Steam Next Fest February 2024 Edition PC Gaming

[David76]

Steam Next Fest: February 2024 Edition has kicked off.

Steam Next Fest: February 2024 Edition runs through February 12, and alongside demos, many developers are hosting livestreams to discuss their upcoming releases. There are also chats with the devs that will continue for the duration.



If you're in the mood for some dungeon crawling, check out the demo for Dungeonborne, a first-person PvPvE where you venture solo or join forces with companions to hunt for treasure, battle monsters, and more. You can venture through the corridors of Clouseau Castle solo or take on the multi-floored Sinner's End with up to two allies. You can play as a Fighter, Priest, Rogue, Swordmaster, Pyromancer, Cryomancer, or Death Knight, and a 3v3 Arena is in the works.





The game is a really cool occult puzzle game where have inherited a plant store in Undermere. This mysterious town, surrounded by hag-infested forests and rugged mountains, houses a colorful cast of citizens who come by your shop. You will need to venture out to the dark woods to find new plants, using your encyclopedia and clues to learn more about the strange plants you come across. By identifying each plant, you will be able to use their effects to influence the story. As the game progresses, you become privy to an occult mystery stretching back hundreds of years, and you can chat with a coven, you can join a cult, and pet your cat. It's been out for a while, but better late than never to try it out!





Real-time strategy fans should check out Stormgate from Frost Giant Studios. Set in a science fantasy universe, you will command mechs to defend the Earth, or play as the bad guy and invade it as the Infernals. It features an ever-evolving campaign, you can group up for 3P co-op vs. AI, compete in 1v1 or 3v3, or play around in the editor.





Releasing on March 8 is Homeworld 3, and Blackbird Interactive wants you to demo it ahead of time. You can take on challenges solo or with friends, and play around in a three-player co-op mode that fuses Homeworld's RTS gameplay with roguelike elements. Claim powerful Artifacts that augment your ships with more power, speed, and weapons to rise through the ranks to unlock new fleets and power-ups.

 

[David76]

Campfire Studios has released a 40-hour demo for Soulmask, a sandbox survival game where after escaping a deadly sacrificial ritual, you find a mysterious mask that holds knowledge that changes the world you once knew. As the "last one," you will start with nothing and will need to face the harsh challenges of nature, survive, rally followers, and build your tribe.





A reality-based survival simulator set in the Canadian Arctic, in it, you have barely survived as the sole survivor of a helicopter crash in the freezing mountains. You will need to use your skills, smarts, and creativity to battle the elements and save your own life before you freeze to death or worse. Over six levels, you will confront challenges such as crafting snowshoes, navigating glacial crevasses, building hunting traps, rappelling cliffs, and keeping your fire burning as you follow the river to potential rescue - just watch out for polar bears.





Check out the Early Access game Backpack Battles. In it, you will buy and craft powerful items and arrange them in your backpack. The smarter you place your items, the stronger you will be against real builds of other players. Items come in different shapes, sizes, prices, and rarities, and you can combine them into stronger equipment. You can brew potions, craft legendary weapons, or hatch a dragon.

 

[David76]

Here's a demo for the first-person driving survival game called Pacific Drive. As you drive through the Pacific Northwest, you'll face supernatural dangers as you travel through the Olympic Exclusion Zone, and each time to enter, it will shift with unique challenges. You will need to scavenge to survive, craft new equipment, and configure your vehicle however you want.

Playstation - PC Gaming - Pacific Drive [Deluxe Edition]

It's a survival game based in the Pacific Northwest and will be released on the 22nd of February. I'm really looking forward to playing this.

idlechatter.co.uk

A demo you should put on your list to play is Lightyear Frontier, a relaxing and colorful open-world farming game set on a planet at the edge of the galaxy. Use your mech to start a home on a distant planet with up to three friends as you create a sustainable exofarm farm, grow alien crops, and explore the wilderness.





Zombie fans might want to check out Dread Dawn, an open-world zombie survival game set in a quarantined city. You play as a student left behind due to missing the evacuation convoy, who together with classmates and other survivors, need to defend the school, survive, and await rescue.





Out in Early Access on March 28 is Godsworn, and you can get a taste of the mythological RTS right now. An epic fantasy retelling of the Northern Crusades, in the game, pagan gods and their tribes clash against crusaders and armies of heaven. You will choose a divine hero, rally worshippers, and mythical creatures, and smite your enemies.

 

[David76]

Available during Q1 this year, Gatekeeper is a fast-paced rogue-lite that puts you on a quest to find the stolen Heart of the Universe and shoot your way through the hordes of machine enemies either solo or through co-op with friends. There are several playable characters with unique abilities, plenty of skill combinations, a Totem System, more than 100 collectibles that change the gameplay, and dozens of unique planets, enemies, and bosses.





Synergy is a cool-looking, cell-shaded, city-building game in which humanity must survive in a strange and hostile world. In the game, you will build a city while respecting the ecosystem, and analyze the plants and other natural elements to flesh out your Knowledge Book. This book will come in handy as it's an essential guide to obtaining resources, ensuring the safety of your citizens, optimizing your city, and promoting survival and prosperity while remaining in harmony with the surrounding natural environment.





Want to restore the equilibrium of magic by saving endangered fantasy creatures? Then you should check out Fantastic Haven. This management sandbox game tasks you with building a shelter to welcome and protect wondrous creatures and explore unique regions, all while rallying neighboring populations to your cause and rehabilitating creatures in their natural environment.





Indecision Labs has a demo available for its upcoming game Knights Within. It's a 1-3 player blend between a third-person shooter and melee hack and slash with roguelite elements. After creating a custom loadout, you will navigate procedurally generated levels using random power-ups to survive endless waves of enemies.





