Steam Next Fest is back! It’s a sentence I always enjoy writing down. Why? Because Valve’s celebration of new and upcoming titles also means that there’s going to be a whole deluge of fascinating demos for us to preview. This week is no different, and indeed, we’ve made our first dive into Steam’s huge lineup of indie games – today, we’ll talk about three of them in particular, sharing with you our honest experiences and first impressions of each.
Tormented Souls 2
A sequel to 2021’s Tormented Souls, this stunning follow-up knows exactly what worked in its predecessor, and decided to stick to its core DNA while improving on various other aspects in terms of UI, QoL and most notably, graphics. Tormented Souls 2 looks absolutely incredible, with sharp textures, brilliantly atmospheric light and shadow effects, and level design that uses the same “spooky Resident Evil mansion” type of architecture I fell in love with in the first installment. The puzzles are also treading familiar ground, and so does the combat – although the latter feels notably improved with the addition of shortcuts, allowing you to bind items and weapons to four different hotkeys (on a gamepad, this means the four directions of the right analogue stick), thus making it faster and easier to swap between them on the fly. I think this alone makes the game tremendously less cumbersome, so I was very happy to see its inclusion. All in all, Tormented Souls 2 most certainly made a good first impression on me – I just hope it can maintain its momentum without running out of steam, which was actually one of my major criticisms of the first game.
DAVY x JONES
Looks aren’t everything, and the brief playable demo of the pirate-themed FPS DAVY x JONES (from BLACKTAIL developer PARASIGHT) unfortunately served as proof that you can have the fanciest graphical engine in the world, but if the gameplay doesn’t hold up, the resulting experience will be… less than pleasant. At first, I wondered why the demo kept a permanent watermark on my screen about the game still being in development and not being final, but after spending a few minutes with it and immediately encountering a bug that made me fall out of the map during a cutscene, everything became clear. Tragically, to make matters even worse, combat in the demo has almost no weight to it, and even your gun hits about as hard as a wet noodle; the visuals are admittedly vivid, piratey and fantastic, but the actual gameplay feels bland, clunky and unsatisfying. The whole experience felt extremely bare-bones, and while I realize the game is still in development, the demo did very little to convince me that this is going to be a project worth keeping an eye on. What a shame.
The Gretlow Tapes
Spooky horror game in a spooky house with spooky ghosts. I see titles like this by the dozen during every Next Fest, but I still decide to give them a fair shot in the hopes of chancing upon some hidden gems. Sometimes, I do. The Gretlow Tapes is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for me: while it didn’t blow me away, and I could’ve done without the slightly obnoxious jump scare at the end of the demo (sorry, spoilers), there’s also a lot to like about the game. It gets the atmosphere right: the house you explore is sufficiently creepy, and the mood is carried largely by the sound design. Unsettling noises, creaky floorboards, et cetera. All good stuff. Having a camera on hand also lends a certain Blair Witch-esque, found footage vibe to the experience, which I similarly enjoyed. Honestly, this game could go either way: I see the potential in it, so hopefully it won’t devolve into tired tropes and general banality. Fingers crossed!
That’s it for now, but Steam Next Fest is far from over – so check back soon for our next episode, with another brief writeup about our experiences during the fest. In the meantime, happy gaming!
