19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Feb 2026 Edition - Day 6
Day 0/Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5
It's time for the weekend sprint. And I exhausted myself today so this one will probably be messy again.
Wild Blue Sky
Star Fox Successor
The evil General Grimclaw once brought the world to the brink of destruction with his robot army. He was only pushed back by the blue bombers, a crack team of expert mercenaries. He's now returned, and the Bombers once again must push him back before war breaks out once more.
It's Star Fox 64. It controls mostly like you expect. Your abilities are what you expect: blaster, lockshot, bomb, boost, brake, barrel roll. That faithfulness is part of the structure too. It looks like it'll be a single branching campaign with a lives system carried between levels. In other words, it looks like it'll ask for a 1CC. I'm not sure if it's "restart when you die" or "you can continue but you'll lock yourself out of a true ending" or if it'll only matter for score chasers. But either way I respect that it seems to be avoiding upgrade systems or randomized aspects for something purer.
It's been a bit since i played Star Fox 64, so I can't really comment on how it feels in relation to that. The ship feels "heavier" than expected, and the lockshot feels weaker than it looks, but this is less "incorrect gamefeel" and more a momentary adjustment.
The main issue is level design. The first level is supposed to be flying through dilapidated ruins during a storm. In function, it was mostly flying through the ocean while pillars fall on you, with only one section where you fly under a building for a couple seconds. No eye for set pieces yet. Maybe they'll ramp up in the upcoming levels, but in SF64 Corneria was a strong start, and even the following asteroid belt had its moments.
I do like that the charge shot and laser have been delegated to different buttons, and that you can set the laser to autofire with hold. I'm not sure why that isn't on by default, you have to go digging in the options, but it's there.
The ingredients are all there, but unless they're willing to up the spice this will stay as yet another also-ran.
DownSouth
Gritty Choice Based Momentum Platformer
You play as a perpetually smiling purple bean named South. Like many in the slums, you're hooked on the new stimulant P40z. But while you're out and about, aiming to get you're next fix, a mysterious mushroom man stops you, and infuses a second soul in your body. Neither good nor evil, unformed. Before you can process it, you discover there's a bounty on your head.
The game plays like a cross between the wario platformers and a sonic game. You play as a heavy character with weighty melee attacks, but you can build up momentum and bounce off walls, getting a good amount of speed. When the route lines up, you can go flying.
The problem is that the levels and design don't feel condusive to that speed. The levels are winding and encourage stopping to talk to NPCs, search for coins, and find secrets. Unless you're going for a speedrun, it'll be an exercise of stopping and starting.
The choice based narrative is interesting for a platformer. The game opens with someone talking about how people's morals and beleifs don't hold up when their life is on the line, and then throws you off a building. You're later given a choice whether to save or kill a mugger/incompetent assassin, and latter his boss. Supposedly these choices will effect a sanity system, and change how South plays, but I didn't get any sense of how that'll work here.
The style is pulling from a lot of places. There's a warioware influence with all its conflicting visual elements. The spritework seems like something out of a love-de-lic / Onion Games game. The tone is very Newgroundsy, which is deliberate considering the Salad Fingers cameo.
I'm just not sure how well these disparate parts fit together.
Like I said earlier, it feels like the platforming is working against itself, depending on what you're looking for. Though that sense might be because I don't really like sonic style momentum systems. The game also has a bad habit of throwing you into points of no return without saying anything. Enemies felt like a pain to deal with, but considering the movement tools you're given, maybe you're just meant to avoid them.
Not sure how to feel about the choice system. If it drastically alters your moveset and level choice, then it feels like something where you can accidentally lock yourself into a less enjoyable version of the game. But if it doesn't change much, then it feels vestigal. A lose/lose. Of course, that does tie in with the thematics of desperate people forced into bad situations.
There's something to like here, and there's still room for the final game to wow me. I'm sure there's plenty who will absolutely love it, but for me it's currently under "wait and see."
Subjectivation
Subjectivation is a first person horror adventure game set in a snow-covered town frozen in time. Solve puzzles, manage your body heat, and
Dreamy Frozen Survival Horror
You awake in a lucid dream, one of many. It's what you and your group are studying, after all. In your hands is the notebook you always have in your dreams, warning you to avoid the entities within, and avoid death. The world is frozen, and reality is fractured. You need to wake up. The waking world is in a similar state, after all.
