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It's day two out of seven in the Steam Next Fest. I know I said I would write one review per day but I also want to see if I can squeeze more. It won't be as long as yesterday's but I hope no one minds!

My first gripe with this demo is how tiny the text is. I have poor vision and I'm probably overdue for a prescription update. That said, the typeface they chose doesn't scale well. The terminals (serifs) makes the letter harder to read when it only takes up 1/8th of the screen.

Other than the UI not being Deck-friendly, this game evokes the familiarity with Hades, but with an East Asian influence instead. The only language available in full audio is Simplified Chinese, as indicated on Steam so I'm inclined to assume it's based on Chinese legends and mythos. It's also nice to see other cultures' wealth of stories and characters being tapped for retelling. Of course, I could just be very biased because I am Chinese by birth.

My partner actually told me about this one before Next Fest even started. I played this a couple days ago, but I think this is still a pretty good place to write about my impression of the demo!

My first impression: love it. It mildly reminded me of Farm Together, but there's more of an open world aspect to it than that game had. It not so subtly advertises multiplayer (co-op) capabilities right in the title menu, but it's not available in the demo. Not a surprise there, really.

It also reminds me of the game, "No Place Like Home." I enjoyed it during its Early Access phase, but then they changed how "dungeons" were unlocked and it felt like they never took a pass at quests to make accessing them more obvious. I didn't have that trouble with Lightyear Frontier. In fact, this game doesn't even have any real combat, unless you count spraying down falling weeds and rising noxious bubbles combat.

In this game, you're collecting things either on foot or in your mech. You have, what I assume to be an AI, in a satellite orbiting the planet, to chat it up in your ears. You quickly get a sense that you, and the AI, are effectively on your own. Sure there are others around, but Earth? They don't really care about us, all the way out here on some far-flung habitable planet.

You're putting together machinaries to process resources, gathering seeds, building up a farm, etc. It's rather standard fare for a crafting-to-progress game. As far as I can tell, there's no terrain manipulation. Resources do replenish themselves, and you can speed this up by providing food...at specific locations. I don't want to delve more into that, I'm already spoiling.

I think I've blathered on a bit. Bottom line, I love that this is a chill, casual crafting game. This is something I would like to play as I wind down for the night, getting ready for sleep. Well, as long I don't have to deal with any hazardous events out of the blue!

Best part is, it already has a release date! March 19th of this year!

Oh boy. So I tried this on Steam Deck first, while I was winding down for sleep earlier. I didn't total my space truck! But I did end up "off-roading" and hit some debris. My truck didn't like that.

Second time around, about a couple hours ago, I tried it again. Fresh playthrough. At least stuff like how to get out of the seat didn't take me minutes to figure out because the demo didn't say anything about that. In case any of you are trying, you look at the seat and interact with it. I found looking down at it had the most consistent success rate.

Maneuvering that truck-shaped starship wasn't as bad the second time around either. This time, I followed the road to the station nearby. This is where the game decided to throw in the CB radio tutorial. You can't pilot your truck-ship while you have the radio on you but it expects you to respond after a couple lines after your first response. I crashed into a drone of some kind and incurred $200 in fines AND hull damage!

And this is where I did something real dumb. I got into my suit, walked out the airlock and watched my truck-ship sail on by. Yup. I forgot to stop the ship first. 🤦

And that's where I am now. Have to say, the experience is nicer on the PC! Or maybe I wasn't in such a rush. Now that I know what to expect, maybe my experience on the Deck will be smoother too 🤞 Definitely looking forward to this game. I never played a truck sim before, although I believe I may own one. I like that this is that, but in space!

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Steam Next Fest - Day 2

Realm of Ink

Lightyear Frontier

Star Trucker