Kingdom Come Deliverance I and II

With Kingdom Come Deliverance I and II being dropped on Game Pass I figured that I would put my two cents worth in for what the games are and why people should at the very least give them a try and lastly, give a little advice to make it a little smoother to play the games.

I played Kingdom come Deliverance when it initially came out. I played for a good 40hrs and then petered off. The game was great and I was enjoying it but I got to a section where I died and lost progress due to its divisive save system. I will speak about the save system later but the long and short of it all is you need a consumable to save and many people found this to be a deal breaker. The game is extremely immersive and this is one of the games biggest selling points. You feel part of the world and Henry, the main protagonist, becomes an old friend very quickly. A quick thing to note is this is an adult game, this does not mean a game that a mature teenager can play as it is worth noting that there is visceral combat and full sex scenes (if you want to go down that path with the various choices). The fact that there is a gay romance option has also been a cause for some negativity but to be honest in both games this option is essentially hidden and something you effectively need to go looking for. I never even got a hint of it until I saw it mentioned somewhere and only then did I realise where this branching path in the relationship between Henry and the other male character could move towards a more serious relationship rather than the friendship I encountered. It is not forced in any way contrary to what some people have reported. 

The basic story is laid out in the prologue. It is a typical prologue designed to teach you the basics of the game. It also helps set up the sort of Henry you will be playing. This is an RPG but not a create your own character kind of RPG. You play Henry, a blacksmith’s son, in a small village in Bohemia in 1403. The prologue sets you off on a ‘quest’ to collect a few things for your father before you are allowed to go off and join your friends. This includes you collecting money from someone your dad did some work for or alternatively returning the goods he bought, secondly buying some coal with the money you retrieved, getting some beer from the pub (where the young lady you are interested in works) and getting a cross hilt from the chamberlain from the nearby castle all in order to help your dad finish the sword for the local lord, Sir Radzig. As an example of how the game allows you to complete your quests and goals in various different ways, when you speak to the local drunk that owes your father money, he refuses and tells you to go away. You can complete this in various ways, including using speechcraft, sterling back the goods or just plainly beating the living daylights out of him. You can fail at all of these methods and these each have consequences. Again the save system comes into play here as at the time you need to save you don’t have or have a minimal amount of the consumable you need to save. There is actually a fair amount of content to complete here in the prologue before you head back to your father to complete the quest, and many of these I would strongly suggest people to complete, especially on your first playthrough, as they explain many of the game's systems through story. You also get a hint into the fact that you can play your Henry in various different ways. This is evident in your interactions with your friends, the barmaid and other people around the village.

Eventually you return to your father and the two of you complete the sword for Lord Radzig. You complete it as the Lord himself turns up. After some conversation and deepening of the characters, you get a cut scene as your village is attacked. There are many story beats in this attack and to explain them would spoil some of the twists and turns of the story but suffice to say there are events that transpire that change your life as Henry forever and you end up first in the local lord’s castle and then through more story, in the castle of his lord Sir Robart. From here on the story really starts as you begin your journey as Henry proper. 

The game is full to the brim with quests, side quests, small interactions, world events and ‘random’ encounters. There are also characters that have a huge part to play in Henry’s development as a character as well as smaller side characters as well. There are various skills and vocations you can interact with (such as alchemy and repairing your armour and sharpening your weapons through a mini game). The game is chock full of things to do which are all entertaining and rewarding if you give them the time to engage you, but I can see how they could become tedious if you are forced to engage with them and you do not enjoy the mechanics. The important thing to mention is you do not need to engage with these mechanics and side content if you do not want to. It is all icing on an already complete cake. 

This brings me to the combat. This is probably one of the biggest gripes most people have when they speak about this game. It is very different from the usual hit RB for light attack and RT for heavy attack. It uses a directional system where your attacks can come from various directions, like the points of a star. They have 5 points (Up, Left, Right, Lower Left and Lower Right) as well as a central dot for a stab. I played with Mouse and Keyboard and you moved the mouse around when locked onto an enemy to change your attack direction. It seems complicated at first but actually it is more complex than complicated. It becomes more intuitive over time and you learn to move the mouse around in order to get past the enemies defence. You defend by keeping your sword directed towards the enemy's attack direction. But in all honesty it ceases to matter later on once you learn to Master Strike. This is probably the biggest bit of advice I can give to anyone trying this game for the first time. Play through the main story from where the attack happens until you meet Sir Robart’s Master at Arms. He will be asked to teach you some weapons skills. Go through the tutorial until he teaches you Master Strike. From here on combat is infinitely easier. You will still be overwhelmed by multiple enemies but at least you will be able to be attacked and compete on a more level footing. I would also suggest that everyone goes through as many of the trainings as you can but once you have the Master Strike ability everything else is a benefit. There are different types of enemies and some, especially the Cumans, are very difficult until you increase your skill levels and multiple enemies will always be a challenge. People oversell the difficulty of the combat, not to say it is easy, but with a little practice and getting far enough to have Henry be taught a few new strikes will make a difference. This is where many people give up as they cannot get to grips with the combat, but it is worth noting that the developers designed the mechanics to feel realistic in the difficulty as Henry is not a soldier and has no experience in combat, therefore when he is faced by experienced soldiers he is at a severe disadvantage. 

The second bone of contention is the save system. This is a system that I understand why they designed it the way they did but with a little work you can eliminate this as an issue which makes it a bit irrelevant as a system overall. I would suggest you collect all the ingredients that you need for the Savior Schnapps which are nettle (which is found everywhere) and Belledonna (which is quite hard to find and is probably the only thing I would suggest people look up where to find) and spend a while brewing Savoir Schnapps. Eventually your alchemy skill will be high enough that you will brew quite a few at a time. You have a storage chest and I just stored the ingredients in there so that if I was running low I could just brew a few more. I bought the Belledonna in the beginning just to get my skill up. You can also use your alchemy skill to brew potions to sell in order to purchase the Belledonna. It is worth noting that on PC there are also mods that allow you to save at any time as long as you have one Savior Schnapps in your inventory while not using the schnapps up. 

Kingdom come Deliverance is best played slowly and deliberately. By this I mean I believe you will get the most out of it if you explore and immerse yourself in the world the developers have created. They really took their time and put a lot of effort into building a realistic medieval world that feels alive. The towns, villages and cities in these games are beautifully crafted and deliberate in their aesthetic. This is not to say that you have to do everything there is in the world. The game can take you 100hrs or more if that is what you want but realistically the main story is only 42hrs long according to How Long to Beat and 136hrs for a full completionist run. I have 120hrs but that is across one comprehensive but incomplete playthrough and a comprehensive full playthrough where I knew the first part of the game and made sure I had the Savior Schnapps and did the training. I feel many people will be somewhere in between. The game is certainly worth the time and effort it asks of you. 

This brings me to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It is difficult speaking about this without any spoilers for the first game as it takes place almost directly after the ending of the first one. There are characters that cross over into the second game from the first and that adds to the feeling of continuity and many who loved the first game really felt that having these familiar faces around helped settle them into the second game like putting on a pair of old comfortable shoes. 

The easiest way to set it up without any spoilers is to say that you and some of the returning people from the first game are sent to a nearby land to try to encourage them to join your side in the war that kicked off with the attack on your village which is still going on . While on your way to the lords castle, you are ambushed and most of your party are killed apart from yourself and a major returning character. You are chased and end up injured and near death being taken in by a local woman who was shunned for her abilities with herbs. This woman saves your life and this explains your slow return to form and abilities from the first game that you lost. You and the returning character attempt to contact the Lord but are turned away as you are without your fine clothes and appear to be vagabonds and after a period end up in the stocks in a local village. Once you are released the story begins and you need to build yourself and your reputation up as you are in a foreign land where nobody knows who you are and you have no friends. 

That's the basic premise and my advice here is the same as before. Learn sword skills and practice your alchemy to create Saviour Schnapps. There are new minigames including blacksmithing to immerse yourself into, but again only if you want to. The story in this one is deeper I feel and the characters are more numerous and therefore have more variety and depth. The combat has been reworked and I found it better but the same as the first one, once you learn the power skill, the combat is nowhere as difficult. You don’t have to have played the first one I suppose if you wanted to watch a catchup video but really you will be doing yourself and the games a disservice if you do. 

These games have been made with love and care and you can tell the development team really loved the world they were creating. They handed out helmets to content creators in their press kits for crying out loud! There is an incredible amount of passion in this game and everything feels deliberate and hand crafted in the world. You can feel that if there is a tree there, it is because someone decided it needed to be exactly there. In any other year they would have won game of the year quite easily. Of course the first one came out with the new God of War game and the second one was in the year of Clair Obscur. The first game when it came out was a relatively unknown game from an unknown developer that gained a following as time went on. The second game was hotly anticipated and extremely well received, but was in a year packed with incredible games and Clair Obscur which blew every game out of the water. It received a lot of praise but it was just never going to compete with the masterpiece that is Expedition 33.

I feel everyone should at least try these games and give them a good go before deciding to give up on them. The things that make the game fiddly, complicated and challenging, is the same thing that makes the game comforting, engaging and immersive. It is quite possibly not everyone's cup of tea, and I do understand that but I think if people give it a try and let themselves be drawn in and find ways to not get frustrated, they will discover why these games are so beloved.

Steam Next Fest February 2026: Part 3

When checking through the list of games there were a lot of horror games, visual novels, shop simulators, anime games, side scrollers, card battlers, Co op ‘friend slop’ type games, and chill games. It was also the first time I have heard the phrase ‘multiplayer social deduction game’ and there were a lot of social deduction games. There were also a large amount of games with unique art styles that really didn’t appeal to me. In general, there were just a huge amount of games to choose from, the list just didn’t end.

I collated a selection of games that I thought were worth a try. This is Part Three of the games I tried.

SpaceCraft: The Universe is yours. SpaceCraft is an online space exploration and building game. Explore a vast galaxy of solar systems and planets, mine and craft resources, design and build ships, automate planetary bases and interplanetary logistics, trade and cooperate.

The game has promise, but it was clear this is still quite early in the development as there are still rough edges that need smoothing out. There were hitches when entering a new zone or a planet’s atmosphere. The NPC models are all basically the same and there is still a stiffness to much of the game that polish will eradicate. 

The basics of the game are a little No Mans Sky mixed with the galactic corporation indentured servant games like Hardspace Shipbreaker. You ‘win’ the opportunity to pay off your life debt by captaining a starship to mine resources while at the same time adding to said debt. You mine different resources and then process them at the space station (for a small fee of course). Here you can create upgrades for your ship and install them (more storage, better mining lasers and a hyperdrive). The gameplay loop was fun but there are things they can do to smooth out the mechanics and remove many of the grindy elements of the game. An example of this is when you smelt resources. The time it takes to smelt them is too long and would benefit from immediately completing. The amount of smelting and creating of items you will do in the game will add a huge amount of time but none of it will be additive but rather to add time to a game that I don’t feel will need it. I think it will be a good game if they give it a little polish and smooth the rough edges down. 

Cargo Hunters: Cargo Hunters is the singleplayer extraction shooter where you control a humanoid robot scavenging the remains of humanity on an abandoned, dystopian Earth.

I have always wanted a PVE extraction game. The demo has a selection of weapons and other equipment that I don’t imagine you will have access to at the beginning of the game but rather gives you the experience you will have along the way. The shooting feels good and the effects you get when you shoot other robots and you are shot yourself are really good. The aesthetics of the game are reminiscent of other post apocalyptic games. The enemies are interesting and although I never fought one there are bigger stronger enemies in the demo. There are melee and gun enemies and I saw one with a huge amount of armour and a gatling gun. There is only one map I think, but I never completed it as I was a little rushed.This could be a lot of fun. 

Aethus: Explore a vast underground world to mine, refine and craft hundreds of items, then build up your modular surface Outpost to farm hydroponic crops, prospect for gems and automate your resource-gathering in this sci-fi survival-crafter where the story always provides a reason to dig deeper.

