Author's Note: This is the second part to a two-part series I did looking at the game demos from the October 2024 Next Fest Event. If you missed the first part of this series here's a link, though reading that post isn't necessary to enjoy this one:
The game reviewed during this episode include:
- Keep Driving
- Is This Game Trying To Kill Me?
- Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate
- The Spirit Of The Samurai
- New Arc Line
- Loco Motive
- Great God Grove
Keep Driving
What is it?
Keep Driving is an atmospheric road trip roguelike RPG. Its developer, YCJY Games, seems to be referring to it as a "management RPG," which appears appropriate. The gameplay revolves around you preparing for a road trip and needing to assess what to bring to complete that adventure. There are different destinations to select from, and the world you explore is procedurally generated while maintaining a decidedly retro pixel art-based aesthetic. The "combat," if you can call it that, stems from everyday annoyances found when traveling long distances in a car, like bumper-to-bumper traffic, stalled motorcars, or vehicle malfunctions. How you resolve those conflicts depends on how you start your game, much like the classic Oregon Trail games. The abilities you have at your disposal at the start of the game are optimal for dealing with a few of your possible roadblocks, but not all of them, and all builds are bound to face impediments that are difficult for them but not for others. Campaigns are brief and only take about two to four hours, and the game has an epilogue feature that shows how your journey could have spiraled in different directions.
What's in the demo?
The demo is a truncated version of the full release. After Next Fest, developer YCJY Games promised you could plan and partake in even longer adventures in the main game. Nonetheless, the demo provides you with virtually the entire game or at least its premise and pitch. While there might be new environments and abilities or builds, playing this demo gives you a perfect snapshot of what to expect with this game and if it is your cup of tea. Given the game's roguelike nature, there's no story to uncover with Keep Driving. The world being procedurally generated also means there are limits to how living the world feels. The game's authenticity depends on your interest and experience with its topic: road-tripping. As someone who backpacks and camps outside of the world of moderating a video game forum, Keep Driving's sense of helplessness when you run low on fuel while stuck in traffic is a genuine dread I relate to. A car not turning on after pit-stopping to pick up groceries or supplies? Horrifying. Stopping at a random gas station to use the restroom only to discover it is a nuclear wasteland? Gut-wrenching, literally.
There are a few gimmes for skeptics. First, the game has a variety of difficulty settings that allow you to make this more of an atmospheric affair or "vibe game" than a gritty RPG. There are also short adventures to try out before you attempt longer ones, which allow you to minimize the odds of failure while providing you safer opportunities to try out new builds or strategies. The internal conflict I have when it comes to my interest in Keep Driving is less about balance or satisfaction with its premise or mechanics and more about a design foible lacking a perfect solution. The sometimes surreal conflicts and struggles you face while completing your adventures seem at odds with the game's efforts to convey the authentic value of exploring the world and unplugging from your surroundings. The journeys I had in the game were equally cozy and comforting until I encountered hitchhikers that seemed more like movie characters, or the RNG goddess hated me, and I had the same two car breakdown types in a row. Likewise, the game places an incredible amount of its value on the journey aspect of road-tripping as being as important as the destination. Unfortunately, that means the "release" at your campaign's end doesn't feel as empowering or memorable as you'd like. The lakes, mountain ranges, beaches, and forests you reach don't feel special.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Sure! I don't think this game is bound to rock my socks off, but it feels like a perfect filler game, especially when I have had a stressful workday. That might sound demeaning, but even with its occasional follies into the surreal, it provides enough of the crux and heart of the road-tripping experience to count as an excellent alternative for the real thing when that's not possible. There is some grit and variety, and I am interested in seeing how this game expands in its full release. I tended to top out with the mid-length adventures, not because the game is more challenging the longer you play it but because the RNG caused me to prefer to keep things brief. I can only be presented with the same 50/50 dialogue choices before I feel like I have seen everything. No matter, the game has incredible vibes and already has a comforting and liberating theme and premise worth checking out in the future.
Is This Game Trying To Kill Me?
What is it?
