Checking Out 7 October Next Fest Demos and 1 Wild Card Demo (Demo Impressions Part 6)

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Coming in hot with 8 demo impressions!

Man, I had so many demos I wanted to play during Steam’s Next Fest: October Edition and with only having a week to try them out, I had to put everything on hold to play them all. It looks like I’ll be doing catch-up for the rest of the year, but it was worth it. There were games I’ve been looking forward to and got to find whether or not I’ll like the game and games I had no idea of that I found and added to my wishlist after liking the demo. Of course, I had to write some demo impressions for the ones that compelled me to write about them. Plus a wild card demo that I played on the switch.

For games with demos still available, I will put a (*) to mark them. Now, onto the demo impressions!

Cursorblade*

Release Date: November 6, 2023
When I saw this, not only did I think about how cute it looked, but thought it was interesting with how your cursor is the blade. Of course, I had to download and play the demo. After playing it for half an hour I have to say that I quite liked it. The furthest I got to was Wave 13, but it was fun and it really is quick to get into your next try (and I’m assuming in the full game the Wishlist button will turn into a quick Retry button). Also, the game surprisingly opens really fast.

There are different blades you can equip and while there are only two for the demo, it looks like each will have their own pro and con and their own ability you can do with a right click. The first blade is the basic blade with a spin dodge while the second blade will let you start with more hearts in exchange for lower attack damage and has the ability to erect a wall around your cursor for a few seconds. Once you choose, it’s now time for you to defeat enemies by slashing them with your cursor. However, the enemies won’t take this and will attack you. Each enemy attacks differently, but you will know when they’re winding it up when they start to shake and glow. If you’re over their model or get hit by their projectile you’ll lose health. So you can’t exactly fling your cursor wildly as death will be closer than you think.

After you defeat each wave, you’ll be given a choice to pick up items. You’ll get the option to pick a weapon the most and this adds to your blade. You can pick up an item that has a chance to inflict burn, a chance to place a sticky bomb, surround your cursor with poisonous spores, and a chance to deal triple damage to name a few. Not to mention that these items have levels. You can level them up by selecting it again after defeating a wave and the level will raise the chance its effect happens or raise the effectiveness, depending on the item’s effect. Every so often, you’ll also be able to pick up a passive item to help you out as well. And these passive items can, for example, lower enemy’s max health, slow down projectiles, or give you an extra heart when you pick up health.

I know I won’t be that good at this game, but I don’t care. I’m looking forward to when Cursorblade releases.

A Date with Death*

Man, this game really spoils us. Not only do you get to customize your character, but also pick out what pet you have and decorate your room. You’re just an ordinary human. Yep, an ordinary human that has near death experiences every day long enough that it’s just a normal Wednesday. I have no idea how our character survived all that we learn happen to her, but it seems that even Death is baffled. One day as you’re trying to relax, an app pops up on your screen and after failing to ignore it (stupid annoying notification sound) and delete it, you just look at it. It turns out to be a chat window and the person on the other end is Death (aka the Grim Reaper). Though, you don’t exactly believe him and start teasing him about how much of an edgelord he must be. Death gets sick of all your teasing and he video calls you, after you say you won’t see him as anything other than a scammer otherwise, and…oh no…he’s cute. You still don’t fully believe him, but you know he’s real and cute and you go even more towards teasing and flirting. The conversation eventually ends up going to a bet. If he can reap your soul within a week he can have it (as long as he lets you put up a small fight) and if he doesn’t you get his soul. What will you do with it? I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be cool?

And thus, the demo ends as your character goes to bed for the day. Other than wishing text during the text chatting popped up a bit faster and wanting the condition of winning the bet to be marrying him, I liked it.

Also gotta love how the store description says “Can you resist his charm…” when it’s more like can he resist your charm since you’re character is so flirty. Can’t wait to have more opportunities to get on Death’s nerves or make him all nervous and embarrassed by my flirtiness and teasing.

The Diary*

I wanted to try this out as I thought the trailer was interesting. Once I read the Steam page, the premise also sounded interesting. A thriller told through the missing person’s diary? And the pictures in the diary are animated a bit? Yes please.

The demo has you flipping through one of Ashley’s diaries. Aside from having meta knowledge that the owner went missing and you’re going through to try and find any clues, the diary is normal. Well, kind of normal as most words are cutout words rather than handwritten. You will be reading and viewing the pictures or papers that were put in the diary, but there are also pages you’ll have to interact with before you continue. There are pages you’ll have to piece together text conversations or ripped up paper, puzzle out what Ashley ordered, taking pictures, and even some quick minigames.