You play as Maive who has been working for a corporation on a mining colony but uses her savings to buy her grandfather’s mining prospect site. You and your trusty drone embark on an adventure to see what it was your grandfather wanted you to find. 

This crafting, space exploration game is quite interesting. Being third person adds something to it and the movement is smooth but does suffer from stiffness from time to time. The character gets stuck on rocks or stairs sometimes and it is one of those cases where you have to do a wide arc to get to where you are going. The inventory system and UI is serviceable but really needs an overhaul. I like the clinical clean look to it but an actual inventory screen would be better. The craft from chest is a great QoL that every game should have as standard. A button to add all similar items to the chests would be beneficial. There are a few things that could be tightened up and a group of solid testers who play these kinds of games, or seeing what other games of this type do would be beneficial. I might see what this is like in time when it releases as to whether I play it or not. 

Wanderburg: Drive your Castle on Wheels into battle in this minimalist medieval roguelike of roaming fortresses! Devour entire villages, build your modular arsenal of siege weapons and arcane machinery as you grow with every stronghold you crush.

It is a fresh take on the survivors genre where you are a mobile castle with various defenses and weapons. You select your weapons at the beginning of the run and as you swallow up people, fields, forests and so on, you get to upgrade and add new items to the castle (such as a ram, or more canons or a mine layer). This is a well made game. The castle drives along well and the turning is responsive. There were a few items I could not get used to but I think that is just me. I never clicked with a survivors game. I tried Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Survivors but the repetitive runs that are the central aspect of the game just got boring and, surprise surprise, repetitive. If you got on with those games and you are looking for another, one that is very well made and tight, then this is one to try out. 

Deified: Forge your strategy around powerful relics in this turn-based tactical roguelite. Choose your slots, manage their constraints, and face formidable bosses.

This is a roguelike tactics game. You move through the world selecting areas to explore. Some areas give you new relics and others are battles or healing. The combat is grid based with a certain number of blocks you can move. Weapons fit into slots that increase with level ups. 

The art style is once again really nice and reminds me of the new rogue Prince of Persia or Sable. The colour pallet is on the red spectrum from yellow through to bright red of his clothing with oranges in between. It is effective and gives it a unique theme. As with all roguelikes this games success will depend on variety, how interesting the relics and powers become and synergy. 

Denshattack: Flip, trick and grind your train in a fast-paced, off-the-rails ride through a colourful Japanese dystopia. Outmatch rival gangs, wreck a shady megacorp, and take back the tracks with nothing but skill, speed, and style.

The basic premise is you are a train driver who finds out about this train racing and trick competition and being the eager beaver she is, wants to take part. The art style is kind of cyberpunk meets Tank Girl anime. The colours are bright and vibrant and the animations are on point. There are very aggressive comic book style pops and flares but it never felt like they were getting in the way or were distracting but rather they added to the overall excitement of the speeding train. 

This was a lot of fun. Kind of a Skate mixed with a fast paced racing game and the Kinect Sports game where you were on a raft and had to move side to side to dodge rapids and rocks. It is frenetic and there are tricks reminiscent of skateboarding games. There are achievements to achieve as you complete each track along with a scoring system. There are collectables as well. The tricks were intuitive and someone who is usually good at skating games will get a kick out of this. Although the train speeds along it wasn’t that difficult to keep up with the tricks and there was a freedom to what you would like. 

Prime Monster: A card-based political roguelike about surviving in a parliament of literal monsters. Fight for votes, break rules, weather scandals and force through absurd laws to keep the top job in this democratic dystopia of truly monstrous proportions.#

Humans have been removed and monsters are in charge. They decide after a while to turn to man’s greatest invention, democracy. They form political parties and for a government. You are the opposition party leader and you need to increase your political clout and your party’s popularity with the population, oppose laws and get yourself elected as Prime Monster. 

You use card based mechanics in parliament to increase unity within your party to ensure they vote your way and cause damage to your opposition and cause their MPs to either vote your way or at least don’t vote against your wishes. In the demo you go through three tutorialised situations from opposing two laws and then the election. Depending on how you did in the previous two situations depends on how you do in the election. I defeated both previous situations (as I am sure you were supposed to) and won a landslide victory and was made Prime Monster. What happens from there is unsure as the demo ends here but it insinuates that things get more difficult from there on. 

This really could be a fun game. It all depends on the variety and depth of the game. The cards have interesting effects but they need to be varied and have more interesting effects as you progress. There also needs to be positive and negative sides to the cards.  I am interested to see how much variety is and how being the Prime Monster is different or how distinct the other parties and representatives are. 

Tombwater: A Souls-Like Western filled with Eldritch Horror. Explore the Wild West town of Tombwater and lay bare the darkness that lies beneath. Survive blood-spilling combat in this gruesome 2D action-RPG that may just drive you to madness.

The demo is set in the wild west and starts on a train with you and two others trying to steal silver from someone in order to pay off debts. The train seems deserted and there is no silver in the safe when you open it. You and your accomplices make a run for it and you are thrown from the train. You are then tutorialised through the basic controls and attacks. The demo then skips forward to further in the game and the enemies are far more tanky and have multiple attacks and attack sequences. They hit a lot harder, are more numerous and take more to kill. This is where I came unstuck as my limited skill in these games came into play. 

I really liked the artstyle of this and although twin-stick shooters are not my thing I thought I would give it a go. The only way I can describe this is stiff. The animations are really good and the environments are beautiful pixel art, but the attacks seemed to have a stuntedness about them. Like I said these are usually not my forte so for people who usually play twin-stick shooters and enjoy them, I would like to know how their experiences of this was. It is very much a skill issue for me though and when I came up against an enemy (who had other enemies around him) had a multi-shot gun attack, I felt that I got stunlocked and he damaged me for all of my health with one sequence of attacks. The game seems to be well formed already though and I would think the story should be interesting with Eldritch horror theme. 

Nutmeg: NUTMEG! is a nostalgic football manager game with a deckbuilding twist, set in the '80s and '90s. Relive the days when the tackles were as hard as the mullets were long and football was about football.

This is a fun little card battler. You set up your team, buy player cards, set training dependant on the staff you have and then play one out of five matches a month while delegating the other four matches to your staff. You can set intensity of play and formation for the non-broadcasted matches (the ones you delegate away). The games you play are played using cards that have different abilities relating to the football positions on the pitch (Green for goalkeeper, blue for defence, yellow for the midfield and red for attack). These cards add to the percentage chance that one of the three options will happen. These are based off of your player and their player. By using different cards you increase your chances of success. The cards use up your players stamina and as your players stamina decreases you can substitute 2 players out during the game.I do feel the RNG in it is a bit Xcom as I repeatedly had 60-70% chances lose out to the lowest percentage more often than not. I often lost unplayed games where I had a 60% chance to win and they only had 20%. I would prefer to have the option to play every game rather than delegate four out of the five games. The players being in a sticker album as in the football sticker books that are available is a nice touch. There are plenty of nods to football adjacent things. The pictures of your various scouts, trainers and other backroom staff are very Jones in the Fast Lane style and I find them a humorous touch. Overall a very good game and I can see myself playing this more especially if they sort their RNG out.

The Ratline: A murdered priest. A secret list. Hunt Nazi fugitives across the globe in this gritty 1971 detective thriller. Analyze evidence, follow leads, and make sharp deductions before the trail goes cold. From the creators of Family, Rivals, Conspiracy, Echo Beach and Riley & Rochelle.

I enjoy these sorts of puzzle games. Different from Blue Prince style games and more in the vein of The Roottress are dead. Decipher information from breadcrumb clues and work towards identifying people from limited information. Unlike the Roottrees game there is no internet but a limited information portal and a rolodex of telephone numbers. The game is very tactile as you need to actually use the phone and drag information you have figured out to the board as well as clicking to add the evidence to the board. As long as the game continues to get more difficult but not suffer from any moon logic it will be a good game. The demo is longer than I thought and I never finished it. 

Darkhaven: Darkhaven is a next-generation ARPG brought to you by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo II. Explore a procedurally generated and fully dynamic open world unlike any other in this solo or multiplayer adventure.

This is Diablo 2 but modernised. There is jumping, dodging, moving around with the ASWD keys, slotted items, multiple loot, 3 weapon sets that you can switch on the fly with V and terrain destruction. The controls feel a little clunky and the attacks are not as precise as more modern ARPGs like Diablo IV or Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile. The UI and menus are serviceable but need cleaning up.

The basic gist is it is the game has potential but needs work. This seems to be the consensus in the Steam reviews of the demo.

Steam Next Fest February 2026: Part 2

When checking through the list of games there were a lot of horror games, visual novels, shop simulators, anime games, side scrollers, card battlers, Co op ‘friend slop’ type games, and chill games. It was also the first time I have heard the phrase ‘multiplayer social deduction game’ and there were a lot of social deduction games. There were also a large amount of games with unique art styles that really didn’t appeal to me. In general, there were just a huge amount of games to choose from, the list just didn’t end.

I collated a selection of games that I thought were worth a try. This is Part Two of the games I tried.

Pragmata: Capcom’s newest IP—PRAGMATA. An all-new Science Fiction action adventure with its own unique hacking twist! It is the near future, and protagonists Hugh and his android companion Diana, must work together as they make their way through the cold lunar research station.

This is a major publisher’s game so I feel a little strange putting it in here as most people know what this game is. I do feel the discourse around this game has been a little weird. There seems to be a disconnect between what the game actually is and if the system they described will actually work. This is the main reason I wanted to give it a go.

The game is set on a lunar solar relay station and you as the only human you are aware of find and join forces with an android with the intention of restarting the solar array to contact earth. As you move around the base you are attacked by the droids that are supposed to be doing a lot of the work on the base. There are story elements told through emails, journal articles as well as CCTV footage that you find along the way. There are collectables in a currency that was discovered on the lunar surface and that is dropped by the droids, I assume this works as your money in the game but I don’t think I found a use for it.

The combat is as you would expect from a sci-fi game. There are a variety of guns in the demo and I found 4 including a pistol, a scatter or shotgun, a net gun that immobilises the enemies to make it easier to target them for hacking and after I had finished the demo through once, there was what effectively is a snipper rifle but it needs to charge up. You can run, dodge and after the first run through I was informed of a perfect dodge that slows time for a small time. At the same time you can use Dianna to hack the enemies in order to increase your damage to them, an act you have to do because otherwise you don’t really do any damage. There are also enemy weak point that do increased damage. At the end of the demo there was a boss fight which was fun. There are massive damage attacks the boss does and the need to hack and do increased damage through the canisters at the back of him that are his weal point. I died the fist time I did it because I didn’t see the massive AOE attack that he does towards the end of the fight.

There is hacking for Dianna to do outside of combat and after a series in the boss battle there was also a minor QTE where Dianna performs a manual override if you push the corresponding at all. There are going to be a lot of these kind of hacking game.

This game is what people have been asking developers to make for ages in so much as it is a cool game with interesting mechanics. Now if people actually like what they ask for is a completely different situation. I think it is interesting and some will find it easy but at times it is a little like patting your stomach and rubbing your head (or the other way around). That is not to say that it is impossible to do, but it does take a bit of practice to become accustomed to it. I won’t be playing this game on hard as having to deal with hacking on one side while attacking and dodging at the same time while the enemies have increased health is a different prospect I don’t think I am willing to even consider.

I would strongly suggest people try the Pragmata demo as you will know immediately if you like it. I think people will be surprised by this game and will be thinking of it come release day, hopefully I really hope it does well as gamers keep lamenting that gaming has gone to the route of tried and tested games, but everytime a game that ticks those boxes comes out, they find a way to ignore it. But this is a Capcom game so your never know.

Puzzle Spy: Pursue diamond thieves and a trail of cryptic puzzles in this short ‘60s spy adventure. As Agent Epsilon you’ll choose your path as you chat with (or chat up!) suspicious contacts. Deduce the puzzle rules, decode cryptograms and decipher clues as you solve wordplay & logic puzzles across the globe!

