Shiara's Streaming Soliloquy: Difference between revisions
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| 086 || 2025-06-19 || [https://store.steampowered.com/app/3410180/ Overlooting] || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-s5jc-BcEI || 1 || 1 || 6.5 || The set bonus and item combination systems are nice, but many of the set bonuses felt underpowered, some of the stats like lifesteal were useless, and the boss was way overtuned so only a couple of builds could reasonably expect to beat it. But if this is a roguelite, maybe that's okay and it was done this way on purpose. There were too many fights before though, since the boss was in room 50. Also there's no way to see the set bonus for a class while picking items, and no way to pass on items. And potions got overlaid on top of regular items in the inventory sometimes. | |||
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| 085 || 2025-06-19 || [https://store.steampowered.com/app/3262100/ Mighty Meow] || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsQnRovaR9s || 1 || 0 || 5 || There's an idea of a game here, and it's not a bad one, it was basically setting up factories and pipelines/conveyor belts with animals that you rescue from a dungeon. A lot of UI improvements need to be made though, like there was no way to pause a factory when it was not actively building an item (i.e. had enough ingredients to build it), and no way to set a maximum item stock. And many tooltips needed improvement. I also managed to get stuck in relocate mode and then duplicate a chest after loading game. Also the combat part wasn't very interesting since the enemy types were just reskins of each other, and the hit boxes of weapons were much larger than their visuals. Also you can just walk out of the world map. | |||
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| 084 || 2025-06-19 || [https://store.steampowered.com/app/3548520/ DOG WITCH] || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCs03l-lrZk || 1 || 0 || 7 || I liked the "10 pick 3" upgrade mechanic after each battle, that was great. Two rerolls for each round was a pretty decent mechanic too, and the donation made to charity for finishing a round was very cool. Only minor complaints would probably be that the minion summoning (only two, one on each side) was a bit weird, some things like charge cards become useless once you are fully charged, losing charges when you are hit were not explained, and the enemy "attack + extra effect" icons were not explained. | |||
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| 083 || 2025-06-18 || [https://store.steampowered.com/app/3331300/ Sunny Side Crossing] || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaPnDYDVtE || 1 || 0 || 3 || Localization was very poor, the restaurant portion with the helper was weird as he sometimes wouldn't do anything and it wasn't clear which orders were active, the story made no sense with things like the flame feather lizard being killed even though it actually escaped, etc. There were several screens that auto progressed even though it said press a button to progress, and others that didn't progress until you pressed even though there was no text or anything to see on the screen. The cooking and chopping mechanics were poor, but the fishing mechanic was actually pretty good, as were certain art pieces near the end. | | 083 || 2025-06-18 || [https://store.steampowered.com/app/3331300/ Sunny Side Crossing] || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaPnDYDVtE || 1 || 0 || 3 || Localization was very poor, the restaurant portion with the helper was weird as he sometimes wouldn't do anything and it wasn't clear which orders were active, the story made no sense with things like the flame feather lizard being killed even though it actually escaped, etc. There were several screens that auto progressed even though it said press a button to progress, and others that didn't progress until you pressed even though there was no text or anything to see on the screen. The cooking and chopping mechanics were poor, but the fishing mechanic was actually pretty good, as were certain art pieces near the end. | ||
Revision as of 19:34, 19 June 2025
Shiara streams as dizzypixie at https://www.twitch.tv/dizzypixie/ every day from 6pm-9pm MST, more or less. She tries to complete games that she starts on stream. She suggests you download the video-swap-new userscript from here (it also requires something like Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey or some other similar primate) to block her stream's ads.
Fragments of other games that have featured on the channel in the very distant past but were not recorded (or she doesn't care to share the VODs) include ArcheAge, Cultist Simulator, DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die™ Edition, Fast Acting Microbes, Guild Wars 2, inFamous First Light, Little Busters! English Edition, Scrolls, SKEAL, and The Lord of the Rings Online.
There's also a Miscellaneous Playlist for the VoDs of other games that she has played that aren't story games and so don't have a start or end. It's located here. (# of Total Deaths in here: 4)
---
This last list is a separated Demos list for games that she played during the Demos sections in the above table. (The Demos master playlist on YouTube is here.) Afterhours means streams that she did offline and then uploaded onto YouTube.