As you’re reading through, the entries seem sweet. Ashley took the plunge and asked out her crush Greg (who you’ll notice wrote the postcards you see when you’re trying to figure out the combination to the lock). They go on more dates and they seem to hit it off. Well, until Ashley’s work gets busy and it seems she started seeing someone else. Right then, whoever is viewing the diary closes it and flips it to reveal that Greg shared this diary with her. This is when it gets dark turn as you see things from his side and it quickly turns creepy as you see his stalker tendencies he did. After you look at all the pages, you’ll then go to do deductions to uncover the truth the diary is hiding. The person reading the diary ends up being Justin, the man who appeared later in Ashley’s side and you learn his name on Greg’s side and see more of him. It turns out that him and Ashley married, which angered Greg, and while we don’t see what happened after the wedding, we do know Ashley went missing. During deductions you’ll just have to pick the correct answer to a question to help out Justin (or whoever’s viewpoint it was for that diary as based on the game description it might change throughout the game).

Even though I was so confused when I first finished, I liked the game. It was interesting and man did it get creepy once you saw the other half of the diary. The deductions also seem to be logical and were even questions I had when I was playing through and called out elements that didn’t raise suspicion for me. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Hana Awase New Moon – Mizuchi Volume (Switch)*

Release Date: October 26, 2023
I actually started with a Switch demo for Hana Awase New Moon. This is supposed to be arriving on Steam as well, but it has yet to get a product page there. Anyway, I only checked out Mitzuchi Volume as this series does have a play order and of course I want to start at the first one. This is also an otome VN and you know I can’t resist. This game starts with a young woman having a strange dream talking about the moon and taking the hand she first sees. You can change her name, but her canon name is Mikoto. She soon wakes up to find herself in the hospital, with the guy that brought her there (she doesn’t know yet, but his name is Iroha). Just as he leaves, Mikoto finds a card on her bed and understandably thinks it was his and he accidentally left it or it fell out of his pocket. After talking to her friends, Ai and Shou, all three of them go to the mysterious stranger’s school.

There is only one school that’s all about the card game Hana Awase (or Kasan as the game’s websites call it) and the hanafuda card Mikoto has is from that game. Mikoto is a huge nerd about this card game, by the way, and there are two roles. Men are Kaei who act as the attacker and women are Minamo which act as support. However, it gets weird as it turns out that card selected her and it means that she’s the moon. She’s a Senki, a rare Minamo, that holds extraordinary power. Senki will flow more mana, or “water” as the game uses the analogy of Minamos being water and Kaeis being flowers, into their chosen Kaei and thus bring out the Kaei’s ultimate ability. There are Five Brights at the school and the card picks which one you go into and of course, you go into Mizuchi’s Team Crane. However, before Mikoto (and you) get a sense on things, tragedy strikes and you need to take care of a little possession shadow (supernatural?) problem.

Imagine my shock when I went in expecting a normal (or as normal as it can be) school life VN and there’s a blood splatter effect and Mikoto freaks out about the blood. And of course, the thing that did this can only be defeated by playing Hana Awase with it.

Hana Awase features a card game, which honestly was half the reason why I wanted to try out the demo. The card game isn’t actually that bad, and I’m sure the reworks they did to make it more streamlined worked in this regard. Using hanafuda cards, you’ll basically need to make card combinations. While the game does tell you the easy combinations (maybe there’s some card building in here?), the game does provide a handy tool that tells you four possible combinations your cards are a part of. Unless you’re lucky, you won’t have a starting hand with a combination so you’ll need to choose what cards you want to keep and discard the rest. Oh and did I mention this is turn-based ATP card battle system? Yeah. If you still don’t have a full combination, your turn will end and it’ll be your opponent’s turn which acts just as your turn does. However, if you have a combination once your discarded cards gets replaced, you can immediately do an attack with that combination. You can do a Normal Attack to deal damage reliably or you can do Koikoi Attack which I didn’t really understand. I failed the one time I thought I could do Koikoi, so I stuck with Normal Attacks.

The goal is to get your opponent’s health to 0 and dispel or defeat whatever/whoever you’re going against.

Hana Awase New Moon has four installments that’s going to release simultaneously, each titled after one of the LIs. At first, I thought it was a Taisho x Alice situation where it only contains that route, but after some research on the r/otomegames subreddit it’s more like it’s revolved around that LI as the others still do have routes (though they only have a happy ending in their game). I’m still iffy on each game being $35.29 though, which would make the whole series about $154 for me. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll end up playing all four, but I do at least want to play the Mizuchi Volume. The prologue was honestly pretty cool and the card game is interesting even though I don’t fully understand it.

