🎮 Andre's February 2024 Steam Next Fest Demos Special ⌛
Pepper Grinder, Balatro, Harold Halibut, Coridden, Chicken Police: Into the Hive!, Stormgate, Islands of Insight, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge, Copycat, News Tower
🎮February 2024 Steam Next Fest Demos
Welcome to a very special edition of my newsletter covering demos showcased during the Steam Next Fest from February 5th - 12th 10am PT.
In the interest of getting this newsletter out before the Steam Next Fest ends and playing as many of these demos as possible, I’m going to have a very abbreviated description of the games plus brief thoughts. If you want to play any of the demos below, please do so before February 12th 10am PT to make sure you can. A lot of the demos are usually removed after the Steam Next Fest Ends. I put a hourglass timer⌛ next to the game demos I know for sure will be removed. The release date is next to the title.
Steam Demos are FREE!
If this is your first time playing a Steam demo or trying to locate one, click the Steam links and you should see a green box that has the demo link for the game. After clicking it will ask you to launch the Steam app to start the download. There you go!
Potential Workaround Tip! If the green box is missing, sometimes there is a demo link on the right sidebar that might still work.
My Playthroughs of Each Demo is Embedded
My demo playthroughs for all of these were done while streaming on Twitch.tv, so you may hear me talking to chat during some of them.
I played a few more demos than the ones listed below but they were duds, so I won’t include them right now.
Pepper Grinder (2024)
Pepper Grinder is a really fun and relaxing platformer. More relaxing than I anticipated, as you have to drill your way and jump to the platforms ahead of you. It was far more fluid and easier to control than you might think just by looking at it. Controller is best for this. Since you have to do a lot of drilling and string together jumping and drilling, I thought originally you had to hold the drill button down. Luckily, you don’t have to hold it down as you drill through a path area, only on the exit. This makes the experience much better. I highly recommend this.
News Tower
(Early Access: February 13, 2024 )
News Tower is an interesting one. The premise is you’re building a newspaper business in Brooklyn to carry forward a family legacy. The newspaper simulation part of the game is the fun part, as you hire journalists to send to places to gather stories. The game then does a simulation of the reporting/editing process on a timer and once that is finished you have to assign and arrange the article to the newspaper press to print. The tedious part is building the tower and having to manage the placements of every object and how it affects the workers. This includes building new floors, toilets, and having to manage noise reduction for the workers if they are near a machine. This was kind of annoying and took away from the newspaper managing part of it. Luckily, this is entering Steam Early Access, so hopefully the tower management part will get toned down.
Balatro (February 20, 2024)
Balatro was by far one of my favorite demo playthroughs. This is a single player roguelike experience that sort of feels solitaire-poker. All the rules of poker are there, as you go against the machine to win chips and beat every round. Every round gets tougher, but you can modify your cards and scoring multipliers for each type of poker scoring result. In my playthrough (below), I had a run where my “Two of a Kind” score was juiced up higher than others. In a normal poker game you would choose “Three of a Kind” over “Two of a Kind”, except in Balatro it forces you to change how you would normally judge a poker hand depending on what modifiers you were able to get. This is a really fun game and has shot up on my radar. I highly recommend this.
Harold Halibut (2024)
The most negative thing I have to say about the Harold Halibut demo is that it takes up 54GB. An obscene size for a demo, but it was worth it! This is a game I’m incredibly hyped for and this demo didn’t change that. Playing as Harold Halibut, a maintenance man stuck on a spaceship in an alien ocean, you walk around doing tasks and talking to people. It’s a fully voiced point-and-click game, but the biggest hook of the game is how the game was made, handmade. This mixes stop motion animation with clay figures and modern motion capture with handmade set pieces. For most of the demo I was in awe of the visuals. The gameplay wasn’t bad either, but it could use a slightly better user interface and character nameplates. I usually avoid point-and-click games, but this one is still on my hype list after the demo. If you can fit this demo on your PC, play it! (Or just watch me.)
Coridden (2024)
Coridden is a new action-RPG that I recently discovered, so I’m glad I was able to play a demo of it so soon. The major hook of this is you can turn into certain beasts that you kill and in combat easily switch between human and beast. Both the human form and beast form have their own skill trees, which are very interesting. I was skeptical going into the demo, but I finished my demo experience very satisfied with the game flow. The user interface might need work, but it’s starting in a very good place. Definitely try this if you like action-RPGs.
