5 Demos I Played Ahead of Steam Next Fest (Demo Impressions Part 9)

Before Steam Next Fest, I happened to play 5 demos.

While I was busy playing Paper Mario and worrying about some severe weather, I managed to carve out some time to play some demos for games that sounded interested to me. I didn’t even know when the next Steam Next Fest was coming at the time, but hey at least I have less demos to play over the course of next week. Well, it’s time to get into the demos I’ve played and I do recommend checking them out. I hope you enjoy reading, even though I wrote out too much for some of them.

Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom

This one was a bit of a surprise for me! When I saw the press release for this game I was going to scroll on by. That was until I saw it mentioning a demo. It wouldn’t hurt to check out the demo and little did I know that I would come out of it liking it.

You can more or less gather what Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom is about just looking at the game’s title and the screenshots. The game follows a little boy named Aarik and he seems to be the young prince for this kingdom. At the start of the game, Aarik is sitting on a throne bored out of his mind and wondering where his dad could be. Aarik spots a treasure chest placed more or less in front of him and, like anyone else would do in his position, opens it up. He finds his dad’s old crown in there and puts it on. I’m not too sure if the crown has any effect for Aarik, but it does for us players as it allows us to spin the camera around to change the perspective.

The game is split up into chapters, making it easy to go back if you wanted, with the land split up into pieces. Normally, you can’t go that far as the gaps between the different pieces of land are too far away or too high up. With the crown, however, you can. The crown allows you to shift the camera. It turns (or spins) around the level, keeping it in the middle, mimicking how Aarik spins the crown on his head. Spin it to the right perspective and you’ll not only see staircases or paths that were once blocked by something in front of it, but also notice two pieces of broken platforms connected. Aarik can now walk over like it was always close together. Pretty cool. The levels do slightly increase the difficulty, putting in more gaps, buttons to press, objects for you to get out of the way, and moving platforms. All you need to do is figure out what perspectives you need to progress and it’s all pretty easy to get the hang of. In addition, there is a collectible that you can find in every level, a crown icon.

Towards the end of the demo, Aarik finds his dad still sleeping (and shaking the walls with his snoring) as well as a red crystal. He picks up this red crystal, or ruby, which lets him pick up broken objects and repair them by placing it where it used to be. So it looks like a new mechanic will appear at the end of each chapter. I do wonder how levels will be when you have multiple crystals. I’m guessing chapters will mainly focus on the new mechanic, with the already introduced ones sprinkled in, until the last chapter where you’re put to the test with levels that use all of them. We also learn that Aarik’s mom has been gone for a long time and even play as her. I wonder what she’s up to…

The demo encompasses the first seven levels which make up the game’s first chapter. It’s a pretty nice demo that I enjoyed. The only things I have to complain about Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom is that it was pretty hard to find where you needed to go to proceed after you get the ruby (as the camera is locked in its position in Aarik’s dad’s room) and I would prefer if the level selection told you whether or not you got the collectible.

Cat God Ranch

When I saw the trailer for this game I was so confused. I had no idea what was happening (well, more like why everything was happening) and I was still confused after looking at the Steam page summary. That, combined with knowing I’m bad at deckbuilders, put this game as one that I wouldn’t get. However, I couldn’t get this game out of my head for one reason: the demo. I thought that it couldn’t hurt to try out the demo. After all, I was interested enough to check out the Steam page, watch the trailer, try to understand it, and thought the artwork was kind of cute. No harm no foul if I ended up disliking it.

Cat God Ranch has you, as you can guess, running a ranch. However, this isn’t going to be a normal ranching job. Bad news: You have to deal with the Cat Gods and their demands. Good news: they appointed a cat god to give you the rundown of your new duties and you’ll never run out of animals as they naturally gather here to receive the blessing of the Cat God. So, what’s the gameplay? Well, it’s a mix of aspects you can and can’t control. Levels include multiple stages you have to get through and to do that you need to have your offering before the deadline. With a minimum of five days, you need to gather enough Meow Coins to appease the Cat God. You gain Meow Coins through the animals on your ranch and their contributions through passive and active effects their card has. You start out with a couple animals and throughout the level you’ll build up your animal deck. The first round is basically a whatever round, as you can’t control it, but after that you will be able to wrangle more control.

