Nov 26, 2025
Wheel World | ▶ dev. Messhof
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Wheel World | ▶ dev. Messhof
All the games that came out this year that I enjoyed. Blue Prince was a stand out though; loved it and
19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Feb 2025 Edition - Day 6
Day 0/Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5
Wanderstop
Teashop running cozy game from half of the duo behind Stanley Parable and from the creator of Beginners Guide.
You play as Alta, a warrior who had an undefeated streak lasting 3 and a half years before experiencing of string of two (2) losses and having a complete physical and emotional breakdown about it. She journeys to see the illustrious Master Winters to get training, only to collapse partway there, losing the ability to even pick up her sword.
She's saved by Boro, a gentle and emotionally intelligent man who runs the teashop wanderstop. After several failed attempts to leave again, collapsing each time, she agrees to stay and help run shop until she can lift her sword again.
I've said this before but I like seeing cozy games that dig deeper into the iyashi-kei/healing story aspects, highlighting the melancholic alongside the soothing. And this game is going all in on that.
Alta and Boro have a great chemistry, someone putting up a stoic front and someone else who can see through it immediately. He has a wisdom about him that's blunted by an inherent goofy awkwardness that's legitimately funny, and Alta not being sure how to respond to this treatment. The kind of back and forth where either side can take the straight man role.
The demo only gives a taste of gardening and tea-making, but I like how involved each system is. The gardening is basically a space puzzle, where you need to plant seeds in specific formations. Nothing with a strenuous fail state, but adds some texture to the moment to moment stuff. The tea brewing machine is a rube goldberg machine with several steps that have to be done in the right order. It's a good way to simulate being mentally present and involved in small tasks.
Wheel World
Cyclist Breath of the Wild by Messof, the Niddhog guy. I am gald he is no longer self-sabotaging by making his games look as ugly as possible.
Your character, Kat, wakes up confused in the wilderness, and finds a temple. Inside is a bike spirit who explains that his job is to cycle spirits to the moon and back through the sewer of spirits to keep the cycle of life (do you get it) moving and shift the world into a new ger (do you get it). But between his old rider passing nad theives stealing all his legendary parts, he needs your help to fix the situation. The world is filled with bike puns.
The game does nail the "feel" of manual cycling. Hills drastically effect your momentum. Drafting not only speeds you up but further refills your boost. Turns at high speed need to be handled very deliberately.
Mildly worried about the "texture" of the world. The sense of it being a lived in place. The starting island didn't have much by way of landmarks save for some sparse houses and a beach, and most NPCs only existed to make further bike puns. But the trailer makes it look like there will be a lot more.
The first race the demo offered was dead easy, but the optional extended rematch actually provided a bit of challenge.
There's also, as the trailer clearly shows, a lot of customization, but so far the game hasn't given me any impetus to not just pick up everything that make number go up across the board. not much incentive to specialize yet. Expect that in the full game though.
Also if you press up on the d-pad you ring your bell. Ding Ding.
Am I Nima
Horror game about making your mother happy.
You play as Nima, a child who suffered a severe accident. You wake up with your memories foggy, tied up and locked in the basement by your mother. She claims it's for your own safety, yet seems… afraid. Distraught. You have to convince her that you are, in fact, her daughter.
The core gameplay is a word combining system. Either when exploring the basement or talking to mom, you'll get new keywords, which can be combined with other keywords to make further words. Those words can then be used in dialogue choices when talking with mom. While it's not a completely freeform system, the game gives you a lot more words than expected.
A lot of combinations circle back to the same words, like "pain," but that in turn leads to it being a very naturalistic way to deliver exposition and simulate memory recall. Combining words with "dad" will eventually lead to greif, and you realize that dad's probably dead, for instance, while combining words with "mom" leads to words about neglect and resentment.
It's doing a lot with a little.
Sol Cesto
Push-your-luck roguelite about italians delving into a dungeon.
Every floor is a 4x4 grid filled with enemies, treasure chests, traps, and healing items. When you choose a row, your character randomly lands in one of the 4 spots. If they land on an enemy, the enemy dies, but if they had a higher physical or magical damage stat, you take the damage in difference. empty at least 5 squares to unlock the floor's door, although you can spend extra turns there to get more resources.
Inbetween enemy floors you can get upgrades that change your percentages, with some drawbacks. +20% landing on a chest, but +10% chance landing on a physical type monster, for example.
You also have the "sun" ability which allows you to move in a different way than usual. The starting character of the knight can instead choose a column instead of a row. you need to build meter to use these but it refills quickly. You also have items that can heal you, weaken/eliminate monsters or areas, and even skip floors entirely. Despite the luck based gameplay, there are a lot of tweakable aspects.
I never beat the demo's boss because it's gimmick is it turns 1/4th of the map into an instant death zone and for some reason or another I kept doing the gamble instead of going for the 100% safe routes
It's a slot machine but one where the odds are very obvious.
