Was there another game just like Breachway that came out recently? Maybe I’m thinking of that game.
Very bold for it to release on March 22nd.
Yeah. Cobalt Core, which is thematically similar and also a deck builder.
I was left pretty underwhelmed with this demo. Partly because it’s a very extended tutorial and it just introduces new features too slowly. But I’m also just not sure it’ll blossom into an interesting city builder. Add to that so much of the interface wants you to remember what these very alien buildings are just by sight that I think this is likely a pass for me.
But hey, two(Breachway and Millenia) out of three likely buys based on NextFest demos is pretty good.
I ignored this game at first but now I have a Steam Deck and I’m interested again!
Shapez 2 is an automation/builder game that focuses on building different shapes. Go figure. For some reason, making this abstract (as opposed to something like Factorio) makes it easier for me to grasp and keeps me involved.
Of course there is a Steam Next Fest demo, with around two hours of fun. I completed the demo and recommend it!
Mentioned in the Space Game discussion thread but in case you don’t frequent there, I’ve started seeing some videos for a demo of Star Trucker. You play a trucker in space, hauling stuff around the stars. On what looks to be interstellar highways (space lanes?). The worldbuilding looks really sweet.
At any rate, the demo is getting raves.
I tried the Star Trucker demo last night. It has a Rebel Galaxy vibe to it, sans combat of course. I’m certainly intrigued.
I’ll need to figure out how to tweak the controls a bit. My brain can’t get used to the default WASD configuration. Probably best played with a game controller.
ObsidianAnt did a video about it, looks like fun.
To my great consternation I notice there is no entry for Delta V on this board. This is unacceptable and must be rectified at once!
The gameplay is somewhere between Asteroids and Escape Velocity. You’re a Miner on Saturn, hoping to strike it rich in the rings. The physics and mechanics are firmly on the hard side of Sci Fi, and besides shooting rocks so you can hoover them up, there’s plenty of things that happen in the rings.
There’s 2 DLCs that change the Crew Portraits (Anthropogenesis and Deep Weeb) into Furry and Anime flavours respectively.
To me, the game will be forever etched into my memory as “that game about Furries mining around Saturn”, but that’s probably due to my highly questionable taste in salacious high-quality artwork.
The patch notes for the game are usually a delight to read, as they’re completely in-universe and quite frequently mention shonky hardware, software updates to ship systems and new available ship hulls.
Apparently I own it! It’s in my “on deck” group with (I’m not kidding) 547 other games.
It sounds like you already know the game is great and recommend it? Or did you mean to post in this thread that it’s probably worth checking out?
Here’s the other Indie games thread to post in if you already checked out a game and recommend it (as opposed to this one, where you don’t know if it’s worth checking out).
That looks really good btw. Definitely being added to my wishlist.
My normal red flag with these types of games is that they’re not fun for me using keyboard and mouse, but this one has full controller support.
Wasn’t aware of the other thread, and the game itself is not big enough IMHO for a dedicated thread.
It’s fun, well-maintained and I have 30 or so hours in it, so yeah, I do recommend it, especially at the rather low price point.
Delta-V’s been mentioned several times in the Space Games thread and has a few fans there. Difficult game to search for, btw.
I found it very interesting but tedious. It’d be a strong recommend for anybody who likes mining in space games (I do not).
Edit: Search link for that thread, because I was shamed
I’ll say! Not even a link to help folks? Just a direct to the top of the 8000 posts in the space game thread? : )
EDIT: Ah, Delta-V: Rings of Saturn. The “Rings of Saturn” part makes it a lot easier to find, @DoubleG!
WitchHand just released.
Stacklands inspired strategy card game with a more playful theme. It had a decent demo in a previous Steam Fest.
NextFest reviews:
Islands of Insight is a game I’ve been wanting to try out for awhile. It releases next week just after Steam Fest ends. It took me 30 minutes with the demo to be all in. The puzzles are very Witness-like and I really like the MMO trappings with upgradeable abilities, cosmetics, unlockable areas, exploration, etc. Hell yes, lets have an MMO that isn’t composed of fetch quests and party-based dungeon delves.
Pacific Drive is very much like the eastern European junky car simulator Jalopy, but with a heavy dose of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach triology thrown in. I spent 20 minutes with the demo and am convinced this game is for me. It’s really pretty good at putting a twist on the “such-and-such simulator” game mechanics by injecting a dose of cosmic horror. There’s a thread for this game here on Qt3 and reactions to the demo seem mixed.
I tried Star Trucker (cue Deep Purple). I think it’s pretty good at what it’s doing, basically piloting a big slow spaceship through spacey environments. The kitch is well done, the minigames are fun, but I could already feel it becoming tedious 30 minutes into the demo. I think it could appeal to lots of people, but probably not for me. The game is linked a few posts up, but I’ll put another link here for convenience.
Children of the Sun has a truly unique mechanic I don’t think I’ve seen before. It’s a classic revenge story told in a gonzo comic-book style without words. Your character is The Girl who is a powerful telekinetic with a sniper rifle. In each level you sneak around the outside of a tableau identifying the targets inside, then you fire one bullet. You have a limited ability to bend the trajectory of the bullet in flight. And each time you hit a dude you can re-aim the bullet in a completely different direction. It’s kind of an ultra-violent connect-the-dots game. If you don’t kill all targets with one bullet, you have to retry the level. You get scored for speed and style. I wasn’t convinced after a couple of levels, but after a half-dozen I started to see the possibilities. I think I’ll probably grab this one on release.
Solar Expanse is basically a video game version of the boardgame High Frontier. It’s been in development hell for several years, so who knows if it will ever be a real thing, but they’ve got a demo now and I really enjoyed it. Realistic orbits, solar-system scale economic sim, mission planning, etc. Hope this game sees release because I’m in for it.
And I’ve got a couple of more demos of story-based games I’d like to try: Always in Mind and Hollowbody. I’ll report back if I try those.
Oooh, that sounds really cool. I feel like the Kerball games have sucked the oxygen out of videogaming in terms of getting a solid follow up to Buzz Aldrin’s Space Race, because now everyone wants to play with physics and build their own rockets and see the little ships blowing up or whatnot. We’ve had a few space exploration strategy videogames, but to really play with hard-science space exploration, I feel like it takes boardgaming, with titles like High Frontier, Leaving Earth, and SpaceCorp. So I’d love to see more strategy videogames like Solar Expanse horning in on that territory.
Nice write-ups, Matt! I’m curious about Islands of Insight. Are you actually solving puzzles with other people? Or are the puzzles themselves single player and the mmo bits just the social wrapper?
(This is one of those cases where a game is released with a basic premise similar to one I once pitched for work (“Multiplayer Myst”). Not taking any credit or anything—they made their game and I didn’t come close—but I’m always curious to see how they turn out.)
They did do multiplayer Myst (Uru) but I’d be curious to hear how different that was from your idea.
Yeah, this was a little pre-Uru (c. 2000). I never played Uru! Do you know what it was like?
From what I recall, in my pitch (which, to be clear, was literally probably a one-pager and never went any further) I was hyperaware of the fact that MMO audiences devour content. And it being hard to procedurally generate puzzles in a Myst style, I leaned a lot on the possibility of puzzle-building tools and user-generated content to keep the content flowing. Tons of issues with that that I never had to have to solve!
Islands of Insight is claiming 10,000 puzzles, so clearly they are aware of the content issue, too. From the description, they leaned on lots of contributors in the game dev community. Definitely a benefit of the industry today!