Oh Boy, it's Steam Next Fest - Day 1

It's that time again, Steam Next Fest! Where a good chunk of games put out playable demo for the masses to try out and see if it's something they want to wishlist and wait ever-so-patiently for it to come out!

Last Next Fest I paid attention to, Enshrouded really took the audience by storm. I say, it worked pretty well, since I ended up getting the game on Early Access release. I'm also waiting on Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. That one had their demo out about a week early, but it was available until a good couple weeks after Next Fest was over. That's another one I'm waiting on.

After trying a few demos on the PC and wished I had played it on my Deck, I've finally got it in my head to install a bunch of them on the Deck. I'm going to try and put up a batch of quick impression reviews each day for this week on the different demos I'm trying. Keep in mind that, unless I say so, these were tested on the Steam Deck.

Gatekeeper

This game strongly reminds me of Risk of Rain 2. You get the artifacts (relics) that boosts your stats or does extra things like firing a projectile every time you trigger the condition for it. The thing is, I'm really enjoying it on the Deck. It's basically like RoR2 but more ARPG, top-down, so I'm not too worried about aiming in a 3D space. I don't aim well in 3D with controllers.

So you go around, kill enemies, pick up these artifacts that the game actually points out to you. Or maybe that's a thing because of the character I chose (Nidum). And you move onto the next area.

This isn't like one of those auto-aim auto-shooters (bullet heaven, as I and some others have taken to calling it). You aim for yourself and you choose which abilities to use. Every evolution (level) gives you a choice between 3 straight stat upgrade, like increasing health, regen, movement speed, etc.

The only thing I don't like is the lack of ability to save mid-run. I want to try the other demos, but I don't want to end the run early. I could throw it, but that's just closing the game with some reward potential. My current run is over 30 minutes now. I'd like to take a break! Give us a mid-run save!

Still, this is probably one of the games I'm keeping on my radar. It's slated to release in Q1 2024...which we're currently in. I hope they figure out a concrete release date soon!

Oh, and that run took me almost an hour to come to a conclusion. I didn't beat it, I died!

More to come!

There may be more reviews I'll write up for Day 1, or I might just limit it to one demo a day that I write up about. If I limit it to one demo a day, then my opinion of them would be somewhere along the extremes (good and bad).

I think one a day would be healthier in the long run. Don't wanna burn myself out writing these up when all I really want to do is to play and try allll these games!

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