What's Good About the February 2023 Steam Next Fest

I underestimated how weird the release schedule for the first quarter of the year was gonna shake out. There’s not much stuff coming out this month that I’m interested in until the release of Lightfall in Destiny 2 at the end of the month. So I was a bit strapped for ideas and not being interested in Hogwarts Legacy only cemented this. Then the Steam Next Fest came along and reminded me that there were a bunch of indie game demos that I should try because a lot of the stuff there looks really cool. However, while the Triple-A space has been taking a Mollywhopping due to the pandemic, I can encounter stuff in the indie scene that’s fun, experimental, and even interesting. So here’s some stuff from the Steam Next Fest February 2023 edition that caught my eye.

Gestalt: Steam & Cinder

This is one that’s been on my wish list for a while because it looked so dang neat. It’s a 2D Metroidvania similar to the Koji Igarashi-helmed Castlevania games set in an intriguing Steampunk setting. From what I’ve played of the demo, it actually feels like the actual opening 30-40 minutes of the game because I got the introduction, worldbuilding and characters showing up to put things in motion. You play as Aletheia, a mercenary hired to find the son of one of her clients and from there, things get interesting with the introduction of elements of ancient wars, corrupt organisations and ancient machines and possible eldritch monstrosities for good measure.

What caught me off guard with the demo for Gestalt was how polished the whole thing was. Everything from the map to the combat, to even the way the controls and jumping, feels really great. And this is just the baseline. As the demo went on, new elements were introduced in a natural way. You start off with a great feeling jump, dash and basic attack combo with Aletheia’s Saber, and from there you unlock a pistol that charges up its bullets by doing slashing attacks that later in the demo can be used to stun robotic enemies. And as time went on it introduced a skill tree that can be used to upgrade your abilities and makes them more potent. It’s some nice ability progression and serves as a decent preview of what the full game could be like.

This also extends to the exploration of the world. You slowly open up more areas and eventually find and fight what I’m assuming is the first real boss of the game to cap off the demo. Gestalt: Steam & Cinder did the main objective of a demo and that’s to sell the heck out of it. I am definitely keeping an eye on this one as a Metroidvania enjoyer.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox

I’ve been keeping an eye on this for a while mainly because it was announced on Xbox and Bethesda’s summer games showcase last June. A Metroidvania mixed with the trappings of 1920s jazz and cosmic horror? Sign me the heck up! What I got was basically that and some other things that I wasn’t expecting as well.

The base setup is that you are the titular Benedict Fox, a private investigator who is currently in the middle of looking into a missing child’s case and the grizzly murders of said child’s parents. As far as setups go, it’s a pretty good one and I don’t think it goes into any further depths because the story looks to be one of the selling points, which is fair enough.

After a quick dustup with some demon worshippers which serves as a tutorial for how combat works, Benedict finds himself at a run-down mansion where he finds his newly dead father and is introduced to the main gameplay feature: dream labyrinths. These are where the main source of the Metroidvania aspects of the game pop up because all of the areas, at least in the demo are lovingly hand-crafted and interesting to navigate. This one seems less focused on fighting enemies, which is still important but focuses more on exploring these wild dream realms and solving elaborate puzzles with whichever new ability you find. I actually really like this approach because it offers a different take on the genre that I don't think I’m personally familiar with.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is definitely something I’m keeping on my radar. With its interesting mashup of styles and the fact that it’s coming out on Steam and Game Pass at the end of April mean that I’m going to be having a nice in-between game for when I have some downtime in Lightfall.

Capes

Capes is a turn-based tactics game done in the style of the Firaxis XCOM games. The difference is that instead of playing as a government-agnostic NGO that’s defending the Earth from alien invasions or a resistance group fighting against an alien occupation, you play as a bunch of underground superheroes tackling their city’s corporate fascist infrastructure.

There are a handful of missions that showcase a small portion of the playable cast and take four of them into missions. You get

• Facet is a powerhouse who covers himself with crystals to defend himself and the rest of his team.
• Rebound is a sneaky teleporter who can stab bad guys and BAMF in and out of combat, Nightcrawler style.
• Mindfire, a psychic who uses his telepathy to weaken his foes for his team and telekinesis to finish them off
• Powerhouse, a former college football star who can manipulate the battlefield with his storm powers

And more are coming in the full game. But in the missions I played in this demo, it was mostly these four. And I don’t mind this because they serve as a wonderful microcosm of Capes’s systems.

You can mix and match each of the four characters and their powers to some devastating effects. Rebound can increase the range of both of her allies' movement and abilities, Mindfire can increase how much damage the rest of the team can dish out, Facet can manipulate the battlefield to make it more advantageous for the team and Powerhouse can displace enemies from cover, off higher terrain, etc.  And this is before you take the RPG-style levelling of powers and team synergies into account.

Capes is a good sampler for what’s shaping up to be a great tactics game. I can definitely see myself picking this up and I recommend it for those of you who need a chaser after playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns and felt like it wasn’t XCOM enough for them.

And these were some of the demos I played during this Next Fest. There are others that I wanted to talk about but either felt like I would have been redundant in mentioning them (Like Oblivion Override, which is just an action-platforming roguelike, but with cool robots) or haven’t gotten to try them yet (Looking at you Dark and Darker and Octopath Traveller 2). But yeah, load up Steam and check out some of the stuff I mentioned or just do some digging, I guarantee that you’ll find something that catches your attention.