Steam Spring Next Fest 2026 (Part 2/2)

Freefall ‘95 is a surprisingly fun little game about falling out of a plane to your death. As you fall you can perform tricks to build a combo and increase your score. You can keep your combo going by mixing up your tricks and collecting falling items. Take any damage, however, and the combo (and your accumulated score) is lost.

It’s very arcade, very score attack focused, with an emphasis on multiple runs to beat your high score, but also to check off various objectives on each level ranging from the expected tiers of ‘perform X number of combos’ or ‘achieve X score’ to collecting X amount of specific falling items (soda, snakes, champagne).

You can ‘ride’ various pieces of falling debris to keep a combo going or to catapult yourself back up into the sky, giving you more time to increase your score or complete more objectives. It’s fast, fun, very silly and certainly unique.

But the game, surprisingly, offers quite a bit more. There’s a story of sorts in the sense that you’re stuck in a time loop that resets every time you die and on each level you’re tasked with collecting a unique item that presumably, you’ll eventually use to break the loop. There are also other passengers on the plane you can speak to between levels who issue quests of their own or offer you various upgrades. There’s even a separate challenge mode. I had quite a bit of fun with this.

Helix: Descent N Ascent is a puzzle game in which you explore a mysterious world, unlock strange powers and try to unravel the mystery of . . . well, everything. What you are. Where you are. Why you’re there. Why you have a doppelganger who either wants to help and/or hinder you. The demo doesn’t explain a thing. It just drops you in and lets you go and trusts you to figure things out.

And it’s great! What attracted me to Helix first and foremost was, obviously, the visuals. I must admit, the stark black and white imagery seriously f**ked with my vision at first but I soon adjusted to it. The game looks absolutely stunning, but it’s also wonderfully animated. It’s not just a static world. Water drips and flows. Little critters scurry back and forth.

But are amazing visuals all this game has to offer? The demo, thankfully, hints at a clever, well thought out puzzle experience too. As you play, you unlock new powers that help you progress from one area to the next. The puzzles are fairly simple in the demo, but they do require a little thought, and are clearly designed at this stage of the game to teach you the various ways you can utilise and even combine your powers.

What additional powers you might find or how complex the puzzles grow over time remains to be seen. But what I played in this demo was certainty promising and this is another game I’ll be keeping a close eye on.

I’d seen a rather negative reception to this Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Remake demo from fans of the original game. The Panzer Dragoon 1 remake also wasn’t particularly well received, although I certainly didn’t hate it when I reviewed it back in 2021. I prefer the original, but the remake didn’t offend me. And I feel like the same will likely be true of this remake of Zwei based on this demo. Is it as good as the original? No. Is it something to rage about? Also, no.

I played through the demo a few times, trying both routes of Episode 2. That’s the only episode available to play which makes sense given Zwei is a game you can finish in about 40 minutes. I’m not sure episode 2 is the best choice in terms of judging this game for its visual overhaul because it’s a very drab, wasteland environment. That said, there’s clearly still improvements to be made here in terms of lighting. It’s all a little flat right now.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy what I played here to a degree but it’s hard not to compare it to the original and point out where it’s lacking. The camera feels too high and pulled back whereas in the original it was lower to the ground and tighter to your dragon’s body. It might seem like a minor change but it completely transforms how you experience the environment. In the original, everything felt much bigger, like you were peering up at these massive airships looming large in the sky. You don’t get that same vibe here, sadly.

It also makes everything feel very slow. I’m also sure they scaled back the enemies quite a bit or perhaps the rate of enemy projectiles because I was shocked how easy this was – and to be fair, Zwei was super easy anyway – but there’s a lot of sections where there’s so few enemies and it feels so slow, like nothing is really going on. The original had this great energy and speed to it that the Remake seems to lack based on this demo. The gun and laser missiles also felt and sounded more punchy in the original and also felt like they really did pack a punch, unlike here where you don’t have a good sense of impact.

