The Dirty Half-Dozen

For the first time since I started picking, playing and reviewing Next Fest demos, I'm in the happy position of being able to rank them as well. I've now played - or at least tried to play - the full half-dozen and this is how they pan out:

1. Dispatch - 26m

2. Dancing Bones - 35m

3. Death On The Nile - 51m

4. Solo Leveling - 26m

5. Elevator Music - 16m

6. Board Game Society - 29m

Let me unpick that list a little. For a start, the time I spent playing each demo doesn't necessarily reflect how much I enjoyed it. Some of them were linear and that's just how long it took. Others were seemingly open-ended and the time noted is how long it took me either to decide I'd seen enough or to feel I'd had enough. 

There was also one I would willingly have played for longer, if I could have gone back after a break and started from where I'd left off. Unfortunately, my progress wasn't being saved, so to carry on I'd have had to start again from the beginning. I really hate when demos do that without warning you what's going to happen before you log out.

Undisputed #1 and fully deserving a post of its own, which it will get, or at least that's the plan at the moment, is Dispatch, the self-described "superhero workplace comedy". Just to spoil my own reveal, I really liked it a lot. 

Possibly by co-incidence, possibly not, it didn't just feel like the most interesting demo I played this time but also the most professional, It was slick as heck. I would happily have gone on playing it for a lot longer but even counting the montage sequence promoting the full game at the end, twenty-six minutes was all I could squeeze out of it. Obviously, this one went straight onto the wishlist and I'm fairly sure I'll end up buying and playing it, too, although probably not the moment it comes out.

At #2 and a fair way behind comes Dancing Bones, the weird western. This was the one that I stopped halfway through and then couldn't pick back up from where I left it. Based on where it felt like it was going at the time, I'd guess there's at least an hour's gameplay in the demo, maybe more. That one I'll also try and review separately. I took lots of screenshots and I'd hate to waste them. I'm going to wishlist this one but I suspect I won't get around to buying it.

At #3 and about as far behind Dancing Bones as Dancing Bones is behind Dispatch, we have Death On The Nile. I might just about get a full post out of that one, too. Depends how short I am of ideas this week. Maybe half a post. I'm not sure it merits a whole one. 

As you can see, I spent the longest playing it of all the demos and that's entirely because it took me that long to finish. I found it about equal parts entertaining and annoying. I didn't wishlist it, mainly because I can't imagine actually wanting to play thirty hours or more of it or however long it's likely to take. As a standalone short story though, I'd tentatively recommend it. 

Now for the three I am not planning on giving posts of their own. I guess I'll have to go into a bit more detail. The top three ranked themselves but I feel the placings in the lower half of the chart are much more arbitrary.

#4, Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive, is perfectly fine for what it is or at least what I take it to be from the demo. It seems to be a pared-down MMORPG with a very heavy focus on "dungeons", all wrapped up in an extremely meta shell.  

There's a perfunctory introduction, which I'm pretty sure takes for granted that anyone playing will already be familiar with the source material. It covers the absolute basics, which appear to be that you died in real life and got offered the chance to come back as a video-game character. How and why isn't explained. It's just a framing device to get you into an endless sequence of fights, as far as I can see.

For the demo, the text is available in English (Decently translated.) but the voice acting isn't. It's in a choice of two languages, neither of which I could identify with any confidence, although one sounded like Japanese to me. I muted the voice-over after a couple of minutes anyway.

It didn't really matter because there was very little dialog or story in the near-half-hour I gave it. It was just a string of instances one after another in which the goal was just to get from the entrance to the exit so you could do it again only harder. Every room was a cavern with nothing much to look at and all the mobs in each "room" were the same - ants in the first, scorpions in the second, werewolves in the last one I did before I stopped.

Most of the fights started with a huge bunch of mobs that did almost no damage, followed by a boss that did more but mostly still not anything to worry about. Even with no real time to study my abilities or learn the controls, none of the fights was hard. One boss did have me drinking two health potions but I didn't die to any of them. 

Combat itself felt quite good. I found the controls reasonably intuitive, with the key binds feeling more than usually comfortable  - all letter keys for the main attacks and specials. The number keys supposedly summon... something. Or maybe someone. Nothing seemed to happen when I pressed them. 

I was doing a bit more than pure button mashing but not much and it was non-stop frenzy but quite manageable. Whether it's fun or not probably depends on your mental age. If it's somewhere between ten and fifteen you'll probably have a great time. Twenty-five minutes of it was more than enough for me, though,and since it showed no signs of stopping or changing I called it a day before I got to the end. Whether the demo ever opens out into any kind of open world or develops any kind of plot I can't say but clearly the aim is to showcase the combat, which it does pretty well. I didn't wishlist it but it ends up as a free to play title I might give it another look.

