Steam Next Fest - Day 3

I'm back with more first impressions of game demos made available during this Steam Next Fest. This one is longer than yesterday so I hope you're not doing anything for the next little while.

Minami Lane

Out of the gate, I'd like to point out this game is not a city builder. It's a puzzle game with city building elements. I've seen a number of games that were a mix of puzzles and a builder of some kind in the last year. Some of the negative reviews for them were the same, "this is not a city builder/transport tycoon-style game!" So I'm putting that out there, do my part in helping set expectations! I hate to see games with potential losing foothold because either the devs/publishers were bad at marketing the game or people lacked reading comprehension to realize what they were actually buying.

Now with that bit of a rant out of the way.

I liked the vibe of the game. Its pastel colour palette helps reinforce the feeling of cute and calm. In this game, you grow out what I assume is the titular stretch of residential street. Each day, you have to decide which building to add, and you only get to add one.

Then once you customize the building's look, that's it. From what I could tell, you can't go back and change how it looks so you better like what you picked. At least for the shops, you can change and adjust the single product they sell through the day.

Once you're set, you start the day and you watch the residents mill about, visit the shop(s), park(s), each other. This is where the timed element of the game comes into play. During this phase, you have to keep your eye out for the cheeky tanuki disguising as household objects. Also, trash. You don't have to do anything of this. However, this could easily make up for 1/3 of your profit for th day. When you're only getting about $25-50, that could make or break your ability to buy that next building.

This game is also objective based. That's the driving force in how you choose to grow out Minami Lane.

My wishes (aka gripes)

I wish the daily report would show me a list of residents' impressions and responses. Right now, the only way I can see that is by clicking on them as they walk by. But if they're right next to the edge of the street, they disappear and I'll never get to know what they thought about the 3 noodle, 3 pork, 3 shrimp ramen combo I set up 😢

That said, I also find when I do get their opinion, it's not too exact. They'll say they appreciate the low, affordable price, but satisfaction drops the moment the ramen I set up in the shops was double the base cost.

I still stand by my desire to see a list of opinions or how the different residents ranked the different categories. When I have to chase down a sneaky tanuki hiding as a gamepad, and cleaning up after these people, and the street is already about 6-7 buildings long, I don't have time to chase them down and try to poll them for their opinion on the products they just bought!

...I thought I had more gripes, but really this is the biggest one I can remember. And this "mini-review" has grown into a full blown one, so I'm just going to move onto the next one!

Minami Lane on Steam

NIMRODS: GunCraft Survivor

Yeah, another Survivor/bullet heaven game! This one does give you the option to toggle auto aim and auto fire on and off. That said, I wish they took a page from Halls of Torment's book, where I can override the auto-aim when I'm providing the appropriate input (the right stick, in this case).

At first, I wasn't entirely sure how to progress in this game. I mean, I know the basic "kill enemies, get exp items they dropped, level up!" The problem was the level up options didn't feel straight-forward at the start. Like there were some stats some item boosted but it wasn't too clear *how* it's supposed to make me kill better. It was one of those learn-by-play experiences, which I didn't entirely hate. If anything, I look back on it with a bit of amusement...because this game let's you return to the fight with a drone companion!

I don't know if this is offered to the player after their very first run, but once you return from the first run defeated or victorious, you find your gun at your feet. Pick it up, but you can't fire it. The game pops up and tries to tell you about the drone, something about them using your gun from the previous run. Okay, so I head over to the machine with the drone-looking device on it and place the gun down. I had rescued a buddy, and turns out they sell weapon unlocks. I didn't make enough in the last run so back in I went.

The first run, I went with flamethrower thinking it'd be awesome. It was not. It was too limited in ammo and the wait to "reload" was way too long. We're talking about a minute, maybe more. In a game that's constantly throwing tougher and tougher enemies at you every second, a minute felt like an eternity before I could use it again. I'm glad the drone enjoyed it enough. I, on the other hand, found great appreciation with the grenade launcher add-on (or whatever the game called them). I played with auto-aim and auto-fire on because I'm lazy 🙃. It did present its own set of challenges with active abilities like lobbing grenades from the launcher. I got the timing and positioning down. My drone and I were mowing enemies down and I made it much farther.

I had enough money to unlock a gun. Rinse and repeat. Didn't do as well this time but I'm picking up momentum.

Anyway, all this is to say, NIMRODS is a nice addition to the twin-stick shooter/bullet heaven genre (depending on how you configure the game). Having a combat companion you can customize with guns you've built in previous runs (you can even store them too for later use) is not a concept I've ran into before. I felt this game handled the companion customization in a pretty engaging way. I also appreciate how it made me feel like I'm not wasting my really good build if only I hadn't stepped in the wrong direction!

I'm looking forward to this one. No solid release date, sadly.

Have I ever mentioned patience is not a virtue I possess? Well, I've mentioned it now. 🙃

NIMRODS: GunCraft Survivor on Steam

Four more days to go...

Well, I'm going to stop here. There are other game demos I want to review but this one grew way longer than I intended!

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