The demo leads you through one puzzle which, as they are making a puzzle game, makes sense as they don’t want to have you complete too many of the puzzles. It gives you an idea of what they game will be. The puzzle wasn’t particularly difficult once I figured it out but in the beginning there was no indication as to what you had to do, just a bunch of words and columns like a crossword. When I tried it it was at the end of a long day and I was a little tired so it may not have been the best time to try a puzzle game that needs you to decipher the puzzle before you can solve it.

Ecto Mercenary Program: Ecto Mercenary Program is a sci-fi looter shooter where you and your friends form a mercenary group to forge a path for yourselves. Rise from a destitute crew fighting raiders for scraps to a feared force on the station. Survival is not guaranteed.

I tried this and just couldn’t get what you were supposed to do. I am not sure if this is a problem with the game or the demo. You are confronted by a menu that when you click play it leads you to new menu with a bunch of options that you have no idea what they mean. You have to hire mercenaries with money you are not sure where it is and then it hires a random mercenary. You are then dropped into a speaceship?? Where you are told to move forward and find an exit. You have no weapons but can punch but the enemies you encounter do a weird lurch attack or have guns. You pick up random things on the side but have no idea what they do. I just think this demo could do with a tutorial level to get you to understand what you need to do. A clearer step by step initial gameplay walkthrough would probably make this demo a better showcase for what the game is.

Pirates: Rogue Fortune: A rogue-lite action and adventure game set in the Caribbean! Explore the ocean depths in search of treasures, survive intense naval battles, and upgrade your ship to reclaim your place as the greatest pirate in a world to discover with every attempt.

This game’s description is exactly what the game is. It is a roguelike where you sail your boat from one point of interest to another, these being either resource gather spots that entail a battle as well or a person to speak to that adds to the story or you can purchase upgrades from. At the resource gathering spot it is a little like Dave the Diver mixed but mining. You descend from the boat and mine out resources (iron gold and so on) while a timer runs out at the top. You have a bag that carries up to three items before you get weighed down and swim slower through the water. There are various power ups that help with this such as increased number of slots in the bag or a balloon that takes up to 2 resources back to the ship (this is on a cool down). There are also run based power ups and chests you can collect that are trapped in rocks.

When the timer runs out at the top of the screen the battle segment starts and you need to ensure you have returned to your boat in order to fight off the enemy boats. Your boat starts off with cannons that have 3 shots before they needs reloading. There is a reload mini game where you need to press space bar when it hits a green segment reload bar to get a perfect reload otherwise the reload still happened but takes longer. The enemy ships vary in size and health and get more numerous and powerful as you move to further points of interest along the run.

There are various people along the run that offer varying items and powerups as well as story notes. Many of the power ups are double edge swords with a bonus and a curse.

Overall this was a fun play and if you enjoy roguelike games this may be of interest as I think it mixes different ideas and could have a lot replayability especially if they have a large variety of items, bonuses and curses to deepen the experience.

A small caviate is that the game will release into early access so if you try the game and like it know that it will not release immediately as a 1.0.

Valor of Man: Forge your party. Master your fate. In this turn-based roguelite RPG, lead four heroes through a fractured realm of danger and destiny. Build synergies, unlock powerful abilities, and face ever-shifting challenges in an epic battle for survival. No journey is ever the same.

Another game whose description is exactly what the game is. It is another roguelike with 4 heroes all with different abilities. The ones in the demo are classic DnD clases, there is a fighter, a healer, an assassin/rogue and a spellcaster. As you progress down the roguelike tree, have different encounters such as battles, different story beats and campsites. Story beats, interactions and campsites give you either new ability, increase your current abilities, give weapons/armour and so on.

In the battles the heroes have Action Points (in the demo they have 2 each) that can be used to move and or attack. You can either move and attack, double move or double attack. Some abilities have other ways to use them (once every turn or 2 turns, once a battle, using mana and so on). The controls are intuitive and if you have played a turn-based game before you will have an intrinsic understanding of the game.

As with all the roguelikes that I have played this could be interesting as long as they add a big variety of abilities, enemies, heroes, synergies and encounters. I did find sometimes it was unclear what the ability would use and then why I couldn’t use it again at a later time. I think the more you play the more you will learn what all the icons mean and it will be a little clearer.

Replaced: Uncover the sinister secrets of Phoenix Corporation, through the eyes of its own creation, R.E.A.C.H. - an AI trapped in a human body against its will.

The premise for this is an AI has been trapped in your characters body. You have escaped or been disposed of outside the city walls. The area is desolate and, in the demo at least, there is no further history of why this is the case. There are journal articles and other highlights you find along the way that give context and more information on what is going on. The game is a side-scroller but there are places where it moves to upper or lower levels and for art 2.5D style there is an incredible feeling of depth and distance to the levels. There is a sequence when you are above some enemies in an airduct and you can really feel the sense of perspective.

This is going to be a special game. The art style is amazing, the pixel art graphics are in that incredible hi-res crisp style that is just gorgeous and the colour pallet they use is vibrant and sharp. The combat is precise and although not difficult as such in the demo at least, is satisfying. It gives you the feeling of being something special without feeling overpowered. The tutorial was clear and gave you enough information to complete the demo without too much trouble. The enemy designs are interesting and although they are similar, there are enough differences to them to make them unique but obviously part of a whole or collective. The one other non-enemy person you meet is clearly stylised and interesting. There is enough in the demo to hook you and want to know more. I think this will be an interesting game and it will certainly be a highlight for the graphics.

Alonitaire: Break the rules of solitaire in this atmospheric roguelike deckbuilder. Unleash forbidden sigils while the Jack of Spades begs for your help in secret. Forge game-breaking combos under the Joker’s watchful eye and uncover the truth behind the deck. Don’t investigate… just play.

This is a fresh take on Balatro with the base game being solitaire instead of poker. The cards are asleep and need waking up as they are being held captive by the joker. When cards are woken up they gain abilities to use to help you win the game against the joker. There are abilities that allow you to move other cards abilities around, one that moves the cards around, one that allows the card to be placed on any card of the opposite colour that is of a lower value, and the initial card that you can use being the one that wakes other cards up. I didn’t play a lot of the game as I am working through the demos I have downloaded, but I will come back to this one when I am done with all the others. Definitely worth a play if you like Balatro.

These are the demos I have tried so far, there were some really good games in there. The Steam Next Fest is a really good celebration of gaming and if I had infinite time and I wasn’t working fulltime, I would certainly play more if games. I whoever is reading this has any suggestions please leave a comment below.

Windrose (formally Crosswind) is really exciting

I played the Windrose demo both in singleplayer and two and three person co-op. Although I am putting up a couple of posts about the Next Fest demos I have played, I felt that this game was too good to squeeze in between the other demos and felt it needed a more in depth review. The game is really good, and it is an early access/demo game that has sucked me in. The last time I could not stop playing a survival game was Valheim. This has many similarities to Valheim and is basically in the broadest terms Pirate Valheim. That is very easy way to explain it and has no nuance to it, but it certainly gives me the same vibes and sense of wonder and exploration as Valheim does every time I play it.

The story goes that Blackbeard and his crew have taken over the Caribbean and he has declared himself King of the West Indies after destroying the British Fleet. Rumour has it that he has made a deal with the Devil himself and now Tortuga is the final bastion of freedom and independent ports that is left.

You were a pirate captain whose ship was attacked by Blackbeard’s pirates while trying to escape and was destroyed along with you and your crew. During the battle on your ship, you encounter two of Blackbeard’s pirates that have discovered an artifact on your vessel and they are discussing it. After you kill them, you pick up the artifact only to be shot from behind by a huge pirate with a pistol and a club. As you lie there dying the artifact that looks like a skull or a mask starts to meld with you. The large pirate orders all of your crew to be thrown overboard. You wash up on an island with the bullet wound completely healed and your body laced in patterns that hurt to touch. All of this is told after the basic combat tutorial via a beautiful comic style cutscene  

Once on the island this is where the survival game starts and you progress through the usual procedure of collecting sticks, stones, food items and fibre to use to craft items. You do start with a broken sword and a musket in a divergence from usual survival games where you start with nothing although you don’t have any shots for the musket. Before you can build anything else you need to set down a bonfire that dictates your camp area and then build various workbenches where you create and update tools, meals, gear, potions and weapons.

There are various enemies on the first islands in the demo, these include animals that give you resources to cook with (boars, dodos) and some undead enemies (giant crab creature and drowned sailors) as well as Blackbeard’s pirates. Other food sources to be collected include bananas, chili, sweet potato, coconut and dodo eggs all used to cook dishes at the cookfire. There is already a decent amount of food items and these work similar to Valheim. You can eat 2 food items at a time, and each food item gives you different buffs, some increase one of your stats (strength, endurance, vitality and so on) and others just give flat health increases. For healing you can create bandages and later brew health potions. The systems is quite deep currently and they are still working on it.

The combat is tutorialised during the opening sequence and is a mixture of light attacks, heavy attacks, blocks and dodges. This is not Dark Souls like but far more actiony. Where this is Dark Souls like is your pirate has different stats (strength, agility, vitality and so on) and you level these up. Your weapons, like Dark Souls, have affinities towards these stats (A being the highest in the demo). Combat is stamina based and swinging and dodging all use stamina forcing you to conserve your stamina (or not as I tend to do). There is also posture damage indicated by shields on both the enemies and you which if it is reduce down enough staggers you or the enemies, but I never really managed to do this as I tended to find they die before their posture was broken.

In the demo I came across a selection of weapons. When you place down the weapons bench you can craft a small selection of initial weapons which include a rapier, a club, a musket and a sabre. No cutlass for some reason. I know a cutlass is a type of sabre from what I have read, but a broad short cutlass is synonymous with pirates. There are also polearms and distinct variations of the base weapon varieties you can craft later. I found a halberd in a chest and there are other special weapons squirreled away on the islands. These weapons have a bonus to them (such as added crit chance or added posture points). Once you find a weapon you can from then on craft it at the weapons bench. The armour bench allows you to create one of the five armours items head, arms, chest, legs and boots. As with the weapons you can find armour in places around the islands. All of these weapons and armours have rarity and some of them have set bonuses. I have always liked set item systems in games as I enjoy mixing and matching in order to fit the situation. The upgrading of these items is done at the associated workbench and you are able to upgrade the level of the item as well as its rarity using various resources and specialised components.

A big surprise and a massive bonus from me to the developers, is the ability to walk up to your storage and push ‘Q’ while looking at it and the game will automatically deposit the items from your inventory that are the same as the ones in the chest. Now I would like them to tweak this so that if you were to create a storage room and place storage containers in there, when you walk into that room and push ‘Q’ it would do the same thing for all the storage at once. Looking at it in order for it to do it is fine but it would save so much time and energy if you didn’t need to look directly at the storage container. The second big thumbs up from me is a big one: crafting from storage. I am waiting for Valheim to add this feature as in 2026 I feel this should be a standard feature.

There is a main questline that guides you through the stages of the game and there are also a few side quests and challenges as well (kill 40 boars and 20 dodos). In a way these feel like it is from an MMO and it kind of leads to my first grip with the game. You do not get any experience for killing enemies. All your levels are gained through completing the missions in your journal. This means there is no grinding for levels and people I have spoken to have agreed that there is not really a reason to stop and fight enemies other than the fun factor or if you need the resource they drop.

When you do level up you are awarded talent points and you can add points to your various stats. Increasing your states increases your health, or stamina or damage depending on your weapon and so on. The talent points are used in the skill tree to add bonuses to your pirate, these include things like less stamina drain for various activities, more health, bigger crit chances and so on. From what I have seen you can respect at any time but I believe it costs money although this may be subject to change.

