Demo Disc #9: The Next Fest Thing - Day 6
Greetings, digital nomads!
This is it, the final Next Fest newsletter. I’ve got a cracking trio of games to sign off with, including what might be my personal favourite demo of the event. Next week we’ll be back to the usual format – five game demos delivered on Friday. I imagine that issue will include numerous Next Fest stragglers (assuming the devs don’t remove their demos once Next Fest is over, which is always a hazard) but who knows what else could land on Steam in the next seven days?
One bit of housekeeping before we get to the last batch of demos. I’ve had a couple of people email me to enquire about paying for the newsletter. This is incredibly nice of you and thank you so much! Right now, though, I don’t have any kind of payment system set up because I am terrible at making money. I’m also not sure I want to create a formalised paid subscription tier without something extra to offer in return. I do have plans for a paid version of the newsletter somewhere down the line, but it isn’t something I’m going to act upon until I feel there’s a sufficient audience for it. Nonetheless, I’ll have a think about whether there’s some kind of middle ground that I’m comfortable with.
In the meantime, the best way to support Demo Disc is simply to share it as far and wide as possible. If you've enjoyed these Next Fest roundups, then please do tell your friends, relatives, colleagues, pets, and your wealthy yet reclusive uncle who lives in the old house on the hill. Heck, tell your enemies if you like, maybe you can reconcile your differences via a shared affection for partly playable video games. The smouldering husk that was once Twitter is the only social media site I have any notable following on, and sharing stuff on there these days is like shouting into a big hole with a pile of crappy Temu merch at the bottom. So this is one circumstance where I’m happy to be paid in exposure, and sharing really does encourage other people to sign up.
30 Birds
Developer: Ram Ram Games, Business Goose Release: Q4 2024
If you read yesterday’s newsletter, you’ll know I’ve been searching for a really rockin’ adventure game to feature. Well, 30 Birds is…the closest I’ve got so far. It’s still by no means a conventional adventure, but that is partly what makes it so exciting.
30 Birds is – how on Earth do I describe this – a technicolour reggae odyssey set in the sky. You play as a teenage girl travelling by sky-rail to a floating city, to attend a festival that celebrates the awakening of an avian deity following fifty years of slumber. But she isn’t just visiting for the festivities, oh no, she has a rendezvous with an informant who has critical information about a malevolent figure known as The Scientist.
If you think that sounds weird, wait until you start helping someone play their musical instrument by poking it in the eyes. Mechanically, 30 birds is half about talking to the city’s eccentric inhabitants to figure out where you need to go next, and half about solving manual puzzles that involve playing instruments and messing with mystery boxes. One example involves you trying to get a merchant to leave his shop, which you do by jamming with a musician the merchant particularly loathes, messing with his frog synthesiser until the merchant simply can’t take the noise anymore.
It’s deeply bizarre, but also utterly absorbing. Indeed, I can’t remember the last time a game so quickly sold me on such a strange world. I should also say that, like yesterday’s Scarlet Deer Inn, this is another game you should go into with as little foreknowledge as possible. There’s a moment where it reveals itself to be even more visually interesting than it initially appears. When you see it, your brain will yell the name of a famous indie darling video game in the same way that enemies bark “GRENADE!” in a first-person shooter.
Download the 30 Birds demo here.
The Spirit of the Samurai
Developer: Digital Mind Games Release: 12 December 2024
There’s more to The Spirit of the Samurai than its remarkable stop-motion aesthetic, but we should nonetheless pause and admire its beautiful faux-claymation art. Much like how the skeletons in Jason and The Argonauts weird me out more than far slicker, CGI-enhanced movie monsters, there’s something about the thumbed texture and jerky movements of the characters and critters in Spirit of the Samurai that elevates its supernatural atmosphere.
Right, enough ogling. This is also a gnarly side-scrolling hack ‘n’ slash with fierce combat and a surprisingly involved story. You play a samurai called Takeshi defending his village from an attack by demons, including shambling undead samurai and horrible scuttling monsters that resemble a cross between a harvestman spider and a post-box. Alongside the standard array of attacks, blocks, and counters, the game features a nifty combo-building system where you can insert different moves into different attack chains. It effectively captures the lethality of cinematic samurai combat, with you able to both kill and die at frightening speed.
The demo provides a reasonable chunk of the game to test, including full tutorial and a nifty silhouetted combat sequence. It takes a little while to spool up, but I urge you to stick with it. Pad recommended for this one.
Download The Spirit of the Samurai's demo here.
DEMO OF THE DAY: STRAFTAT
Developer: Sirius Lemaitre, Leonard Lemaitre Release: 24 Oct 2024
STRAFTAT was brought to my attention by fellow freelancer and Demo Disc subscriber Cole Luke, and what a recommendation it was. This multiplayer shooter hard reverses from the design of modern military megaliths, swapping out their massive team-based battles for fast-paced, chaotic 1v1 gunfights.
What STRAFTAT lacks in scale, it more than makes up for in variety. The demo alone features a whopping 25 maps, each wildly different from the others. One, for example, sees you both sliding down an ice ramp connected into an infinite loop by portals at either end. This is unusual enough on its own, but crucially, the weapons you need to murder each other are also tumbling freely down the slope. This results in you both frantically slaloming down the incline trying to grab a weapon, your target constantly popping up in front and behind you as they pass through the portal.
Other maps include a Twin Peaks style red-room, a map reminiscent of Call of Duty 4’s “Bloc” which pits sniper rifles against meat cleavers, and a ruins-themed map where you both have to race through the same corridor at the start to get to the main arena where the weapons are. It’s gleefully diverse, and while they’re all very compact, they’re smartly designed, offering plentiful opportunities to outfox your opponent.
As for weapons, they run the gamut from familiar revolvers, shotguns, and sniper rifles, to plasma pistols, repulsor cannons used to push your foe off ledges, and a gun that shoots black holes. They’re aren’t the most refined virtual guns out there, but there’s enough snap to the shooting to make them fun to fight with.
Since matches are best of three affairs that rarely last longer than a couple of minutes, you cycle through the maps at a tremendous pace, squealing and giggling as you try to figure out the shape of each arena while also avoiding being splattered against its walls. It's some of the purest deathmatch fun I’ve had in a long, long time, perfectly evoking the joyous, intimate frag-fests of early first-person shooters, but in a way that feels fresh and new and exciting.
Additional thanks to Jake Tucker, writer of the excellent FPS newsletter Hit Reload, for testing this out with me. No doubt he’ll have a more detailed writeup of STRAFTAT available soon. The full game (which features a dizzying 100 maps) is out next week, so I’d advise you to get on the demo while you can. That said, it looks like STRAFTAT will be free at launch anyway, so you’ve really no excuse not to try it.