This post is horribly late as I have been distracted by other things. Worse, because of said distractions I didn’t even get to test out all the demos I wanted! Oh, well, such is life with ADD.
For those wondering what this Steam Games Festival is all about, it was a short event hosted by Steam where people could download and play demos for a ton of featured indie games. It was a nice opportunity to play some games that we weren’t sure if we’d like or haven’t even heard before.
It ran from June 16 to June 22 of 2020. As far as I know most of the demos aren’t available to download anymore but I’d still like to highlight some of the games I played just in case the is demo still available somewhere or even if it is just so people can keep an eye on it if they like what they read here.
With all that said here are a couple of games that I really enjoyed and added to my Wishlist:
A Space for the Unbound
I don’t think I can explain this game better than the Store Page does, so let me quote it:
A Space For The Unbound is a slice-of-life adventure game with beautiful pixel art set in the late 90s rural Indonesia that tells a story about overcoming anxiety, depression, and the relationship between a boy and a girl with supernatural powers.
What immediately grabbed me about this one was the beautiful art style of the game. Plus it covers a place and time that we don’t usually see represented in games. Mix it with all the above mentioned themes and I knew it was a demo I wanted to give a try.
The demo covers a small portion of the start of the game and I really enjoyed what I’ve seem of the characters. What we could see of the story was very little but enough to make me curious about it.
I did have some small nitpicks about the demo but for the life of me I can’t remember them now. It wasn’t anything deal breaker, just things I wished were better.
Oh, as far as the few puzzles that were in the demo, they were all pretty easy to figure out, very logical too. There was no pixel hunt or anything that took me more than a few seconds to figure out.
To be complete honest I never heard of this game before this Steam event. Now that I did play the demo it is one of the games I am most looking forward to!
Hazel Sky
I actually saw the trailer for this game before so it wasn’t exactly new to me. The trailer itself had already made me very intrigued with its gorgeous art style but it didn’t say much what the game would be about or the gameplay. The demo however pretty much answered these questions for me.
From what I gathered from the demo the story seems to be set in an alternative earth where some people built a floating city ruled by engineers. It is a society based purely on rationalism, where any form of art is seem as a sin.
The protagonist is a young man that at the start of demo is going through a test that each generation of his family goes through to determine if they are fit to be engineer. He is left at an old lighthouse at an abandoned island with the task of building a plane that can get him back to the floating city.
The gameplay itself is a 3D adventure game. Again, in the demo none of the puzzles were hard to figure out. The art style was just as gorgeous as it was in the trailers, with a lot of small details in the scenery to be explored and appreciated.
What little of the story the demo provided was also a lot more intriguing than I expected which, again, makes me curious to see how it will all develop.
If the trailer I saw before was a bait for this game then this demo was definitely the hook. After playing it I am certain this is a game I will enjoy once I can get my hands on it. 🙂
Honorable Mentions
These are other demos I tried but for a reason or another didn’t grab my heart. Nothing particularly wrong for me they just weren’t my cup of tea. However they might be of interest to someone else so I’d like to at least mention them here by name with a link to their store page.
If you do get the opportunity of giving them a try before buying, I highly recommend to do so and making your own mind about them.
… and more demo reviews!
I was not the only one who tried to play as many demos as possible during this event and write about them. There were other bloggers who not only did the same but did it better! If you are looking for more interesting games that you might have missed, read these posts:
Steam Game Festival (June 16-22) at Nerdy Bookahs
Steam Game Festival: Demo marathon Part 1 at Nerdy Bookahs
Steam Game Festival: Demo marathon Part 2 at Nerdy Bookahs
Touch Type Tale Demo (Steam Game Festival) at Nerd Girl Thoughts
Madly in Love with Best Friend Forever Demo at Nerd Girl Thoughts
Three Demos That Didn’t Convince Me at Nerd Girl Thoughts
Ten Thousand Coins Demo at Nerd Girl Thoughts
What I Wish Listed – Steam Game Festival at Nerd Girl Thoughts
The Nope List – Steam Game Festival at Nerd Girl Thoughts
Steam Game Festival: Crimson Spires Demo at Gray’s Otome
Anicon: The Rabbit’s Path Demo (Steam Game Festival) at Gray’s Otome
Excuse Me, Sir, The Dead Body is Talking… at Gray’s Otome
Also, because I loved Solasta so much, let me link my first impressions of it here because I want to tell everyone I can about this game!