Let's talk about the Next Fest game demo that is drawing comparisons to Inscryption! I don't think the comparison between Is This Game Trying To Kill Me?, and Inscryption is "perfect," but it is hard not to see why so many are making it. Like the aforementioned Inscryption, Is This Game Trying To Kill Me presents you inside a locked cabin, directed by an omniscient malevolent voice, and forced to play games to guarantee your continual survival. The difference is that you operate a computer and play a video game. The voice claims that if you beat this game, they will release you, but as time marches on, you discover more hints that that is not the case. Additionally, that video game is a 2D genre-bending puzzle game, whereas the out-of-game world is fully 3D. The cabin has a smattering of escape room-like puzzles and mechanics that only unlock after you have reached certain milestones in the computer game or story. The computer game is an odd mix of Sokoban, Chip's Challenge, and Catherine, except when it isn't. In saying this game has been drawing comparisons to Inscryption, I hope you get that what you see and experience at the start isn't what you will experience throughout the full game. Nonetheless, the game tactically pulls its punches during its demo and has since released a free Prologue that the developer claims is an even better showcase of what to expect.
What's in the demo?
I mentioned that I wasn't entirely comfortable with the comparisons between Inscryption and Is This Game Trying To Kill Me, and let me explain. First, Is This Game Trying To Kill Me feels a bit more "honest" in that its "game" feels to be, at least based on the demo, a greater emphasis than any individual card game in the former. Second, this game's tone is about horror, and that is something it starts with and never lets up on. There are some gruesome scenes in the demo, and the game does not want you to think you are anything other than a victim in a Saw film. The in-universe video game in this title takes you along carefully crafted puzzles that require ingenuity and showcase new and novel mechanics as you progress. The cabin-based escape room puzzles are also better than the ones in the first act of Inscryption. Even in the demo, they feel more fully realized, and you get the sense that there are more of them. Finding new ways to transform your environment or discovering new nooks and crannies in your starting circumstances adds visual pizzazz to what initially seems like a rather drab prison. Obviously, I'm going to avoid spoilers. Still, this game plays around with the fourth wall, and how you feel about modern games referencing the fact they are video games, be it Poney Island, Doki Doki Literature Club, or Inscryption, will factor into your enjoyment or interest in this game.
So, what about the gameplay "twist?" The demo doesn't give you a great idea of what that might be, but you know it is coming. Inscryption changed its formula, and that ended up resulting in its best moments. If Is This Game Trying To Kill Me doesn't do that, that would be disappointing. It pains me to say this, but if I had to spend the entire game doing that same 2D puzzler for the whole thing, that would be a real bummer. Don't get me wrong, it's stylistically fun, and the game's narrator adds plenty of storytelling potency whenever you decide to boot up a computer terminal. However, even during the demo, I ended up with the same feeling I had during the first act of Inscryption in that I really wanted things to speed up and devolve into something new or different because I had had my fill with the atmospheric touches, and had already done all the escape room bits. Similar to Inscryption, I also downright liked the cabin escape room puzzles more than the computer game and started to get frustrated with the game gloating about the inaneness of the in-game video game. Again, I'm almost sure that's the point, and this pomp and circumstance will segue into a new act that doubles down on the game's meta-ness, but in its current form, I can't help but feel it already overstays its welcome when we all know where it is bound to go.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Probably. I liked Inscryption but wasn't as enthused by it as many when it came out. My core problem is that with so much of its world being a segue to different genre pivots, its potency waned on me the more I played it. There's an initial shock with the conclusion of its first movement, but then you come to expect that with the end of every act, and that makes the rest of the game less "special." We also live in a world where games have shocked us with genre pivots and fourth-wall-breaking moments, and it's starting to get harder and harder to appreciate new titles that stem some of their narrative value in such premises. The great news with Is This Game Trying To Kill Me is that it plays well, looks great, and has enough variety in its horror elements that you do want to see what the rest of the game is like. Nonetheless, there's no denying the simple fact that the make or break for this game is yet to be seen, and if there is no genre pivot, then this Sokoban shit is way less cute. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that this game is a carefully crafted adventure with a ton of passion put into it, and to that, I tip my hat.
Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate
What is it?
How much do you value a good piss-take? And to be specific, a piss-take on bad GameCube/PS2/Xbox movie tie-in games and the world of Harry Potter? Secret Agent Wizard Boy is the latest work by indie developer David Szymanski, who is best known for being the mind behind Dusk, Iron Lung, and Chop Goblins. David Szymanski and his family members that populate his studios' design and programming team have a "look" in every game they make, and that's late 90s and early 00s 3D game design. Virtually everything he has created looks as if it was made using the first two generations of the Quake Engine, and in the case of Dusk, that has allowed his works to embody particular eras of genres under a modern lens. While his games might come across as rudimentary, they also exhibit incredible lighting techniques and get a lot out of little. With Secret Agent Wizard Boy, Szymanski is attempting to capture mid-2000s era 3D platforming in all of its annoying and imprecise glory while also taking the piss out of J.K. Rowling. The jumping is floaty, and aiming projectile spells is irritating as all shit, but that's the point.
What's in the demo?
Do you remember the tie-in games for the first three Harry Potter movies? Back when the Harry Potter games had to convey the drudgery of attending wizarding classes in between 3D recreations of the most pivotal scenes in the films? Well, Secret Agent Wizard Boy calls back to those games specifically as managing classes and homework-oriented tasks remains a crucial point of emphasis, especially when progressing its story. This issue broadly addresses one of the more pressing questions about how a piss-take game like it can maintain momentum. There's a primitive Persona-like social management undercurrent in the game. Be warned, though, that there are minigames, considering that the title tries to evoke a particular era of tie-in video games. Oh, goodness, are there minigames, and most of them play and look like dogshit. Obviously, that's the "joke," and I couldn't help but find myself chuckling along with the game as I struggled to make potions or perform spell maneuvers. And as you might suspect, there are a ton of fetch quests with Secret Agent Wizard Boy almost sneering at the arbitrary nature of your tasks and how ludicrous they come across to the player.
And therein lies why this game might not be for you. There's a lot of physics-based mayhem in Secret Agent Wizard Boy, and sometimes that can bite you in the ass. Nonetheless, that's how the game has been designed, and you either have to rely on saving or be willing to roll with the game's sometimes unintentional punches. Tasks involving picking up items from various environments or rooms in your boarding school are bound to make you scream, as aiming and lifting objects feels fundamentally wrong. And the jumping in the game is as floaty as the early Tribes games or Unreal Tournament 2003. Missions expect perfection, and much like the Octodad games, Secret Agent Wizard Boy doesn't entirely provide you with an environment to pull that off. And clearly, there's the real skeleton in the closet: J.K. Rowling. This game calls out the worst of her writing and worldbuilding, even beyond her current transphobia. It revels in the more ridiculous aspects of the world of Harry Potter and is even willing to call those parts out as being derivative or hack writing. The weird quibbles with worldbuilding we all overlooked because we read the Harry Potter books as kids get thoroughly blasted in this game, and it's great. I can only assume that on this site, no one here is bound to get their feelings hurt by hearing that. At least, I hope not.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
HELL YES! You can't help but respect David Szymanski. He pioneered the boomer shooter and has never strayed too far from a highly specific art style and aesthetic. With Secret Agent Wizard Boy, it feels like he's taking on his most ambitious project yet. The world of this game feels far more diverse than his previous works, with each classroom needing to provide a different theme or task. However, the game is funny, and there's no point in dancing around that fact. It's hilarious unleashing a big area-of-effect spell, seeing NPCs ragdoll, and watching clunky textures bounce around like a LEGO Star Wars game. I was cackling when I was expected to pick up surreal packages or when the complexity of a minigame felt too unreasonable. I laughed not because I thought such endeavors in this game were "fun" but because I am old enough to remember when that was the expectation in cheap tie-in games. That's a large part of why I can't wait to play the entire game, and I recognize that's possibly unique to me.