There are a few issues I have with the game, some are a me thing and are really just design choices from the developers that I am not fond of, other items do ruin the experience for me. Firstly the food bonuses are lost on dying. This makes sense, but if you are fighting a fight that is more difficult and you die a few times, you very quickly go through a lot of cooked food. This also adds to the decision not to fight everything you come across and the risk is too high for very little reward. Having said that, on death your top row of your inventory stays with you and the rest of the items are in a glowing storage where you died, and if you die multiple times you will have multiple corpse storages to go and collect, it dies not disappear.

Secondly the amount of resources you receive from chopping trees, mining stone, claypits and so on, is just too small for me. With upgrades and building and cooking being quite resource intensive, you end up running around to find a boar for it’s hide, and ironically hiding is exactly what happens.

Third I really wish all games used the rule that there was no stamina drain while running outside of combat. The stamina drain is very lenient while chopping trees and running around, but it would be good that if you are.

Fourthly, the camera can go a little wonkey when you are in a tight spot. This is an old soulslike issues, but it can be a pain later on.

There is much more to that is packed into this demo. I have played 18hrs of it between my solo run and the two co-op games I played with friends, and yet I never even really tried the building system, but that has a system for everyone from what I have done. It is similar to Valheim and many other games and it is a good system. If you are not the kind of person that need a well-built base of operations that has been lovingly and skilfully built from the ground up from hours of harvested materials, then there is a prefabricated building for you to build, but if you are the kind of person that likes the above, there are tools for that as well. I am waiting for my brother to test it out thoroughly as he is one of those people that has to create a show home.

There is a lot to this demo, and I have refrained from going into too much detail as it is part of the fun to find these things out. I haven’t spoken about when you get your ship (not a huge spoiler as this is a pirate game after all) and how good the naval combat is aside from the boarding as it seems all the enemies rush you and you end up getting attacked from all side by them. But the one thing that does need mentioning about the sailing is the sea shanties and just how good they are and how much fun atmosphere they add to the game. I am unsure why you need to turn them on though. I am all for the op in approach rather than the opt out approach, but in this case why would you sail as a pirate and not have a sea shanty going in the background?  

This game has it’s hooks into me and many other people from what I have seen. I will try to not play this again until 1.0 as I wouldn’t want to burn out on it, but Valheim is still calling me and I often succumb to its siren’s call and I imagine this game will be the same.  

Steam Next Fest 2026 Pt 1

When checking through the list of games there were a lot of horror games, visual novels, shop simulators, anime games, side scrollers, card battlers, Co op ‘friend slop’ type games, and chill games. It was also the first time I have heard the phrase ‘multiplayer social deduction game’ and there were a lot of social deduction games. There were also a large amount of games with unique art styles that really didn’t appeal to me. In general, there were just a huge amount of games to choose from, the list just didn’t end.

I collated a selection of games that I thought were worth a try. This is Part one of the games I tried.

1348 Ex Voto: Brave the harsh realities of the Italian late medieval period through the eyes of a courageous noble whose life is about to change fundamentally. Follow Aeta (Alby Baldwin), a young knight errant, on a brutal journey through Italy to find and save her closest one, Bianca (Jennifer English).

This game is coming out on the 12th March this year. It is interesting but has a lot of rough edges. The combat itself is fluid, but many of the animations are still very wooden and stiff. Hair and clothing physics are a little off putting but they are generally the most difficult to get right. It features a swing, dodge, block and stagger combat system. There is also a perfect strike system where you strike the next blow as the first blow hits and it seems this does more to the enemy’s stagger metre. The voice acting is good with the two lead characters (as expected with Jennifer English) but as the demo was short and to the point, it is hard to tell if all the other voice acting was of the same level. The story in the demo is just through the prologue stage so it really just getting started. It seems the type of game that people will enjoy if they can get past the jank of the animations, that are fine just can be distracting when Bianca’s hair goes through her neck, and I imagine the story will be engaging. Jenifer English is always fantastic as a voive actor but based on the demo I am not sure how much she is in it nevertheless Alby Baldwin was doing a very good job as the lead character.

Wild West Pioneers: Are you tired of the crowded east coast cities? Grab your family and move to the West where there is free land for everybody and claim your future. With fertile soil and abundant resources, you’ll find more than adventure and freedom. This is your chance to be a driving force of the American dream.

This is for all intents and purposes Anno in the Wild West. There are character dialogs, distinct characters with their own individual personalities and the usual base building game buildings and resources to manage. There is an overworld somewhat like Anno and the game requires you to find points of interest on the world map using your scouts. Unfortunately there were some bugs where the tutorial pop ups did not disappear and blocked the screen and after a short amount of time I had a black screen and the game froze. I feel I got a feel for the game in that short time as I have played similar games before. The game has a good feel to it and I think it could become something special if you like the Anno series. It comes to early access this year no date as yet although there is a join the playtest button steam.

GRIMPS: There aren’t any normal weapons, but you can shoot a shark like a gun, hurl stools, and rip your fluffy foes to shreds! Is this the best way to destroy stuffed animals? Probably not. Is it awesome? Hell yeah!

This is exactly as you would think it is from looking at it. It is like High on Life with an annoying pigeon character following you around and unusual guns to fight with. There are enemy arenas with multiple enemies dropping in through portals. You have health and armour to worry about, and ammo drops from most enemies and these are also scattered around the arenas. There are 2 guns I tried a slow gun that you start with and the machine gun that speeds up as it goes along. I didn’t like the shooting as I felt that it didn’t shoot where I was aiming, but rather a little down and to the right. When I adjusted that it seemed to go better for me but it was still off putting.

Starship Crafter:  Take on the role of a starship mechanic and repay the immense debt your father left behind. Upgrade your workshop, craft components, build starships, complete contracts, follow unfolding events through the in-game newspaper, and most importantly, repay the debt before the deadline

This game is a Car Mechanic kind of game but in space. You breakdown and repair ships, buy new new recipes to learn, Buy resources on the marketplace and so on. The game was fun, but the lack of universal storage just adds busywork instead of doing things that would be a bit more fun. You owe a debt to some pirates through your father and need to pay it off. I do think it could be fine, but you need to be aware of that it is what it says on the tin.

War for Bryndor: A fast-paced strategy game where cards offer you strategy and dice determine your fate! Conquer provinces in thrilling battles in an attempt to unite the land. Manage your resources and outmaneuver opponents in quick matches filled with tactical decisions and shifting frontlines. With dynamic maps and a blend of luck and strategy, you won't want to stop. Can you claim ultimate victory?

This looks to be a fun little card battler. I didn’t play enough as I feel I had the basic understanding and if I had more time and less demos to try I would have played more. I liked the art style and if I had more time to work through the cards I think it would be a good game.

House and Hand: Building thriving island cities in this addictive match-3 deck-building roguelike! Place forests, mountains, cities, and more on islands using cards from your deck. Match 3 identical features to combine them into a bigger, better features that scores you points.

House and Hand is a match-3 deck building city scape roguelike. You have card with different tiles you can place (including fields, trees, mountains, robbers and so on) that when three or more are in a row, create a new upgraded tile (pastures for fields, towns for trees, mines for mountains and the robbers upgrade). The round ends when you run out of cards in your deck which moves you onto the next island or if you have no spaces left on your island to place cards then the run ends. Each island is purposefully quite small, but they differ in size and when you get to choose the next island to go for, they have bonuses and hinderances attached to them as well as different tile sizes (4X4, 5X5,6X4 and so on.) At the end of the round if you win you are scored on that island and receive money which you use to either add buffs (you can have a few that persist through the islands on that particular run) or to purchase new cards to add to your deck.

It was a fun little game. Hopefully for the full release they have numerous cards and combinations to keep it interesting. This game reminds me somewhat of Dorfromantik in its mechanics and although I loved that game, I found it got repetitive after a while and I don’t think this game will be any different for me. If you like match-3 games and enjoy finding strategies to work your way through then this will be a great game. The sprites are well done, and the game runs smoothly.

Mirealle: A world has split into thousands of floating islands. A forgotten history is hidden in ruins. Mirealle is a touching puzzle adventure set in a cozy universe. It is about the search for hope where a lost part of the world… and of oneself… are hidden in every detail.

Mirealle is a cute little puzzle game. My daughter would probably enjoy the game as the graphics are charming. The puzzles were not difficult on the 3 maps I played. You start on your home island and your pet gets ill. You decide to travel to another island to seek help. On the island you discover a stone that takes you across to further islands. There are sections on the maps that show you past memories that add to the story. As you walk around the island, while rotating them 90 degrees at a time, you get little pop-up speech bubbles that give you context as to why these islands are uninhabited. These speech bubbles change their perspective to keep their facing in order for you to read them which was a nice touch. There have been similar games but this game should stand on it’s own.

Imago Season: A true narrative roleplaying experience. Explore an alien city inhabited by human-insect hybrids. Roll dice, join a revolution, become a mutant yourself. The choices are yours, but so are the consequences.

This was a good narrative game. The characters were interesting and the world was unique. Humans metamorphosing into bugs via a choice system was interesting. The history of the world is something I would be interested in learning more about including the robots that seem to have taken over the world as their leaders.

You start in the world being told a story about what you are felling and where you make choices that direct said story to some small amount. There is much about this game that reminds me of the way Disco Elysium tells its story. There are dice rolls that are affected by your skill set and failure in these rolls does not always mean failure in the game, but rather a different path through the story. As in Disco Elysium there are dice rolls that can be repeated after a skill increase and ones that cannot. I feel the demo was rigged to ensure you passed certain tests in order for the demo to progress. I enjoyed the game, but I am not sure if I would play it when it came out purely down to the number of releases that come out but I feel they have something interesting here that will tickle many people’s fancy. The demo is worth your time if you find it at all interesting.

Commie Block: Survive as the newly appointed manager in an expanding communistic regime where our purpose is to produce more and more resources for the glory of motherland! Manage the workforce & optimize output of buildings to survive against unrealistic demands as long as possible in our own commie block

I think there is a gem of a game here, but the tutorial is minimal and explains what you would already know if you have played any of these games before. There is little information on the buildings you put down. The apartments don’t add workers but add personal storage which I have no idea what it even does. I repeatedly failed my quotas because I just couldn’t get enough resources out of the buildings quick enough. I tried many buildings with few workers and few buildings full of workers. In the end the game became frustrating. I played the tutorial and was trying to figure out how to get more workers and other than research and random rewards for meeting quotas, there wasn’t a hard and fast way to do so. I feel I missed something important in the tutorial but even a second run through of the tutorial did not remove any confusion. Good idea but it needs more direct explanation or a deeper tooltip for the buildings to explain to stupid how they work.

Cursed Blood: Cursed Blood is a brutal 1-4 player co-op melee roguelike. Play as vengeful Samurai Apes fuelled by rage, unleashing a whirlwind of lightning-fast combat. Spill blood, sever limbs, and claim your vengeance!

I really enjoyed this demo. It is a twin stick melee roguelike. It is visceral and bloody fast-moving melee combat with powerups and curses to dictate how you play. I played singleplayer but it is up to 4 player co-op. I only played 2 of the characters and they did not deem to play that different. The second character had kunai but I never figured out how to use them. You also pick up guns with limited ammo along the way that onced empty of bullets you can throw. There are multiple curses along the way that you can collect at alters that give you a bonus in return for the curse. Overall this was a well presented, well thought out well made game. I just wish I didn’t suck at twin stick shooters.

Mio: Memories in Orbit

TLDR: This game really surprised me. As someone who really likes metroidvanias, but is incredibly bad at them, this game was a lot of fun. Handling MIO was intuitive, simple and fun. The powerups you install were clear on what they did and had a clear and decisive effect on the gameplay, allowing you to tailor the gameplay to your personal preferences. There is nothing new here really but it is just a good, clean metroidvania.

The game starts with a line drawn outline of your character that is then used through a 2D maze to teach basic mechanics, a theme that is used every time you need to learn a new mechanic (double jump, using your lasso or using objects to refresh your jumps and lasso and so on). After the short tutorial you wake up as your 3D character with no idea what is happening or where you are. As in most metroidvanias you learn by exploration. As you move further you get more information and discover more on the environment. The movement is similar to games like Hollow Knight or Silksong but overall this game is a little bit easier in everything you do. This for me personally was a bigger draw. I am not as spry as I used to be and my reaction times are not as sharp.