As you press to go to the next day, or the next round, the animals will start to bring in Meow Coins and you’ll be able to pick a new animal card (or skip). Just like with any deckbuilder, you’ll need to figure out what build you want to go with and try to adapt. Each animal card has their base Meow Coin contribution and their own ability that come into effect depending on how much time has passed or what cards are around it or on the field. Like foxes will eat adjacent chickens, pigs will cost Meow Coins but they’ll automatically sell after a couple of days for a profit, or you’ll get bonus Meow Coins if more swans are on the field and/or they’re adjacent to a pond tile. In addition, each animal are under three families (Carnivore, Bird, and Ungulata). Animals under the same family are similar in some way and they can synergize with another family. Anyway, the card selection isn’t the only randomized aspect as each day your animals will go on a random tile. Don’t worry though, if you have more than 20 animals you still keep the excess. Their contributions just won’t be counted since they’re not on the board. Hopefully, once the deadline comes around you’ll have enough Meow Coins. You’ll be gifted Meow Cans for appeasing the Cat God. Meow Cans can be used to buy items, tiles, and talents (which gives an effect to a specific animal family) from the shop before every stage to give you more of a chance; as well as being able to reroll your card selection, reroll the shop, and throw an animal out of your ranch. Oh and I’m afraid I have some more bad news…the amount of Meow Coins you need for your offering increases with each stage.

Before you go into a level, you’ll also be able to switch up what Cat God you’ll be working with. This isn’t just an aesthetic choice as each Cat God does have their own passive ability that you can take advantage of (aside from tutorial cat). Like giving you extra starting animals or being able to guarantee an animal will show up every round. There are also other things you can look into before going into a level, but they were all unavailable. Most do look like it’s extra information (database on all the cards you’ve seen/played, achievements, and maybe your rank against other players), but there are the family stones in front of the Cat God. I’m not quite sure what these stones will do or effect as it goes both ways. It could be an animal-only card database (with collections being a database for non-animal cards, items, and events) or it could let you effect a specific family of cards.

The game can be surprisingly hard, though this could be because I gravitate towards a bird build and tend to want to put a leash on the carnivore animals in fear that they’ll eat all of my animals. I was able to get past the first difficulty of the first level, but I couldn’t for the second difficulty (though I did get a little bit past halfway on one of my attempts). Otherwise, the only negative I can think of is that I did find it hard to read the description for the Talent upgrades. The levels do also feel long, but considering the level after the tutorial has 9 stages, I think that was the point.

I’d say if this happens to interest you, even if you can’t really tell what’s going on in the trailer, try it. This game is pretty decent and it doesn’t hurt to try out the demo.

Makoto Wakaido’s Case Files Trilogy Deluxe

A detective game? Yes please. This game follows Detective Wakido through four particular interesting cases, but for this demo we only get to see part of one of the cases. The Case of the Executioner Lichpin. The game opens up to an old man and a little boy sitting on a bench somewhere in the country. We learn that the old man is actually Makoto Wakaido, the protagonist of this game, and he’s with his grandson. It turns out that he’s been telling his grandson about his detective days, even though it’s kind of inappropriate, and the game is actually him reminiscing and telling his grandson what happened. Anyway, he starts with a case he was actually telling his grandson about before and is just continuing it. It’s about a series of murders. We jump in at the time he found the third suspect and we learn that the murderer is operating at a per year basis. How did he and the police know it was from the same murderer? Well, all the scenes were the same, a decapitated victim hanging upside down from a pole with a suspicious symbol somewhere in the vicinity. The symbol is suspected to be religious, which would tie into the suspects being a part of the same religious group.