Overall, I didn’t hate this demo like some seem to but like the Panzer 1 remake, this one also seems rather lacking in key areas. I might still pick it up because I’m such a big fan of the original games but I’m not expecting much.

Windrose is a pirate game! I downloaded the demo only knowing it was a game where you play as a pirate and sail a pirate ship and your crew sing sea shanties as you attack, board and loot other ships. Which is why I was rather surprised when the demo began and I found myself on a deserted island being tasked with collecting rocks and sticks.

Because Windrose is a building, crafting and survival focused pirate game. Your first tasks all involve gathering resources to craft structures to house storage, various workbenches and produce goods / tools from raw materials so you can venture out and gather more resources to craft yet more structures and produce more goods. If you’ve played any crafting / survival game from the last few years you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Whilst I was a little disappointed by this at first – and rather bored by how tedious it all was – I can’t say I didn’t enjoy slowly working my way up to finding and then repairing my first ship. Resources, to be fair, are quite abundant so it doesn’t take too long to collect what you need, but there’s a lot of little steps to take and it does require some patience.

There were three islands to explore in this demo with a few enemies to fight. Combat is simple and the AI easy to abuse – just jumping on a crate seems to confuse them. You don’t get experience for killing enemies so in some cases it’s best to just avoid them – especially early on when your fast travel / re-spawn locations are limited and you might require a lengthy trek / sail in your tiny (and slow) starting boat to get back to where you died.

After much mining, chopping and crafting I eventually had my first proper ship with cannons and a crew and I could finally set sail and engage my first target. Ship combat is also rather simple but still fun and you can even board a damaged enemy ship. I made the mistake of trying that early on though and rather than destroy a ship I was attacking, I chose to board and was swiftly overwhelmed by higher level pirates.

It booted me all the way back to a little camp on an island where I’d set my revive point and when I looked at how far I’d have to go to get back to where I was I decided to call it a day! I think there’s promise here but there’s also clearly still a lot of work to do and as much as I would love to play a cool pirate game, I’m just not sure I have the patience to play one that involves collecting so many rocks.

Now Playing: Metro Awakening (VR)

I’ve played and reviewed all of the previous Metro games on this blog so it seemed a shame not to give this VR spin-off a go, even though this is a series I’ve found as frustrating as I do enjoyable. And Metro Awakening certainly doesn’t buck the trend. In this VR prequel to the previous Metro games you play as Serdar, a doctor who embarks upon a quest within the Metro to find his missing wife.

From a story point of view, I think there’s a decent narrative here to enjoy that serves as an origin story to a character fans of the previous games will be familiar with. Also familiar is what awaits you in the dark and dangerous tunnels – mutants, hostile humans and supernatural threats. Awakening doesn’t really offer anything new to the Metro experience – it just gives you a new medium (VR) through which to experience it.

As a VR experience though, I’d say Awakening is a little lacking. My main issue is the brightness. This might sound like a strange complaint, but hear me out – Awakening is far too dark, even with the brightness cranked up to max. Like previous Metro games there are sections against human enemies where stealth is a viable (and preferable to conserve resources) option.

But in Awakening, some of these sections are so dark you literally cannot see a thing. Nothing. All you see is pure black and using your headlamp only gives you away. There were times I was within a couple of feet of an enemy and I simply could not see them. Navigating the darkness is a key facet of this series but it shouldn’t result in a situation whereby it’s impossible for the player to see or understand what’s happening.

Like the previous Metro games you do have a headlamp but also like those games the headlamp needs to be continually recharged. That’s fine when you can just press a button but in VR, you have to take out your backpack, grab the charging device and then manually wind it. It wouldn’t be so bad if the battery didn’t seem to die every ten minutes or so.

Inventory management is also pretty annoying. You have to reach over your left shoulder for your backpack which includes your lighter, gas mask, and charger, but over your right shoulder for your primary weapon selection. Both are slow to do, which isn’t ideal when you need to quickly switch weapons or pull on your gas mask.