The powerups are what you would expect. The first few you get are showing your health, showing the enemies health, add more protective layers to MIO (more health), making the regeneration of health at the health basins free and so on. In order to install these upgrades, you need to increase MIO’s power as each of these powerups has an energy cost. This ensures you can only install a few at a time but also gives you the ability to tailor your gameplay to your personal taste. You can, of course, increase the amount of power and therefore the amount of installed powerups as you go along. Again this is not unique at all but it functions as you would expect. I have only managed to play 8hrs so far but have in that time opened up a lot of the area and fought several bosses.

I doubt I will complete the game as I often find the repetitiveness of these kind of games a little boring after a while to be this games credit I keep finding myself coming back to it. It feels very light and I find I can play this after a long day of work and parenting. It is an easy game to switch on for a few hours and I have to say I always felt like I made progress. It was easy to put down when it was getting a little repetitive and I doubt it will take very long to finish (How Long to Beat says 13.5hrs for the main story and 28hrs for a completionist run).

I played the game on my PC and the ROG Xbox Ally X (including using the Xreal glasses). It ran well on all systems and it was smooth.

I really enjoyed playing what I have so far and imagine I will go back to it a few more times as long as it is installed and I don’t need the extra space (it is only 3.5GB).

Claire Obscura: Expedition 33

Claire Obscura: Expedition 33

Buy and play this game. End of review.

Partially a joke but really not. This is one of the best games I have ever played. To write a review of this is almost impossible. After I completed it, I looked through multiple reviews in the press and on YouTube and still look today, and none do the game justice.

The main reason is because the game cannot be explained without ruining it. It is like giving the ending away to Bioshock or discussing Neir Automata and the relevant plot points that slowly become clearer the more you play the game or revealing the secret to a movie like Fight Club or Seven (not the Sixth Sence because, let’s be honest, that was bleeding obvious). This is not just secrets but the way the game peels back story layers and show hints and indications of what is true and then whiplashes you to different truths.

This game is not just beautifully dark, sad, haunting, joyful and full of moments that make you think or just shock you, it is also full of believable characters that are so well written and are so deep and layered that you very quickly connect with them and start to care deeply for them. It is so easy to feel their emotions and sense their drive and personal pain and joy, a feat many media struggles to convey.

I imagine by now many know the basic plot, but if you don’t here is a basic rundown. You meet Gustav and Maelle as they are heading down to the docks to experience the Gommage (derived from a French word meaning ‘to rub out’ one of many painting references in the game), a yearly event where the looming mystical figure of the Paintress, who sits by a huge monolith, stands up and reduces the number on said monolith by one and any of the inhabitants of the city of Lumiere who are that age or older dissipate in a swirl of dust and flowers. They disappear and this leaves many of their loved ones behind. The citizens see this as a joyful event touched by sadness. They show a level of respect for the people who are going to Gommage and they offer them flowers in red and white as a sign of affection and love. They try to make the most of the devastating event by turning it into a celebration similar to the Day of the Dead.

As you move through the city you speak to people and start to understand that there is a swathe of feelings about the Gommage, the Paintress and the Expeditions. Again, here is where the writing shines as even characters you meet in passing have depth to them and you can feel their history within the city and connections to the player characters and the city feels like it is full of genuine people with genuine views and feelings.

You meet Sophie who you soon discover is strongly connected to Gustov and Maelle and who, sadly, is celebrating her Gommage. You never feel like there is sadness there but rather a reminiscing of history and memories between the characters. There isn’t even sadness just comfortable companionship. The story proceeds through to its inevitable climax in a scene that I have seen repeatedly make everyone tear up and use the phrase ‘I am not crying, you are crying’. If there is any doubt in your mind and if for some obscure reason you have not played this game and you need any inspiration to drive you to play this game, just watch the first 1hr of this game and it will hook you.

During this time, you find out that both Gustov and Maelle are both part of Expedition 33, the number of which is tied to the number the Paintress painted on the monolith. Sophie was 33 and Gustov is 32. You find out Maelle is much younger than them both but has inexplicably volunteered to join the expedition. The Expedition is a group of people who leave Lumiere in order to find a way to the Paintress and discover a way to stop her yearly number reduction and thus the Gommage. That is enough of an introductory explanation as it gets to a point where it is best experienced firsthand.

The game features tight, often very difficult, combat with each playable character having unique combat systems that are simple to use but difficult to master. These once again are really better experienced through the game as it does a really good job explaining the individual systems and many are quite complex to describe without the ability to show don’t tell.

Another standout in a sea of truly amazing qualities, is the music. It has been reported everywhere that the composer was a first-time composer for games. He was found by the game devs (a team of 2-3 at the time I believe) on Soundcloud having posted on there for the first time that very day. The music is 8hrs of truly moving music of varying styles.

I played this game day one. I had it on my Wishlist on Steam from the day I first saw it on the Xbox showcase in June 2024. As soon as I saw this game I knew this would be something special for me personally. I didn’t think it would blow up like it did with people singing it’s praises from every rooftop. It tipped over to the point where journalists, YouTubers and media commentators who would normally not make content about games like this jumped on the bandwagon. I feel this is a sign that you have made it as a development team. I saw video after video with headlines like ‘Is this game that good?’, or ‘I tried Expedition 33 and man was I surprise’ and so on. Months later content is still being made of people listening to the music or starting the game for the first time and it absolutely amazes me and I hope that this means it will be remembered at the game Awards but I suspect that it will lose out to Kojima and Death Stranding 2, even though this is deserving of the award as it a game that is universally loved. I don’t think I have heard a bad word spoken about this game other than difficulty, which I can partially agree with but doesn’t distract from the game.

Like I said at the start, play this game.

BallXPit

I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I had played games that are similar but not quite the same. The game that to me is the most akin to this is Loop Hero. It has characters, upgrades, resource gathering as well as roguelike mechanics. You have a home base that upgrades and requires runs to progress. There are similarities to Vampire Survivors and Balatro but I feel those are quite generic roguelike mechanics and systems.

The story is that there was city called Ballbylon and it was destroyed by a giant ball from space leaving a giant pit in its place. You are what is left of the city, and you need to move down the pit in order to fix what has been broken in New Ballbylon. You have a lift that takes you down the depths of the pit and you need to make your way down, destroy the bosses along the way, collect resources and characters, collect gears to fix the lift and so on.

The basic outline of the game is quite simple and yet complex. You have 2 distinct portions of the game. You have your home base where you build and upgrade buildings that increase your character’s stats and give you general upgrades for each run and the roguelike arena where you complete your runs.

At the base you have a starting area that is initially small but can be expanded with gold as you go along. In the open area you build buildings that give bonuses and unlocked new characters as well as resource collection sites that include farms, forests and rock piles. These are where you collect the resources you will need for upgrades. These resources are gold, wheat, wood and stone. An interesting mechanic is the resource collection from these sites you have built. There is a hidden timer that counts down and once it is done you can use your characters to bounce around and collect these resources. This generally last as long as a run so the resource harvest is ready when you finish a run. Each of the buildings and resource sites need the characters to connect with them in order to collect the resource and some cause the character to ‘bounce’ off when they collect the resource in a pinball machine kind of way. In order to build the different buildings and houses needed to increase stats, add bonuses and open up new characters, your current unlocked characters need to bounce off them directly a set number of times. I have played a fair amount and have opened up 6 characters (it was a fairly quick process) and having these 6 characters pinballing around the base at harvest time makes a significant difference to the amount of resources harvested in one harvest period and the speed at which buildings are built or upgraded.

All the characters have 6 attributes, these are Endurance, Strength, Leadership, Speed, Dexterity, Intelligence and these vary with each hero. Each of these effect various character stats like Damage, HP, various ball attributes (more on that later) and Crit and AOE chance as well as damage bonuses. There are 16 characters at the moment, and you unlock characters as you play runs during which you receive blueprints for their individual houses which you then need to build back at your homebase to unlock said character. Each character plays quite differently from each other. Other than the usual stat and attribute difference, each character also has unique mechanics and base ball. Currently I have the starting character The Warrior as well has 5 others that I have unlocked. These characters also permanently level up as you progress through runs. They receive XP for each run based on how far you get through the run and as they level up, they increase their attributes.

The second part of the game is the roguelike run through the different levels. Each level is made up of a selection base enemies, 2 mini bosses and the final boss of the level. The level is in a vertical corridor with your character at the bottom of the screen and enemies moving vertically down towards your character. Each level is thematic with the first level being themed around the Bone Yard (written The BoneXYard) and the second level being ice themed (The SnowyXShores) and so on. Each time you complete a level by beating the final boss you receive a gear. You need to complete the first level with 2 characters at least to receive 2 gears which allows you to go down to the second level and so on. There are benefits and bonuses to completing each level with every character and there is also a distinction made based on how long it takes to complete the level. I have not personally managed to complete a level fast, so I am not sure what, if any, benefit there is to that. But I imagine as you level up your characters this will be easier to do.

The basics of a run is each character has a specialist ball they start with, and this ball has a characteristic such as ice, fire, vampiric and so on. They also have a number of ‘baby balls’ that are being fired constantly and cause basic damage. As your character progresses up the vertical corridor the enemy units move down towards them. You can freely move your character around the arena. You only have one copy of your specialist ball, and you shoot it in the direction you are aiming and cannot shoot it again until it returns to you. You also shoot baby balls at regular intervals. Each character has unique systems, so for instance the Cohabitants are a duo that fires a double stream of balls in diametrically opposite directions but the balls do half damage, while The Itchy Finger shoots twice as fast and can move at full speed while shooting but his aim is scattered and therefore doesn’t fire directly where you are aiming. These make for interesting strategies when using different characters. The system, for me, is reminiscent of a mixture of Tetris, space invaders and a twin stick shooter. The enemies come down, similar to space invaders, in procedurally generated Tetris like rows, your character moves and shoots like a character in a twin stick shooter and as they die the enemies leave behind a selection of goodies for you to collect. These include gold, resources, upgrades and, in Vampire Survivor fashion, experience spheres to upgrade your character for this run. When you level up you have to select between either a new specialist ball to add your arsenal or upgrading one of your current specialist balls or select an item that adds a benefit to your character. As you move through you can have infinite items to add various bonuses to your character, but you can only have 4 specialist balls at any one time. When you have 2 specialist balls that are level 4 you can fuse them into a new ball that mixes the properties for both balls. You can also receive a drop that looks like a rainbow ring that randomly upgrades 1-5 of your items and is what you need to fuse the specialist balls. There is a large selection of specialist balls available as well as several fusions and when you discover a fusion, it is remembered for next time. As you can often select between a couple of specialist balls it is possible to have synergies between your specialist balls, and they can create an incredible amount of damage and domino effects. There are balls that are vampiric and steal health, others that add fire or ice damage and can either set enemies on fire or freeze them, other poison enemies or the starting Warrior character’s specialist ball causes bleed.

The enemies are varied and interesting as well. Again, this is simple yet complicated as the different enemies do different things. Some are melee and attack you if you get too close, while others are ranged and fire projectiles that slowly move towards you and are easy to dodge but can become more difficult when there are many enemies on the screen. When the enemy reaches the bottom row, they fly across the screen and melee attack you. Some have armour and can only be damaged from a specific direction. They come down in random rows with gaps in between them. If you fire your balls through these gaps and they get behind the enemies, the balls bounce off the walls and back of the corridor and do damage to the enemies from all sides until it bounces through a gap to return to you similar to brick breaker games. This can be a significant way to destroy many enemies.

On the right side of the corridor is an indicator showing your progress through the level including the points of the 2 mini bosses as well as the final boss at the top. On the left side is your health represented as a health ball similar to Diablo, as well as your progress towards your equipment progression that increases as you pick up experience.

