Ryan’s big Next Fest roundup for the weekend
Here's five more Next Fest demos for you to try out before the event ends!
It’s been a pretty great Next Fest so far, and we’ve got a ton of coverage up on the site this week recommending free demos for you and your friends. You can check out all of our coverage for this Next Fest (and past Next Fests) here!
Anyway, I’ve already written about the demo for Mistfall Hunter this week, which is an awesome Soulslike extraction game, as awful as that may sound. But I have a few other things to recommend before we head into the weekend.
Make sure to add any demos that catch your eye to your library before the 22nd, when Next Fest ends. Enjoy!
The Lift Playtest
The Lift is a game I haven't stopped thinking about since last fall, around when we first launched the site. And it has a newer, bigger playtest as part of this Next Fest lineup.
You can read my preview from last year, if you’d like, but here’s the gist again:
In The Lift, you play as a handyman who works in what is essentially an interdimensional office building. And you’ll take the weird space elevator that you call home from floor to floor, fixing everything you can. More specifically in this playtest, the post office.
This process mostly manifests with fixing circuits with wire puzzles, replacing lightbulbs and disposing of the broken ones, vacuuming up space sludge, and screwing things back together. But this isn’t really one of the traditional “doing a job” games, like Powerwash Simulator. It’s more narrative focused and fantastical. The work itself is also a lot more varied, and more about exploring the world and collecting new equipment.
It’s just one of the most interesting things I’ve played recently, and I cannot wait for the full launch.
If you’re interested, make sure you sign up for the playtest ASAP, as you have to be approved for it.
Dicevaders
Dicevaders is a Balatro-like, in that your goal is to make small number get big with a series of multiplicative artifacts and allies. But it, of course, has some pretty fun twists to it that make it unique.
The game is setup a bit like Space Invaders, but with dice. You have six rows and three dice. Each row houses some of your alien units, which will attack if they’re powered up. To power them up, you simply need to put dice in their column.
When the turn starts, you’ll roll your dice, and they’ll automatically occupy the column that they land on. So any ones you get will go to the first, and so on. Where the game gets interesting is that you can spend a currency to nudge your die or reroll them. But you can right click die you’re happy with to “freeze“ them.
There are, of course, multiplicative bonuses for doubling or tripling up on a column, and a series of interesting artifacts that make your numbers skyrocket.
It’s a fun and visually delightful “break the numbers” game that’s definitely worth a look.
Chained Beasts
Chained Beasts is a co-op action game where you and your friends battle some gladiator-like enemies in a big arena. But it’s a little more complex than that because you’re also chained together.
This creates a bit of an interesting problem, as your friends will push in a direction and, inevitably, pull you with them. At the same time, you can coordinate to use that chain to trip enemies, making them vulnerable to your attacks.
Each one of you can play as a different beast, all of which have their own passives and stuff like that. And between each round, your crew will be able to choose from different perks, which can even further amplify your special skills.
The game does a nice job offering you some variety as well, as some matches you might not be chained together at all, and others you might be attached to a ball and chain that slows you down.
Shroom and Gloom
Shroom and Gloom is a deck builder where you explore a dark and dank cave. It may sound familiar, but it absolutely oozes style, and has a few interesting things going for it.
Despite being mostly about walking forward, or occasionally left or right, Shroom and Gloom offers a ton of variety to your gameplay. It’s not just about fighting monsters or making decisions, like you might find in Slay the Spire or Monster Train (some deck builders I love).
In Shroom and Gloom, you also have a exploration deck, which you can use to keep yourself satiated with food, dig up artifacts with shovels, break locks with hammers … or keep the Gloom away with fire.
This game has a real look to it (very positive) and very much falls in that delightful Devolver weirdness (which makes sense, considering Devolver is the publisher). It’s charming, it’s a little silly, and it’s also really beautiful to look at.
Kingdom Rush 6: Genesis
Tower Defense is one of my absolute favorite genres, specifically for mobile games. And the Kingdom Rush series is largely responsible for that. I have some truly cherished memories of sitting in a hostel, in Paris, while backpacking in college, watching League esports on my iPad (with former Polygon friend Austen Goslin), and replaying all of the KR games on my phone … simpler times.
Anyway, the 6th Kingdom Rush game is on the way, and there’s a demo out now for the PC version.
If you haven’t played a Kingdom Rush game in a while, they’ve changed quite a bit in scope. The classic “archer, barracks, cannon, magic” towers are still there, but so are a host of unique heroes and towers.
In the mobile versions of the recent games, these additions have led to microtransactions. But on the PC ports, they’re simply full price games that come with all of the launch towers and heroes.
These are just … very good tower defense games where enemy units move along the path from one side of the screen to the other. You still place towers on plots and try to even things out between magic and non-magic damage. I’m not sure how “special” or unique they are, but they are, but the KR games have always been my gold standard for tower defense.
If you’ve never checked these games out, this is a really great opportunity to do so.