The Spirit Of The Samurai
What is it?
We transition to the most visually striking game to grace the October Next Fest event, The Spirit of the Samurai! The game is a bit like Trek to Yomi, but it has a world that pays homage to the works of Ray Harryhausen, with characters and demons deliberately looking like figures in a stop-motion claymation film. However, the combat is fast and avoids the jerkiness of previous games that have emulated stop-motion-like visuals. It's a weirdly smooth game with a gameplay structure similar to Trek to Yomi's. You usually start at the far left of a route and have to make a slow but deliberate trek toward an end boss or final encounter. There are mid-point bosses or challenges, and the interstitial levels provide Metroidvania-like filler enemies that often require a simple strategy to eliminate quickly. The game's mixture of sidescrolling Japanese mythological action with Metroidvania mechanics gave me Muramasa: The Demon Blade vibes, but on a far smaller scale. In fact, the high production values melded with semi-linear action-adventure gameplay reminded me of some of Vanillaware's older works. However, The Spirit Of The Samurai is going for a different aesthetic and gameplay approach.
What's in the demo?
The demo is an entire level, with its mid-point and concluding boss battles all ready to go. Presentationally, the game holds its own, but there are mechanical reasons to be excited for the Spirit Of The Samurai as well. The combat is highly input and directional-based with special moves and combos dependent on almost fighting game-like jukes, parries, weaves, and bobs with your character. There are magical powers to be unlocked as you explore environments and defeat specific encounters, which add to the potency of certain moves or combat styles. With each encounter, you gain experience, which allows you to open up new combos or combat options. The demo emphasizes the game's titular samurai character, but the developer has indicated that there are two other playable characters in the full release. There's the diminutive spirit or ghost, Kodama, and the warrior Maneki-neko character Chisai. While your samurai sports a katana, these other characters utilize a bow and yari spear. Each character plays distinctly from one another, highlighting another reason for my Vanillaware and Muramasa senses tingling with this game. Still, we shall see how different these characters play in execution. Likewise, the ability and skill drops in the game happened at a decent enough clip that I cannot imagine it being an incredibly long game. There's also world exploration to be had. There are junctures in paths that allow you to go up and down and avenues that lead you to missable optional locations and goodies.
The lead about what sets this game apart from a crowded field of Metroidvania and boss gauntlet games is that it utilizes an in-game combo editor. You may not like your usual Square-Square-Triange and want to spice things up with circles or crosses. As you progress the game, you can tune combos to take advantage of certain enemy-based weaknesses or play into your combat preferences by editing combos your character can use. It is an exciting idea, but I have to see more of it, as in the demo, I found the default in-game combos to be sufficient. Unless future levels force you to mix things up, this feature might fall by the wayside for most people because there is an element of trial and error. The only other issue I have is an overall concern about the game's scope and length. I enjoyed my time with The Spirit Of The Samurai, but its beautiful art style and in-depth combo system might not be enough to justify Muramasa's length. A short five to seven-hour experience feels generous enough, but is that enough time for its Metroidvania hooks to sink in properly? It's a common problem that many games of this type encounter. If it doesn't have some filler, most players cannot fully feel the gameplay hooks, but too much filler is a proverbial fly in the ointment.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Maybe. I'm sold on the game's look, but I am hesitant that it will come together mechanically without any hitches. Vanillaware highlighted the absolute ceiling on how long games of this type should be with Odin Sphere, Muramasa, and Dragon's Crown. While this game certainly has hooks to add some depth to its combat, so it isn't wholly a linear boss gauntlet with some Metroidvania trappings, the leveling seems far less intense or in-depth than those Vanillaware games I mentioned. I also should come clean that I wasn't a huge fan of Trek to Yomi and quickly grew annoyed by its exploration bits and side quests, which I cannot definitively say if The Spirit of the Samurai avoids. Luckily, this game avoids Trek To Yomi's greatest sin: despite all of its notions to the contrary, your best course of action in Trek to Yomi was to parry everything first and then input a simple two to three-hit combat until everything is dead. With this game, the encounters are varied enough to explore different combat strategies and techniques. Will the combat hold up across a continuum of five to seven hours? That remains the burning question, and I would hate to see the game struggle with the possible weightiness of its combat aspirations and be afflicted with unneeded filler that also bogs the experience down.
