stiltsthegm

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Steam NextFest Impressions - June 2025

Having recently finished Clair Obscure and completing the first major task of Blue Prince, I was floundering a bit on what to play on my PC when my hands finally get tired of holding the Switch (perhaps the least ergonomic console of all time) during Fantasy Life i sessions. NextFest's overwhelming bounty of demos provided me an opportunity to satiate my restlessness without needing to get too invested in anything. So I figured, hey, it's been quite a while since I've written something on my blog, why not get all these demo opinions off my chest? Maybe it'll even be helpful to someone.

Pompeii: The Legacy

Here's a fact about me that I feel like doesn't come up that often: I'm a sucker for city builders. Thankfully for me, it seems like we've been in a bit of a renaissance for these styles of games for the past few years, with both big developers and indies taking stabs at the genre from all sorts of aesthetic directions. I admit to having a bit of a bias towards historical ones, though, so I had to give Pompeii a shot. Given the very limited scope of the demo, it's a little hard for me to tell whether this one has the sauce or not (the true nature of a city builder doesn't tend to reveal itself until you've at least reached the specific complexities of the mid-game), but I did enjoy what I saw. The opening portions have a similar vibe to an Anno without being quite as logistically or mathematically demanding. It's also got story events that pop up from time to time to give you very light roleplaying (or min-maxing) opportunities, which seems to be something a lot of 4X and city/colony builders are doing these days. I know some enthusiasts don't particularly like them (looking at you, every popular Civ 7 Youtuber); but I'm a filthy casual, so I find them a nice change of pace even if the implementation is pretty basic.

It seems like disaster management will be a pretty important consideration in the full game, but none of that reared its head in the demo. Definitely one to keep an eye on to see how it shakes out once it's actually released.

Town To City

Might as well get the other city builder out of the way. This one actually gives you a pretty solid chunk of time; and even once you reach the "end," you can still keep playing and building. You just can't progress further up the development tiers. I adored this game. Unlike most city builders I've encountered, TTC puts a much larger emphasis on spatial puzzle solving rather than strict management of production chains. Fulfilling citizen desires with specific building types to increase happiness does still exist here, but in a much more simplified form. To satisfy food needs, just plop down a fruit stall and fish stall. No need to also put down a farm and harbor and then optimize the output of each one. Instead, you need to manage your use of space: distribute your shops and warehouses so that your entire populace has easy access to things they want, build housing dense enough to provide sufficient labor for those shops and services, but don't build so dense that you don't leave yourself any space for other needs.

Aesthetic considerations are very important in this game. It has no grid, and you're encouraged to plop buildings down in more organic, freeform arrangements. The road building tool is literally a paintbrush, which I think communicates this game's priorities perfectly. My favorite part, though, is how decorations work. Much like in real life, your populace is happier when their workplace, housing, and commute have features that are pretty to look at. It's vital to fill in the spaces between your houses, shops, and walkways with all sorts of little decorations: streetlights, flower pots, wells, arches, bushes, trees, etc. There are a lot of options, and many of them have different colors and varieties you can either manually select or have the game randomize for you on placement. You can even place some of these decorations directly on your existing structures: streetlights turn into wall-mounted lamps or lanterns floating in a fountain, and flower pots and bushes turn into windowsill planters. This gridless, modular system makes it so much easier and more fun to customize and beautify your little town. The game even comes with a photo mode to let you capture your town from any angle you want (I used one of my own photos for the screenshot before this writeup). It really is a delightful, relaxing, and only moderately-puzzly game. The most no-brainer wishlist addition for me.

Date Everything

Oof.

So despite this game appearing like your typical farcical dating sim, I wanted to give it a fair shot. On my first playthrough, I left with mixed feelings but still felt tentatively optimistic. Sure, some of the humor did not land all that well and was trying way too hard, but there were at least a couple characters I enjoyed (Betty the Bed and Mac the Computer) and one I thought was fine but had promise (the piano whose name I can't recall off the top of my head).

It turns out I just got very lucky with my choices.

