Well, it’s that time of year again: E3. Or perhaps the corpse of E3 is more accurate? I never know exactly how to address this time of the year anymore because Summer Games Fest is the name of a specific showcase rather than the whole collective of different showcases that happen at the beginning of June.

Regardless, the latest iteration of Next Fest is happening right now to coincide with the hundreds of game reveals, and associated trailers that dropped over the past 2 weeks. As such, I’ve put together a list of the demos that I thought were the most promising, so that you don’t have to sift through the thousands of games that are participating in the event.

Though, there is 1 thing I wanted to acknowledge before I start: AI. This particular Next Fest has been absolutely chock full of games using AI with a reported 1 in 5 games making use of AI tools at some point in development. That isn’t something that I’m looking to support, so I triple checked each of the games listed here to verify if they disclosed the use of AI. As such, everything listed here should be free of AI.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the interesting demos.

Well Dweller

I suppose the best place to start is with one of the stronger demos that I played: Well Dweller. It’s the latest Metroidvania from brothers Kyle and Eric Thompson who’ve had a rather understated run in that space over the past few years. Both Islets, and Crypt Custodian have maintained an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, while also having reviewed favourably with critics.

And it would seem the duo have happened upon another banger with Well Dweller.

That said, what really sold me on Well Dwellers was the first power-up that you discover while playing the demo. It allows players to perform a high jump by bounding off the taut matchstick that they use as a weapon after it is embedded within a wall. This was already a novel reimagining of a familiar mechanic, but it came with an additional benefit: it could also be used as a ranged attack. Unsurprisingly, it hurts to be hit by a stick when it’s thrown hard enough to remain stuck in a wall. As such, your newly acquired high jump also serves as your default ranged attack.

This sort of dual-purpose design is something I really enjoy because it makes discovering new abilities a lot more interesting. It’s almost like a puzzle – instead of assuming that your first instinct is the only way to use something, you’re rewarded for experimenting and engaging with the full breadth of what’s on offer. I love that sort of thing, and I’m keen to see if there is more of it buried further in the depths of the titular well.

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Bulbo’s Belief System

As luck would have it, several of the demos downloaded following last week’s deluge of trailers were also taking place in Next Fest. That was the case for Bulbo, which was 1 of the games I highlighted in my recap of the Thinky Direct. 

That said, I can’t really describe Bulbo any better than the attached trailer already has. You’ll control the titular Bulbo, and be tasked with reaching the goal in each level. To do this, you’ll need to learn new beliefs from the menagerie of available NPCs, which imbue Bulbo with new ways to interact with the level. Then, you can strategically forget those concepts when you no longer need to make use of them. For example, you might find gravity helpful for walking down a flight of stairs, but you may need to forget about it to fly over a bottomless pit.

The whole thing is super clever, and the demo showcases around a dozen different keywords. It also has several puzzles that highlight how these different keywords can interact with one another, which has me thinking that Bulbo’s full release may look a little something like Baba Is You. Hopefully it’ll be a little easier than Baba though.

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Don’t Kill Them All!

Y’all remember a little game called Ship of Fools? It’s co-op Roguelike from 2022 that my wife and I were rather fond of playing. Apparently the developers behind it, Fika Productions, have finished updating it, and were ready to show off their latest project: Don’t Kill Them All!

Despite also being a Roguelike, Don’t Kill Them All has more in common with the likes of Into The Breach than it does Ship of Fools. That’s because it’s a Turn-Based Tactics game where baddies telegraph their intentions every turn. It’s then your job to command a squad of clumsy orcs to dispatch everything before you pilfer the surrounding environs for a variety of natural resources that you can use to upgrade your base, and equipment.

There’s a catch though: all of the lootable resources can be destroyed by both your, and enemy attacks. Ergo, Don’t Kill Them All asks the player to move, and attack with precision, despite the obvious lack of dexterity present in your squad of lackeys.

It’s a really neat idea that throws a handful of additional wrinkles into the mix to help keep players on their toes. Plus, Fika’s charming character designs, and animations are present throughout every fibre of the available demo.

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Arcane Eats

I realize that there is a large amount of fatigue for Deckbuilders, but I think Arcane Eats has a different enough twist that it warrants a look. Namely, you’re preparing food for a horde of hungry customers, and have to juggle variables like cook time, flavour profile, and fullness instead of damage, block, and poison. This gives Arcane Eats a fairly unique cadence when compared against its contemporaries.

For my money, the biggest change is that all of your attack cards have been replaced with food ingredients. As such, they need to be cooked before you can “attack” your customer’s stomach. This forces players to balance their strategy around cook times, while also prepping food for future turns. In some capacity, it’s almost as if you’re working in a restaurant kitchen – albeit all of the food here is represented as cards.

The concept is very unique, and I appreciate how developer Wonderbelly Games has committed wholeheartedly to it. Honestly, this is the kind of iteration that we need more of, especially for Deckbuilders, and I recommend checking out Arcane Eats if you’ve found yourself as burned out by more traditional entries in the genre as I have.