| # | Dates | Game | Youtube Link | # of Streams | # of Stream Deaths | Score (/10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 086 | 2025-06-19 | Overlooting | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-s5jc-BcEI | 1 | 1 | 6.5 | The set bonus and item combination systems are nice, but many of the set bonuses felt underpowered, some of the stats like lifesteal were useless, and the boss was way overtuned so only a couple of builds could reasonably expect to beat it. But if this is a roguelite, maybe that's okay and it was done this way on purpose. There were too many fights before though, since the boss was in room 50. Also there's no way to see the set bonus for a class while picking items, and no way to pass on items. And potions got overlaid on top of regular items in the inventory sometimes. |
| 085 | 2025-06-19 | Mighty Meow | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsQnRovaR9s | 1 | 0 | 5 | There's an idea of a game here, and it's not a bad one, it was basically setting up factories and pipelines/conveyor belts with animals that you rescue from a dungeon. A lot of UI improvements need to be made though, like there was no way to pause a factory when it was not actively building an item (i.e. had enough ingredients to build it), and no way to set a maximum item stock. And many tooltips needed improvement. I also managed to get stuck in relocate mode and then duplicate a chest after loading game. Also the combat part wasn't very interesting since the enemy types were just reskins of each other, and the hit boxes of weapons were much larger than their visuals. Also you can just walk out of the world map. |
| 084 | 2025-06-19 | DOG WITCH | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCs03l-lrZk | 1 | 0 | 7 | I liked the "10 pick 3" upgrade mechanic after each battle, that was great. Two rerolls for each round was a pretty decent mechanic too, and the donation made to charity for finishing a round was very cool. Only minor complaints would probably be that the minion summoning (only two, one on each side) was a bit weird, some things like charge cards become useless once you are fully charged, losing charges when you are hit were not explained, and the enemy "attack + extra effect" icons were not explained. |
| 083 | 2025-06-18 | Sunny Side Crossing | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaPnDYDVtE | 1 | 0 | 3 | Localization was very poor, the restaurant portion with the helper was weird as he sometimes wouldn't do anything and it wasn't clear which orders were active, the story made no sense with things like the flame feather lizard being killed even though it actually escaped, etc. There were several screens that auto progressed even though it said press a button to progress, and others that didn't progress until you pressed even though there was no text or anything to see on the screen. The cooking and chopping mechanics were poor, but the fishing mechanic was actually pretty good, as were certain art pieces near the end. |
| 082 | 2025-06-18 | Medieval Crafter: Blacksmith | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdZaEUAlbas | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | The crafting was pretty great, the fantasy town and outer castle had good medieval vibes, the inner castle and the cave were kind of weak though. At least the front part where I wandered around in. It needs a leave button to teleport out from anywhere. The smelter bugged out my coals at one point, there were tooltip issues here and there, the whetstone minigame could have been better, and the voiceovers will get annoying after a bit. But those were small blemishes on a good demo and seemingly fun smithing game. |
| 081 | 2025-06-18 | Guild Master | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5NWNeasi8 | 1 | 1 | 5 | It crashed three times before I even started the game, and once more after, but was fine after that. The numbers in the adventure zones, especially healing values, seem off. And that whole adventure bit seems like the output from a 2D game dev course. There was no music and barely any sound. The building up the guild section might be good though, and if there's even story around the characters.. I want a game like this, but better and more fleshed out! |
| 080 | 2025-06-18 | Cybersim: Noetic City | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC6JFX9SaGg (Afterhours) | - | - | 6.5 | The base idea is actually really solid -- Balatro in a light cyberpunk hacker sort of aesthetic, complete with a cozy diorama decoration game in your own hacker pod apartment, where you can use the currency you earn from the minigame to buy stuff to deck out your room, It needs more of everything -- more tutorials on what the numbers are, more clarity on how they increment, more types of "jokers" (perfs) and more varied fights, more furniture, etc. But that's what a demo is for. The levels cannot reset each time you lose a battle. But battles also become ludicrously easy after a bit. |
| 079 | 2025-06-17 | Discounty | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8FsbELZ2Vg | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | Pretty solid game with funny writing. Characters all seem to have their own quirks. The shopkeeper part of the game might be a bit too micromanagey once it scales up but it's hard to say without knowing what other shop mechanics there are. I like the whole town restoration and befriend townsfolk to unlock their profits in your shop sort of theme. The shop part became better once I figured out you could use a keypad to operate the cash register. It's weird you need the keyboard to do some interactions and need the mouse to do others. And the click and drag mouse to pick up items part gave me lots of issues. |
| 078 | 2025-06-17 | The Vast White | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoYfZm7EwTE | 1 | 0 | 3.5 | The swapping between control and camera types when I was on my snowboard versus walking about were very annoying. Sometimes the controls wouldn't revert back properly either. The "quests" did nothing. Lots of little issues like getting rooted in place after conversations if I sped through them, camera errors if I was on a snowboard when I went into a cave, managing to softlock myself by jumping over a fence, the slalom flag triggering being cheesy, and other camera quirks like being able to look below the ground or having my view stuck behind a mountain. I did like the graphics and going up a mountain in chair lifts. |