When I replayed the game on a date with Fabby and let her make nearly all of the decisions, we both left feeling largely negative and wary. Fabby being Fabby, she spent most of the second day (the first day where you can choose to talk with anything in the house) in the bathroom. The writing for these characters was pretty dire. The toilet character's gimmick (a white rapper with an extremely overdone French accent) was so surprising and weird that it kinda wrapped back around to being a little charming, but the shower, mirror and towel just did not have anything interesting going on. You'd think these characters would provide at least some fun interplay and/or kink given how closely they're linked to intimate, seemingly private activities, but their introductory scenes did not have any interest at all in exploring any of that. The shower was especially egregious, as he spent most of his scene complaining about being stuck in the bathroom and finding his job extremely dull (while shifting inexplicably between an Elvis and Johnny Cash impersonation). Betty the Bed does engage in intimacy and kink, so this seemed to just be a result of specific writing choices made for those characters rather than any game-wide content restrictions. Fabby's comments summed up my disappointment with the writing quite well: "This shower should be happy to see me naked every day." The whole situation wasn't improved by a noticeable lack of gender variety in the bathroom characters (everybody we found used he/him pronouns) and misgendering language used by at least two of them (to the point where I would have wondered if I had accidentally chosen the wrong pronouns at the start if it weren't for the opening sequence clearly referring to our avatar with she/her pronouns). We also noticed a trend of non-white characters sometimes being put in stereotyped roles and outfits. It happened just frequently enough to give both of us some weird vibes.

So yeah! I left that second playthrough feeling pretty disappointed with the game. It leans way too heavily on comedy for how unfunny most of the writing is, and it seems weirdly averse to being kinky and horny. I think I would have liked it if it was either more sincere or more perverse. Ideally both.

Dispatch

I was genuinely floored by this demo. It's a superhero workplace comedy made by former Telltale folks that blends a simple management simulator with the now-ubiquitous timed dialogue choices. The animated sequences look gorgeous, the writing is snappy and clever, and the actual dispatching portion of the game is surprisingly engaging. I love how you're given a brief description of what traits might be important for a mission and have to spend a brief moment agonizing over which of your Z-listers might pull it off. And how sometimes the one you know would knock it out of the park is already busy doing some other mission. When you succeed you feel like a genius, and when you fail you can't help but laugh. It rules! One of the few games I'm absolutely going to buy the moment it releases.

Azaran: Islands of the Jinn

Hey, you know how Nintendo hasn't made a "traditional" 3D Zelda game in 14 years? Benji decided to just make their own, and God bless them for it. I don't have much to say about it, since the demo is just a small slice of what I assume is the very first dungeon, but it does a great job of nailing the aesthetic and dungeon design. As someone who tends to replay Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess at least once a year, I'm very happy this exists.

Crescent County

You are a delivery witch who rides a broom (that's basically a motorcycle with glide capabilities) through a pastoral, pastel island. The primary mood the demo seemed to be trying to hit was "chill." Even the races were chill. The delivery portions didn't have time limits; and while "optimal" routes exist, you can pretty much drive wherever. It was fun enough, but I'm not sure how well what seems to be the core loop will hold up in the full game.

Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream

I feel like it's been ages since I've seen an isometric stealth game, and I'm so goddamn happy I found this one. I do love me some first-person stealth (Thief, Dishonored) and third-person stealth (Splinter Cell, Hitman), but there's something really special about the birds-eye, isometric implementation. I love how blatantly puzzle-y it is. You're given essentially perfect knowledge of enemy placement and routes. Then the game stares out you and demands you take it all in and figure it out. It's not trying to trick you. That would be gauche. It just wants to see those gears turn in your brain.

Eriksholm's demo gives you longer to play than I figured it would, and I loved every second of it. Just barely threading the needle between two guards feels so fucking good.

Undusted: Letters from the Past

A woman restores mementos from her childhood as she remembers her complicated relationship with her parents. It's the kind of game I'm a sucker for, and it itches the same part of my brain that Powerwash Simulator did. Just in smaller, bite-size portions. Of course the story is clearly going to be much more important for this game than it was for Powerwash, and the writing seems pretty solid so far, though it's not something that can truly be evaluated from just the short snippet the demo offers. I'm intrigued, though!

