It's the season of game demos once again. I usually try to play a good amount of 'em each time one of these showcase events rolls around, and I've continued that trend this spring. I sampled stuff from basically every showcase that happened related to the Summer Games Fest and Steam Next Fest. No way I'm going to remember which games were from which showcase, but I'll highlight the ones that stood out to me most. The fests are technically over now I think, but some of these demos may still be around.

Phantom Spark

This one nails the feel of the vehicle physics. Smooth and clean, wide turns that can be finely-manipulated with micro button presses, satisfying moments of gliding off ramps. The UI is nice and minimal, making it easier to zone in on the action and absorb the sci-fi-meets-mythological-fantasy feel of the world. You get some dialogue with characters in between levels, which, combined with the intriguing intro of the game, was just enough to make me want to learn more. It actually reminded me of the anime/manga Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni).

What really grabbed me about Phantm Spark, though, was how it paces out its levels. Each level a non-looping, no laps track that takes 30-90 seconds to finish. Your first run of each level is exploratory, like a dry run. After that, you're given a pre-determined time to beat to prove you've really learned the level. Restarting is always a single button press away, and you can see ghosts of your personal best and an NPC run of the target time. All of this worked great in Neon White, and it works great here as well. It shifts the challenge from maintaining your lead for multiple consecutive laps like in most racing games, to learning and perfecting your execution of a carefully-crafted slice of a track.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this demo. Lovely drum & bass music too. Looking forward to playing more in the future.

Mirage Feathers

I feel like this is one of those games where a screenshot will immediately tell you if you're interested in it or not. This is an absurdly gorgeous uh... Space Harrier-like? Sorry, I'm not well-versed in shmup-related subgenres, and I'm still fleshing out my foundational knowledge of the genre at large. All I know for sure is that Mirage Feathers slaps. A bit opaque at first (affectionate), but totally learnable with study.

My only complaint is I wish the demo gave more of a preview of the story. There's only the tiniest whiff of lore at the very end -- basically nothing. Though, to the point I made at the start, I think what the 15-minute demo does show is plenty to know if you're in or out.

...and I am ALL in.

ONE BTN BOSSES

ONE BTN BOSSES is just some real good one-button action. Your ship moves along a set path, and pressing a button reverses your direction. There's a big boss tossing out danger zones and projectiles all over the place. The only thing you actively do as a player is evade those attacks by reversing direction before they hit you. So how do you actually defeat the boss? Well, your ship constantly auto-fires at the boss at all times, but the real tasty bit is that the longer you keep moving without reversing direction, the faster and stronger your bullets become! You can repeatedly press the button to keep your ship in one spot, but your bullets will be pathetic like that. What you really want to do is only reverse direction at the last possible millisecond, or even learn to determine when you can make it past an attack without changing direction.

The game mixes it up even further by giving alternate movement and weapon types you can choose to equip before a battle. The only one of these available in the demo is a Dash movement mode. With this movement, pressing the button makes you zoom forward at high speed but only for a limited time. You have to wait a short time for your energy to replenish before you can dash again. This tiny change gives the battles a totally different texture. Very cool.

There is a roguelike mode, but, mercifully, it also has a proper campaign, said to be about 4 hours long. Beautiful. That's all I want! Though, to be honest, this is far from the worst type of game to have a roguelike mode. It feels more like an arcade game with some randomization.

The Big Catch: Tackle Box

"The Big Catch" is the name of the full game, but "Tackle Box" is like a prologue demo. The tutorial playground area here was plenty to immediately show off just how expressive the controls in this game can be. It really just drops you in and hard skill-gates the tutorial like the dark souls of--. It doesn't give much guidance after that, either. It opens up to a pretty vast hub area with a bunch of little levels scattered around. The main objective seems to be to collect fish wandering around those levels (on land). Catching these fish involves chasing them through dense, convoluted, difficult levels. It reminded me of chasing egg thieves in Spyro, except this game really demands a lot out of you. You gotta LEARN your moveset and make use of the weird environment objects to get the jump on the fish.

I didn't play a ton of this demo after exiting the tutorial, but that's because I was pretty immediately sold on the game. Aside from the super interesting controls and level design to match, the world and characters had a wholly unique feel. Very mysterious, kinda spooky, vivid and imaginative... I loved it. If you like 3D platformers and are down for something demanding, I think you'll love it too.

Fowl Damage

You play as an egg that breaks if you hit something with too much velocity. This beautiful twist forces you to read the very familiar platformer level design language in a completely different way. The instinct to jump at the edge of a platform almost always results in yet another egg splat, and it's funny every time. Instead of making sharp movements and bounding leaps, you're often scanning levels for the shortest and safest drops to keep your fragile egg body in tact. The demo isn't very hard, but it's just a real fun time. A great example of "___ with a twist" done right.

Here are some other demos I enjoyed:

EDIT: I foolishly forgot to mention Angeline Era because I actually played it a few weeks ago. It's a very cool bumpslash action RPG by one of my favorite dev studios. Possibly my most anticipated game at the moment! It even ultimately inspired me to start making my own bumpslash game.

Overall, I think I was impressed by more demos this time around than usual. Decent variety, too. These showcases are pretty overloaded with entries of wildly varying quality, especially Steam Next Fest... I hope this write-up helps you find something you love and that it brings at least a tiny bit of attention to some games that may have been buried.