Gameplay is pretty simple here. You’ll be talking to any characters in an area, interacting with anything that stands out, and deducing once you reach the needed amount of leads. As you talk to people or investigate things, you’ll get a lead which you can check out in Wakaido’s memo pad. The memo pad does give you a quick summary of the lead so you’ll know what it’s about if you forget, but it also lets you “Raise” it. Raising a lead lets you talk to a character about it (and the game does show which character/object is related to it and if you still need to talk to them about it) by putting it as a dialogue option. This, in turn, can lead to new evidence/lead or even a new location to investigate. Once you get enough leads you’ll also go into Wakaido’s mind to deduce some things about the case. Various pillars will appear with paper taped to them and it’ll ask you a question. You will then have to show your understanding of the case so far by presenting evidence that answers the question. Once you answer them all correctly, you’re able to continue investigating.

Honestly, I wasn’t too into this game at first, but it grew on me. It was pretty annoying having to go in and out of a conversation to raise evidence so you can question someone about it, but at the same time I kind of liked how straight forward the gameplay was. Looks like I have another game to add to my wishlist.

Super Farming Boy

I have way too many farming sims and life sims, but I can’t help but want to play more. When I saw Super Farming Boy I was immediately drawn in by it’s art style. I was even more sold when I checked out the trailer to see the gameplay. Even better, there was a demo available! I just had to check it out and see if I would enjoy it.

In Super Farming Boy you play as a young boy named…well…Super Farming Boy, or Super for short. The game starts with the farm fully going, with a bunch of crops planted, Super fully upgraded, and a bunch of helpers helping out with whatever tasks they handle. As Super doesn’t want to get up, we see that the house is actually a transparent and sentient with eyes, a mouth, and tentacles to root itself in its place. Weird, especially since the house can and will throw you out, but cool. Young’s mom also seems to be a star, which you’ll soon see can transform into a giant head with gorgeous hair if needed. Anyway, all is good. Another day, another harvest. However, today is the day where everything changes. A storm cloud named Korpo (little on the nose there) appears and proceeds to suck up all of your crops, capture your helpers and your mom after she tries to defend the farm, and taking away all of Super’s upgrades. Korpo only gives you one coin as payment, forcibly takes ownership of your farm, and hires you to work on your own land. He leaves you, but not before trashing your once pristine farm, probably laughing on his way out. And to kick you down even more, Super can’t even rest in peace as Korpo haunts his dreams. This is where you learn that you need to buy not only your upgrades back, but your mom and your helpers.

The only thing you can do is try to rebuild. Controls are pretty simple here, and reminds me a bit of Wylde Flowers, as it aims to lessen the amount of buttons you have to press. Like having Super bring out the tools he needs himself instead of having you need to equip it first (though here, you do need to unlock them first). Anyway, you’re left to clean up the farm and wrangle in the corn seeds that you find on your farm which will also plant themselves when you walk too close (and while you can grab them, you can’t grab them all). Okay, that needs a bit more context. The seeds here are also sentient and they are just little guys hopping around until you plant them in soil. At first, you can’t really do anything but plant crops and pick up the dead crops and small things like small rocks and shells. Luckily, you do get the beginning upgrades pretty quickly. At the end of the day, Korpo takes everything you picked up, pays you for it, and then shows you the various upgrades you can buy, as well as helpers. You’ll need money, but the later upgrades will require materials like gems and wood. Letting you finally water plants, fly (which acts as your run but being able to fly over obstacles), and use other tools.

Little Korpo tangent aside, this does feature the usual farming mechanics. There’s stamina that you have to keep an eye on, though embarrassingly enough I didn’t notice the bar until a couple days in, watering crops, harvesting crops, and a day-night cycle. The crops do grow pretty fast here, so you can harvest them more than once, but there is a bit more going on with the crops here. This game puts a focus on combo-ing and thus, all the different crops have their own combo pattern. This basically means that when you pick them, they bounce into another square, or squares. If another crop is there, it’ll start a domino effect as that crop will bounce into its combo pattern. This makes harvesting pretty easy as it can makes what would have been a dozen clicks into one. The combos also seem to serve as your weapon as it also deals damage. In the hour I’ve played the only enemy that shows up are these ghost guys when it’s Night, but the trailer does show Super planting crops around what seems like a boss. There also is a meter that fills up I believe whenever you do a combo and it basically makes plants grow really fast when it pops off, letting you harvest continuously until it runs out.