| 077 | 2025-06-17 | I NEED SPACE | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Y1k-S6N-E | 1 | 0 | 8 | This demo was awesome. Lots of great writing, and lots of little touches like the robots playing differrent instruments for make their tune and they stop playing their instrument if you talk to them, causing the background music to change. The game implies you can find and unite other musicians with them as one of the overarching plots too, and if that is true and that changes and enhances the music then that is amazing. Only a conjecture though. The only poor part of the game was the controls for the drawing a constellation part. And the actual collectathon mechanics weren't anything to write home about. |
| 076 | 2025-06-16 | Fishing Alone | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAbgLi-5h9c | 1 | 0 | 3.5 | I managed to softlock the tutorial by running out of battery before catching 3 fish since releasing them did not count. That put me in the city zone but with no interaction prompts to get back to the fishing area to progress. The fixed camera in the city was absolutely horrible and the city was far too unnecessarily big. Not being able to walk around the fishing area was disappointing. The demo didn't seem to let me catch any of those fragments of the lost human past that the game page talks about. Lots of typoes too. |
| 075 | 2025-06-16 | STAR FISH | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3084hgu5DjU | 1 | 0 | 2 | The UI looked nice but was horribly broken in multiple places, and the window did not capture the mouse properly, and that made the game annoying to play more than anything else. Once all that is fixed it could be an interesting collectathon though. There was little explanation on how to catch legendary fishes or what a fish hotspot looked like and such. |
| 074 | 2025-06-16 | The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJVi18oYYw | 1 | 0 | 4 | The most annoying part about this was the difficulty of the depth perception needed to fly through the little rings on the serpent for extra shells. The art also did not suit the game and made it hard to find fishes at times. Fishes should not be able to phase through the catfish and basically everything else. The serpent always spawned so far away and it was difficult to track nearby objects. I thought the tutorial was softlocked at first during the scene where you needed to open the browser and type in a webpage. |
| 073 | 2025-06-16 | Mourning Tide | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ptTzaZ2Yo | 1 | 0 | 5 | I'm not a fan of the graphics, but the game works fine and the demo ended very interestingly. I couldn't figure out the spamming of spacebar to cut the rope for a while, that was unintuitive. The fishing minigame was cool and unique, especially once the directional shoving buttons were introduced. |
| 072 | 2025-06-16 | Fishing Mega-Game | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkjMCZ9HK0 (Afterhours) | - | - | 4 | The game seems short and hasn't quite thrown off its "game dev project" feel. Skills are named weirdly, with references to swords and axes that don't exist, music is repetitive and abruptly cuts short, there only seem to be 15 fish to catch, no keybinds, no skills, no healing, using keyboard to select skills meant I accidentally selected something once without meaning to, no way to see what skills you already have, etc. No idea if I completed the tutorial demo or not once I fished all the initial fish out. Still, the fish theme on Vampire Survivors is definitely something that could work. |
| 071 | 2025-06-15 | Witchlight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XZizgyx4JA | 1 | 0 | 4.5 | 4.5 - The game does feel like a decent slow life exploration simulator. It was buggy though, with janky animations like standing on the cat while patting it, and some vibrating when I tried to use candle plinths. I managed to soft lock myself early by placing the candle on the wrong plinth because there were no instructions on what to do. Very few options, and options in the accessibility menu like the crosshair do not properly persist, and the main menu has an irritatingly long pan downwards that cannot be skipped before it shows you the menu options. Very easy to get vertigo in this one, I could feel its onset after 30 minutes. |
| 070 | 2025-06-15 | Consume Me | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWkGfkZLYnc | 1 | 0 | 7.5 | Very fun, and felt like a very authentic depiction of an Asian family and the chaos of being a teenager. Love all the little minigames and how they represent the little imperfections in the chores that kids had to do. Love the flawed art too, it was very charming. Some aspects of the minigames were not explained well, but arguably that could also represent the kid having to trial and error to figure out how things work. |
| 069 | 2025-06-15 | Beyond the Map | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUk8tz4yzME | 1 | 3 | 5 | The game mechanics work well together, but there isn't any story or goal at all in the first hour, though there was a decent tutorial to follow for the crafting bit. We didn't really get to flex the ARPG side of things though. I did like the skill system and crafting your own skill tree is a unique mechanic. I did get stuck on a roof, and get swiped through doors by enemies, the rotation keys bugged me to no end, and it felt like my teleport trait stopped working for the rest of the demo after the first usage. |
| 068 | 2025-06-14 | Hirogami | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xSgFbnE_uc | 1 | 0 | 5 | I don't like a fixed camera in games, and the mouse and keyboard definitely did not feel like the optimal way to play the game, although they do say that at the front and it does still ultimately work. Right mouse button "special" did not seem to do an attack, and was only used to trigger event nodes, but you could still do it "in combat" even though it did nothing but a small animation that rooted you in place, and that seems like a miss. It also ultimately meant every character only has one melee attack. Aesthetics were very nice, although I almost glitched through the ceiling a couple of times. |
| 067 | 2025-06-14 | Fading Serenades | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy1IRIKTMfw | 1 | 0 | 4.5 | It's okay, the courier mechanics seem a little too simplistic, but perhaps it works well as a vehicle with which to tell a story, I don't think the courier mechanics are meant to be the main draw here per se, and the energy system being tied to the minigames (especially the sloooow log) seems contrived. There were definitely translation problems, and issues like there not being a confirm option when using the bed, or when pressing the Exit button from the options screen. Why not just repair the bridges? The previous postman would have. |
