What we’re feeding the Maw
Happy this week all! It’s time for another Steam Next Fest. A time to stock up on unfinished business. A time to litter your desktop with dead-ends. A time to install 30 game demos and play exactly three of them – unless you are RPS supporter Mr_B, who I think accounts for the majority of Valve’s downloads traffic these days.
We’re not doing the whole Wishlisted thing this year due to a chronic shortage of wishfulness brought on by our collective advancing age, but we’ll be writing up the hottest demos as they arrive, in a dramatic departure from our regular news coverage of… writing up the hottest demos as they arrive. It’s not all demos, mind: a few developers have scandalous plans to unleash complete games into the storm of prototypes and playtests. Here are the ones we’re thinking about feeding to the Maw.
Monday 23rd February
- The traditional Xmas party rite of hiding terrible spiders under cups for your mates to find has finally been adapted into a videogame, complete with foil packets of power-up cards that don’t, surprisingly, appear to be microtransactions. Genuinely, “pay 50p to skip turn” would be a compelling offer in this context.
Tuesday 24th February
- Rise Of Piracy is a MicroProse-published early access RTS in which you take charge of a corsair fleet during the golden age of sailboating. Although you don’t have to be a pirate – the Steam page devotes two whole sections to diplomacy and trading. Rise Of Piracy Alongside Other More Respectable Ventures, then.
- Emberbane is a 2D metroidvania featuring elemental martial arts. One for the Korra nutters, maybe.
Wednesday 25th February
- Reigns: The Witcher is Nerial’s latest saucy/murderous deckbuilding narrative game, this time set in the CD Projekt fantasy universe. You are legendarily dire bard Dandelion, and you’re trying to sing a song about Geralt in which he does not die for as long as possible.
- Utawarerumono: ZAN 2 is a soft and sleepy-looking anime hack-and-slash that boasts of a base management system and the chance to weaponise *squints* carp?
Thursday 26th February
- Spellcasters Chronicles is a 3v3 wizard MOBA from Quantic Dream. Press X to jungle?
- Tales of Berseria Remastered is Bamco’s latest revamp for one of their generally quite decent action-RPGs.
- Snägäri Pinball is a celebration of “Finland’s legendary late-night snack kiosks where neon lights, grease, and glory meet under the silver ball”.
Friday 27th February
- Resident Evil Requiem is Capcom’s latest helping of undead frightfulness. They’ve cut the action-horror label in twain for this one: you’ll alternate between massacring zombies in third-person as Leon Kennedy, and hiding from them in first-person (by default, anyway) as new character Grace Ashcroft.
- Arrow World is conveyor belt sokoban. It burns! It burns!
RPS staff activities this week? Well, a lot of us are playing Requiem. I have already gotten as far as the bit with the ghastly girlboss from the SGF demo. Callum and Jeremy are much further along and are expressing strong opinions about things that are under embargo. James also has a code. Pour one out for Mark, sitting glazed on the periphery of all this, trying to write about a game that involves rats. What are you up to this week?