The demo does feature two shops: a food truck where you can buy stamina replenishing food and a seed vendor. This game does have a lack of inventory, which did trip me up a bit, but it seems the food items are put in a queue that Super will eat by himself when he goes past a minimum and seeds are just placed into the overworld. There are wild seeds you can grab, but it does seem like the bought seeds follow you in some degree and they won’t plant themselves. There are more shops planning to be made, but weren’t available in the demo, like something that looks like a Blockbuster parody.

I did enjoy my time with Super Farming Boy, though there were a few things that I didn’t like. I did feel the game needed some more explanations, like what the super meter is, what the ghost guys that pop up during the Night are, that you’ll faint after one hit (unless stamina doubles as health?), maybe pointing out the stamina bar on the first night if more people have trouble spotting it, and how buying multiple food item works (like when Super will automatically eat the queued up food). I was also a bit split on the seeds. I do like how they’re sentient and there’s wild seeds that can spawn outside of the farm, but I was worried that they would just wonder around or plant themselves. It doesn’t look like this is the case, so that’s good. I also think it does need some background music as well. Lastly, and this is the biggest thing, is that I think there needs to be a way to pull up crops. I planted a handful of corn before I got the upgrade that lets you see the combo interaction spots and seeing that the corn needs to be in a row instead of a column (the seed vender also shows you the combo positions, but I didn’t visit them until after I got the upgrade). Combined with a square of corn crops will grow as a giant corn that requires it to be hit by a combo hit 4 times to be harvested, and the corn you get in the beginning planting itself, I wanted to pull them up so badly.

Other than that, I do hope this makes its way to the Switch when it’s ready for its full release. The game is already being made with touch controls in mind, and the trailer mentions you can switch between controller and touch controls seamlessly, so it would be perfect for the Switch.

Wax Heads

Wax Heads starts with a quick tale about a band called Becoming Violet. How they were on the top of the world until it all came crumbling down and they split up. One particular member, Morgan, even disappeared and her whereabouts are unknown. Until you get out of the prologue where Morgan is running her own record shop that is beloved in the community. You are actually a recent new hire and your first day working is canonically your first day on the job! You’re thrown in without a tutorial, but you’re manning the register and customers will come to you for recommendations or for something specific. A customer will walk up, say a couple lines in relation to what they’re looking for, and you’re set out to find it. Some customers are vaguer than others, but you can gather what they want from a combination of what they said, what they’re wearing, and/or what they possibly have on them.

There are multiple screens with records and you can take a closer look at them if needed, allowing you to get a bigger view of the front and a view of the back of the cover and the record itself. If you think it’s the record they want, you can check them out, print a receipt, and see if you got it right. It does look like there’s a scoring system, with the right answer giving you 3 points, a semi-right answer giving you 1 point, a wrong but meh answer being 0 points, and a wrong answer being -1 point. I’m guessing this is going to factor in somewhere in the game, but since this is only Chapter 1 we don’t know yet. In addition, there does seem to be additional activities that can pop up, as Chapter 1 has you designing a poster, there’s an arcade machine you can play while looking for a record for a customer, and there’s a phone that has multiple apps. Not all apps were available in the demo, but it looks like customers will post about their experience (which surely will play a factor) and a text backlog (though I’d like it to have a shortcut if it doesn’t already).

It does seem like the game will progress on a day system with story events possibly happening before, during, and after your shift. The demo, specifically, ends on your first day where Morgan gets terrible news (and you learn terrible news). It seems the records shop isn’t doing too well as she’s really cutting it close to being foreclosed. However, it’s even more dire here as there’s a potential buyer…her sister!

Wax Heads was just okay. The gameplay does fall into what I do enjoy, but I’m overall meh on the character writing and the story so far.