First person horror adventure game with some interesting ideas. It's hard to get a read on the plot right now. Because it's in a dream, everything is filtered through layers of abstraction and metaphor, but we know we're playing a researcher in dreams, and there's some overseeing government that we're paranoid of. The statement about the outside world is mostly speculation from the steam page description.
The main threat in the game isn't actually the monsters. It's the cold. Staying away from a heat source will cause you to slowly freeze to death, your vision getting blurry with frost. And there's an interesting dynamic here. Survival horror style gameplay tends to encourage creeping slowly, while here you have a pressure to keep moving.
The problem is that your temperature is also your health, it seems. When you get hit, you just instantly get colder. The thing is, you have heat sources you're running back and forth between. In other words, you have refilling health. The monsters just became a nonissue.
On the topic of running around between heat sources, the demo's level design doesn't really help. The game advertises exploring an entire frozen town, but right now you're just exploring a small set of looping hallways, and the few open doors between them. Aside from being hard to navigate, it doesn't really give a sense of place or threat.
The puzzles were alright, but there's one spot where you have to make an abstract leap on what you're supposed to do, that I can see others not noticing. Aside from that, there was a fun puzzle involving having to reverse engineer a code within a morse code sequence. But it was mostly just run back and forth between point a and b.
I feel like this is mostly a problem of "the limited area the demo takes place in chose a bad foot to start out on." Once we're actually in a space where exploration is possible, I can see this improving. But… don't have the highest hopes right now.
Esoteric Ebb
D20 Disco.
It's a week before the city's first ever elections. It's a fierce fight between the fantasy nationalists, capitalist, and communists. As the tensions rise, a tea shop explodes. You are The Cleric, sent to investigate the explosion. Was it truly an accident, or a sign of some larger conspiracy to come?
I'm going to be real I wasn't planning on playing this. The idea of Dungeons and Dragons Disco Elysium gave me a flinch negative reaction. But a friend suggested it, so I gave it a whirl.
The fear with this sort of thing was that it was, essentially, an attempt to depoliticize Disco. Make a game without the pesky communism. Thankfully, that's not the case. The personified stats are not just what they literally represent, but political tendencies. Strength is not just your muscles but nationalism. Wisdom is not just insight into the world but into class relations. And there is an overriding question, beyond which party should succeed in the election, whether a peaceful transfer of power is even possible. The game is trying.
It's just that… it's not doing it as well as Disco.
I said it last next fest with rue valley but Disco Elysium really put this entire subgenre of RPG in a bad position, being both the forerunner and the top of the class.
The problems start with The Cleric. Despite the various ways you could go about building DuBois, there was something very specific about it. The Cleric is a character who you can decide one of several backstories for. I guess it opens more room for interpretative roleplay, but it just makes him feel like the only base character trait is fuckup.
The narration and prose isn't as striking either. But once again, what can you do there? I will say that they are putting more effort into the setting than the expected generic DnD. There's a good history to its world, and I like its imagery of the area being essentially two cities stacked on top of eachother, one above and one underground.
But the DnD baggage gets in the way of the base mechanics. I will admit, this is probably just due to me being unused to standard DnD rules but… The D20s, the advantage and disadvantage system, the spell slots, the short and long rests, all the extraneous mechanics feel like they're taking away more than they are adding.
But maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe I'm just not the target audience for this. If you look at it less like a Disco-Clone and more like just an attempt at digitizing a comedy one-off campaign, it'll probably land in a lot of people's strike zone. Probably won't go for the full release, though.
Airframe Ultra
High Speed Hovercare Battle Racer.
The street racing scene of the future has evolved. With the advent of the airframe, the possible tracks went from the streets to anywhere that could even be theoretically called a road. We've moved past wagering pink slips, we're now wagering lives. The ultimate race awaits.
The next project from the rain world devs has taken a very different turn from their previous work.
I will be upfront that 1) this is technically not a demo but a beta. So stuff is still being worked out. 2) I am incredibly bad at this game. So any comments I make on the systems should be taken with a grain of salt.
First thing to note is that this beta only has a tutorial and online. There's no single player campaign or bot battles. I do hope those are added in the future, but I can see why they don't offer them now: Stress testing the online is probably one of their goals right now.
The game has an interesting structure for the matches. The game has multiple modes, but instead of just picking one, you cycle through them. You race, get points based on your positioning, and end up in a battle arena. Then, for a period, you fight, either on bikes or on foot. Kills net you points. Then you're signaled to get back on your bikes for the next leg of the race. Whoever reaches 10 points first wins.