AEROMACHINA

I really wanted to like this game more than I did. It's got a killer art design and a compelling premise (you're a cyborg furry who's part fighter jet and you do 3D platforming), but the implementation was just a bit too frustrating and awkward for me. The nadir of the demo was very early on where it tries to teach you how to do a long-jump into a glide and does and absolutely piss-poor job of it. If it weren't for a Steam discussion thread where multiple people expressed their own frustrations and one kind soul perfectly communicated the specific button-press timing the game is looking for, I truly don't think I would have made it past that room. Even when I finally knew what to do and could do the long-jump glides consistently, it still felt kinda bad and awkward. Psuedoregalia this is not.

I feel the real test of how much you care about a game will reveal itself in how willing you are to redo lost progress as a result of an unfortunate save situation (whether it be the game's fault or your own). In my case, I got into a boss fight without realizing just how difficult it was going to be, died, and then went back to the last time I passed a save point. Because this game doesn't have checkpoints or auto-saves. I realized I'd have to redo, like, 15 minutes of progress and decided I just didn't care that much about seeing the end of the demo.

I had seen enough.

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First two Christina's were doodled while listening to her first appearance in season 2, and third drawing is a random design idea I had today, after finishing season 2.

Here's also Chris and the Flamingo Deluxe:

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i dont know dick about Fate but i have a friend who really likes Sabre and i have been really enjoying doodling her for said friend. so, here's a few doodles of her ive done so far:

i hope you freaks in the Fate fandom will enjoy this...

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If you lived in Dungeon Meshi world, would you stay human or be something else?

I'd be an elf. Long-lived and magical is what I'd want to be. Also pointy ears rule.

I'd be chill about it, though.

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If you could replace one organ or limb with the perfect cyborg replacement, what would you pick?

The brain, for a few reasons. First, the most annoying health problems I have (anxiety and insomnia) would get a lot less annoying if I could just get in there and tweak some values (I've always been jealous of how The Borg in Star Trek can just step into a regeneration alcove and immediately take a relaxing nap).

Second, some of the coolest cyberpunk upgrades involve the brain. Memory recording and instant learning? Hell yeah!

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Would you rather have bird wings, bat wings, or bug wings?

Oh, definitely bird wings. Feathers are just very comfy and pretty.

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Would you rather have horns, antlers, or tusks?

I've never been a fan of tusks. And although antlers are really cool, they would make sleeping absolute HELL. So definitely horns.

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I've been given a task, and by god I guess I'll do it. This will not be a comprehensive list, simply because there's a lot of Fate media I have not gotten to yet (or haven't watched/played in a long time).

S TIER

Saber (Artoria): Despite her primary route in F/SN being the least developed, Artoria is the GOAT. No matter how many other blonde women with swords Type-Moon continues to spit out, Artoria will always be THE Saber. She's beautiful. She's perfect. I desperately need her outfit.

Sakura: She's allowed to do as much murder as she wants. She deserves a little treat.

Rin: The first time she met Saber, she was about to get run through my Excalibur and STILL the first thought she had was, "Goddamn she's hot." Rin is a closeted bisexual disaster and a queen. Her fashion is immaculate. No one could fix her, but honestly it's pointless to try. If you don't love what's wrong with her, you don't deserve her.

Saber (Nero): She's beautiful. She's charming. She's a pansexual theater nerd. She has my favorite Noble Phantasm. Her bridal outfit goes SO hard.

A+ TIER

Bazett: She gets a lot of points for her incredible character design, being cool as fuck, and getting a genuinely fantastic character arc in Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. Unfortunately, she loses a point for having 50/50 taste in men. Lancer? Yeah, sure, totally understandable. Respectable, even. Kirei, though? Girl, what the hell is wrong with you?

Rider (Medusa): She doesn't get much to do until Heaven's Feel, but boy does she make up for it once you get there. Has some of the best and most charming scenes in F/HA as well. Is basically Sakura's surrogate hot mom. Takahata is a genius for putting her in glasses, a turtleneck and jeans. I would love to spend an afternoon chilling with her in her little library.

Saber (Mordred): Artoria's angry, punk son. As a character? He rules. Great look, sickass armor, really fun attitude. The main problem with Mordred is how Type-Moon (and by extension, the fanbase) handles his gender situation. Trying to talk with a stranger about Mordred is like navigating a minefield. Will they be chill and understand what's going on, or will they be weirdly insistent about Mordred "definitely" being a girl despite everything he says and does? It's a coinflip, honestly.