New Arc Line
What is it?
I even found some excellent old-fashioned Eurojank during October's Next Fest event! Before I subject you to my brainsickness, wherein I profess a love for playing janky and busted video games from small teams, predominantly in Europe, let me be very clear about New Arc Line. This demo is a mess, even erring close to being a disaster. Nonetheless, I loved it almost because it failed to put even a singular good step forward. Admittedly, the game being a CRPG spiritual successor to Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, meant that making an effective demo south of three hours was all but impossible, but god damn, did developer Dreamate try! They provided an opening act for you to get a taste of their magic versus technology Steampunk world. The game takes place in a teeming metropolis named New Arc, which struggles with factions aligned with magic and technology. You can create a character that is either human or elven, and that is what determines which of those two camps you find yourself in. Unfortunately, you only have a human "diesel engineer" or an elven "voodoo shaman" to pick during the demo. This demo is only about two hours long if you don't spend too much time tinkering around with your character screen. Likewise, it's a CRPG game demo with almost no combat. It's an absolutely bizarre thing.
What's in the demo?
First, can I point out that the title "New Arc Line" is terrible and does nothing to hint at what this game is about? Nonetheless, the game has many trappings of a game meant to act as a spiritual successor to Arcanum. Much like Arcanum, there is an almost endless list of options and build paths to take any given character build, and on the flip side, not all of these possible character builds are viable or even balanced. On top of that, the game is an isometric party-based CRPG with Divinity-esque combat. You have action points and movement, much like the classic Divinity games, and the pace and course of battles are virtually the same. Mages can interact with spell-crafting mechanisms that are similar to the one seen in Tyranny, and the engineering character class is more oriented around crafting, which feels directly lifted from Arcanum. Nonetheless, there's barely any combat in this demo as most of it involves you picking up what I can only assume is the game's first questline, enlisting your first recruitable party members, and investigating leads to complete your starting quest. That must mean the demo instead does a great job of introducing a troupe of characters and carefully showcasing the game's setting, right? Well, your first companion is a big hunk of meat who likes punching things and has zero personality. You go two hours without encountering a single engaging party member in this game despite it ostensibly being a role-playing game.
The tone could be better. The game's opening involves you going through an immigration checkpoint, and an officer reminds you to be careful about using magic, or else you might face persecution. And yet, upon entering my first combat scenario, I popped off magic spells and then faced zero reprisal for doing so. The game's prose is also awkward. Your mission objectives are blunt and often comedically to the point. As you can see in the screencap above, having the game say, "Keep making your way toward your stuff," as my primary objective, followed by "Pick up your things," is silly. The starting quest, which is your only narrative hook for the entire demo, is that you are an immigrant to New Arc and helping a clinic treating victims of a plague. This allows you to test out skill checks so you can non-combatively transport skeptical patients and disperse hostile crowds. Regardless, the payoff for this quest is that you find out the head doctor of the clinic is using the victims of this plague to conduct illegal cage fights and pockets most of the profits of the gambling associated with these fights. One of your responses is, and I quote, "Dr. Bailey, you need to join the world of grown-ups now. Maybe after I teach you a lesson, you'll see things differently." When I saw that line, after hearing victims of this "Iron Lung" describe in excruciating detail the pain and agony they were in, I could not help but burst into laughter for a solid thirty seconds.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Considering how rough this demo was, I shouldn't consider putting this game on my wishlist. And yet I did. With the demise of Piranha Bytes this year and Larian delving into AAA, I have to take the Eurojank games that come out these days without being too picky. I have to scrounge through the dark corners of Steam and GOG to get an authentic Eurojank experience that approaches Risen, Two Worlds, or E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy levels. The weird, small, scrappy CRPG is a dying breed, and I'm always down to take a chance on a game that has its head in the right place but ends up having zero execution. But should YOU play and support this game? How much have you been pining for a modern homage to Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura? In hindsight, a game seeking to be a spiritual successor to Arcanum being a hot mess is a bit apt, considering Arcanum itself was a teeming dumpster fire at launch. Speaking of which, the demo for New Arc Line is horribly optimized and runs like shit. It is releasing on November 26th, 2024, which seems dangerously right around the corner, but it may have one of those soft Early Access launches that Larian has pioneered this last decade. Even then, this game will be a tire fire at launch, and I'm hyped.