Labyrinth of the Demon King
Feudal era Japan survival horror King's Field.
It is the latter age of Dharma. War and famine blight the country, and demons walk the earth. You're a simple footsoldier, whose army was decieved by a demon and led into an ambush. Having lost your lord and all your comrades, you descend into the demon's stronghold looking for revenge.
This is a game less that I "dislike" and more "I couldn't get my head around." Namely the combat. It has a stamina meter tied to your attacks, a very short dodge, and a parry. But this meter is punishingly strict. I was constantly finding myself on zero and dying at every enemy encounter. I'm assuming it's a me problem, that there's something about the rhythm of combat I'm not picking up, but I spent an hour with it and want to move on.
That isn't to say I couldn't appreciate anything, though. It has a strong atmosphere, and the cutscenes that deliberately up the grain feel very apropos.
Enemy behavior was impressive too. They won't just head straight toward you, they'll fight eachother if given the chance. One time I got lucky enough to whittle an enemy to low health, and it ran away. I was honestly just grateful for the breather, so I stopped for a bit to regain my stamina and slowly crept down the hallway.
The same enemy was hiding around the corner waiting to swing at me.
I may try it again later at some point, I just had other things I wanted to finish.
Isle of Reveries
Game Boy Color Styled Classic Zelda.
You play as a young nameless owl boy on a pilgrimage, to a mountaintop temple said to grant any wish. It's a pilgrimage that many take, but no one seems to come back from, and as you arrive, you realize something is terribly wrong here.
This one took much longer than it should. I got stuck. While being a classical top down zelda, you have the unbelievable power to manually jump. While I smiled at the novelty, I forgot it was something I could do right as a puzzle demanded it, and I sent myself back wandering through the halls thinking I needed to find an upgrade
Aside from my blunder this was a pretty good zelda like. I liked most of the dungeon design. But there were a couple complaints.
The first is… you're not actually stuck to a grid. Or at least, not the grid the pixel art implies. But the granularity of movement means you can easily slip into a pit or water trap by clipping the edge of it. There was a hidden optional upgrade to turn off damage from those but if you recognize that it's a problem you've just giving me a band aid, and an optional one at that.
You got a big chunky hitbox and you're garunteed to eat damage. To counteract this you can pick up hearts everywhere. Makes combat a bit frustrating
There was something that I really liked though. In the last bit of the demo you get the ability to copy a tile and replace it elsewhere. Like an extremely scaled down version of echoes of wisdom's ability. This turns what was previously "single room limited problems" into ones where you can drag anything from any point in the dungeon to a new space. I can see this being really interesting on a large scale.
Moon River
(wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style someday…)
This is some classic RPG Maker Shit. Some Enterbrain Logo on startup shit. 640x320 resolution at start and hit F5 to fullscreen shit.
The world is ending from an event called "The Dimming." Shadows swallow the world, a void that supposedly leaves nothing but conciousness in a vaccuum. One island remains, where people can only exist in moonlight. Our protagonist, the mariner, arrives from the sea, and aims to read the end of the Moon River cutting through the island before sunrise.
It's mostly a puzzle game, although… not great puzzles. I didn't finish it, this demo was unexpectedly long, but save for a set of block pushing puzzles, it was all fetch quests.
But as a narrative experience, it was interesting. It has a repeating structure. Mariner goes down the river, hits a wall of shadow. It can only be dispelled by filling a nearby lantern with "pure light." You dock, and go to the nearby village to search for it.
Each village so far has been different ways people respond to the end times. Complete lethargy, paranoia, throwing their remaining time into longshot solutions, religious mania. It reminded me a bit of Kino's Journey.
The music is excellent. While the pixel art isn't the most detailed, I like the art direction of having each area use a different color pallete. Both in terms of giving the game a sense of visual progresssion, but also informing the mood of each section. The town of monks who turn themselves into trees, explicitly presented as mass ritualized suicide, is bathed in an oppressive red. The town of the astrologers aiming to reverse the dimming is pained in a gentle but melancholic purple.
Has some very clear technical issues though. I was clipping through areas I wasn't supposed to. One time I brought someone an item for a side quest, and he just responded as if I had already given it to him, while it still stood in my inventory. It's not deal breakers, nothing so far derails progression, but mildly annoying.
Cinematech's Trailer Park - Wheel World (PS5/XBS/PC)
The fate of the world rests in your handlebars.
Racing on your feet is overrated.
The soul sewer in the middle of the woods.
🎮 Wheel World
monochrome monday
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Alt: Scenery from the game Wheel World showing a large stone building in the middle of a forest
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Trees on the slopes surrounding the Soul Sewer.
🎮 Wheel World
follow along on #YouTube for more
Alt: Scenery from the game Wheel World, showing a red grassy slope with trees and large stone blocks