The Holy Gosh Darn

The last game in the Tuesday Trilogy is getting closer! On the very same Tuesday that Manual Samuel and Helheim Hassle takes place on, we find ourselves in Heaven. It all starts with two angels as they watch countless dogs come into Heaven and try to guess what breed the next dog will be. They also want to pet one, but it seems dogs ignore angels. The angel we follow is Cassiel (or Cass) and this Tuesday is going to be…a lot. After re-calibrating her friend, Puri’s, Soul Purity Measurifier, they notice that souls other than dogs are being detected heading to Heaven. Confused, as humans arriving at Heaven seems to be quite rare, they go to Peter (aka the guy manning the welcome booth and tired of all the dogs) to ask. Well, it turns out those souls aren’t normal human souls, but Phantoms. These Phantoms are paradoxes and with them fast approaching, the only thing they can do is get The Holy Gosh Darn. However, it’s already too late as Phantoms are already pouring in and, after a few seconds, Heaven explodes.

Luckily, this isn’t the end as Cass meets up with good ‘ole Death. The Phantoms may be…kind of…probably…totally Death’s fault and he’s enlisting Cass to help him help you save Heaven. He gives Cass a clock necklace that grants her the ability to time travel. The furtherest she can travel back to is 12 pm, which is when she woke up, and since Heaven gets destroyed at 7pm…yeah not a lot of time to work with (even with time travel). The clock lets you travel back and forwards by 15 minute intervals, but you can make a time stamp at any time that you can go back to. Time Travel will also help you in conversations. You can cut a conversation short and even ask whoever you’re talking to to get to the point already, however that is rude. If you end up needing something from them, whether it’s right then or later, you can rewind to have a redo at being more polite so they’ll tell you. And of course you’ll be able to use the info you got in previous rewinds as dialogue choices. Though, any items you got in the time frame you’re rewinding will be lost and you’ll have to get them back every time.

Anyway, this demo is the game’s prologue and you’ll be trying to figure out what The Holy Gosh Darn is, how to get to it, getting to it, and then finding out that it was stolen. All with time travel shenanigans.

I can’t wait to play the full game, but I am a bit worried about the possible annoyances the time travel will cause. Luckily, it does seem this was already thought of as long conversations gets shortened or a quick passover once you listen to them the first time and you do unlock the ability to take an item back in time without losing it (and it looks like it’ll get another upgrade). I’m also guessing that after certain events you’ll get a reset in terms of what you’ll need to do with each rewind. Like after the prologue I don’t see any reason to go about getting the Vault key again and brewing coffee and all.

It also looks like Cass may also get abilities throughout the game. You get a Dash during the prologue which helps you clear big gaps. Although, I got stuck right when you were supposed to use it to get to The Vault as the tooltip ended up closing too quickly and I had to look up what the button was. I also did find the button mapping kind of weird (not to mention I just kept pressing Q and thus resetting my time stamp) so hopefully the controller support works for me in the full release. It’s pretty weird using a controller, but the game only shows keyboard buttons.

It seems we’ll get a lot of references from Manuel Samuel and Helheim Hassle as well! It seems the Phantoms may have been caused by an end-game event that happens in Manuel Samuel and we get to travel to Helheim.

Well, I yap yap yapped on about Holy Gosh Darn didn’t I? Let’s finally go to the next demo impression shall we?

Looks Good*

Looks Good is similar to A Little to the Left, but with some more variety as it’s not just about organizing. All the levels are organized in books based on the theme and the artist(s) that provided the artwork. There are six books in total, but for this demo only five are available for us to get a little peek in. Each book has three levels you can do and what you do seems to depend on the book. The first one, Snapshot, seems to be in the vein of A Little to the Left where you’re tidying and organizing things and some levels will have multiple solutions. Other books, meanwhile, do have another layer even if some levels fall under the organizing label. The Adventures of Buta seems to be telling a little story that progresses with each page. Flash Style features, you guessed it, flash art and even flash-esque levels. Like clicking frogs to extend their tongue when a fly flies by or putting birds on a power line. Put The Right seem to have a theme of royalty and shows a puzzle of figuring out what crest goes where and putting the gems back on vases and a crown. And lastly, Food Journal has a theme of food and had a mix of organizing, putting the correct pizza pieces together, and an equation-esque puzzle where you figure out what dessert elements make a dessert, as well as putting the dessert in the right solution spot.

So far, Looks Good looks…good. It does looks like there will be a variety of puzzles and I do like how each book has a different theme and art style. I do wonder if you can do the five books in any order, as I would like to do my favorite books last and my least favorite first. Also, if I have to guess, the sixth book may become unlocked after completing all the other books.

My favorite books are definitely Snapshot and Food Journal.

Pixel Cafe*

Playing as a young woman named Pixel, the game starts out giving us a little background information. We learn that Pixel used to be at her Grandma’s house a lot growing up as it was the one place she felt safe at. When her Grandma died, she inherited her house and Pixel rented it out at first. Though, once she wanted to live somewhere else and after another argument with her mom, she decided it was time to move into that house. After the tenants moved out of course. It’s actually a pretty nice house and I assume it’s fully paid off, but Pixel still needs to pay all the other bills. Pixel finds a job at a pub called The Pit. Throughout the game, it looks like you’ll jump between pubs/cafes/restaurants with story segments sprinkled in.

