I’ve been trying to publish this all day, but I just couldn’t get this Google Sheets spreadsheet to display like anything in the West Karana blog. I’ve downloaded a plugin — TablePress — that claims to be able to do the trick.
We’ll see. I have my doubts.
Anyway, I was enmeshed withing Dune: Awakening and Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles and didn’t have the time to spend in the Steam Next Fest. I wanted to, but the only game I really dove into was Dissimilar, based upon Bhagpuss’ excellent review. And that was worth playing.
I made the list below (assuming it displays at all) based entirely on what Steam recommended to me, based on games I’ve played before. Some of them, okay, I get it. Other ones, what, really? Me?
Most (but most definitely not all) of the games seem to be of incredibly high quality. And the really distressing thing about these games, if you think about it, is that I have been reading the blogs of other gamers who are enjoying the Next Fest and the games they list are all different from each other, and different from this list! And most of them are almost certainly really good games.
These kinds of celebrations of new games makes me sad, because most of them are just not going to get in front of the people who would really love them. And these are labors of love for the developers, they want people to play them.
I wish everyone whose game is on this list success, and I hope their games find their players. I may dive more deeply into these later. The links should work, and I hope they do, or I’m just going to have to write a program to do what I need done myself, and that sounds like work.
| Title | Genre | On Wishlist? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Fox Tale | Platformer | Yes | I actually kickstarted this many years ago. |
| Dissimilar | Tactical RPG | Yes | See my write-up |
| Star Trek Voyager | Base-Building RPG | Yes | See Scopique’s write-ups |
| Cloudheim | Action RPG | Yes | Should be “Wolkenheim”… |
| Norse: Oath of Blood | Tactical RPG | Yes | Baldur’s Gate-like? |
| Magic World | MMORPG | No | Generic, possible AI, not the first game by this name |
| The Midnight Walkers | Extraction Shooter | No | Why did they think I wanted this? |
| Xeno Haven | Base-Building RPG | No | Stardew Valley meets Palworld? |
| Debris | Survival Crafting | No | This could have been a Flash game |
| Carnival Hunt | Survival Horror | No | Co-op game, wind-up bunnies vs monster |
| Kind Heart Survivors | Survival Crafting | No | Kid-friendly survival crafting / base building |
| Shatterland | Shooter | No | I am SO OVER the zombie apocalypse |
| Sunny Shores | Survival Crafting | No | “For casual and retired gamers”? Really? I’m thinking there is more to this Minecraft-like than meets the eye. |
| Cut Grass | Survival Horror | No | If 7 Days to Die was a farming simulator |
| Defective Sectors | Survival Crafting | No | Roguelike base building? |
| AstroBotanica | Survival Crafting | No | No Man’s Sky, except the alien planet is Earth |
| Long Drive North | Survival Crafting | No | What if Pacific Drive were co-op? |
| The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis | Survival Crafting | No | SF survival crafting with a plot? |
| Misery | Survival Horror | No | Multiplayer Fallout without the blue jumpsuits |
| Oceaneers | Base-Building RPG | No | This could have been a Flash game |
| Everwind | Survival Crafting | No | Step 1: Rewrite MineCraft. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit! |
| The Last Caretaker | Survival Crafting | No | Ship setting is nice |
| Winter Burrow | Survival Crafting | No | Cozy mouse-focused 2D game |
| Blind Descent | Survival Horror | No | Did this need to be set on Mars? |
| Valorborn | Open World Adventure | Yes | Intriguing blend of sandbox tropes |
| Sword of Justice | MMORPG | No | Step into the “pulsing martial world” |
| World of Sea Battle | MMORPG | No | Whatever happened to Pirates of the Burning Sea? |
| Roadside Research | Simulator | No | You’re aliens studying humanity by running a gas station |
| The Cube, Save Us | Extraction Shooter | No | Nice title |
| Eastern Era | Base-Building RPG | No | Nice setting |
| Sinking Eternity | Survival Crafting | No | Still getting over Kedge Keep |
| Island Beekeeper | Survival Crafting | No | Looks fairly generic |
| Escape from Duckov | Extraction Shooter | No | 2D overhead parody of Escape from Tarkov, except you’re a duck! |
A few years back some developer made the mistake of saying on social media that too many games were being made and got a lot of hate for saying that but… I always kind of thought he was correct. He said something like no one could play even 1% of the games being published and folks set out to prove him wrong by playing a jillion games for 5 minutes each.
I kind of think those people missed the point. I just thing the volume of games is making it almost impossible to find an audience unless you happen to catch a spark.
Imagine if every weekend 30 movies debuted at the cinema. So many studios would go broke not because their movies were bad, but because the public didn’t have enought free time and/or free revenue to watch them all. And games take a LOT longer to play than watching a movie does!
I remember that. He was a bit of a jerk about it as I remember, which is probably why there was so much pushback. I’m not sure the premise holds, really, anyway. There are a LOT of people playing games. Like, literally billions of people. The ESA claims 205 million Americans play video games every week and that’s just Americans. Imagine how many Chinese or South Koreans play! There really ought to be enough players to go round. If anything, the problem is that most people seem to want to play the same games and I’m not sure making fewer games would really address that.
Well, that’s it, for sure. The people who would love these games might not be able to find them. I love survival crafting games, and tactical RPGs! There are HUNDREDS of these games. A lot of the tactical RPGs are terrible, but I have found some gems and I think I have written about the good ones. I look forward to these games on BlueSky and Masato and everyone’s blogs and I know I am missing so many just because they haven’t been where I’ve been looking.
People want to play games where they know they’ll have a good time, especially when games are now so expensive. So they go for the popular ones. Totally understood.
I’m glad you enjoyed Dissimilar. You also understood the tactical part a LOT better than I did! No surprise there.
All the links seemed to work – well, all the ones I clicked on, which was quite a few. I really like the lok of the mouse game. Going to wishlist that one. Boy, though, aren’t there a lot of survival games now?
Yeah, probably going to play around in the cozy mouse demo. It looks fun 🙂