A complex city builder where the fate of your kingdom relies on your every decision. To create a thriving kingdom, you will assign your subjects tasks, collect resources, build structures, explore the wilds, and secure your kingdom's reputation through trade or by conquering your foes in RTS combat. As a ruler, you will need to choose the path of Benevolence or Tyranny - both paths have their advantages - and make good decisions, because they will have long-lasting consequences for your reign. You can play around in this medieval land alone or with friends.

 

[David76]

Steam Next Fest: February 2024 Edition is now a few days in, and once again here's a small taste of the thousands of demos you can try out.



This twin-stick, adventure exploration game from Moonloop Games has a lovely aesthetic, what with its hand-crafted art style, use of line art, and two-tone palette. Titled Hauntii, you play as the game's namesake, a ghost on a quest for answers regarding the mysteries of Eternity and the glowing race of creatures known as Eternians. These mysterious beings guide lost souls to a central tower where they appear to ascend to a higher plane. They look like angels, but no one knows who they are or where they came from. To find the answers, you will use your ghostly powers to possess both inhabitants and the environment to find solutions to puzzle challenges and to devise various approaches to combat scenarios. The game is also coming to PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.





One of the more popular demos on Steam at the moment is the shoot 'em up Nimrods: GunCraft Survivor. In it, you are an expendable clone created for one purpose: to test devastating, over-the-top, and absurd weaponry. As a tester for a Gun Manufacturer, this roguelite shooter has you scavenging alien planets to collect wild weapon parts to invent even wilder guns that slay thousands. You may not survive the hordes of aliens you encounter, but your guns will.





If you are in the mood to try an adventure puzzler with RPG elements and combat, give the demo for Potions: A Curious Tale a whirl. You play as a young witch named Luna who overcomes obstacles with potions she brews from items gathered from enchanted lands and conquers puzzles while she's at it. When faced with conflict, sometimes combat isn't the answer. In these situations, as Luna, use your wits to strategize conflict resolution quickly to sidestep danger and trick, charm, and scare your opponents into dropping valuable resources. You will run into monsters, adventure across seven biomes, and craft over 100 potions with some help along the way from your witchy grandmother and Helios, your cat familiar.





Klei Entertainment, the folks who brought you Oxygen Not Included, Shank, Invisible Inc., and the most excellent Don't Starve, comes the 1-4 player hack-and-slash rogue-like dungeon crawler Rotwood. The game has you exploring and fighting through a maze-like forest full of vicious vegetation with up to three of your friends. You will face ever-increasing challenges and rewards used to craft new weapons and armor or to fortify your safe haven. That is all that's known about the game at the moment, as more features and details will be revealed in future announcements.

 

[David76]

Another game on people's radar during Next Fest is the ink-style action roguelite Realm of Ink from Leap Studio and Maple Leaf Studio. Playing as a swordswoman named Red, you are pursuing the Fox Demon when quite unexpectedly you find out your life is dictated by the 'destiny' within the world of the book. To unveil the truth of your existence and challenge the constraints of fate, you will need to break free from these constraints. You can choose from three playable characters, there are nine powerful weapons to equip, 20 distinctive Ink Gems, over 120 Artifacts, Ink Pets that can evolve into 15 plus distinct forms, and conquer over 20 creatures with distinctive Chinese characteristics and their own backstories.





Itching to play an open-world survival craft game with a programmable sidekick named Grammi? Then give the demo for Omega Crafter a try. Set in an under-development game world being attacked by a mysterious program, you will build a city, and fight enemies with Grammi (and friends), to complete the game's development in time for its release date. You can program your sidekick to do many things, explore various biomes, fight monsters, gather materials, find hidden secrets, and invite your friends to play online with you in the procedurally generated world.





Set for an April release, Earl vs the Mutants is a bullet hell survival roguelite set in a post-apocalyptic world swarming with mutants. You, Earl, are the only employee of Edna who owns a pest control business that deals with these mutants. As the winner of 37 consecutive Employee of the Month awards, your job is to create powerful builds by combining vehicle-mounted weapons, attack and support drones, level-up-based upgrades, and temporary powerups with each build attempt different due to an expanding list of in-run upgrades. When ready you venture out into the 3D environment to battle swarms of mutants in runs lasting 10 minutes or less. If survive, you'll go head-to-head against bosses to earn their vehicles.





Those who like a blocky look to their games will probably enjoy Voxlands where a spreading "ooze" is transforming the raytraced voxel terrain. Local inhabitants need your assistance, and it's up to you to find the mystery behind this weird ooze. Throughout the game you will encounter mutated wildlife as you quest, craft, loot, build, destroy, and shoot your way to the top of the food chain alone, or with friends.

 

[David76]

Releasing on April 17 is the gloomy Metroidvania adventure Kingsgrave. Inspired by classic Zelda games, in it, you play a king awoken from a prolonged slumber to find disease has swept through your kingdom and taken people's lives. Your lands have wilted, many of your subjects have abandoned their houses, and monsters created by fragments of diseased souls have taken their place. While venturing through the interconnected world, you will solve puzzles, uncover hidden paths, and navigate treacherous terrain to collect resources in which to build new villages. In order to bring subjects back to your kingdom and save the ones who stayed, you must slay the plague creatures.





The Paradox Interactive published Millennia is a historical turn-based 4X game that challenges your strategy skills across 10,000 years of history. Developed by C Prompt Games, you decide the course of human history across ten ages, from the first cities to space travel. If you accomplish certain objectives, you can move time into a Variant Age - an alternate history with new rules, new technologies, and new units. Just beware of Crisis Ages, as following these patches of chaos and disorder may plunge the world into a future filled with war, sickness, or ignorance. Keeping that in mind, it's possible a crisis can be turned into an opportunity. Choose your path with care because your actions will have a lasting impact on your people and the world.