Steam Next Fest June 2025

Wildgate

An extraction shooter featuring ship combat and management elements sounds like an idea someone should have had long ago. It’s a relatively complex game that features multiple things to keep track of and is very overwhelming at first. One round took about thirty minutes and I wasn’t sure what to do for the first ten. It is intuitive though as boarding desolate ships and stations to scrounge for loot to upgrade your own makes sense. When ship combat starts is when it goes off the rails. Engaging your enemy from a distance is your best bet as they can board your vessel, and vice versa, if you’re too close. Prospectors have sidearms they use to clear the empty ships and they come in handy during these player engagements as well. You can gun down a whole crew, stick a bomb on their ship and dip for a victory. Alternatively, you can upgrade your onboard turrets and blast ships down from a distance. You have to get through their shields, but depending on what you upgrade, this could be your best option. The last standing ship wins, or you can try to escape with the artifact. This object spawns in the middle of the round and leaving with it gives you the victory. There’s lots of layers to this game and though it can be overwhelming, I think it has potential to carve its own niche within the gaming landscape. It’s wholly unique and that’s something I value more than anything nowadays.

Solo Leveling Arise Overdrive

I love this IP, but this game is abysmal. The world of SL has so much potential for a party/class based dungeon crawling multiplayer PVE game, but this game is just a button mashing mess. Sure some of the bosses do AOEs and you need to dodge them but the rest of the time I just held left click and mashed abilities off cooldown. It felt almost like a mobile game with its lack of impact on any of the attacks. There’s also a massive crafting system and a recruitment mechanic to get people to join your guild. Essentially you make offers to get characters on your crew and I can only imagine how they’re going to implement that in the full release. (Gacha incoming.) It’s also somewhat offensive to the source material as Jinwoo could clear dungeons alone very easily with his army. Scaling down his power for this sort of looter/dungeon crawler style game doesn’t work. All in all, it’s just boring. I can’t see how this game will survive. If they’re banking on the IP, it wasn’t enough for me to even think about playing it ever again.

Dead As Disco

Y’all, I can’t even play with how sick this game is. It’s a beat ‘em up that has a musical rhythm to it. It’s not as strict as you’d expect though. You’re not penalized for hitting enemies offbeat, but rewarded when you do. There’s so much to play with here and I can’t wait for the full release. The style is off the charts as the comic artstyle and musical arrangements create a wholly unique atmosphere. Also, this demo was less than ten minutes long and I’m immediately invested. That should tell you that this game is serving something special. An impressive showing from a new studio and I can’t wait for the full release.

Dispatch

So the crude humor was somewhat off putting right off the bat. Eventually though, I came to appreciate it. You play as a hero who lost his mech suit and now works in a hero dispatch center. You need to choose what hero to send to a situation based on need and if they complete the job properly, your reputation at the agency goes up and so does their experience. I’m not sure how fleshed out these systems will be but the potential of what this demo shows is promising. The characterization makes each one stand out and I really want to learn more about them. Because you’re new, you’re in charge of a team of misfits, so to use them effectively will be difficult. This perspective can help people understand that everyone has worth, not just those that excel. Given that this is written by ex Tell Tale devs, I have hope that their stories will be fully fleshed out. I was pleasantly surprised with this one and am now anticipating its release.

Morbid Metal

This one is interesting because I’m not sure how I feel about it. It seems like a roguelike but the difference here is that you play as multiple characters that you can swap between on the fly. It’s a hack and slash in a way, however, combat does have a flow to it. The moves are flashy to pull off and there’s a lot of stylization in the art direction. I’m interested in where the plot will go as I’m not sure if you’re playing as a human consciousness in a robot or a sentient machine. It feels solid to play as the main bot is nimble and hits quickly, while the other is slower but disrupts the entire field. I get the impression that you should swap between the two relatively often and I think that concept is cool, albeit difficult to execute for some gamers. I’m not sure about this one overall, but I might check in when it comes out.

Into the Grid

I really wasn’t sure what this one was going to be going into it. It lays a lot of systems and terms on you immediately and it was pretty overwhelming. However, once they set me loose on the grid, I was able to understand it so here’s the gist. You need to hack stations on a grid to obtain keys and currency along with other items. Some keys are for doors and others can be synthesized for other uses. Your goal is to gather as much intelligence as you can and get out. Every time you hack you increase your trace level. When that reaches ten, the alert level increases by one. The alert level causes doors to lock and the enemies get stronger. Oh yeah, there’s enemies to fight and you do so in a turn-based card battler. This system is also pretty fleshed out. You get a starting hand and each time you play a card you increase your VIM. This allows you to use commands, which are abilities you can use to help turn the tide. Each turn you have three clock to spend on cards. Some do damage and others increase your barrier. Many have passive buffs that activate when you have a certain amount of VIM or if you used a command that turn. It’s a really intricate system inside of another that makes the possibilities of this game endless. The skill ceiling is so high that I’m not sure I’ll be able to understand it enough to play it properly. Still, it’s a game that makes you think strategically and is rewarding when you “solve” fights. It is definitely not a game for everyone, but if you like to wrinkle your brain, this game has a lot to offer.

Mina the Hollower

Man this game is frustrating. I was on board for the retro aesthetic and gameplay, but it doesn’t show you how to do anything. Having to press all the keys on the keyboard just to figure out how to play isn’t fun. Also, it’s not intuitive. The environment art is cute, however I have no idea what I’m looking at half the time. There were some things I could burrow under and others I could not. I couldn’t tell what was intractable and what was not. The lack of any sort of tutorial was off putting but the unintuitive map design and control scheme were the nail in the coffin for me. I wanted to like this game, but it just feels obtuse for no real reason. It looks simple on the surface but there’s a lot here that I just couldn’t understand and don’t have the patience for. If you like these retro style games that are hard because of a lack of information, give it a shot but it’s not for me at all.