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The best steam festival demos: ACTIONLights, camera…
Lights, camera…
I can’t keep up, readers. A constant hoseworth of new games is one thing, but between mega bundles and a dozen streaming events, this month has become an avalanche of games. TheSteam Game Festivalhas flung heaps of promising games in our direction. Frankly, far too many of them look good. My brain cannot parse this kind of volume.
So. Let’s stick with the action games, yeah? Yes, it’s a nebulous category. Yes, I’ve cheated and put in at least one that you could argue technically doesn’t belong. But do you really have time to worry about that, when you could be playing more of these demos instead? Exactly.
Ultrakill
The retro shooter revival wave continues to splash chunky gibs over gamesland.Like Graham, I lose track of the many 90s inspired splatfest FPSeses we’ve seen over the last few years, despite having played a fair few. And most are actually pretty good. Ultrakill’s headline gimmick is that dousing yourself in blood heals you, but that’s neither as edgy as it sounds or entirely deserving of the word “gimmick”.
It’s a fast but manageable micro-horde management game in which you plough through a series of small set piece rooms. Fleshy demonic things beam in and run at you, biting, or sit back and launch fireballs from afar. You must punch them, shoot them, leap over and slam into them from above, blast the glass floor out from under them so they fall into a big grinder, or punch their projectiles back at them. Ammo is unlimited and the only health is blood, which is why that system works. It keeps the pace up, it rewards you for getting stuck in up close and finding a flow rather than sitting back and nerdlingering everything with long range headshots. The demo shows off five weapons, each with alternative fire modes. One revolver flings a coin into the air, and if you shoot the coin it pings off into an enemy for a critical hit. One shotgun can be pumped up to boost damage at the expense of accuracy, again encouraging point blank hit and run attacks. You get more points for varying your attacks and weapons, which will let you buy more guns, although that’s not much of a factor in the demo.
It soon gets out of its brown corridors too, as you fight in pretty outdoorsy arenas, and even its music leans towards a more rhythmic drum ‘n’/or bass than the exhausting generi-metal most of its peers go for.
You can watch our Colm be quite bad at iton our YouTube channel. Taunt him, friends. Do not acknowledge that the mouse sensitivity was clearly far too high.
Get the free Ultrakill demo here.
Fights In Tight Spaces
The phrase “deckbuilding roguelike” is both barrels aimed directly at my potential interest in a game. But wait! I’ve stepped to the left, grabbed another assailant and shoved him in the path of the attack. Next I’ll use a movement card to slip past a third attacker and smash his head against a table. I’m out of cards but that’s fine, because there’s just the gunman left to deal with and I can probably kick him through the doorway, taking him out of the fight completely.
That’s whatFights In Tight Spacesis about. It’s too obviously comparable to John Wick to ignore, but it wisely doesn’t go all in on copying everything about those films. Instead it’s a somewhat experimental type of roguelike. You have a series of levels, some of which branch. Across each one you fight in a small room against a handful of punchy red men, who politely let you go first. The fools. They can only do one, maybe two things per turn, see, but you have a deck of cards that represent different movement and attacks, and you can play them all (usually. There’s a resource, momentum, that sometimes runs out, but I never quite got to grips with that). Kick! That’s done some damage, okay, now can I… yeah I can move around this guy and then shove him into the wall, then hopefully on my next turn I’ll get a grab card so if this one with the pistol moves here I can move the third guy in the way and he’ll get shot instead.
Every few levels you can heal up or pay (in-game cash) to acquire or upgrade your cards. It works because it’s satisfying, basically. The animations and sound really sell the punching and staggering, and in particular the collapsing ragdoll of a critically bumkicked mook.
It is, however, at times frustrating. Never infuriatingly so, but the nature of the deckbuilder means that you’ll sometimes get hands that mean you just can’t do anything useful on a turn. Some of the movement rules and terms could be clarified a bit, and I’d like an option to continue a fight that I’ve won if there’s still someone standing. But! That’s exactly why we have demos, right? And in any case, this is a novel and fun little fighting game from the people who also brought usRICO, the slow-motion doorkicking FPS. They’re getting a bit good at this.
Get the free Fights In Tight Spaces demo here.
Raji: An Ancient Epic
Some attacks take advantage of pillars or walls, or require that you absorb dangerous magic from shrines first. The environments you’re climbing and doing leaping, spinning area attacks with really caught my eye, too, as the distant camera really makes the architecture stand out, particularly the towering statues. I like the puppetry used for the cut scenes too.
Get the free Raji: An Ancient Epic demo here.
The Riftbreaker
I struggle with the traditional base building RTS, and with tower defence games. It’s mostly a pacing issue, I think, and that’s key to why The Riftbreaker does it for me. It’s a hybrid of several subgenres in which you pilot a customisable mech around a thriving alien world (although the demo is a simulation), mining ores and zapping up bases to power them and convert them into weapons and defences against the swarms of mostyl hostile spacebeasts.
You are definitely the baddies. Although there’s a story thing going on too, so who knows, maybe the campaign will have you realise the destruction you’re laying on the place. But it just feels good to wade into everything. It’s visually busy but looks far better in motion than screenshots suggest, especially when you’re cutting down foliage with your sword, or wading into a crowd just to set off a bomb and watch 30 of your attackers pop at once.
And you can teleport for free anywhere you build a teleport thing, so the tower defence stuff doesn’t constrict much. It’s good stuff.
Get the free The Riftbreaker demo here.
Haven
Haven is a about a couple, Yu and Kay, stranded on a strange, floatily archipelagorical world. They’re hiding from a sinister terraforming organisation whose potential arrival offers Yu the dialogue options of “at worst I kill them” or “at worst I kill myself”.
It’s a pretty, if slightly stark world, and the way you glide about together gathering fruits and vegetables and marvelling at its alien creatures makes for a serene, upbeat time. You seek out ‘threads’, little glowing things that generate a track for you to skate along, which generates energy somehow. These threads are also key to travelling to new lands that quickly open up when you’re cut off from your ship, and it’s here where things get faintly ominous. You’ll start seeing strange corruption around the place, and more hostile animals to deal with in simple fights, where co-ordinating your attacks is key. Your goal is to pacify, not to kill, which is a nice touch.
I kinda like Yu and Kay. They’re a convincing couple, a little bit cute, a little bit sexy, a little bit grumpy and argumentative with each other in their visual novel style conversations when they’re resting and hanging out at home. But something tells me there’s a vein of darkness to the plot, and I’m curious to see where it’ll go.
Get the free Haven demo here.
If you’re looking for RTS or city builders, action games, strategy games or management games, check out our otherbest of the Game Fest lists here.
Whatever you call it, hit ourE3 2020tag for more from this summer’s blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check outthe PC games at the PlayStation 5 show,everything at the PC Gaming Show, andall the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.
