19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Feb 2026 Edition - Day 2
Day 0/Day 1
Looking For Fael
Dimenson Hopping Escape Room
It all starts with a strange voicemail from your roommate: a request for help. "Listen, this is going to sound strange but… I think I'm lost in the apartment. Right now, I don't know where I am. Can you come help me?"
When you arrive, you find the place completely empty, save for odd machines spread along the walls. When you finally figure out how to turn them on, the exit is replaced with a door to another version of the apartment, completley overtaken by nature. In it are more machines, leading to more apartments. Find Fael and then find a way out.
There's two kinds of puzzles in this game. The first are more abstract environmental puzzles. The demo doesn't have much of this, but the trailer shows off way more. The biggest one in the demo had me stumped for a while, but that's because there was a detail I was completely missing. Not sure if this is a failure of puzzle conveyance or me.
The second type involves plugging a not-game-boy into terminals on the wall and playing a simple block stacking game. These feel… kinda trite? The ones in the demo are piss easy. I had trouble with the last one but that's because it was introducing a rule I hadn't seen before. But I can see how they would get harder. But that's only half the problem. They feel disconnected from the environment at large. It breaks the atmosphere.
When the atmosphere is working, it lands. It becomes clear that, while none of them feel like obvious 1 to 1 metaphors, that the different apartments are being shaped by Fael's conciousness and history, and that you'll learn more about him by digging deeper. We're already seeing some of the notes being played with his fixation on a leaf camouflaging insect. Possibly some genderweird feels based on a hidden note and some background details? But could be me reaching.
It's interesting but it feels like it hasn't fully "proven" itself yet. FInal product could go either way.
Haunted Lands
NES Style Side Scrolling Hammer Horror Action.
So there's minimal narratively going on here. It's a big castlevania sendup. You play as a team of monster hunters doing their namesake. In the demo its fighting through a manor of cultists and demons.
There's 6 different playable characters, spit into 3 classes. Each one has a different set of mechanics. Gunners use gun, but need to reload. They regain health through pickups. Sorcerers use chargeable magic, but it eats at a special refilling magic meter. They heal by spending the universal super meter to make a shield. The beast is all melee, but they can heal directly collecting enemy blood.
it's old school in that, despite each class's ability to refill health, there's not a lot of room for error. Only 3 hits at the start of a level. It also feels very intentionally mechanically limited. The gunner and sorcerer can't attack while jumping, and can only shoot straight or at a 45 degree angle. So there's a lot of deliberate positioning you need to do. The beast can attack in air, but you basically need to constantly be in danger range to use them properly.
The level design feels like it's trying to marry old and new castlevania. It's linear levels, but each section has a lot of optional side rooms or exploration tangents. There's a real push and pull between wanting to find all hidden treasures, since you can buy items at home base, and wanting to avoid danger. Combine that with each class having different movement options, such as the sorcerer's hover, and there's a lot of different ways to tackle a level.
This'll be a game for the kind of person who likes routing out a challenge: figuring out the layout and how to take advantage of it. It's the kind of Arcade/NES style repeated gameplay that turns off a lot of people, but I think we need a bit more of.
Lucid
In the dev's own words: A Celestroidvania.
You play as Oenn, a fledgeling Sentinel, training to protect a shattered world from The Flame. Today is your rite of Passage, and you are off to purify The Temple. In other words the plot is a lot of proper nouns and I don't really have a sense of the stakes yet. But that's not why we're here.
The game is an attempt to merge the precision platformer style of celeste and similar games with the structure of a metroidvania, with a bit of megaman in there for flavor. The arsenal you're given is fit to task. Aside from the standard double jump, you also get a dash, a dash jump, an air dash, and a lunging air sword slash. Hitting an enemy or obstacle with the ai slash resets your air movement options. At the tail end of the demo, you also get a spear that allows you to pogo and lunge upward. You can see how this will facilitate floor-is-lava obstacle gauntlets.
The game is pretty generous when it comes to actually pushing you, though. Most of the harder precision or speed challenge stuff I could find was purely optional, but it was there where the game felt like it was at its best. Not sure how long that'll last before the struggle hits the main path, but I'm here for it.
Compared to something like yesterday's Goldman playthrough, the bosses and enemies felt more interactive. they were still following predictable scripts, but I had more points of interaction, dealing with both their attacks and whatever stage aid/hazard was being thrown my way. Judging from some of the trailer footage, it looks like bosses will probably continue to be one of the game's strong points.
Biggest complaint is the world still feeling vague. Maybe it'll improve as I go deeper, but I still see everything as levels, and the NPCs are just shopkeeps, quest givers, and hint dispensers.