| 066 | 2025-06-14 | Strange Antiquities | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbd47UtU1AM | 1 | 0 | 8 | I love the Fallen London-esque occult feel and writing of the game and the sense of mystique and exploration of the unknown that the game evokes. Assuming that the rest of the game is like how the first couple of days were, this should be pretty great. I should go back and play Strange Horticulture. Many of the mechanics were not explained in the demo, which makes sense, but some things like the green/red bar on the right side of the screen that governs how well you do, and the fact that you can get different examination results by hovering over different parts of an item, probably should have been. Items not being able to be rotated also feels like a miss. Still excellent. |
| 065 | 2025-06-13 | Oldish Stuff | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3G4BF-BPbo | 1 | 1 | 3 | The idea of a game is there, but this demo was obviously rushed out for Steam Next Fest. Can't talk to NPC, equipping items bugged out once, menu screen ended up behind map when pressing Escape with map open, enemies attack you while you talk to the minigame NPCs with full screen text plates up, you don't have a starter weapon and killing initial enemies takes forever, poor drop rate, poor healing rate, enemies keep asking for items that you don't have but it's completely random and there's no penalty for not having the item nor any chance to go out and get it, the biome borders are all straight and there are unnecessary invis walls, etc. |
| 064 | 2025-06-13 | Backpack Seeker's | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fJjRAMkpDs | 1 | 2 | 4 | The UI elements are clunky, character gets stuck in terrain very easily when you leave the inventory screen, items seem unbalanced, characters had no names, and the boss characters look overly tough, but there's a cool idea here and the in-character references to it being a demo were funny. It needs better execution though. |
| 063 | 2025-06-13 | Dead Engine | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvv7yL3yh4 | 1 | 1 | 6.5 | I'm not sure I like the backpacks resetting after each node instead of at the end of each run, but being able to permanently upgrade the backpack is nice. The needing to find and rescue characters in the nodes to upgrade the base is a good twist on the Vampire Survivors genre too. Being able to come back for items later in the same node once you find backpack space, and the ability to bring them back to base, is cool too. How good it is might depend on how much there is to unlock in terms of base progression. |
| 062 | 2025-06-13 | Upalu Mundi | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eexzNLqEmws (Afterhours) | - | - | 5 | The demo lacked a title screen! And some mechanics like how to toggle train stations to thin platforms (and what they really did) were not really explained, I think, though I kind of figured it out in the end. There was also no leaning into the fantasy theme at all so far. I did like the end screen displaying the efficiency lines and showing that you needed to find *one* of the possible solutions that hits the line to pass the level, and the whole blueprints system allowing you to load a previous attempt (I think), that was cool. |
| 061 | 2025-06-12 | Trainatic | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gczsN9W9oH4 | 1 | 0 | 5 | The game itself might eventually be fun but the demo was slow and didn't really showcase any interesting mechanic that I didn't see in the first 10 minutes. It was literally just number upgrades to get a little further each time, and eventually one new resource. I needed to see more biomes, more resources, maybe more interesting things to upgrade besides just small train numbers. MagicCar of Delicious did this sort of game a lot better. |
| 060 | 2025-06-12 | Halcyon Days at Taoyuan | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnDLM5GSqww | 1 | 0 | 7 | The UI was a bit clunky, and there were a few minor translation issues, but overall the localization, mechanics, characters, design etc seemed good. Love the ambience and setting. The crafting minigames seem like a good idea and I do like that they only apply when you're learning the recipe, not every single time you craft it. Each puzzle should be unique to each recipe though. Whether the game is ultimately good depends on what the rest of the game's story and events are like. |
| 059 | 2025-06-12 | Anomalous Railroad Crossing | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpxA9ILjVDs (Afterhours) | - | - | 2 | There is not much of a game here because the level is not big enough, this feels like a tech demo that says "Look, I know how to alter the properties of an object in Unity!" The location it's based on is very beautiful and I have been there IRL before, but the demo fails to showcase any meaningful gameplay or interesting mechanic. You literally can complete the entire thing in 3 minutes. |
| 058 | 2025-06-11 | Wanderlust: The Magnificent Journey | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnj_6w6HTPE | 1 | 0 | 5.5 | The writing is great and all on paper, but there's far too much of it. In the demo chapter at least, there's too much focus on pointlessly explaining every single action. It felt like there was "padding" put in to hide the game's other deficiencies. Like there only being 4 dialog options in the first 2 hours of the game. Half the text from the entire chapter needs to be mercilessly cut. Conversely, once the travel portion started, the art and writing were not good enough. The airplane sleeping scene was great, but the New York part of the story was bad. Landmarks were not named or drawn, and the group photos were not shown on screen. If you are a game about travelling, and it means so much to the characters, you need to NAME and SHOW the locations. Not generic_landmarks and generic_museums and "New York Airport". Have these devs never actually travelled before? Watch the Zatsu Tabi anime! And yet, despite all that, the game ended up on my wishlist. |
| 057 | 2025-06-11 | Dungeon Mori | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozuw-mduY0s (Afterhours) | - | - | 6.5 | This worked surprisingly well. I liked the loot run concept that the game is built around. It needs better tooltips on what the stats do and how to improve some of the rolls like Lockpicking etc, and not being able to change the equipment loadout dungeons, particularly for consumables, was not a nice experience, and more graphical resolutions are needed, but despite all that it got a decent score because the underlying game was fun. |
