https://store.steampowered.com/app/2133520/Ertugrul_of_Ulukayin/This seems like a good game in it's early stages. I actually haven't made it to Witcher 2 yet (Witcher 1 injured my soul with an uncompletable in later Acts or something quest to return this ring that is being carried around everywhere in all the Acts on the savegame I was going to import into Witcher 2, I looked for the NPC so many times!) but I think it's sort of like that type of game. It sort of reminded me of Mount & Blade but seems to be on rails rather than sandbox and without using the mounts beyond transport, the characters dismount before fighting in the demo. The fighting is much simpler as well, with no directionals. It worked alright with just being mouse 1 combos instead. The enemies have attacks that are interruptable, counterable with a block, and unblockables that must be dodged. It has a lockon to keep the character facing the opponent. I wasn't very good at this but it seemed functional. I wasn't very good at this one because I was familiar with the quick block times from Mount & Blade. The blocks in this are somewhat sluggish. There is a dodge button that works pretty good on the spacebar however, and a kick that works pretty well for an interrupt if you see the notifier in time. I think the blocks are delayed or interrupted by animation conflicts but I'm not sure. The game demo does animations for being knocked down and then scrambling away well, better than Mount and Blade:Bannerlord despite all that game's excellence. I was on Hard mode and the demo boss is tough. Overall this game demo looks decent for coming to Early Access soon, things in the demo looked good but small details like the horseback riding animation might be able to use some work, Mount & Blade team did great work there for example.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872970/Food_Truck_Empire/This is a solid game demo! I don't have many of this sort of game, so I don't know how it compares to rivals for the supply of Steambux. However, it seemed to be a solid economic buildup game. The food trucks, at least in the demo, are limited to one food production chain which I thought was unnecessary. However there is a nice variety of combinations so it should work with more trucks. You can customize parts of and paint the food trucks though it's freehand rather than a grid mosaic applied later like in the Boba screenshot in the previous post. It's difficulty wasn't terribly high so I'd guess it would be rebalanced with expenses for release. I was able to sell burgers, veggie burgers, grilled cheese, and sloppy joes using the three trucks in the demo. There are other options that are locked or that I didn't use, such as selling Bowls (of food).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2794290/Grimshire_Demo/People, I was sceptical of this one. However I think if I were to unfairly rate these demos by some arbitrary method, this one would be #1 in the 17 Women's Day Sale demos I downloaded as of yet. It is very well drawn. The demo's gameplay reminded me of Elona/Elin except only the farmsteading aspects of it. I don't know if there is some sort of fighting later on after the end of the demo chapter, but the story includes accounts of the animal people in the city and nearby villages turning "feral" and otherwise acting like zombies so I'd guess it's probably planned to be included. The story is that you are a refugee from a nearby city who is rescued by a ship captain and taken to a rural river village. The gameplay is producing food and trade items so that the village does not starve, and also build new things like a mushroom hut. Some villagers are carnivores and some herbivores. I sucked at fishin' in this game so the carnivores were on the verge of starving before I realized I could buy meat and donate it. Ranching is an option too but I didn't try that. I'd guess that if you like games where you use the watering can tool to water crops once per game day this would be a fun game for you. I don't own any so I don't know how it stacks up, but I think once this goes on sale I'll pick it up if it's in my price bracket.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3021170/Lords_of_Ravage_Demo/This is a turn based game where you place minions on a small grid to fight an opponent's grid. It was a solid demo. The main character is an evil warlord who did regicide and then had to find a super artifact to claim some sort of ultimate power. You go across a map to different locations in which there are rewards or fights. In the fights you can send the warlord in as he is a super combatant but the opposing grid could beat him if he goes in too early. He has an option to gain permanent powerups from defeating enemies so it's probably smarter to have him finish the last 5 enemies as that is the cap for the gain. There was some levelling up or at least unlocking of new abilities involved with the minions and possibly warlord. I only took 3 screenshots since I was getting tired after so many demos and they wren't very descriptive, but here they are.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2616800/Merchants_of_Rosewall/Demo expired, no licenses.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066520/Ritual_of_Raven/Okay, there are some good and bad things with this in my opinion. The art is pretty good, and overall this is a pretty solid demo. It appears to have some homesteading elements to it, but this is done via automaton after inputting proper orders. This seemed like unnecessary tedium, but I also began to suspect at that point this game may be intended for a younger audience than me and perhaps this is educational to encourage thinking about processes or fiirst introduction to coding or something. The main character is randomly generated so I did that until I generated one that seemed like had potential to be the blackest hearted of sorcerers and then named appropriately for this. However it turns out that despite appearences the character is a grad school student who fell into a portal and seems unlikely to become a vessel of unholy power. The character seems quite cheery actually, without any hint of foreboding brooding. The character would prefer to learn magic from the good character alignment witch who lives on the other side of the portal. He learns how to summon a familiar, a smartmouthed raven, after learning how to program the automaton. I was nearing the limit of my herculean capacity for demo-imbibing on the day I tried it so I rushed it a little in between falling into a demo overdose coma. I think depending on how it pans out this could be a good game for young people unless I'm missing something about the intended audience.