Loco Motive
What is it?
Oh, of course, I played this game. The person who is bound to put the Riven remake on their 2024 GOTY list and has publicly stated their favorite video game genre is adventure games played the Next Fest standout that pays homage to the works of Sierra and LucasArts. As you might be able to tell from the screencap above, Loco Motive is a pixel art tribute to SCUMM and Sierra interpreter-based adventure games where you need to solve the murder of a wealthy heiress on a train rapidly approaching its destination. You take control of the heiress' lawyer and try to pick up clues in various train cabins as you interrogate multifarious passengers for alibis and additional details about the events preceding the possible murder. The game stylistically pines for the glory days of LucasArts with its pixel-based characters bobbing up and down and each train car conveying decadent artwork and furniture. Still, it narratively matches that of The Last Express, and the reliance on pressing characters about contradictions forces me to recall Delphine's Cruise for a Corpse. I bet no more than three of you reading this blog even remember that game. Loco Motive is also humorous, with much of your interest in conducting this investigation stemming from your ability to interact with larger-than-life personalities and their new and unique lines of dialogue.
What's in the demo?
The demo represents the game's opening act. As I mentioned, your character acts as an unofficial investigator trying to determine if foul play could have offed their benefactor. The problem is that following the mysterious death of the socialite, the issue of her heir remains in the air, literally. Your character accidentally allows her will to fly out of a window as he is about to read its contents. As the premise might suggest, despite its theme being around the murder of a person and family members having their knives out, Loco Motive is an incredibly humorous game. The demo doesn't convey that the entire game will utilize three playable characters, all of whom are billed as unreliable narrators. You need to assess the legitimacy of what each brings to the table or uncovers as you play the game. The characters experience things simultaneously, but their interactions with other characters, as well as the clues they reveal, are different. In terms of the game itself, it is a standard retro throwback point-and-click adventure game. Characters start things off by checking out rooms and then scanning for clickable items or inhabitants who are willing to talk with them, and sometimes, upon clicking things or talking to someone, they need to solve a puzzle.
This being a modern point-and-click adventure game, plenty of quality-of-life features make the usual adventure game trappings less of a roadblock. Each room has a telephone you can use to get hints about where the game needs you to go next or where missing quest items might be. Additionally, when you are engaged in a pixel-hunt-based activity, which do exist in Loco Motive, these items are marked with a diamond icon, which makes discerning them from the game's backgrounds and foregrounds a walk in the park. I am skeptical about how the complete game will manage your dueling characters and their interactions with one another and if the game will follow through on the implied factionalism with its NPCs. In the previously mentioned Cruise for a Corpse, there are about a dozen characters, and some are happier to broach certain subjects more than others. You even discover through conversations which cliques everyone belongs to. There are early hints about that being the case in Loco Motive, but it's too early to tell if the story fully realizes that idea. Nonetheless, the world is filled with plenty of memorable characters, and the dialogue, even when it is slightly over the top, is downright hilarious.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Yes, and I already have the game on my wishlist. It's a funny game, even if the characters sometimes feel like caricatures. The writing is tight and witty without making your skin crawl, which is essential for an adventure game. With so much of the game's story being you reading text with barely animating character portraits to support this text, the writing needs to be good. The puzzles are fine, even if I feel like what is seen in the demo feels "safe." Given the topic at hand, I can only assume there will be more fully fleshed opportunities to engage in genuine social deduction; at least, that's what I hope. It would be a real shame if, in a game revolving around backstabbing and investigating a murder, there wasn't some fun finger-pointing that one of your playable avatars engaged in. Speaking of which, I need to see how the game does good with its three playable characters. Will there ultimately be a "true" protagonist, and how long will the game keep them segregated before it starts offing them or forcing them to join forces? Nevertheless, the game seems like a feel-good time in the future.
