind of thing that you’d expect not to work, but then you try it and wonder how no one has stumbled upon it yet.
Though, to elaborate on why I think Vultures is so good, I have to first explain how the pistol works.
Similar to your typical Survival Horror fair, players are able to aim their pistol, and shoot different parts of the body on zombies. As you might expect, shooting a zombie in the head grants bonus damage, which might cause you to assume that it is best to always go for headshots. This will allow you to maximize damage output, and conserve ammo for future encounters.
Generally speaking, that assessment would be correct. However, shooting zombies in the head takes 0 skill in a turn-based game. As such, the developers have balanced headshots out by having them cost twice as much AP as shooting a zombie in the body.
Oh ho! Now we’ve actually got a decision to make. Do you take the higher damage head shot, and try to conserve ammo? Or do you spend 2 shots on the body, ultimately dealing more damage at the cost of an additional bullet? Furthermore, how does your decision making change when you need to target several baddies since you only have 3 AP to spend per turn.
Plus, you could also opt to target a zombie’s legs which does protracted damage, but has a chance to temporarily immobilize them. Do you gamble on a temporary stun, or just unload into the zombie for guaranteed damage?
This sort of decision making would already be compelling on its own, but limited healing and ammo really help to ratchet up the tension. This leads to some killer encounter design that captures the fun of completely outmanoeuvring your opponent, while staying true to the razor’s edge feeling of fighting your way through a horde of zombies in the best Survival Horror games. It’s the perfect melding of both of Vultures’ constituent genres, and I can’t wait to play more of it.
And with that glazing of Vultures, we’re finally at the end of my Next Fest coverage.
As always, I have to ask: did you find something you liked? I hope you did. I spent way too long playing demos this time around, so I kind of need to know that this was worth it. Please let me know in the comments if something I wrote about caught your eye.
I’m only half-kidding of course.
Though, I am very interested to see how the rest of 2026 shakes out now. There’s a good chance that the overwhelming majority of the games I’ve featured will be released in the coming 10 months, and that’d make 2026 an absolutely stacked year for great indie games.
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Frostilyte Writes 