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Object Impermanence

Do we know if there is a subgenre name for games that are loosely inspired by Portal? I swear that I’ve been seeing more First-Person Puzzlers with a high concept core mechanic as of late. Stuff like Superliminal, The Art of Reflection, or The Entropy Centre. They’re usually a fun time, though they never manage to feel quite as clever as their shared inspiration.

Regardless, Object Impermanence seems to come from a similar lineage, and asks the question: what if an entire game was built around peekaboo with a small child. That is, certain elements of the puzzles disappear whenever they fall outside of your viewport. As such, the problems that you’ll be asked to solve across Object Impermanence’s demo are about figuring out exactly how to keep everything in frame until you no longer need it.

The concept is extremely cool, even though I think most of my fascination with it comes from trying to work out exactly how they’ve programmed it. Regardless, the demo showcases 2 different ways that this mechanic can manifest, and I’m keen to see how else it manages to leverage object impermanence in the full release.

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Ascenders: Beyond the Peak

I’ve seen Ascenders likened to Darkest Dungeon, which kind of works as a surface level comparison. The differences sort of end when you interrogate that comparison with any scrutiny, but they’re both games about leading a team of explorers into the bowels of a Lovecraftian hellscape in pursuit of ancient relics, and cursed treasure.

That said, in Ascenders you’ll lead a team of alpinists, instead of a team of warriors, as they trek up a cursed mountain in a turn-based fashion. To that end, the focus here is on management of your team’s stamina, and position as they climb up the wall. Basically, you’re trying to chart a path to the top of each segment of the mountain, while finding an appropriate number of perches to stand upon while recovering stamina. All with the threat of nightfall looming where stamina usage is doubled each turn.

It’s a fairly compelling cocktail of ideas, one which gets a lot more spicy when random eldritch events start to behalf your crew. Though, I am curious how much more punishing the full game will be compared to what I saw in the demo. Hopefully Ascenders will hit the right balance of friction without feeling depressingly oppressive.

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HellSlave II: Judgment of the Archon

I think I want to describe HellSlave II as an RPG-ass RPG. You know what I mean? It’s the kind of game that hits you with half a dozen proper nouns in the first few paragraphs of dialogue. It also features deep, and meaningful character customization with several available classes, and dozens of available abilities to learn. Basically, HellSlave II is the kind of experience that you’d expect from a developer who has a deep love for Role-Playing, and Fantasy, a love they want to share with everyone.

Having said that, it was definitely the character customization that won me over with this demo. I had a lot of fun seeing my Poison Mage transform from simply casting magic missiles to hitting enemies with an explosive poisonous mist that leveled the entire battleground within 2 turns of actions. And that was just with the build I opted to pursue. There were several other equally enticing abilities that I could’ve built around within my available skill trees, never mind the myriad of options that were hidden away on the 5 other available classes. It’s the sort of thing that’ll have me thinking about a game between play sessions, and may even entice me to do multiple playthroughs.

Also, I feel this bears mentioning given the current state of the industry: I appreciate developer Ars Goetia’s hard stance against AI. That immediately caught my eye when I was watching HellSlave II’s trailer, and I appreciate seeing such a firm, and clearly defined stance against a set of tools that are slowly attempting to kill off creativity.

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Green Mist over Portland

To close things out, I wanted to reiterate the recommendations I’ve already made in the articles that I wrote prior to the beginning of Next Fest starting with Green Mist over Portland.

In essence, Green Mist is a Detective game about determining the who, the when, and where of a particular event. Once you’ve sorted all of those variables out, you’ll be able to travel back in time using psychic powers to view the scene in question. This will yield additional kernels of information for your ongoing investigation allowing you to repeat the process at another point in time.

For a deeper look at Green Mist over Portland, please read my first impressions article here.

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Desktop Explorer

I think the closest approximation that I could make for Desktop Explorer is to compare it to a Daniel Mullins game. It has the same sort of horror vibe, and is absolutely rife with fourth wall breaking. That said, the puzzles across the demo were great, and I really liked how much heavy lifting the music and artwork did for setting the general mood within the demo.

For a deeper look at Desktop Explorer, please read my first impressions article here.

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Prophet Margin

Finally, we come to what’s still been my favourite demo of the event: Prophet Margin. It’s a game about establishing, and optimizing trade routes such that you can extract the most value out of a peninsula of islands before offering up tribute to the local menagerie of Gods. The demo showcased a ton of clever little design decisions that the developers included to help give players a ton of depth to splash around with while they work out exactly how best to run their supply chains across the islands.

For a deeper look at Prophet Margin, please read my first impressions article here.

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And with that, I’m out of games to recommend. Selfishly, I wanted to get this article out while Next Fest was still in full swing because that tends to be when the majority of folks are looking for recommendations about which demos to check out. As such, I know that there are some notable games that I’ve likely missed, which I may or may not cover separately in the future.

Regardless, I hope my round-up of demos has helped you to find something new to check out for yourself. And if you had anything that you thought was interesting, but which I didn’t feature here then let me know about it. I’m always curious to hear (or read as it were) about which demos other folks tended towards during a given Next Fest.

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