| 056 | 2025-06-10 | Tokyo Underground Killer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kSb9NLOCYo | 1 | 3 | 5 | As a first-person shooter/slicer game, this was pretty cool. Very stylized, very smooth. Voiced in both Japanese and English. Character felt fairly sturdy. I disliked the right click + left click slice mechanic that force turns the character camera around in a circle though, that's terrible in first person games. And it lacks checkpoints so everytime you die you have to reset. |
| 055 | 2025-06-10 | Galvatein: Adventurers’ Guild | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsHrQxOhBlw | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | I'm still looking for a good Adventurers' Guild game, and this one seems fairly interesting, though we'll see how well it holds up in the end. The Papers, Please style of gameplay as the guild receptionist was neat, and the information gathering plot for the princess was neat too, but the tavern cooking part of the gameplay felt incomplete and pointless. Translations need work. |
| 054 | 2025-06-10 | Dispatch | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vgE9Pulx9E | 1 | 0 | 6 | The demo was neat and stylized but there wasn't much of it, there was a lot of comic book style exposition and very little game, and what game was there felt unexplained in parts, with very little plot. The hacking minigame was also poor. The post-game comic book scenes hinted at a lot of really interesting things that will happen though. |
| 053 | 2025-06-09 | Elevator Music | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDdkF_hlSic | 1 | 0 | 7 | I liked the idea of this one, though the ingame music wasn't working and it was easy to misclick levels and miss people boarding on your current level. The story is really intriguing though and the time moves so slowly that that seems to imply there's a lot of potential storyline to uncover still. It seems like it would make any attempt at replaying it a huge pain though, and also there's too many instances of people coming into the elevator and not having any convo option at all. And several instances of missing "back out" dialogue options, options that didn't quite make any sense, etc. |
| 052 | 2025-06-09 | Outrider Mako | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_i634dTOE8 | 1 | 15 | 3.5 | The controls were convoluted for no good reason, and jump and shoot just didn't make sense and didn't feel fluid at all, coupled with poor implementations of things like it being impossible to jump onto an elevator if a monster is near cause the jump auto targets the monster, and the inability to hit a monster that you've jumped onto without spending red nectar. And the sheer sillyness of the very first major fight being in the rain so you couldn't use the red nectar you'd just learnt about anyway. And the fact it autosaves whenever you die so when you respawn you don't get back any consumables that you might have used. |
| 051 | 2025-05-15 | Across the Wonderlands | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-lP5m-ArKo | 1 | 10 | 5.5 | A survival crafting game with a strong Alice in Wonderland theme and a pocket dimension home base similar to Once Human. Mystical, quirky, a bit pretentious, but in a good way. It might succeed or fail depending on how long they can keep the wondrous feeling going. I didn't like the (on purpose) lack of a crafting table meaning that I couldn't just craft gear and weapons. I almost soft-locked myself on the starting zone boss due to that. The demo either broke at the end or ended at a random quest objective. I fell through the world or out of bounds a couple times too. |
| 050 | 2025-05-15 | Scarlet Deer Inn | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y39ZfPCox9E | 1 | 7 | 5.5 | Serviceable platformer with an intriguing story but slightly weird UI that felt like it was missing tooltips. Torch management felt a bit like busywork. I liked the art style and how the characters alternate between two shades. |
| 049 | 2025-05-14 | Neverlooted Dungeon | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV0JM0KpOWk | 1 | 6 | 8.5 | Minus some issues with dragging tombstone covers and stuff and weirdness with arrows and ropes and fire, and some oversized fish attack ranges, the game was very fun. The levels are hand-crafted so there likely won't be much replayability once all the dungeons are played through, but the first demo dungeon alone took me 3 hours and I still missed some stuff. Definitely felt like a modern tribute to Thief. |
| 048 | 2025-05-13 | Fishbowl | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnCxsvD1PTg | 1 | 0 | 5.5 | I liked the rhythm work minigame, and the story seemed cool, especially the dream part of it, but some of the characters speak a bit too childishly and the demo overall wasn't too long so it was hard to tell if it would trend into a great story or not. |
| 047 | 2025-05-13 | Mushroom Musume | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xKGR1Llhhk | 1 | 0 | 6 | The game goes back and forth between viewpoints and the other character is stuck in stasis stats-wise despite living their life in game, which is weird. This means you need to know upcoming events and plan for them in a previous season if you want a specific ending. It seems like there's a lot of unlockable story bits so later runs have more options. |
| 046 | 2025-05-13 | Let's Build a Dungeon | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDrhlU70ksk | 1 | 1 | 5.5 | Game crashed 4 times at the start before we could start going, starting tutorial was sparse, and the UI and storyline and all was a bit weird. I found "Lord Richard" and his story to be rather clumsy. There were funny bits though, like player reviews. And the idea of an overbearing investor could be interesting. |
| 045 | 2025-05-12 | inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NacY9wnd3pw | 1 | 0 | 7.5 | I like the chill pace and the idea of talking to your customers and learning their stories in a liminal setting late at night. Kind of reminds me of Coffee Talk. The pseudo Japanese language is weird but consistent so it's interesting in that it represents a different language. UI feels primitive, and keybinds and when the mouse can or cannot be used could use some work. |
| 044 | 2025-05-12 | Ten Thousand Coins: The Golden Merchant | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPmCHZjQHnY | 1 | 0 | 7.5 | Love the use of merchant goods in combat, and the story so far seems pretty good too. UI has a couple of issues here and there, like the ability to accidentally lose combat loot due to clicking the Forage button while the combat loot window was still open. Not sure the trading mechanic regarding getting the opponent to become Impatient is the best option, but it's interesting. |