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1780070/Seeds_of_Calamity/This one is very similar to the Grimshire demo in gameplay. In this one, there was a big war and resources and cash are needed to rebuild. This one seems acceptable to people who like watering their crops with a watering can tool once per game day, in the same way as Grimshire. I never had Harvest Moon and the like but I thought playing these that is probably what that is like, but I could be wrong. However this one includes some dungeon delving and monster fighting, though I did not reach that point. I believe this game demo is where my bodily strength finally fled and I had to be carried, protesting, from the Chamber of Demos. Like the one just above it's quite possible I did not do this one justice as I didn't make it through the demo content. I will train harder at these demos! <flexes demomuscle>
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2825060/Urban_Jungle_Demo/I... uh... didn't figure this one out. In it, you have an ambition of having an indoor garden. However all I was able to figure out was how to place a few plants on the windowsill. The house it was in looked really good though!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868070/Whispers_in_the_West__Coop_Murder_Mystery/This is a mystery solving game. I think the key appeal is instead of singleplayer if you have 1 to 3 friends you could play this as a team with up to four other beings. Since my dad's dog wanted to play ball instead, I of course did not. There are four characters and each have a different ability. You go around asking questions and figuring out a mystery that way. The demo investigation was not very complicated but presumably it would become more complicated in later investigations. I took the character with lockpicks so I was able to solve it by breaking into the sheriff's desk (the sheriff character could probably access it too I'd guess) and taking what was either a naughty book or a coloring book, it was not clear, to return to an NPC of diminished mental capacity for a clue.
If you have a small group who plays games together, this might be fun. The time required to solve a mystery was somewhat exaggerated though, there's no way that one I did in the demo takes an hour. I have no idea how long the demo locked ones are.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2968460/Wizdom_Academy_Demo/This was a fine game demo. You build a multi z-level magic academy. It probably looks quite nice when fully built up. There are classrooms for various subjects, housing for students and staff, and testing rooms where the students prove themselves for a degree. After they graduate they can apply again. There is a bachelors of magic I guess that includes alchemy, self-defence, and magic history. Completing the classes creates resources to use for building, such as Alchemy class producing uhh... stone equivalent basically. The research tree is unlocked by the stuff produced by Magic History class. There appear to be invasions from off the map as well so I guess that's what the self defence course is for. I think there are dungeons to send faculty and students off in to explore, but I didn't get to that point. There is a mana pool that is the upkeep for rooms, and there is a mana blackout that means shutting off rooms or having a big storage for mana until the income starts back up. The area for the academy was quite cramped, it's clearly meant for building vertically. In the demo it looks like the proving grounds are mildly bugged in that it doesn't grab students ready for the testing well. The demo's objective was to have a student earn the bachelor's degree in magic (not the real name) but that took a long time so I didn't complete that. I think it may be that having them graduate and then re-apply for one of the other courses might make that a bit easier as there is a time limit before the student leaves unhappy from not acquiring a degree of some sort.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2911500/Yes_Your_Grace_Snowfall_Demo/This one is a sequel. It would probably be best in sequence. There was an import game option (you can answer questions to pick what happened in the previous title if you don't have a savegame from that) and there were some number of callbacks to the first in the series. It is a resource management game mostly. You solve issues which increases prosperity which is turned into gold or influence points for the next turn, which is a week IIRC. You have some employees to pay wages to replenish their actions so you can use them to solve issues. There is a map of the branching web sort, I am not sure of the correct name. You can explore a certain number per turn limited by IIRC the influence resource. The art was quite good. It seems like a pretty good game though I don't think I own any of a similar type I can compare to this.
To finish off the total of 17 if I counted correctly, I had placed this free game in the demo folder I made for this. It's not a demo, you silly Duuvian! It is a free game, after all! It can be added to your steam account permanently! I will post it below even though I think I already mentioned it previously:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2516940/The_August_Before_Chapter_One/As to a review, I cannot give one. This is simply not the place for it. It is a thread for discussion upon demos. Moreover I have not tried it yet anyways.
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Topic: Steam Nextfest Demos (Read 3983 times)