I doubt I will complete this game as I imagine, for me, it will become quite repetitive, a trait I find common to roguelike\roguelites. But I really think for games of this type this has held my attention for longer than normal which is a huge compliment to this game. I imagine this might be one of those games that doesn’t leave my PC. It is less than 600MB and it is easy to pick up and just do a couple of runs. There are intricate systems but realistically they are not overly complex but rather it is a case of easy to learn but difficult to master. I would strongly suggest this game to anyone who enjoys cleaver systems and complex and deep synergies with roguelike mechanics. I feel I grew quite strong quite quicky, but I only have 6 of the 16 characters and have only unlocked 2 levels. I have completed the first level with all 6 characters but none of them completed the level fast (within 12minutes). There is enough there for achievement hunters to keep them busy, but I feel that most people will get something out of this game.

Steam Nextfest October 2025

A new Steam Nextfest is on us and as per usual there is a landslide of games available. I feel landslide is an apt description of trolling through the demos. As per usual there is difficulty finding games even though they have added a whole selection of filters. You will have a spate of good games, maybe 3-6 games, then 30-40 either rubbish or games that we have seen before with a new skin. I will say compared to previous Nextfests there are actually a lot of very good looking games but I feel they are still hidden under a slew of AI slop, rehashed or reskinned games or just games that are not very good. I applaud people who create a game and more so to have the courage to put said game out there, but realistically having said that not all games are good unfortunately.

I do feel Steam has done something on the back end to make the games that are shown more curated, but there is still a lot of games on there that are just not good. This isn’t just rehashed AI slop but just games that are, as I said, just not very good. I am, I admit, quite a snob when it comes to graphics. I don’t mean that it has to be photorealistic or absolutely beautiful, but there is a standard I expect to be a minimum. I realise this is not a thing some people worry about, but pixel art graphics that look too outdated I cannot deal with for instance. Again, this is a personal choice. I love pixel art games (Stardew Valley, Core Keeper, Dave the Diver) but for some reason I cannot play pixel art games that are not in more of a modern style and resolution.

Another thing I feel the developers who put demos up would benefit from (or more specifically I would benefit from it), is gameplay immediately in the trailer so you can see what the gameplay is and therefore decide if it is a game for you or not. Or just gameplay in general, the number of games that have no gameplay astounds me. The gameplay should catch your eye and then more info can follow in the trailer. I found the games that caught my eye had gameplay first then more about the game including story trailers and a more in-depth details about the mechanics.

As a sidenote, anywhere I mentioned a game I put its title in bold so you can easily see the games name in case you are interested and wanted to look it up.

Looking through the games in the rolling banner, the For You section of the demo storefront and in the charts, I noticed a few things about the games they highlighted. There were many repeats of either classic games or recent games often reskinned or altered in some way. I know this seems obvious but there were quite a lot. I will say that many of these were the usual quick cash grab (ones based on Peak, Vampire Survivors and\or card\dice games) but there were actually a lot that seemed to move the genre or game design forward in interesting ways. There were also many shop simulators including a pet store and train sim one as well as a Bike repair one and a Parking Garage Simulator. These were all in the style of the original shop sim games with varying amounts of differences. As with the last few years there have been many vampire survivor likes. Many in 2.5D basically the same as Vampire Survivors but reskinned while other seemed to go the route of Megabonk and make it 3D often with really nice cartoony graphics. There also was a few more comedy style ones where there was a story behind the game, such as the one where you play a drunk con man who has pretended to be a wizard and must protect a village from hoards but you have no spells, so you throw rocks instead.

There were quite a few based on classic games from the 70s and 80s such as Asteroids in the form of games like Leaks in Space. In fact there were just a lot of space games in general from shooter, sides scrollers and first-person horror games. There were a lot of horror games but it is October after all. There were also a lot of card games similar to Balatro and dice games.

A lot of AI games, some of it slop but a few just to have art and voice acting. These ranged from a quick cash grab to someone who has an idea for a game that seemed interesting but has no art or voice acting skills so needs to have a helping hand to create the game. I think there is a conversation to be had here, and I am not sure how I feel about it if I am honest. Without the AI the game would not be made but it is AI so where the line in the sand for that is I think will be up to each person individually. If publishers were more likely to greenlight games like this with smaller budgets and smaller profit expectations, then AI would be a great placeholder as a proof of concept, but publishers are just not taking chances on games like these that really won’t need many sales to create a profit but at the same time will not generate the level of profit many publishers expect.

On a side note, I will mention one publisher I have had a lot of time for. Hooded Horse seem to be a publisher that publishes many of these smaller, well curated games that other publishers would not touch. They have a selection of published games that have exceptional reviews (Shadow Gambit, Son’s of Valhalla and Old World) they also have a few great games in early access (Manor Lords, Endless Ledgend 2 and 9Kings) as well as some very interesting upcoming games (Whiskerwood, Drill Keeper and a prequal to a classic game Might and Magic Olden Era). In fact, all throughout my time looking at the games on the Nextfest demo list their name kept coming up.

Another striking thing is how many of the demos are games that are being self-published. I was left wondering if this is a sign of things to come or just purely a sign that publishers are not willing to take risks? If publishers are not willing to publish games and more established studios see that they are able to self-publish with a little more effort and therefore have no publisher to split profits with then might they follow suit and publish their games themselves?

I also saw many hidden object games where you have to search for hidden cats or dragons and so on but in more in the style of a colouring in sheet where you need to colour in the hidden object. There were a lot of cat games I found in general. Surprisingly there were quite a few football manager style games including games where you actively play the games as well or football games like Rocket League or Rematch.

There were some papers please style games such as a game called 1998 The Toll keepers Story and one that has been around a bit in the news Quarantine Zone. A surprise was the amount of army strategy games including Strategod from MicroProse. I didn’t know they existed anymore and ended up down a rabbit hole on who started the company, who bought the company through to who owns it today. The more you know.

There were also the obligatory selections of Boomer shooters including Boomer Grandma which looked like more fun that those games have been for me personally.  Unsurprisingly there were lots of Chinese games and they too fall into the category of all the other games with much slop but some stand out games as well. We are still being inundated by idlers like banana a notable one I saw was TBH Task Bar Hero that looked like it would be fun if you are into that sort of game.

There was a swathe of games that were a sequel to another game that I really didn’t think would have enough sales to have a sequel. I am surprised by Cocnut Simulator 2 for example. I didn’t know the original Coconut Simulator existed and wouldn’t have thought that it required a second crack at the whip. Also being horror month, I saw a lot of Anomaly games with strangeness as their tagline.

Below is a list of games I saw with a cursory scan that looked interesting ang caught my eye while going through the carousel:

Click to Civ – This seemed an interesting casual clicker game that might be fun for a few hours depending on how much they add to it and the eventual depth of the systems.

Raidbound – a rogue like autobattler with gear progression. Again might be fun for a few hours but if they add a lot of customisation options or some RPG style mechanics it might hold for a bit longer. The graphics and feel is a bit like Battle Brothers.

Word cross – PVP crossword game. Looks interesting if you are into crosswords and PVP

Lilith’s Game – Asymetrical chess where it looks like you play chess against Lilith and the chess pieces are different or the board is set up in such a way that she has the advantage. It looks like she can have multiples of chess pieces. It is a game where the board is set up and to win the game you need to work yourself out of the situation you find yourself in similar to the Dulingo chess my son does.

Dogpile – a Tetris style game where you drop different dogs on top of each other and when the same type of dog hit each other they grow in size. I assume the idea is similar to Tetris in you try to keep the play area clear of dogs. There is a cat version as well with Cat Merge

Out of Shape - Multiplayer coop Hole in the Wall game. Quite simple but many of these simple to play hard to master co-op games become popular due to the lowish skill ceiling and random fun that is created.

Hacked the Streamer - FMV detective game where a streamer gets hacked and you as the streamer need to figure out who the hacker is. If you like detective games and FMV this seems a well-made well-acted FMV game.

Hide Zone - PVP hunter game in the vein of Dead by Daylight where the victims turn into Props

This Aint Even Poker Ya Joker! – Another Balator like idle clicker. Not sure how it works but looks interesting

Simon the Sorcerer Origins – return of the point and click game but a prequal to all the games. It is Simon the Sorcerer point and click. More of the same.

SpongeBob Titans of the Tide – a SpongeBob game including the one and only The Hoff. It’s another SpongeBob game so I think you know what to expect.

Balance Plane – a game where you use your plane to courier items around with a sort of Tetris style packing system, increase your plane size incrementally, try to smuggle things in, pick your piolets and so on.

Bubsy 4D – I was never into Busby but there is a new one that looks like a 3D platformer

Servant of the Lake – This is A Rusty Lake game. If you enjoy their games, I imagine you will enjoy this.

Restless Lands – 2D side scroller that looks quite tight. The graphics are the type of pixel graphics that I just cannot play (a bit like Regions of Ruin or Kingdom New Lands)

Bandit - 2D side scrolling shooter that reminds me of the type of game you would have got in an arcade machine in the 80s and 90s.

Nook Fall West Town – interesting looking narrative adventure that has a style of its own.

The Oversight Bureau – interesting voice driven narrative adventure where you are trapped in a detention centre that corrects your social thought to make them more inline with the social norms and you need to escape.

Jackal – A Hotline Miami style game that is very visceral

Revelation of Decay – Top-down zombie survival similar to Core Keeper or Crahlands

Forestrike – martial arts roguelike that has a mechanic similar to Sifu I guess where you go back in time and learn from your mistakes.

Mystic – a bit rough aound the edges of a survival game based on Eastern fantasies similar to Outworld and a Kenshi mix

江山北望 – There is no English translation for the title. This is a Chinese FMV game which has English subtitles. Any of these I have seen before have been well made and really good. This looks well-acted and they tend to have multiple endings and story divergences. I believe these games often go along with a TV series in China, so they benefit from the bigger budgets of said TV series.

Roadside Research – This is kind of a shop simulator game with the same style of gameplay but in it you play co-op as aliens where you are researching humans for invasion and you try not to get caught. I thought it was interesting in its differences.

Escape from Ever After – Paper Mario like game where you need to escape from Forever After Inc. The game looks very well made and very pretty

Dusk Punk – a Citizen Sleeper style dice game with a narrative story

Angst – Don’t Starve survival game mixed with the Long Dark aesthetics.

Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era – a Heroes of Might and Magic Prequal by Unfrozen and Ubisoft and published by Hooded Horse. It looks old but new at the same time. I think this will be a definite for Heroes of Might and Magic fans and has a very high production value.

Marvel Comic Invasion – Streets of Rage, Battle Toads or Double Dragon style game with Marvel characters

Whiskerwood – another Hooded Horse game in the vein of Timberborn with anthropomorphic Mice building towns. Very intricate with large production chains like Timberborn.

Demos I tried:

A Planet of Mine – This really is a great little game. You can already see the bare bones of something that will become a nice little cozy game. There is still much that is greyed out in the menus like all the different animals and planet types. I imagine it will be a game that is simple to play but difficult to master.

Statecraft – a game similar to Suzerin or King of the Castle where you are given a choice that has positive or negative effects on your country’s resources cush as military, economy or infamy. The other parties (run by AI in this game) vote as well and the highest voted options wins. You have options available t o you to swing that vote in your favour using money, energy and popularity. It is a simple game with choices that seemed overwhelmingly negative. In the game I played of the 20 od so choices I had only one had a slightly positive spin to it. There is also an election every 8 turns but I was unsure if I played the same party all the way through or if I played the ruling party.

Tavern Keeper – This is a very good tavern builder in the style of the old Theme Hospital or Theme Park games. This includes the humour and oddball characters. This is a no brainer for people who like those Theme style games.

Astrobotanica – It is a basic survival exploration game. There are puzzles which are the main point of the game that I could see. You are working with CO2 instead of Oxygen and a Stamina gauge. The game I think will be interesting to explore the areas and speaking to the prehistoric people. The lack of inventory id a real pain. I find this more than other survival games. It wouldn’t be such an issue if there weren’t that many things to pick up. You start with 5 slots only although your tools do not take up space in your inventory neither do quest items which is good. I explored most of the map and couldn’t find the quest item I needed.