Great God Grove
What is it?
Great God Grove is the other adventure game from October's Next Fest that I played, and it had possibly the most memorable gameplay mechanic I experienced during the event. The game depicts the gods of the known world or universe converging at a meeting spot to debate the merits of delaying the apocalypse. Unfortunately, the god of communication is missing, and now the people who should be spearheading saving the planet are feuding and all up in their feelings. So, your character grabs a megaphone and discovers the origins of various disputes and rectifies them by gobbling up the speech bubbles of the game's NPCs and then reformating their statements to settle their beefs. Great God Grove is a game of telephone but on steroids, as you need to explore levels trying to find nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and more to piece together resolutions to long-standing conflicts and misunderstandings. The characters, including your cowboy hat-wearing mail carrier, look like cardboard cutouts, and the game utilizes a playful and colorful 2D/3D look. The characters might look 2D, but you search for articles, gerunds, and prepositions by navigating open spaces with an X, Y, and Z-axis, much like Don't Starve. The developer of this game, Limbolane, previously released a similar game named "Smile For Me." For those of you who might be familiar with that title, yes, this game also has puppets.
What's in the demo?
The demo provides an opening hub area with a handful of characters to interact with, each with a core conflict you can resolve by using their speech bubbles and sometimes the speech bubbles of others. If the game's Steam page is to be judged as an arbiter of truth, the full game will have sixty characters for you to meet and a comparable number of word puzzles to solve. I wonder how many of those will be required to complete the game and how the game manages the order of its affairs. Things weren't too overwhelming during the demo, but I started to feel that the management of your banked words may become too much if the game ramps up its complexity, even a few notches more than where its demo taps out. That's not to say that this game is going to be impossibly hard, but I'd hate to see quest-givers sit in one environment and be impossible to solve if you forgot to pick up one stray word two or three levels ago. So far, that seems to be a priority Limbolane kept in mind, but only time will tell how its final acts, especially when you have sixty characters to consider, will play out.
Despite those concerns, Great God Grove is comforting to play. I'll be the first to admit that I play Scrabble and complete crossword puzzles in my spare time, but you don't need to be a word-play enthusiast to enjoy this game. If you are still playing Wordle or had a blast with Baba Is You, this game is absolutely for you, but those games are not required to appreciate Great God Grove. The game lays out its cards coherently and is immediately accessible. Most of the mediation efforts you engage in require multiple steps and are not simple one-offs you solve after successfully completing one sentence. Speaking of which, seeing resolutions play out after minutes of considerable effort feels great, and the game always delights you with visual pageantry whenever you complete a mission and sometimes with puppets. It was a delightful time, and it had one of my favorite soundtracks from Next Fest. Regrettably, this was one of the few titles that completely pulled their demo upon the conclusion of Steam Next Fest, but the good news is that the game is also coming out on Switch, which might be my preferred platform of choice.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Yes! This game has incredible vibes. It looks great, has a cozy soundtrack, and, from what I played, knew how to keep its stakes high. The world is goofy and sometimes a roller coaster, but it always has new and novel ways to put a smile on your face. The word-based gameplay often mixes with music and, given the game's use of 2D character art, evokes memories of Masaya Matsuura (i.e., PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon, and Um Jammer Lammy). It is a deceptively simple game at first glance, but it has a lot going on in execution. Also, did I mention that the game has cutscenes that use puppets? Those cutscenes are really for the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared crowd as they lean into the game's narrative thread of your world being on borrowed time and nearing the end if these gods don't get their act together. There's a subversive undercurrent in Great God Grove. You only get hints of it in the demo, so I'm excited to see it in complete form.
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