At #5 comes Elevator Music. I strongly suspect this will turn out to be a good game. It's visually very well-designed, the writing is solid and the set-up is promising. I'd have liked to have been able to play the demo all the way through. Unfortunately, I just could not figure out how the controls worked.

There's a short introduction, to which I clearly did not pay enough attention, and then you're left to get on with things. The idea is that you operate the lift in a skyscraper with more than thirty floors. That's your character's new job and it's their first day. 

People get in and tell you what floor they want and you take them there. You're advised to plan your movements for efficiency and you get tipped accordingly, although what you need the money for I have no idea. Those are the basic mechanics but there's a plot, too. There's a peace conference being held in the building and all your passengers are delegates or officials or hotel workers. As they talk to each other and to you, I think you're supposed to be able to pick up what's going on and maybe eventually influence the outcome.

Which all sounds very interesting - if you can get the lift to work. I could not. I could get it to go up or down but not to stop where I wanted it.  Not reliably, anyway. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out who wanted to go where so the idea of planning the trips went straight out the window. Or maybe down the lift-shaft.

I was already starting to find it all quite frustrating even before I managed to get the lift stuck completely. I couldn't get it to go up or down no matter what I did. If I'd been enjoying myself more I might have tried harder to figure out what I was doing wrong but instead I took it as a welcome opportunity to give up altogether.

I suspect that even if the game is much better documented when it goes live and has a much clearer tutorial and more intuitive controls, I'd find the underlying mechanics too restrictive to have a good time playing it. Let's be honest - not many people dream of becoming an elevator operator and there are better ways to spend your time than pretending to be one, no matter how important the people getting in and out of your car might be. 

 

And finally at #6, the game that turned out least like I expected, Board Game Society. When I chose this, I thought I was getting some kind of visual novel or point&click adventure, in which a bunch of Breakfast Club-inspired high-school stereotypes somehow end up playing board games and adventures ensue. God knows how that would work. 

The only part I got right was the high-school stereotype bit and as far as I could tell those have literally as much impact on the game the dog or the boot do in Monopoly. You just pick the one you like and... er, that's all. 

There's a very brief, wordless introduction that appears to suggest some kind of Jumanji situation in play, where a bunch of kids get sucked inside an actual board game. You get to pick one of the stereotypes (Which are quite nicely represented.) and then it's all about moving around a board, killing monsters and finding loot.

The game is intended to be multiplayer and you get a couple of warnings that although it can be played solo it won't be nearly as much fun. I can vouch for that. Playing it alone isn't a lot of fun although I wouldn't say it was no fun at all. 

I could have played with others. There's a Party With Randoms option (I think it does actually use the word "Randoms".) but I thought I'd at least get the feel for it on my own before I subjected myself to that. Then, by the time I'd finished I couldn't see how it would be all that much more entertaining with strangers, so I didn't bother.

What happens is that you click directional arrows to move around the board and as you land on various spaces, things pop up. Mostly monsters that want to kill you but sometimes crystals or chests or keys to open the chests. Monsters also sometimes drop keys but mostly they drop consumables like molotov cocktails or weapon upgrades like baseball bats or chainsaws.

When you pop a monster, there's a fight. You each roll a six-sided die, your various bonuses are added and the higher score wins. I lost only the first fight, when I had no idea what was going on. After that I won every time and it wasn't even close. By the time I had the chainsaw, nothing could touch me.

And I enjoyed it. It's mindless fun but mindless fun is still fun. The UI and character graphics are nice but the game-board itself feels very lo-res, which did put me off a bit, but I can't help feeling that if the whole was slicked up it might be quite addictive. You can see by the numbers that I went on playing for a lot longer than I needed just to review it, so I must have been enjoying myself. 

The main problem I had with it, other than the ugly look of the thing, was that I couldn't quite see the point. Solo there's literally no reason to play at all, other than the in-the-moment fun of the fights and  to get through each level to see the next. The only score or win condition relates to playing against others. You play to get crystals and that's it. The player with the most wins.  

If there's only one of you that's not really much of a motivation but I can't see it being much fun with "randoms" either. Unless you're pathologically competitive, you'd need a bit more of an incentive than that, I'd have thought. It might work quite well between siblings or friendly rivals, though, where bragging rights and crowing come into play. 

I didn't wishlist this but I didn't dislike it either. Could be fun for the right person int the right circumstances. I'd likely play a prettier version with a few good voice actors yelling out amusing one-liners here and there and some kind of win condition for solo play. 

And that's it for Next Fest until next time. Except for the three full reviews I still have to write. Look forward to those later in the week, then, I guess...