Steam Next Fest 2024

I thought Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn had a pretty good trailer at the Microsoft Showcase so I was happy to see a demo available during this years Next Fest on Steam. Unfortunately, the demo kind of soured me on the game. I don’t know if the demo is entirely representative of the opening, or if it’s a truncated slice.

I hope it has been cut down, because it’s not a great introduction to the story, world or characters. However, the initial tutorial area as musket wielding soldiers fought off hordes of zombies was pretty unique as a premise, but once I started getting stuck into the gameplay, that’s when things went awry.

Flintlock is unashamedly a ‘Souls’ game and I kind of wish it wasn’t – or rather, I wish it didn’t adhere to the Souls formula quite so rigidly. You collect ‘reputation’ from fallen enemies as a currency that you drop and must reclaim upon death. Resting at a campfire restores your health, refills your healing flasks and musket ammo but also resets enemies within the world. Combat is fairly slow with a lot of circle strafing and dodging.

You have a simple melee attack and your pistol that can interrupt enemy attacks. There is a skill tree where you can use reputation to unlock more abilities, but that’s obviously limited within the demo. There is a parry ability but the timing of it feels off. In fact, a lot of the combat feels off as far as timing and animations go.

Some enemies do the annoying ‘laser guided’ thing where they’ll suddenly shift at an odd angle as you dodge and still hit you. I noticed this with some of the ranged enemies where it felt like they were firing heat seeking musket balls. It just feels slow, clunky and imprecise. I can live with slow, if it feels like it has weight, but here it doesn’t.

It also feels at odds with the game’s attempt at more fast and fluid traversal which ends up feeling awkward and not as smooth as it should. The combat overall, just felt too . . . well, familiar I guess, and I’m not convinced that any unlocks on the skill tree will really change that. It’s a shame, because the idea of a combat system which combines melee (axes) and ranged (muskets) could be pretty neat, but going with such a restrictive Souls model feels like it holds the potential back.

The demo was surprisingly substantial with a lot to explore and I did like how expansive the map was. Visually, it’s nothing special, but it’s fine. Some of the character interactions fell very flat though and the dialogue isn’t great. The world also didn’t feel very coherent, more like a weird mash up of things the developers liked from other games.

At one point I ‘liberated’ the ruins of the village by killing a ‘leader’ bad guy and instantly the village was transformed into a functional place with living people. That was kind of jarring, but not as jarring as the being told to go into a coffee shop to speak with the ‘host’ who it turns out is a weird looking creature but nobody – not even our protagonist – seems entirely surprised by this.

Do humans live alongside creepy monsters in this world? I don’t know, and the demo doesn’t try to explain. I was then on my way to fight a bunch of ‘knights’ which felt straight out of a Dark Souls game but felt very odd here when everyone else was dressed and equipped like a Napoleonic era soldier. Like I said, it’s as if the developers just crammed in all the cool stuff they liked without really taking into consideration the consistency of their own world.

But I don’t want to keep dunking on Flintlock because this was only a demo and I’m sure the developers will polish up and improve a lot of the aspects I’ve talked about and there’s probably also a lot of context and character stuff that just isn’t available yet. That said, the fact that it adheres so rigidly to the Souls formula is still disappointing to me because I was hoping for more of a unique twist and style to Flintlock, so this might be one I give a miss.

Whereas I didn’t finish the Flintlock demo because I just wasn’t enjoying it very much, I didn’t finish The Alters demo because I didn’t want to spoil anything else. I played it for just over an hour and that was enough for me to know it’s a game I’m very interested in picking up at release.

It’s such a cool and unique concept and although the demo wasn’t perfect – the scanning system could certainly use some work – I’m pretty sold on the game regardless. It’s taking the ticking clock mechanic of Frostpunk and combining it with the base building and people management of This War of Mine to create something that feels so original and different and it’s this kind of thing that gets me excited.

It looks great, it walks you through what it needs to but it also it trusts you to figure out things on your own. It’s immediately compelling and immersive and it just gets more intriguing and more engaging as you go.

I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it. I reached a point in the demo where I decided to stop because I just didn’t want to see too much of it now. This one is moving up on my wishlist.

This demo actually released after Next Fest but I figured I’d include it here – Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess. It’s a very unique and stylish action / strategy game in which your goal is to escort a dancing lady through a level whilst fending off attacks by monsters. Each level has a day/night cycle. Day is a safe period during which you can gather resources, free trapped villagers and prepare your defences for the arrival of Night.

Because Night is when the monsters arrive via a magical portal. You play a sword wielding warrior with some simple combo and special attacks but with so many monsters and multiple ‘lanes’ of attack, you can’t be everywhere at once. This is where the villagers you’ve rescued come into play as you can assign them different roles such as a melee fighter, an archer or a healer. You can then position them strategically across the level to maximise their effectiveness against each wave of enemies.

In order to beat the level you just have to guide the dancing lady to the next magical gate to purge and close it. It’s a pretty simple concept, but it gets a little more complex as you progress through the demo with new enemy types to deal with and with more monster lanes to manage.

It’s very colourful and fun enough to play, and I do think the mix of action and strategy works quite well but I must admit, I did find even this limited slice of the game a tad repetitive and basic. I’m sure it gets even more complex in the full game as you unlock more villager types and environmental features, but I just don’t know if there’s enough meat here to really engage me long term. Certainly one I’ll keep an eye on, though.