Coaster crash course – a physics-based game where you build roller coasters on different maps. It was fun for a bit, and I can appreciate the idea but for me it wore thin quickly as I wasn’t really that bothered to clear the map or to go on and get a better grade.

Quill>Pistol – Never got on with this one. The instructions were a little too obscure and although the tutorial opponent was rubbish you still had to wait until they had their turn and that made learning a little slow. It told you what you needed to do but didn’t tell you how. The mechanics around the actual shot are all to increase the accuracy of the shot and increase your potential to do damage. For instance, it explained you needed to reload the pistol. This makes perfect sense. It said you need to load the gunpowder, then the wad then the pellet, then the rod and then the primer. So, I placed the items on the pistol and then there was nowhere I could see that actually set the reload into motion. It didn’t explain you didn’t need to just close the book. Another system is where you have to triangulate the persons height and distance from you to increase accuracy another good system, I think. So, you have to move your left and right hands (one in a c shape and the other with its thumb up), swopping between them as they move around randomly and I once again couldn’t figure out how to set it in motion to add this to my accuracy rating for the shot. It was filled with fun looking systems, but they need to be made clearer.

Cataria – isometric cartoony Rimworld. You have settlers and different things to build. I would say it needs work. There are some basic quality of life systems that these days are just expected. You have to constantly and actively tell all the settlers what to do. Most games like this you have a jobs list and can assign particular villagers to particular jobs. Now this is, as with many of these demos, still early in production and there does seem to be quite a few rough edges to the game so I imagine they will add many things especially if they continue to take on board what anyone who plays the game says.

Norse Oath of Blood – This looks like it could be quite interesting. There is village building, missions, turn based combat with individual character progression with some RPG elements. The graphics are really good as it is an UE game. I imagine there will be a lot of things to this game when it releases in full.

Tears of Metal – This will be a really good rogue like game with many upgrades and weapons and charms and so on. I think this will rival the Hades games for some people as it is very visceral and the attacks are heavy and chunky. I feel this is one to watch.

The Last Caretaker – This is exactly what I thought it was going to be. The game is all about a robot on a station trying to get everything to work again. There are crafting items and cables that need linking and tools and everything you would expect from a game like this. It will be a game I will wait to play at full release rather than play a lot of the demo as I know I will enjoy it. It surprised me as I though it was set in space or somewhere else but instead you appear to be in the sea and on a boat or station of some kind. Like I said I will be playing this at launch so I didn’t want to be too spoiled.

14: Overmind – This is basically Breathage or Subnautica in space. It is very interesting, and I think once you learn the mechanics and how the systems work it will be a good game. For a work in progress it is very good. How much longevity there is depends on how many new systems, mechanics and interesting vehicles and so on they add.

Pokitaire – Poker solitaire hybrid in the style of Balatro. You clear the solitaire game by playing poker hands. Seems more interesting and different than the other versions of Balatro-likes that I saw. It has interesting combos and new poker hands to find and learn. The decks are not always your standard 52 card deck of cards. Stackflow was another game like Balatro but with Tetris instead of poker or card games.

Below is a list of games that were already on my Wishlist that I hadn’t mentioned before:

Tides of Tomorrow – I tried this demo a while ago. Looks interesting with a good story with narrative arcs but seemed a little rough.

Anno Pax Romana - Again I tried this demo a while ago and seems like more Anno but they have made a multitude of changes to quality of life additions even from Anno 1800. The game looks really pretty as well. There will be a semblance of a story to drive you along, but I will wait to see if Ubisoft does and Ubisoft and tries to monetise the hell out of the game. I wont be holding my breath though.

V Rising

I have recently been revisiting V Rising. I had played 60 odd hours of this game before but had the itch to return to it. This is a fantastic game. It is a great mix of top-down Diablo style ARPG with specials and attacks that are dependant of progression of spells and your weapons. It has a selection of weapons that can fit different playstyles each with their own move sets, my favourite is the spear which has a quick multiple hit repeat attack that can hit many enemies in a cone in front of you. This is mixed in with a group of increasingly more difficult boss enemies that each provide you with new craftable items, castle upgrades and new crafting machines and tables. This is all wrapped up in a survival game veneer. The game is single player, PVP, PVE, you can join public servers for both PVP and PVE games and you can host your own server for friends as well. There are also numerous options to customise the server for the game you would like to play.  

This game is made by Stunlock Studios, a Swedish game company, whose previous titles include Battlerite and Bloodline Champions. All three games are very positive on Steam. I would like to note that the game has DLC, but all story and game content is free. The DLC is all cosmetics and designed to be an added income for the developer. They did a crossover with Castlevania for instance that is £16.75 but contains a huge amount of cosmetics from new hairstyles to statues and other decorations, to variations to your shapeshifting forms, to a mount, stairs, paintings and so on. As an indication the DLC also has a very positive reviews on Steam. I think they just let their very talented artists free to go wild with aesthetic ambiance and they delivered. I have not bought any of the DLC cosmetics but looking at them (and the fact that the game itself is only £30 and I have seen it as low as £7.50 on sale) I would be seriously considering it even though I don’t buy cosmetic DLC. The game came out in May 2024 and they have actively been updating and balancing the game since then.

Also I played on keyboard and mouse, but controllers are 100% supported. I tried it and it worked fine, but I preferred to use my keyboard and mouse as I had learned the controls. It is also Steam Deck verified.

The basic story is vampires ruled the world until man destroyed them and forced them into a hibernation state. You are one of these vampires and you have awakened many years later and not only are you hungry, but you want revenge. You start in a crypt, and your first task is to extract yourself from your tomb. The game gently leads you through its mechanics and progression by setting you tasks that once completed net you a reward of new craftables. It doesn’t always explicitly tell you want to do (go here, do this, kill this boss and so on) but rather it suggests things that need to be done in order for you to get that next tier of reward (new flooring for your castle or crafting recipe and so on). The progression is steady but not too fast and there is often plenty to do along the way and you can often get lost in doing simple tasks like cutting down trees or collecting stone or any number of typical crafting game mechanics. This is similar to Valheim in that manner as I often found myself spending hours chopping trees or smacking rocks or cooper veins.

You start off basic with a wooden palisade and some simple crafting items but rapidly you are able to build your first Castle Heart and then some floors and then walls and thus you have a functional castle with walls and a roof over your head. With this the basics are out of the way, and you can start to spend time moving around the map, collecting the multitude of crafting items, killing humans and animals, taking on bosses and collecting new recipes and other items as well as slowly building up your vampire as you go.

Your vampire has many customisation options, from a pretty vampire that would be at home in Twilight, to one that will put the fear of the nightwalkers into their enemies, a sort of Malkavian vampire from Vampire the Masquerade. This includes many options for faces, hair, body, beards, skin colour and so on. Much of this doesn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things as mostly your vampire is seen from the top in an isometric view from quite high up, but we all like to customise our character even if we never see them. You can zoom in but there isn’t really any need to and being able to see further is really of more use than seeing how pretty your vampire looks in their new armour. I did figure out that you can change the colour of your armour to stand out somewhat if you want to so there is that.

The survival mechanics are baked into this game at its core, and everything revolves around them. The game is a survival game first and the crafting and progression are required for making headway. There are specific vampire survival systems that I feel set the game apart from other similar games.

As a vampire, the day night cycle is important to you as the sun, unsurprisingly, damages you. You can venture out in the daylight but if you are caught in direct sunlight, you will take significant damage. There is plenty of shade to move between in most areas but there are significant spaces that are more sun-drenched. Walking around in the daylight is generally fine and if you come across small groups of enemies this tends not to be a problem, but if you come across a large group of enemies or one of the roving bosses this can become more of a problem. There is no reason to hide away during the day, and the day night cycle is relatively quick, sometimes too quick if I am honest, especially if you are having to repeat a boss. Beating the bosses during the day is more than doable but the sun adds an extra thing to be thinking about and some of the bosses require you to pay close attention and use all your tools sparingly and timely, so the added stumbling block of the sun just adds another dimension.

As any great vampire, you also need blood in order to survive and here in lies one of the great mechanics of the game. Each human, animal or creature has different blood types. These types of blood (creature, warrior, rogue and so on) have different benefits when you fill up on them. Each blood has different levels as well so the higher the level of the blood (which is depicted as a percentage above the creature\person) the bigger the benefits. They split the bonuses up into 5 levels. For instance, the worker blood gives you an increase in resource yield at the first level and an increase in damage to resource objects at the second and so on therefore 2 levels of worker blood increases both the yield and speed of collection. The brute blood gives you a small increase to your primary attack at level one and a small amount of life leech at second level. These stack as the level of blood increases but as soon as you feed on a different enemy you lose your current blood, as well as its bonuses, and replace it with the new enemy’s blood along with its bonuses. This can often be useful dependant on what you are looking to do or your playstyle. You use a lot of magic, a decrease in cooldowns might be handy. Or maybe you are going to spend your time resource gathering, well a high-level worker blood is your drink of choice. There are later mechanics that make this swopping of blood easier as looking for high level blood enemies, especially ones that are specific to what you are currently looking for, can be quite difficult. Finding particular types of enemies is not difficult as they tend to be at selected areas on the map (rogues and warriors in bandit camps, scholars in the monasteries and workers in the mines and so on) but finding that one with a particularly high blood level that gives the top bonuses is a little more difficult as it appears to be random.

The blood is also used for a few vampire skills such as healing. This drains the blood from you in order to use it. The blood drains slowly over time anyway and this is increased when you are passively healing. Eventually you reach zero blood and unless you find a new blood source you will slowly die. There is plenty of warning about this and your blood level is prominently displayed in a Diablo style blood ball in the UI including the blood type and percentage.

Dying is not a great loss in V Rising, you can just revive at a teleporter or directly in your coffin which you build at your base and your dropped items (excluding your armour and weapons which you keep on you) will be nice and tidily bagged up waiting for you in a drawstring bag where you died but any boss will be full health again. A nice touch though, for me anyway, is that if you killed the boss and then died (to ads or other enemies) and you hadn’t had a chance to drain them of their blood (more on this later) they will be downed and waiting for you when you return to them. This happened more often than I would like to admit to myself or anyone else.

Your level is set by gear. It is based on your armour (chest, legs, boots, gloves, helmet, cape and ring) and weapon level. These are crafted at various points along the way and can be researched (using scrolls and books at a research table) in order to get different armours, some with set bonuses. This is another way you can further customise how your vampire plays. The benefit to this is if you are up against a boss and your current weapon, armour, spells or set bonus isn’t working it is nothing to swop out to a different set, weapon and spells in order to better defeat the boss. This has no drawback as the gear levels for the different weapons and armour are the same, but they just have different attributes. You are not locked into a class or weapon\armour set as the game is classless.

There is a ‘family tree’ of bosses, called V Bloods, that get progressively higher level and more difficult as you move up it. Each boss has an area they hang around or are they patrol in the case of the roving bosses. Each boss has details of things to craft or new production machines or work benches which are required for you to progress which you receive once you defeat them and feed on them. For instance, the first boss is an Alpha Wolf that allows you to change into a large wolf that moves around a lot quicker than you do. As a side note this is a bugbear of mine how slow your vampire is. They seem to saunter around the map and there is no sprint\run button. The wolf moves faster but it is still a little slower than I would like personally. The second tier of boss has 3 enemies of the same gear level and for instance on the second tier is Keely the Frost Archer and defeating and feeding on her gives you blueprints for the Tannery (to turn pelts into leather) as well as the recipe for leather, the Travelers wrap coat and a waterskin used for potions. You also receive a Tier 1 spell point for one of the spell schools specifically Frost spells from her.

