Demo Disc #6: The Next Fest Thing - Day 2
Greetings, digital nomads!
I had planned to start today’s Next Fest newsletter with a tortured Boxing Day analogy, something about working through the vast pile of leftovers following the feast of Next Fest’s debut. But to be honest, we’re still thoroughly in gorge mode, our bellies distending beyond all natural laws, spilling across the dining table and pressing our relatives into the walls.
The flood of fattening food doesn’t appear to be slowing either. Today’s trio of demos are all certified corkers, to the point where any one of them could have easily occupied the demo of the day slot. I have selected the game that most surprised me with its quality, but I’ll freely admit that it’s an even more subjective choice than usual.
Keep Driving
Developer: YCJY Games Release: Tba
Keep Driving filled me with a nostalgia for a youth I never had. I can’t drive, never went to festivals, am not Swedish (last I checked) and the idea of picking up a hitchhiker fills me with nothing but dread. Yet despite the fact my own youth was mostly misspent failing to learn how to skate and playing Unreal Tournament on the LAN in my dad’s attic (some fun Rick lore for you there), the low-fi cars and punk rock beats of Keep Driving put me right back in the early noughties.
This is a side-scrolling RPG that lists a bunch of influences on its Steam page, but the most relevant of them to us is The Oregon Trail. Like the educational classic (specifically the 1982 version of it), Keep Driving’s demo sees you plotting routes to your friend’s house via a series of towns, before driving automatically between them as pixelised pastoral landscapes roll by. Along the way, events will happen, ranging from getting stuck behind a tractor to spotting a hitchhiker looking for a lift.
Some of these events are resolved through narrative choices. Others are resolved through “combat”, in which you use your driving skills and items from your glovebox to deal with a driving hazard. Symbols on your dashboard represent the kinds of “damage” the hazard does (such as draining your fuel or tyre integrity) and you need match the best skills and items to deal with the hazard efficiently.
The distinctive mechanics and freewheeling vibes all combine to form an evocative road-trip adventure. Crucially, while there is a wistful element to Keep Driving, it never feels twee or cloying, which is always the risk of fiction that harks back to an imagined youth.
Download the Keep Driving demo here.
System Purge: Hollow Point
Developer: Actual Nerds Release: Coming Soon
I wasn’t aware before playing that System Purge: Hollow Point is a sequel, and it says a lot that this revelation has me keen to seek out the original. If you’re likewise unfamiliar with System Purge, the easiest way to describe is “Celeste meets INSIDE.” It’s a game built largely out of natty jumping challenges like Maddy Makes Games’ beloved platformer. But don’t expect any encouraging words or reassuring sentiments here, because Hollow Point takes place in a decaying cyberpunk nightmare world riven by biological catastrophe.
You play as a witchy-looking girl whose spring-loaded legs negate any need for a broomstick. After a brief yet shockingly bleak intro, she descends into a giant, trap-filled cistern on a mission that I won’t explain because it would spoil the opening cutscene. Alongside the indirect nature in which the story is told, what makes Hollow Point interesting is the tungsten-dense atmosphere of its world, and how that world folds into play in intriguing, mysterious ways. For example, the early demo revolves around navigating forests of dangling crimson blades, which are easy enough to dodge at first. But then they start getting blasted by massive green concussions from some unseen anomaly, which causes them to swing about and makes you think. “What on God’s cobalt Earth am I headed toward?”
The latter half of the demo sees you arrive in some subterranean facility, which has clearly been conducting biological experiments of an ethically unconscionable nature. Here, the platforming shifts into full blown horror, as you explore the facility by torchlight while things scuttle about in the shadows behind you. It’s properly creepy in a way that channels the macabre soul of Playdead. Hollow Point’s demo is undeniably stylish and mechanically watertight. More than that, though, it’s indicative of a developer with vision.
Download the System Purge: Hollow Point demo here.
DEMO OF THE DAY: Wormhole
Developer: Pocket Moon Games, ThanaThan Release: 31 Oct 2024
It’s fitting that Wormhole is set to release on Hallowe’en. Not because it’s a scary game – it isn’t and neither is it trying to be. Rather, it's because there's something forbidden-feeling about its faux-retro vibes. It’s a Balatro-style project that takes a classic game – in this case the Nokia 3310 staple Snake –then pulls and twists and bends it into something else entirely.
Your ‘snake’ is in fact a giant interstellar worm that eats planets, with each consumed sphere adding a link to your length. Your movements are governed by an energy meter that runs down as you slither through the cosmos, so it’s prudent to utilise the wormholes dotted around the level as a shortcut between your celestial snacks.
Simple, right? Wrong! Because Wormhole also throws in a galaxy’s worth of other modifiers. Also flying around the level are UFOs, floating skulls, and something that appears to be carrying an envelope, eating each of which has different effects on your worm that I still don’t properly comprehend. The effect is a bit like playing a new pinball machine. You’re not cognisant of what all the flashing lights and weird noises are about, but you quickly develop a vague, intuitive sense of what they do.
Wormhole couples this with immaculate presentation its 1-bit aesthetic funnelled through a simulated arcade cabinet screen in front of a swirling black & white background. The sound design is likewise surgically precise in its retro recall, from the staticky crunch of eating a planet, to the crushed, modulated voice of the game announcer saying “Wrmhle”.
Wormhole plays like something that fell out of the back of Derek Yu’s van, a forgotten arcade treasure locked away because its power was too great. The demo gives you just enough of a taste of that power to foresee the hours you’re going to lose to it.