That’s not to say there aren’t any nice little VR touches – the first time my gas mask fogged up I instinctively reached up and wiped it clean with my hand and it just worked. It was a nice surprise and made me realise just how immersed I was in the experience.

In addition to cranking up the brightness to max I’d also recommend switching on the ‘arachnophobia mode’ regardless of how you feel about spiders. They’re by far the most annoying enemy in the game as they leap at you from dark corners and land on your face, completely obscuring your vision.

You can try knocking them off with your hands but I often also accidentality pulled off my gas mask at the same time. Like the issue with the darkness, it’s not fun in VR when you can’t see shit, Captain. Aside from the spiders there are only two other mutant enemies you’ll encounter – one of which has this annoying ‘stagger’ animation when first shot that makes subsequent hits meaningless until the animation is compete, at which point you can shoot them again to finish the job.

The other mutant is mostly reserved for the initially fun but repeated far too often ‘train car chase’ sequences in which a horde of them pursue you as you race down a track on a mounted gun. Tip: equip your gas mask before departing because it’ll save you fumbling with your backpack as you go.

Human enemies are the most fun to fight because they do more than just charge wildly at you. They do try to use cover and flank you and because I found stealth such a chore due to the brightness issue, I mostly just shot my way through every hostile group I came across.

And I’m glad I did, because the combat is actually pretty fun. You have three primary weapons – an assault rifle, shotgun and crossbow. The crossbow kind of sucks because it’s a nightmare to aim in VR, but the others are good fun and handle well.

Visually, Awakening looks good. Not great. The character models are a little poor but the environments look nice, even if some of them end up too dark to fully appreciate. The early levels are rather slow but fortunately, the game picks up the pace around chapter three and keeps you engaged until the very end. And I’d say it does stick the landing, at least narratively speaking.

I do wish there was more taken from the previous Metro games – like the bullet economy or weapon upgrades. There’s no trading in the game, no shops and little in the way of character interaction. The Metro games are as much about the people as the environment, but Awakening doesn’t do much with what little supporting cast it has.

It took me about nine hours to complete Awakening and although I can’t say I loved every minute, I can say I still came away with a pretty positive impression. It’s a flawed, but fun VR experience that like the previous Metro games, I found as frustrating as I did enjoyable but I’d still recommend checking out.

7/10

Steam Spring Next Fest 2026 (Part 1/2)

First up was Shift at Midnight which is a fun twist on the ‘retail simulator’ genre. You can play solo – and to be fair, it’s quite fun solo too – or with up to three friends. You work the night shift at a gas station and must keep things clean, tidy and restocked as you serve your customers. So far, so much like the other retail simulators we’ve seen released over the last few years.

The twist here is that not all of your customers are human and you must inspect and question each of them to decide if they’re actually a doppelgänger. If you think they are, you can pull out a gun and shoot them. If not, you can let them pay and leave safely. There’s a daily store quota to reach, so you can’t shoot everyone just to be safe, and there’s no immediate penalty to letting a suspected doppelgänger walk out of the station.

But if you do let one or more doppelgängers leave they’ll return in their monstrous form at the end of your shift and attempt to murder you and your friends. You get a warning and a little time to prepare various traps and barricades to slow and hurt the creatures with the goal of driving them away. It’s a simple, quirky little game that will be more randomised in the full release, but this demo only had three scripted shifts to try. I played it through with a friend and we certainly had fun with it. It’s hard to say what kind of long term replay value it will have, but if appropriately priced, I can see this doing quite well.

The demo for Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! gave me the impression of a fun, if somewhat limited, first person shooter in which you get to join the Mobile Infantry and fight an endless horde of bugs. This demo featured a single mission on a fairly large map with multiple objectives, each of which you can approach in your own order. The objectives range from defending a base, to evacuating civilians, to collecting an arms cache . . . but really they all involve going to a place and killing a hell of a lot of bugs. It’s rather mindless and repetitive but, as I said, also rather fun.