| 043 | 2025-05-11 | Forgotlings | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOugNwDD3M | 1 | 2 | 5.5 | I liked the existence of the stealth bits and the storyline seemed interesting so far, and the jumping was mostly fine out of combat, but the combat was atrocious. Combat lag animations, easy to get stunlocked into a very quick death, imprecise jumping where your character locks onto a ledge instead of trying to jump away or at opponents... |
| 042 | 2025-03-26 | Vuntra City | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1TDyfCjkIs (Afterhours) | - | - | 7 | Very pretty. Some fake reflections and car/road mesh issues and I did find some repeated prefabs and items, and this was just an environment demo so there were no people around, but what was there of the city generation seems very nice. |
| 041 | 2025-03-19 | Cairn | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmHQ1Rlnuus (Afterhours) | - | - | 8 | Love the vibe, and the gameplay is interesting enough though there were a couple of things I wasn't sure about. The mountains and solitude and the cairns and rest spots that you find were really nice though. I felt like I bonded with my character as we climbed wordlessly. |
| 040 | 2025-03-18 | WindStop Strategy | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQydRMjEZ8g (Afterhours) | - | - | 3 | Mostly held back by terrible/nonexistant translations right now, it mixes a tactical map conquering layer and supposed sect management/self-cultivation aspects with a strategic combat layer and a bunch of visual novel stories in between. There's no in-world character movement -- the world and battle maps both involve selecting nodes to travel to, and combat is a 9 square grid for each side's characters to stand on. The demo broke at the end too. |
| 039 | 2025-03-13 | Am I Nima | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMTVuBTZPmY (Afterhours) | - | - | 6.5 | It's Little Alchemy but with an interesting mild-horror psychological story wrapped around it. Interesting premise, but needs UI/QoL improvements, suffers from the same avalanche of combination choices and organizational problems that Little Alchemy has. |
| 038 | 2025-03-06 | Cauldron | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k__Fp2gpMXc (Afterhours) | - | - | 6.5 | Wish the UI was a bit better in places, but this one has lots of dopamine -- you play minigames to collect items to upgrade your party or upgrade the minigame itself. Pleasant game, funny writing, definitely a great companion game to putter on while doing other things. Multiple game modes for different moods that affect each other, like some powerful upgrades require you to complete X number of game modes. Could use more tooltips and such for the combat part of the game though. |
| 037 | 2025-03-05 | FUMEHEAD | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGObO5OaSE | 1 | 0 | 7.5 | I liked this one a lot. Stylish colours and characters, a unique battle phase implementation for the deck that determines what colour cards are eligible to appear that round, consumables that have expiration dates so you cannot hoard them too long, a stylish inventory/upgrade menu, a descent into insanity storyline, and a funny post-end-of-demo scene. |
| 036 | 2025-03-05 | Doloc Town | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SMBR0miG5I | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | Cozy farming/life sim with a post-apoc theme and a side-scrolling view. There are quite a few almost-familiar-but-slightly-different implementations of systems like the faint/sleep penalty, the need for planters, the sleeping tent that you can build platforms in, portable 15-use boxes, tech trees that require XP levels in multiple tasks, etc. Some I like, some I'm intrigued by, some I'm not sure about. The ambience during the rain is especially wonderful. There's combat and bosses too, though not in what I played. |
| 035 | 2025-03-05 | Cubic Odyssey | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD3SlTlE6eA (Afterhours) | - | - | 7 | Pretty smooth, stylish galaxy-wide Minecraft/NMS inspired game with things like vehicles and spaceships, including what seems to be mobile spaceship bases and such eventually. And portals to go back to any planet bases. I liked the demo quite a bit, minus a few issues like hotbar quirks and the inability to split items. The stars, the colours, the meteor showers, they were great. Can't tell how repetitive it is later on though. |
| 034 | 2025-03-04 | The Northern Path | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srD1upPisw | 1 | 1 | 6 | Sledge. Dredge in the tundra with a dog sled and a more peaceful overall vibe. There does not seem to be a food/supplies mechanic, which is fairly different from many other coldlands survival games. Which means you can basically farm tons of money at the start of the game with no penalty. That part's weird. |
| 033 | 2025-03-04 | Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXQeFozkUYk | 1 | 1 | 6 | Roguelite autobattler. I like the idea in general and love the flow, but gameplay was a bit slow, some clicks weren't intuitive, and I felt like I was fighting the UI here and there while trying to get used to it. I LOVE L5R though. And we didn't get to see much of the roguelite upgrades, but it apparently is quite good. |
| 032 | 2025-03-04 | Absurd Story: Back Home | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hihldHN4Srk (Afterhours) | - | - | 3 | This demo is held back by a very poor translation effort, but there's a chance the actual game could be fairly interesting. It looks like the main character is en route to pick up a quirky party and the puzzles are easy in the demo part of the game, except for a part that I wasn't noticing the ingame feedback for. |
| 031 | 2025-03-03 | Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13D9FqC34Q | 1 | 0 | 7 | Fun, solid, well voice-acted game. Not super simplistic, but not too tough either, it's more of like a comfort food game, put on your detective hat and follow along with the story. I did dislike occasionally knowing exactly who a deduction was talking about but not having the keyword for it because you have to find and talk to one specific person to get it though, but then again the map does show you what clues you have uncollected. |