Gray: A precious child. I adore Gray's aesthetic and personality. Her relationship with her adoptive gay dad (Waver) is one of my favorites in the whole franchise. Her scythe is sick as fuck. The only points against her are that it's very difficult to recommend stuff starring her. She's only in one anime (which, while good, is very confusing if you aren't already invested in this franchise). The only other officially translated content starring her are limited-time events in FGO. Some of the Case Files novels have been fan-translated, but not all of them. It's rough out there for Gray fans.

A TIER

Caster (Medea): The second MILF-coded murder-woman on this list. She's a little one-note, comparatively, but that note is played very well. She killed her first, shitty Master and got herself a stoic, noble husband who loves her SO much. I love how much they adore each other. It's so charming. She also tried to put Saber through a corruption arc via magical bondage and a custom-made wedding dress. Was it evil? Oh, extremely. But do I respect the hustle? Absolutely. The scene in F/HA where Sakura asks her for advice is one of the best in the entire fandisc.

Illya: I love how much of a gremlin she is. I love how poignant some of her scenes in F/SN are. I love how F/HA lets her (mostly) be a goofball. Although the first two games largely avoid the ickiness that comes with the territory of "18+ woman who looks like a child for Reason," there are still moments that make me side-eye Nasu, and it really only gets worse post-F/HA. I'm sorry, Illya. That magical girl manga isn't your fault, but if a character has to have a "please just ignore anything starring them after this point" caveat, that's gonna deduct some points.

A- TIER

Caren: A potentially controversial placement. I do appreciate her moxy and how fucked up she is. Big fan of all her outfits. Unfortunately, a lot of her scenes blend together for me and start to feel repetitive. This is likely due to her almost exclusively having scenes with Avenger. She's also the unfortunate recipient of the most off-putting sex scene in the franchise. Yes, even worse than the Rin x Shirou one in UBW. If she got more chances to interact with other people, she'd definitely place higher.

Otoko: I can count the number of scenes she gets in F/HA on one hand, but she makes a hell of an impression. Great design, great attitude. If Nasu wasn't a fucking coward, there'd be a scene where she gets her strap out of storage and annihilates Taiga.

B TIER

Taiga: I'm probably gonna get flak for this, but her humor is kinda hit-or-miss for me. Especially in F/HA. She's mostly fine, and she does have a great design, but the joke sometimes gets old. Also the whole "Jaguar Warrior" thing in FGO is a bad look. You can't be doing that, Taiga.

Luvia: The standard ojou-sama archetype. I enjoy her every time she shows up, but there's not much to her. She's at her best when she's a foil for Rin.

C TIER

The Trio: I've put these characters together, because that's when they're at their best. On their own? Completely forgettable. Together? Solid supporting, comedic-relief characters. They're totally fine. I will never remember their names.

D TIER

Illya's Maids: I'm not even going to look up their names. I have never been able to remember these characters. Nasu took the concept of "maid that's also a nun" and made it boring. They just get nothing to do. The two of them deserved better.

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hey sexy, piss here often?

With all the water and coffee I drink? You bet I do.

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How many clones of yourself would be needed to defeat a gorilla with only barehands?

I only just now noticed this was in here.

It's probably a lot. I'm a sprinter, not a fighter. I did take karate classes back in middle school, but those lessons have long since faded.

I'm pretty good at coordinating, though, so maybe 150?

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Trace (Tursiops truncatus) ENJOY A TASTY MOËT

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jiggle physics

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accidentally thought about words of radiance for more than 20 minutes and relapsed

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Who is the most charming spren?💙

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KC "Kneeling Knight Emoji" Cardenas

alt version before i remembered haley is space themed and i had to redo the pattern. i loved it too much to not let it be seen so here you go

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i have a question as the internets number one trace kinnie who needs an argument put to rest. whats her favorite pokemon

Oh this is a really good question

The answer is Dragonair

This is partly based on gut feeling, but I do have deeper reasons for this choice that I will not elaborate upon until (potentially) much later in the season. I don't want to spoil any potential character beats.

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Ellaline Terriss as Joan of Arc, 1900′s.