You have access to weapons like your standard assault rifle and shotgun, but there’s also turrets to man and even an exoskeleton to ride. There are also support items you can use to call down deadly area of effect attacks – handy for dealing with a swarm. I played on the default Normal and found it to be way too easy. You get ranked at the end of the mission and difficulty does factor into your score so that’s clearly a way they’re pushing replay value. The visuals are . . . I wouldn’t say bad.

They’ve gone for a very distinct, colourful style that works better in some ways than others. The bugs look great but your fellow humans are essentially just 2D sprites and they just look . . . goofy. Maybe that’s intentional, but I can’t say I cared for it. Whilst the shooting is fairly solid, the movement makes you feel like you’re skating across the map. Not sure I cared for that, either. I do like the effort they’ve put in to capture the spirit of the movie, even giving us cheesy FMV sequences. Overall, not a bad demo but I can’t say I’m quite sold on the game.

Wanderburg is a surprisingly addictive ‘minimalist’ (low budget) roguelike set in a silly medieval world where castles have wheels and can roll around the world ‘consuming’ resources in order to evolve into the most powerful. It’s a bit like ‘Mortal Engines: The Game’. The demo only featured a single map with only a default selection of abilities and equipment. Nevertheless, I played it several times and had quite a bit of fun doing so.

As your little castle trundles around the map and defeats enemies you collect coins that eventually unlock upgrades, new abilities and equipment and eventually level up your castle into a bigger, meaner version. As times goes on, the map throws more and more enemies at you that range from simple groups of archers (that you can roll right on over) to large, hulking fortresses that demolish everything in their path.

Eventually the map throws a ‘Boss’ castle at you and even if you deal with that you will, inevitably, be overwhelmed at which point your castle will be destroyed and you’ll need to start all over again from scratch. You’re scored on the time you survived and the coins you collected. The map in this demo was rather simple, and I’m curious if other maps will be more or less the same just with a different biome.

I’m also curious about possible cosmetic unlocks for your castle. It feels like there’s some fun and engaging ways they could incentivise repeat play here. One to keep an eye on.

Someone once said: ‘What if Jet Set Radio but . . . trains?’ And so we have Denshattack! It takes the exuberant visual and audio style of Jet Set Radio with a dash of Tony Hawk style score attack as you grind, flip, trick and race your way as a . . . train! Yes, as a train! You might think that couldn’t work, but you’d be wrong!

The demo for Denshattack! was super fun to play. There’s a short but welcome tutorial before the game lets you take a crack at two full levels. They’re linear in the sense that your goal is to get from A to B as fast as possible whilst also racking up as high a score as possible, but each also features multiple pathways and optional objectives to complete, giving you a reason to replay.

The game is fast, colourful and I appreciated the unique little moments of each level – such as riding atop a Ferris wheel or escaping a lava pit. The camera remains locked behind you most of the time, but occasionally shifts for cinematic trick moments.

There are different trains to unlock and various cosmetic options to customise your ride. The only thing I had a little trouble with was the trick control system which felt a tad finicky to handle but maybe I just needed more practice. Denshattack! is pure video game – simple concept, executed brilliantly.

Now Playing: Hubris (VR)

Hubris is a VR sci-fi action game in which you play as a recruit of the ‘Order of Objectivity’ on a mission to locate the mysterious (and missing) Agent Cyana on a hostile alien world. Quite what the ‘OOO’ is or does isn’t entirely clear. In fact, from a story point of view, nothing is entirely clear.

Are the OOR the good guys or the bad guys? They do seem to wear a lot of black and give off Star Wars Imperial vibes. There’s another faction in the game that seems to be at war with them – I assume, given they keep trying to kill you. When you do locate Agent Cyana she seems to have special powers . . . which I think are related to the unique resource mined on the planet?