Gameplay is pretty simple, but has the capability on getting a bit stressful. Starting out with two counters you need to switch between, before progressing to three, each counter has different food and/or beverages that you’ll need to prepare (except coffee, that’s a staple). Once a customer stops at the counter, they’ll tell you their order and you have a pretty generous timer to complete their order. And if they order more than one thing, time is even added when you serve one part of their order, which is nice. Anyway, preparing the food is pretty easy and the process of it differs depending on what it is. Some will require you to start it, wait until it’s done, and stop it before it overflows/overcooks; while others just need you to put all the elements together on a preparation slot or click to start the animation. Beverages can also be ordered with straws, ice, or milk which you do need to put in on a preparation slot and food like the cake-looking item need some prep before cooking it. As the game goes on, it gets more complicated as you get more items on the menu whether it be a new drink or a new element to a buildable food item.

You can prep the items ahead of time. Though, you do start out with limited prep slots so you do still need to wait to see how you need to build it and ice cream does melt after a while (duh). You also have a bar that charges and once it’s full you can get “in the Zone” which makes equipment go faster.

Once you give the customer their full order, they’ll leave money on the counter for you to pick up. You do get scored based on how well you do and it seems you are timed. It looks like the timer is how much time you have to serve all the customers for that day (which you don’t know how many you’ll have until the end of the shift).

There are quite a few things you can upgrade. Each location will let you upgrade aspects like giving more slots for the different food preparation stations. If you go back to Pixel’s house, you’ll also find that you can not only buy new furniture, but also Pixel. The furniture is mainly just visual, but it adds some happiness to Pixel. You can then use her happiness to upgrade Pixel. These upgrades seem to decrease time food needs to be cooked/drinks need to be poured, give you longer time before stuff gets overflowed/overcooked, lower how much money gets taken out when you throw food away, and increase how long you’re “in the Zone”.

For Pixel Cafe, I think it’s the type of game that I really need to play the full game for. I do like the gameplay, but I’m still undecided on the characters, story, and difficulty progression. I did see in the forums that the developers rearranged events for the demo and the progression will be better in the full game, which is good. Plus this erases my confusion over Pixel being fired from The Pit after a week. I do also wonder what causes her to be fired. For the story and characters, I did like the setup and the scenes we got so far. Pixel is a bit prickly, but it does look like we’ll get to know her more as the game progresses and maybe she bonds with a co-worker or two.

So yeah, this food time management gameplay seems promising and only time will tell on how the story will be.

Teleforum*

Release Date: October 19, 2023
Teleforum has a short demo, but man did I get creepy vibes despite that. You play as a cameraman who is accompanying a reporter named Julianna to a widow’s home. The whole game is actually viewed through the camera you’re manning, giving the game its found footage style, and it all starts once you two are in the elevator. At first, you (as the player) don’t know what exactly happened, but as the cameraman you’re a bit more hesitant while Julianna is all for talking to the widow. She is even doing this without being given the green light. You just know that something happened to a journalist named Walter Martins during a broadcast and Julianna wanted to talk to his wife. Disguising her unauthorized curiosity as the station creating a homage to Walter, Adriana Martins lets them in and agrees to an interview.

As she’s getting her guests something to drink, you get some time to look around and you can inspect specific things. Once Adriana comes back, it’s time for that interview and whatever you inspected determines the type of questions you’ll be able to ask during the limited time you have. However, it soon turns dark as they discuss what happened to Walter. Not only do you learn that Walter ended his life in the middle of his broadcast, but it seems those that there’s a discrepancy on what he used between those that seen it happen and those that didn’t. She also reveals that Walter started to act strange after he watched a particular tape. The original as copies seem to lose whatever effect it has on the watcher. Adriana, sensing you two want to watch it, gives Julianna the tape and you two watch it as she steps out (as she did promise her late husband she will never watch it). The tape is…strange to say the least with strange visuals and talking that you can’t or barely understand.

The demo ends right when Julianna is done watching the mysterious tape. The consequences of that is still unknown, but based on a quick scene in the trailer, it seems she is going down the same path Walter did. Luckily, it doesn’t seem like you were affected as you were watching through a camera lens and the tape only affects those that watch the original. I also want to say that this game nailed the creepy visuals for me with how there’s just enough light to see your environment and how the face of Adriana is always shadowed. You can barely make out her features, but just barely.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s going to happen to Julianna, how your character will react, and maybe going back to see any dialogue changes like the interview with Adriana.