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge (2024)
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is an interesting one. It’s about building a frog sanctuary and trying to restore the wetlands to be more habitable. The main gameplay loop of the game is building furniture to attract frogs, then feeding the frogs to try to tame them. Part of the gameplay loop is you have to build ponds and plants to get food for the frogs, plus collect berries and other ingredients to make food to sell for gold that is then used to buy items to attract frogs to your sanctuary. There is also a frog breeding feature that involves a tic-tac-toe game. My main complaint about this one is that it’s a bit boring after some time and it has a very ‘mobile game feel’ to the gameplay. You have to click insects that appear on the pond before they disappear in order to stash them for food. I’m indifferent about this game. It’s a nice concept, but I probably won’t bite on this one when it releases.
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge on Steam
Copycat (TBA)
Copycat, a depressing cat simulator. This is another weird one. You play as a shelter cat (you choose the cat) picked by an old lady because her original cat ran away from her. On the plus side, the visuals and controls of the cat are actually very good. It’s not too long into the demo when the game actually teases that you will run away from the old lady. Just to make it more uplifting, the old lady coughs and collapses due to emphysema and you get to make a few decisions as the cat. I actually played the complete demo of this and I still have no clue what to expect from this game as a final game. The cat simulation portion of the game is actually excellent though.
Chicken Police: Into the Hive ⌛ (TBA)
Chicken Police: Into the Hive! is a sequel to Chicken Police - Paint it RED! This is a fully voiced point-and-click detective game. The good thing about this is you don’t need to have played the first game. One of the major features of the first game were the black and white noir visuals, I really liked that. Into the Hive! gives the option to toggle between Noir and color. For my playthrough (below) I played with the color on, which was pretty good. Playing as Marty McChicken, it’s a clucking funny time. The dialogue and voice acting is incredibly funny, plus the anthropomorphic characters are very well done. I have nothing but good things to say about this. I actually had no idea about this sequel until a few days ago, but this is definitely on my radar now!
Chicken Police: Into the Hive! on Steam
Stormgate ⌛ (Early Access: 2024)
Stormgate is a real-time strategy game developed by Frost Giant Studios, which includes former developers of Starcraft 2 and WarCraft III. This is an open beta playtest of the game and clearly they have some ways to go before the game is fully ready. The financial model of Stormgate is free-to-play with a focus on online versus modes and a 3v3 commander vs AI mode (like Starcraft 2). Campaign mission packs will be sold as an add-on eventually. Full disclosure, they recently did a Kickstarter and raised $2.3 million dollars. I was one of the backers. Right now they only have two races in the game, the Vanguard and Infernals. So far I’ve only played as the Infernals (below) and I’m still trying to get used to the game. The Vanguard is similar to Terran and the Infernals are similar to Zerg in Starcraft. The hotkey setup is a bit different and trying to get used to it. Generally, the game plays like a cross between Starcraft 2 and Warcraft III minus the heroes in versus mode. I’ve enjoyed what I played of it so far with the understanding the game is far from finished.
This Open Beta Playtest is definitely expiring on Monday, but I will still be able to play afterwards due to me backing the kickstarter. The bad news is I can’t talk about the game or record anything after Monday, I will just have to quietly enjoy the closed beta process
Islands of Insight (February 13, 2024)
Islands of Insight is an open world puzzle game with multiplayer components. This was a game I had my sights on from the first trailer I saw and I’m glad to have played it. The game features islands filled with puzzles that you have to complete to help level up your character and gain more powers. The multiplayer component is you see other players running around the islands with their character level. You can communicate with them but I didn’t try. The puzzles I did weren’t entirely difficult. I spent more time trying to figure out what the goal of the puzzles were than the puzzles themselves. It was weird leveling up and getting a double-jump in a puzzle game, which then enabled me to reach other places to get secret items. The flow of the game was relaxing.
My biggest complaint is when reaching the big island full of quests you can only take one quest from the quest giver. This sort of takes part of the fun out of it because you have to be a little more selective about what puzzles to do, as certain puzzles fit the other quests you couldn’t pick up. In a game like this you just want to do every possible puzzle you come across without having to skip one due to a quest mission reason. Still, I really like the game and I want to play the full version. I was immersed into the game the entire time. If you like puzzle games definitely check this one out.
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[LINKS CHANGE: I changed the style of hyperlink presentation for the whole newsletter. I want to switch to this standard style instead to give the links a little more pop. If you’re a reader that prefers the other style, please let me know and I will consider switching it back.]
Did you miss my last issue of Andre’s Gaming Odds & Ends from February 7?
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Andre’s Gaming Odds & Ends:
More Steam Next Fest Demo Feedback
February 2024 Game Hype Rankings
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More From Andre Shortcast #03
Discussing My New Workflow More
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