There is a helpful V Blood boss tracking system in the game where if you highlight a V Blood you wish to track in the V Blood menu you get a periodic blood line that comes from the direction of the boss. It also shows information on the boss and a vague distance to the boss (imminent, far Very far to the west and so forth) in the top lefthand corner of the screen. If you are close enough in level to the boss it will also show you what you will receive for defeating the boss.

There are 6 Spell schools: Blood, Frost, Chaos, Unholy, Illusion and Storm. Each has 9 spells some of which are similar in use (AOE or throwable type spell as an example) with others being unique to that spell school (such as summoning spells). The spells work similar to Diablos spells and special moves, so they are not unique in that regard. There is the usual breakdown of summon spells and spells that add damage over time and others that apply a debuff or status effect. Although these are still interesting this, I feel, is the least unique portion of the game.

I feel the developers got the difficulty spike just right. You very quickly start feeling like a badass and that you can take on anyone and then get owned by a roaming boss a few levels above you. I never felt like the higher-level enemies are impossible as I felt they were in Assassin’s Creed where if the enemy you are fighting is a few levels higher than you, you just cannot seem to do damage to them but then when you equal their level all of a sudden you destroy them. You can defeat any of the bosses with skill (something I sometimes felt I lacked with a few of the bosses) but it is certainly more challenging.

On the subject of difficulty there are 3 starting levels to choose from; Relaxed, Normal and Brutal. These are distinctly different and the contrast between Normal and Brutal is quite stark. The enemies on Normal are definitely doable and even the bosses are easy enough. But the difficulty on Brutal ramps up quite drastically. If you enjoy a difficult game, then this will test you. I believe you are handed all the tools to enable you to complete all the tasks and defeat the bosses, but it will require skill. I am sticking to Normal on this playthrough as I am just having fun.

I think the game is beautiful. The graphics are clean and sharp, and all the UI elements have all the information you need. There is some similarity to games like Diablo with the UI such as the blood ball telling you how much blood you have left (unlike in Diablo or POE where it indicates your health) with your health as a bar above the ball with a numerical indication as well as the bar. To the right of the blood ball is your basic attack, special weapon attack, your 2 spells and a third specialist spell that opens up later all of which shows the cooldown left once you use them. This also comes up on the screen above your character if you try to use it before it is ready, so you know how much time is left until you can use it again. You have a dodge as well on space. To the left of the blood ball are slots 1-8 for your weapons and items (like a fishing rod). There is a list of objectives and the current boss you are tracking in the top left of the screen and in the top right is a mini map and the current time of day broke into day and night. I find it all very unobtrusive but easy to read if you need the information.

Building in the game is simple but very effective. It uses a click and place system that works extremely well. Although you won’t be able to build Valheim style buildings where you place every single block, there is a certain amount of freedom to build using the Lego style system where you place different types of floors, walls, windows, and so on. They have added many quality-of-life things like a treasure room where you store all your items in chests (which you can label) and any room that is touching the treasure room you can use items directly from those chests. There is also a great system where each crafting machine gets bonuses to speed and cost of production as long as certain criteria is met. These are: is the machine indoors and does it have the relevant flooring. For instance the sawmill and crusher need to be indoors and on a workshop floor in order for them to receive a 25% increase in speed of production and a 25% decrease to materials used respectively. This make a huge difference in the long run and getting this set up early is just a no brainer and beneficial.

On the subject of production this is where I feel the game lets itself down a little and can, in time, feel grindy. It is a bit like an GOTCHA or game like Warframe where gaining resources, the amount of resources and the time it takes to process those resources is just too much and too long making it feel really grindy. For instance it takes 12 Stone to make 1 Stone Brick and 1 Stone Dust. This changes to 9 Stone with the correct flooring. To build one floor tile you need either 2 or 4 Stone Bricks. So to build a 3X3 room you need 18-36 Stone Bricks (that’s 432 Stone or 324 Stone if you use the right tiles in the room ). A wall is 9-10 Stone Bricks so for the same room you will need 12 walls so that is 120 Stone Bricks (made from either 1440 or 1080 Stone). So to build a 3X£ room with 12 walls around it (the castle entrance or doorway is the same as a wall) you will need upwards of 1872 Stone. Now each Stone outcrop gives you a 100-150 Stone yield and this take maybe 30s to destroy. That’s 5-6mins of resource gathering just for a basic 3X3 room. Then the grinding of the Stone to Stone Bricks takes 20s (16s if you have the correct flooring) so to make 156 Stone Bricks it will take 52mins (20s X 156 Stone Bricks divided by 60). This is very much an early game issue as once you have built a castle and floors and so on you don’t need nearly as many bricks and as long as you continue to keep the grinders going when you can, you should continue to have bricks when you need them. But this is just one of multiple craftable items (there is Planks from Wood, Whetstones, Copper and Iron Ingots, Sulphur and so on) so the time sink can very quickly add up. That is why getting the correct floor tiles can make such a difference. Just by getting the machine indoors and using the correct tile you can change the above example from 52 minutes to 41minutes, the 25% decrease in time is significant.

Another thing to note about building is you can build up. You can have 3 floors (up to 6 by changing the server settings). This does open up many options for creative building, but obviously you will need more of those pesky Bricks and Planks.

There is so much to speak about in this game. There are so many small nuances that the game gets right. The grind can be a drag at times while waiting for stuff to process but I find in general there is always something to do (usually resource gathering). I do wish the blood you feed off of lasted a little longer and that those higher-level blood enemies were more common or at least you managed to get what you need faster to make that be less of a drag on your time. You can get times where you just feel you are waiting constantly for the game to get stuff done so you can progress but there is a lot that is interesting in this world that I feel you can get lost in it quite easily. The V Blood enemies are interesting and although I have never actually completed the game I cannot really comment on the last few bosses as I still had at least 20 V Bloods to go. You can fly through quicker if you follow guides and don’t faff around as much as I do or spend hours building a castle. The world has many unique areas and enemies and although the materials and crafting can be slow it is interesting, has unique ideas and all the resources feel needed and thoughtful rather than a waste of time with slightly different variants of the same thing. I know this will be a game I will play again and again (although I feel I will play for 10-15hrs then get my fill) and I will be interested as to what Stunlock Studios do next.

Hollow Knight and Silksong

I played Hollow Knight in 2017. Not at launch but a bit after. I went in expecting not to like it that much, but it was an inexpensive game, and I thought I would give it the old college try as they say. It came as a surprise to me that I really liked it. I am really not very good at metriodvanias at all. I don’t have the reflexes and my hand-eye coordination is just not up to par with what you need but I did well enough to embarrass myself only a little. I was also at the time predominantly keyboard and mouse so I was pretty rubbish on controller which doesn’t help.

There are many things about this game that people find fantastic and I feel it richly deserves the praise it gets. The art style and stylistic direction are amazing, from the world to the characters, to the subtle story telling through a mix of visual cues and cryptic conversations right down to the world language they created that draws you in. The way it leads you through the game, gently tugging you in the right direction when you need it and seem to have lost your way, is masterful. I struggle with many of these types of games and often feel I am aimlessly wondering through the world but in this game, I felt that whenever I was flailing a little and losing my way there was a developer performing a little head nod in the direction I need to go with subtle clues or glaring empty areas in my map. In most metroidvanias I just get frustrated. The backtracking, even through really beautiful environments, frustrates me and games such as Ori made this easier with fast travel that alleviated this a little. I often suffer through the controls and just don’t have the dexterity I need to perform as well as I would like to. The issue is I always I lose interest in the end. This happened in Hollow Knight as well but I feel that when it happened I was more disappointed in myself that I drifted away from it and it is a bugbear of mine that after almost 30hrs of the game, I never finished it.

When I saw Silksong was in development I was really happy for the developers. They had made an incredible game and deserved to be able to continue making games. This was the type of stories we all love in gaming, a developer that made the game they wanted to, smashed it out of the park and because of their hard work and creative vison, they created a situation where they were able to make another game. Everyone was rooting for them and in no time at all the snowball began to roll downhill and before we knew it Silksong was the most wishlisted game on Steam. On top of that people were willing to give them time to make the game right and as the developers wanted it to be. People didn’t rant and rave on about where the game was, there was only a woeful, quiet constant question of where the game was every time there was a games showcase of any kind.

After multiple proof of live showings, a date was eventually announced and the world lost it. The game sold like mad even though it was on Game Pass. The consensus overall was it was an amazing game in a year of amazing games. It is ‘very positive’ on Steam with a review number of 83 000. The major gripe seems to be difficulty.

I thought this might be the opportunity to redeem myself (in my own eyes at any rate) so I downloaded it on Game Pass (although it is only around £17 or $20). The game is great but now I am 8yrs older than I was when I played Hollow Knight and to no one’s great surprise my dexterity and reflexes have sadly not got any better. My personal issues with the original game remain.

My overall feeling before and after playing Silksong was it is more Hollow Knight, and this is definitely not a bad thing at all. It has all the comparable art style and characters that fill the world. Although there are differences in the movement and combat mechanics there are similar enough for someone coming from Hollow Knight to be comfortable in saying this is familiar to them. The dialog is alike in how the characters interact with the main character in both games and the characters individual personalities are similar as well. The map and metroidvania mechanics are the same and so on and so on.

I think the main issue I had with both games was with the control mechanics. I actually like the combat and acquisition of different skills, charms and the upgrade system. The issue I had with both games is I felt that the game never did what I wanted it to. The jump has a system where the longer you push the button the higher or further you jump. Although I liked this, I often felt that the difference between jumping too high\long compared to too short\low respectively was too tight. Again, I need to stress that this is a me issue. I couldn’t quite get the timing right and often jumped too high into spikes or not long enough to jump over an enemy. Specifically, the bounce on something (like an enemy or the red metal flowers in Silksong) was erratic in when it worked. I would push down and attack on the controller to do a downward attack in order to bounc on the thing I needed to and then do it again in order to bounce off another item to get higher and instead of doing a downward attack I would just whiff an attack in the mid-air. I did see other people struggling with this exact problem and many people said the solution was to use the D-pad as they had had better success with it. I am too well trained now after many years of using the analogue sticks to do this. I also never really liked the D-pad as I always felt it was too imprecise.

As to the difficulty that others complained about, I didn’t get far enough into Silksong to comment on this, but I can see that my personal difficulty would be fighting the controls and my lack of dexterity and timing. This is how boss fights and even basic enemy fights were in Hollow Knight. I would often end up hitting enemies and taking damage on touch from the enemies, because of these issues I have with the controls and be left feeling like I couldn’t get the game to do what I wanted it to do, and I was fighting the controls rather than enemies. To make it worse, I would from time to time know what it felt like to do it correctly because I would every now and then get the controls to do what I wanted them to do.

One of my biggest bugbears, not specific to this game by any measure, is the damage on touch. This has been an annoyance of mine from the first time I saw it. It makes no sense at all. If the enemy took damage as you do, maybe this would make more sense. I get why this is a thing, but I cannot get behind it as games that do not do this do not suffer from any side effects but only benefits. They could make your player character or the enemy move or dodge each other with a sweet ballet move or ninja sidestep. I know damage on touch can add another level of difficulty and encourages accuracy in your movements, but I cannot get onboard with this.

I doubt I will go back to Silksong not because it is a bad game, as I think for may people this is game of the year material, and to be fair I can see why. I believe quite strongly that Team Cherry did exactly what they needed to do in order to make this game successful. It is more Hollow Knight with mechanics that are different and yet similar enough to please old fans and elaborated enough on the game to keep both the old fans and any new fans happy at the same time. I think we have seen enough sequels that have not done this successfully to know this is no small feat. I hope Team Cherry go on to make a new game in this world. I am not sure but I will assume they will continue to make metroidvanias, but I would love to see what it would look like if they were to bring their world, attention to detail and storytelling to another genre. I think about Moon Studios move from metroidvanis to soulslike ARPG when moving from Ori to their new game No Rest for the Wicked (which I actually really like). This game has a tug to it though and when I think about it I want to play it, but I know if I were to return to it I would remember why I sucked at it and the frustration would just set back in and I would quit.