And her plan is to activate a planetary terraformer to do . . . something. You do learn what the something is but then you wonder if that really was the entire point of her mission. You’re accompanied on your adventure by Lucia, a pilot who talks to you via a drone. You’ll also meet the aforementioned Cyana (who doesn’t talk a whole lot) and a guy named Wack (who talks way too much).

I’m not going to say the story or character stuff is bad – it’s not. It’s . . . fine. I think the problem I have with it is: it’s not dull enough to make me not care. Rather, it’s decent enough to make me wish it was a lot better. And in a way, that kind of applies to the game as a whole.

Hubris is visually impressive, arguably one of the most visually impressive VR games you can play. And it’s undeniably ambitious – pushing hard on visuals, action, voice acting, platforming, swimming (more on that later) alien creatures, explosive shoot outs, upgradable weapons and even a (kind of bad, sadly) vehicle section.

I really do admire it for that. For what was likely a small team with a limited budget, they really wanted to deliver as close to a ‘AAA’ VR experience as possible. And I’d say they weren’t far off succeeding. The problem Hubris has is that nearly every aspect of it just doesn’t quite hit the mark.

The platforming is a little too janky – I actually died a few times glitching through the scenery when trying to climb or jump. The in-game item menu is neat visually (it projects from your wrist) but awkward to use. The shooting is fun enough, but there’s no real feedback to when you take a hit, so you have to continually check your health level to find out if you’ve taken damage.

There were times an enemy was behind me, shooting me out of my field of view, and I wasn’t even aware of it until I noticed my health was going down. And enemy AI is kind of terrible. They mostly just run at you. Sometimes they do take cover. Sometimes they just stare at a wall.

The swimming is . . . the swimming nearly made me want to quit the game at one point because I absolutely hated the swimming controls that require you to physically swing your arms. I found it slow, inaccurate and tiring. The enemy selection isn’t bad for the game length (about 6 hours on Normal difficulty) but there’s nothing particularly exciting here – you get alien squids, bugs, drones, homing mines, guy with gun and bigger guy with bigger gun.

The vehicle section is a nice surprise towards the end of the game but it also handles like ass. The voice acting is fine but . . . stilted, to say the least. You have a single weapon you can upgrade and switch between three modes – pistol, shotgun and a rapid fire ‘burstgun’ although the shotgun is pretty much useless.

Despite all the little (and big – swimming!) irritations, I can’t say I didn’t have a fun time playing through Hubris. Because there is a good game here – a potentially great game, in fact. It’s just a shame that it just falls short in so many areas. Like I said – it’s ambitious, and I admire it for that. And I’d love to play a more refined, more focused, more polished and considered sequel. I do feel there’s a lot of untapped potential here. If you see it on sale, be sure to give it a spin.

6/10

REPLACED (Demo)

REPLACED is a 2.5D cinematic action platformer set in an alternative 1980s cyberpunk style world. You play as R.E.A.C.H or just ‘Reach’, an artificial intelligence inhabiting a human body on a mission to escape and / or take down the sinister Phoenix Corporation that created you.

The demo was only about twenty minutes long and rather light on narrative, hence me somewhat lifting the Steam store page description. I can’t remember exactly when I first saw REPLACED – it must have been during a summer game show because I added it to my Steam Wishlist way back in June 2021. I’d honestly kind of forgotten about it, but then this demo suddenly appeared.

As I said, it’s only about twenty minutes but it does give you a sense of how REPLACED plays. You can run, jump and climb to progress your way through some very striking pixel art environments. This is a game going for a very ‘cinematic’ vibe through its visuals and I’d say it achieves its goal.

The demo is clearly from an early area of the game designed to serve as a tutorial with a few simple platform puzzles to ease you in and several small combat segments. Combat operates like a 2D version of the Batman Arkham games, with an alert icon appearing over an enemy about to attack giving you a chance to block and counter. Yellow alerts mean it’s safe to do so, Red alerts mean you need to dodge. Simple, but effective.