| 030 | 2025-03-03 | Sylia | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_boKEXnYWg | 1 | 2 | 7 | Despite the forced 640x480 fullscreen resolution, some weird text things like characters at the start of some lines not being capitalized, and the perhaps slightly too long introduction gameplay segment, this game was great! I played far more than I meant to. The pet characters were fun and memorable, being able to recruit random monsters was awesome, and the first Sequoia dungeon was cool, while also dropping hints that there were other pets we were missing. I managed to sell my map, that is probably a bug. |
| 029 | 2025-03-03 | Bura: The Way the Wind Blows | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYgXHt0nhBo (Afterhours) | - | - | 3.5 | Most of the art was decently nice but some (faces, walls) were low-poly, weird and offputting. Lack of decoration and life in village, the "church" was a small empty room. Story was nonexistent and characters twice referred to things that hadn't happened yet. Interestingly it looks like the full game involves a time skip to an older protagonist. Game gave me vertigo too, partly because FOV slider was hidden, but the controls were not very good overall and hiding acorns in random places is not "rewarding exploration". |
| 028 | 2025-03-02 | Deliver At All Costs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5NTpoeW2B8 | 1 | 3 | 8 | This was a lot more fun than it had any right to be. Destructible physics, fun and voiced narrator and over-the-top characters, great music, chaotic quests, and intriguing vehicle upgrades. Kind of felt like playing GTA: VC again. Main drawback would be the tank controls, but I suspect this is deliberate in order to cause more chaos. |
| 027 | 2025-03-02 | qualia | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vp953IRHdg | 1 | 0 | 2 | More an art project than a game. The main menu did warn that the demo was only 5-10 minutes long though. But even as an art project, it's lacking a certain je ne sais quoi. It needs more interaction than just pressing Human or AI buttons, and it basically doesn't make full use of the video game medium. The engine was also very weird, with visible menu items up top. |
| 026 | 2025-03-02 | Nice Day for Fishing | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfH5UDYXbkE | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | I like the game and its fishing mechanic, and the NPC banter was quite funny even without knowing about Epic NPC Man, but the game runs the risk of being repetitive and how good it will be will depend on that. |
| 025 | 2025-03-02 | Veloria: The Knot of Candles | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzTHDavhqQM (Afterhours) | - | - | 5 | I enjoyed this one enough to play it all the way to the end of the demo, but it needs several passes to deal with all the translation issues, punctuation, missing line breaks that made sentences cut off, etc. Classic Asian jank. Some of the puzzles were moderately difficult, with red herrings thrown in, and translation issues hindered a couple of them. Plushie and dog abuse trigger warnings. |
| 024 | 2025-03-01 | My Lil Afterlife | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KCp7rv41QI | 1 | 2 | 2 | Felt like a very early tech demo. Graphics were cute, but music was a bit repetitive, inventory/placement needs QoL, there's no reason to craft anything, the dungeon was too short even for a demo, and combat is weird with some attacks ignoring line of sight, attacks landing before induction bar ends, etc. Also a bug where you can go into decoration mode as the dungeon was loading and you'd end up invisible in the dungeon. |
| 023 | 2025-03-01 | Do No Harm | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96mjNYolrlA | 1 | 0 | 5.5 | They pile on quite a lot of mechanics and some things like dosages, allergies (and how to get around them), and the meter thing that came in with the wheel were not explained well or seemed inconsistent. Don't know if that was intentional. Dislike the sanity mechanic where you have to quaff laudanum, because that's like RNG saying "Hey, here's a random gold or sanity loss for this customer." |
| 022 | 2025-03-01 | Tales of Seikyu | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpmzCUqkCrY | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | Yokai and cozy Stardew mechanics in a 3D game seems to be a nice match, but there are signs of lack of polish that I hope get addressed. Inventory and the shortcut bars were a chore, at least on kb/m. Some characters clipped through things or stared at walls. I had some screen tearing, though the stream didn't capture that. It was a 3-day demo so there was nothing like a festival or event to see, those are often the highlights of these sorts of games. |
| 021 | 2025-03-01 | Hanako's Flower Shop | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEZP1X06gKg (Afterhours) | - | - | 5.5 | I very much like the concept, but I found the English voice acting and the amount of unnecessary early banter during the "tutorial" offputting, though maybe I was a bit harsh. There's proper JP voices planned though. The flower collecting segment was buggy too. Things like trait stacking were not explained, at least within the first couple bouquets. I love their volume sliders for each character. |
| 020 | 2025-03-01 | That's not my Neighbor | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_H4-LzX_Lo (Afterhours) | - | - | 4.5 | Demo on https://nachogames.itch.io/thats-not-my-neighbor and not part of Steam Next Fest. It was fine, fairly straightforward, demo only contained one level with 7 neighbours to interview. The rotary phone UI was a bit weird. |
| 019 | 2025-02-28 | As I Began to Dream | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfHELWJsLcg | 1 | 0 | 6 | The store description mentions trauma, but the demo never got to the trauma part, and it was fairly easy and straightforward. But it was a cozy puzzle platformer, and if the puzzles eventually get harder then it will be a good game. The rules around the collectibles felt a little confusing. |
| 018 | 2025-02-28 | Promise Mascot Agency | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRbja6aJWso | 1 | 0 | 7 | Smooth, solid demo, with a Yakuza-like weirdness that I like, was voiced in Japanese and even has a vocal song, all great things. Vehicle controls (on keyboard) were a bit too slidey, but might be adjustable. My main worry is that it felt like a weird but ultimately bland minigame collectathon. It will live or die by how good its story is, but that didn't impress me in the demo. I really like the timed demo concept though. |