I like how these matches kind of bleed together. During the races, you can hit glowing green spots to get money, which can be spent on weapons in the battle. Whatever weapons and damage you have from the battle are still on your person during the next leg of the race. It adds a nice sense of escalation.
The airframes feel really fun to handle, both smooth and weighty. You get boost items to rocket yourself forward, but you can boost without them in exchange for damaging your ride. Makes the final stretch really tense.
The problem is the on foot sections are…kinda ass. And if they only existed to tell you "run back to your bike you crashed" thats one thing, but a map will occasionally force you off for a battle.
Main complaints are 1) if you die during a race, you are completely fucked. Just wait for the next section to try and get points. 2) this might just be my own incompetence, but it felt like the stages need a bit better visual guidance. More than once I accidentally veered off course without fully realizing it until the game screamed "wrong way!" at me.
Still, for all the hiccups, I can see this filling a similar niche to Burnout: A game all about reveling in chaos with friends.
Vampire Crawlers
Survivor Deckbuilder Dungeon Crawler Roguelite
It's vampire survivors as a card game. In other words, a very very dangerous combination. Two hours flew by without me noticing.
The game is a pseudo dungeon crawler, Each floor has enemies dotted along the map, and you can choose which ones you engage with first. Aside from elite enemies and bosses, there doesn't seem to be a huge difference in the order you choose, though.
Battles are done with cards. You spend mana points by playing cards, and they get buffed in a combo if you play them in ascending cost. 0 -> 1 -> 2, that sort of thing. The cards are colored based on effect. Red cards attack, yellow cards buff, blue cards defend, purple cards add mana. Each crawler has a different synergy based on a card color. One has attacks get progressively stronger the more red cards you play, another has more cards drawn in the next hand based on how many purple cards were played in the previous hand.
Lastly, you can find gems that will buff your cards with secondary effect. Like turning an attack into a card that also gives you shield, or ups the amount of projectiles you shoot per move.
As expected, once you find an engine going, the damage numbers can get big.
I am a bit frustrated that Poncle is still dead set on putting so much behind the upgrade track. In this case it feels redundant, because the upgrade track feels like it should just be more possible cards. But maybe the pool isn't as wide as I thought, I don't know. Still, even in the demo there's a LOT of game here.
I like how it feels like you're making more meaningful decisions per minute than in the original. And it's a design where you can give yourself a minute to breathe if you need it.
I am scared to buy this based on how well it clicked here.
Akatori
Martial arts metroidvania.
I'm gonna be honest the demo really didn't give me any plot premise to work with behind "you are cool monk girl with staff." It jumped into different scenes while saying "we'll explain whats happening in the full game." The steam page says it's about her journey to save the world from "The Amber Storms that are infecting and destroying all living things."
I have problems with this game, and part of it is inherent, part of it is being spoilt once again by Silksong.
Our protagonist Mako has a good amount of mobility, with a double jump, air dash, dodge roll, glider, and wall jump. When the game is focused solely on platforming, it's mostly pretty good. The main issue is that the wall cling is sticky enough that you'll get it accidentally, and it kills all momentum in an instant. But that's something I can see being refined.
The combat is the main issue I have, which is twofold. First, the game really locks you into the animation of your standard 3 hit combo. This isn't inherently a problem, but this feels like the sort of game where you'd be able to cancel out of it, what with all your mobility options. It almost feels like a sort of lag.
Second is the enemy design. And here's the Silksong comparison. You have all these tools to move around and dodgde, and the enemies… aren't pushing you to reposition at all. The melee ones feel like they're goombas, just following a track until you're in range. The projectile enemies feel like they just stand and shoot. Give me a sense of back and forth!
I did feel a bit more at the very end when it was a boss battle, though. It was two phases. The first had normal enemies in a close arena. The space was smaller so their shortcomings weren't as much of an issue. The second had a fight against a large boss, who had a massive lunge and left trap explosives on the field, so I was actually being forced to reposition consistently.
The thing is, since the demo just jumped between scenes, it felt less like a metroidvania and more like a linear action platformer. And I kind of wish they leaned into that more. Make the spaces smaller and the enemies more of a hassle. Ninja Gaiden that shit.
(Of course that ties back to how, at least based on steam data, linear platformers sell terribly compared to metroidvanias, so games that would be better in a linear mold get pushed into the exploration space. But that's a story for another time.)