You have a basic attack and a gun that charges over time to perform stylish one shot counters. I don’t know if the game will introduce more weapons or different types of counters or attacks, but the basic foundation of the combat system is solid.

I think the most important thing I can say about this demo is that it left me wanting more. I love the gritty, moody look of it, the combat – though rather basic and easy – was still fun, and there’s an appropriating pounding synth-driven soundtrack pushing you on.

Will the game turn out to be more style than substance? Perhaps. I think it will likely live and die on its narrative aspects rather than its gameplay. The world. The characters. The story. If it can nail those, then we might have something pretty special.

Now Playing: No, I’m not a Human

I first played No, I’m not a Human as a demo during a Steam Next Fest last year, attracted to the unique visual style and intriguing concept. The idea is that something has gone ‘wrong’ with the sun, forcing everyone to stay indoors during the day. And at the same time, mysterious ‘Visitors’ have begun to appear, clawing their way out from beneath the ground.

The Visitors are violent and dangerous, seemingly intent purely on killing. They can mimic humans and attempt to persuade you – a hermit living in a small home on the outskirts of a town – to let them in. Every night you’ll hear knocks at your door and you’ll have to decide to let whoever is outside in or not.

You might think – well, why let anyone in at all? But there’s a scripted Visitor who appears regularly across the 13 days and nights of the game and will immediately enter and kill you if you’re alone. In fact, there’s a fair number of scripted interactions within the game. Whilst many of the characters you encounter are randomised, some are always scheduled to appear on exactly the same nights. Some are always human and some are always Visitors.

Most though, as I said, are randomised, so you can never be quite sure who will show up and who will be a Visitor or not. Just because one character was human in one playthrough, doesn’t mean they will be in the next. As you progress you’ll learn different ways to test your new house guests and if you suspect any of them are a Visitor you can immediately pull out a gun and blow them to pieces. But you won’t know for sure until you pull the trigger.

If they’re a Visitor, the game will let you know with a jump-scare style flash. If you made a mistake and they’re human, they just die. In some ways, I feel like it would be more interesting if you didn’t know for sure because at its heart, this is a game about paranoia. It’s a bit like ‘The Thing’ in which you begin to suspect everyone – even yourself.

You have limited ‘energy’ each day so you might not be able to test everyone to your satisfaction, although there are ways to boost and increase this. Visitors will target and kill humans in your home, increasing that sense of paranoia when you think you’ve tested everyone and are sure they’re all human, only to wake up and find someone dead.

Because those tests aren’t always totally accurate and that also plays into the sense of paranoia but also the idea of being manipulated by media and the Government, which is represented by FEMA who send a regular operative to your door to take people away for ‘testing’ and who broadcast televised updates regarding Visitor ‘signs’.

Neighbour turns on neighbour. Society breaks down. Innocent people die. The game doesn’t lean as hard into these angles as I’d like. As I said in my post on the demo, I feel like the game is more interesting in concept than in execution but nevertheless, it remains an engaging and intriguing and certainly a unique experience.

You can ‘complete’ No, I’m not a Human in about an hour or so, maybe shorter if you get killed early on but the game is designed for multiple runs so you can meet and explore the fairly large cast of weird characters who show up at your door. There are also multiple endings to unlock based on your actions and choices throughout the game.

Some are rather convoluted to say the least. Some are downright bizarre and silly. But given you can run through the game so quickly, you don’t mind doing so in order to see all the weird and wonderful outcomes it has to offer.

Visually the game has a striking and unique style both for environments and characters. There’s no VA, it’s all text based but it looks and sounds good. I’m still working my way through the game, exploring different options to see how things play out and I’m enjoying my time doing so. It’s a game I’d recommend if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary.

7/10