| 017 | 2025-02-28 | Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx_-Gn0go64 (Afterhours) | - | - | 6.5 | Fairly smooth and very pretty Japanese-themed, Hades-like, action roguelite, though there's a bit of an animation lag at the end of the attacks that I don't really like in my action games. No major complaints though. |
| 016 | 2025-02-27 | Wordatro! | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoTFyHWOEKs | 1 | 0 | 6.5 | Balatro with words, and it is exactly what it advertises to be, needs more QoL and powers and stuff but the demo promises that in the full game anyway. Main Menu button really shouldn't end the current game without warning, demo or no. |
| 015 | 2025-02-27 | Valkyrie Star: A Cacophony Choir | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKAf-LyyPtQ | 1 | 0 | 3.5 | Combat is missing lots of descriptions like tooltips on buffs/debuffs, some skills and mechanics (like mana/mystique) were partly renamed and had two names, and the story writing was incoherent at times. Nice to see several sort-of henshins though, and the concept in general is intriguing. With polish and an interesting story, could be very fun. |
| 014 | 2025-02-27 | What Comes Next | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMjuqG9Mns (Afterhours) | - | - | 3 | It's really simplistic, has weird "story" arcs (like when you break into a house to get a shirt for a beggar), you can't retrieve the mouse after he completes his tasks and returns to the girl, and it overall feels very much like a free game or tech demo. |
| 013 | 2025-02-26 | STRAND | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD5u3M3W8iY | 1 | 0 | 5 | What I played of the demo didn't really show that much, though I really liked being able to pick up and spin/examine so many weird items. I might have gotten softlocked at the end though, not sure. Also the game has FPS issues on higher graphics and looking around can cause motion sickness. |
| 012 | 2025-02-26 | Skin Deep | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5ysVzzlGU | 1 | 1 | 5.5 | Stylish spaceships and weird cat captains! Am worried using props to murder enemies and get rid of heads might feel sameish after a couple of levels, especially with the "easier" ways of killing. The teleporting in the demo was weird too, but assumedly not in full game. |
| 011 | 2025-02-26 | Wanderstop | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qePDwBbre8k | 1 | 0 | 9 | Amazing demo. Beautiful graphics, stylish teahouse, great concept and intro, fun characters, perfect length for a demo. Main nitpick would be that controls can be a bit touchy, both in terms of picking things up, holding them, and item interaction. But it's a nitpick. |
| 010 | 2025-02-26 | Dragon Heartburn | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqUOZJwHkfo (Afterhours) | - | - | 2 | A finicky "precision puzzle" game where you are breathing fire and need to navigate through rooms of idiotic workers without killing any of them. There's a cursor bug in fullscreen, and the fire mechanics and the weirdness around what happens at angles in the game are not what I'd consider fun. |
| 009 | 2025-02-25 - 2025-02-26 | Mayhem Maidens | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3qAdUjDTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv8ytlqVtcU (Afterhours) |
1 | 0 | 4 | Basically Vampire Survivors as a tower defencey roguelite where you control/recruit up to 5 girls (characters from some Light Novel) and protect/upgrade an orb in the middle. Character movement is slow though, and it's very difficult to switch to/control the characters in the chaos. The melee characters feel a lot weaker too. |
| 008 | 2025-02-25 | Food Wagon | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDVKaafocI | 1 | 1 | 3 | The adventure part was weak, the graphics and UI were super basic, some Korean signs were not translated, the "roguelike" component felt out of place like they didn't figure out how to save games, and the only NPCs I found were bugged. But pulling the food wagon around and across bridges and setting up camp and cooking kebabs was evocative of something much greater. I want a better game like this. |
| 007 | 2025-02-25 | MagicCar of Delicious / Gourmet Food Wizard | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0-9ftL_1J8 | 1 | 0 | 7 | I enjoyed this one. Upgrade a little train with towers that you drag around clearing little zones. There's a night market segment to sell food at too. <3 Though that part is weird, since you can just leave and reenter with no penalty to reset the stall. |
| 006 | 2025-02-25 | SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHLBl-gXdF4 | 1 | 0 | 5 | It's a serviceable "restaurant" simulator with stages, using Singapore/SEA-inspired recipes, with the main twist being that there's a different "outdoor" area connected to the restaurant with each stage. It's meant for two players and I felt disadvantaged playing alone. The early story is weak. Who am I selling my food to? The island is deserted! |
| 005 | 2025-02-24 | Moves Of The Diamond Hand | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t409cCnDZqY | 1 | 1 | 7 | Fun dice-levelling mechanics and stylish art, though there are some weird decisions like not being able to just use items in inventory to heal yourself directly. Might be possible to get softlocked. |
| 004 | 2025-02-23 | Sultan's Game | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRDRUt0-Eck | 1 | 1 | 6.5 | This is a Cultist Simulator variant with similar QoL features from those games, but with a narrative story wrapped around it. Lots of typoes in the demo. Some unclear bits on what cards can be used where sometimes. But very intriguing otherwise. |
| 003 | 2025-02-23 | CraftCraft: Fantasy Merchant Simulator | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2oulOZbBPM | 1 | 0 | 3.5 | The crafting is both simplistic and finicky (some unexplained parts) at the same time, but with a bit of polish it could be a lot of fun. Right now, not really. Game is voiced, somehow. There are two buttons at the top that return you to main menu, for some reason. Lost my first character because there's no confirmation on one of them, and the game crashed soon after. |
| 002 | 2025-02-22 | Save the Villainess: An Otome Isekai Roleplaying Game | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blYilW2TpwI | 1 | 0 | 5.5 | Funny/interesting narration style, pretty art, but lots of unnecessary and slow animations (skippable though). It's not "snappy". I accidentally mixed up save and load twice, annoying menu UI. |
| 001 | 2025-02-22 | VIOLENT RUSH | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1goU_YWSkt4 | 1 | 0 | 2 | Stylish, but short demo that abruptly ends, no meaningful choices, very questionable content and art. |