February Books: 4/4 (The Murder of Mr. Wickham and Steering the Craft)
I don’t know if you remember last year, squider, but Steam apparently has a demo event at the end of February each year called Next Fest, where you can play demos of games coming out in the next twelve months.
Hundreds of demos, they claim! I picked out, uh, seven.
(Anything to avoid playing a real game, I guess.)
Of the demos I played last year (I downloaded six, but didn’t realize you had to play them during the week of the event, so only played five) I put three on my wishlist, and bought exactly none of them when they came out. So do with that what you will.
In order:
Cleaning Up!
A cleaning game, not unlike House Flipper, though more cartoon-y. The tutorial was so impossible I thought I’d have to chuck it for control issues, but the actual gameplay after the tutorial was fine. I played through the whole demo in about half an hour. I put it on my wishlist but I don’t know that I’d pay more than $10 for the full game.
Flock Around
Some sort of multiplayer bird watching game. I tried it on solo mode, as I didn’t feel up to dealing with random people, and to get a feel for the game itself without the distraction of other people. I don’t know if it’s a problem on my end or not, but whenever I went to look at the pictures of the birds it would say no bird had been found, and if I tried to get closer to the birds to get better pictures, they’d fly away. Mostly frustrating.
Nippets
A hidden object game. Cute graphics, but too out of the box for me, apparently. I could do about half the first level (maybe the only level in the demo) before I’d gotten well and truly stuck, and if there was a hint system, I couldn’t find it either. (ha.)
Thrifty Business
A cute little shop-owning game where you buy boxes of stuff from people and resell them in your thrift shop. Looks like there’s some re-occurring characters and stories based off of them, and the opportunity to build community around the store. Took me half an hour to get through the demo (I may have played a few extra days) and I put it on my wishlist.
Hozy
This, too, is a cleaning game ala House Flipper (closer to House Flipper, honestly) but the game ran so slow the controls were practically unusable. I tried for a bit then gave up. Don’t know why I picked out more cleaning games when I already have one.
Birdwatching Notebook
Apparently I was into birds when I picked the demos as well. This one was cute, and it doesn’t take up much of your screen, so I suppose it may be meant to be one of those idle-ish games that sits onscreen while you do other things. I enjoyed it while I was testing it out, but don’t see much appeal long term.
The Last Gas Station
You have bought or inherited a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Most of the game is store management–buying stock/gas, helping customers, cleaning up the store, but there’s definitely a horror element to it as well, and some sort of mystery about the gas station. Took me two and a half hours to get through the demo. I put it on my wishlist. Probably the one I’m most likely to buy. You know how much I like horror adjacent games, and it has a cute pixelated art style as well.
So that’s the demos sorted. I suppose I should play a real game with a storyline (and an end!) here soon.
Happy weekend, squiders!
