There’s still a couple days left and I’m curious to hear what others have been playing.
A couple standouts I’ve played:
Tropico 7: I’m a pretty big fan (~360 hours in 6) so I was very excited to try the demo. It’s more Tropico, which is what I’m looking for! Some of the gripes I had with 6, like managing buses, have been smoothed over and I like the better visibility of how much money each citizen makes. I’m looking forward to the full release.
Beastfolk Barber: I tried this more to recommend to a couple friends since visual novels aren’t usually my thing, but this game is so cute! Customers come in, you spend a minute getting to know them, pick out some haircut options, then chat more while cutting their hair. I like that no customer overstays their welcome before leaving, and a couple of them were really endearing. I likely won’t play the full release myself, but I know a couple people I may gift it to.
What have you been playing?
I was a bit gloomy going into this Nextfest because of all the AI doomerism surrounding it, but it turned out to be one of the better ones I’ve experienced tbh.
Some games I appreciated:
ROBIN: Chill tile-laying deckbuilder.
Ballistic.exe: “ARMA without the fun”, interesting and strongly stylised ballistics simulator / gun building game.
Kopernicus: Incremental Suffering: Surrealist horror-game. Check it out if you like surrealist titles like Hylics or Brutal Orchestra (/ anything else Talia Mair has worked on)
Probably Stolen: You run a stall in a Cyberpunk dystopia, would recommend.
Dungeons & Dynasties: Meta-DnD, you run an adventurers guild in a simulated world based on DnD (had performance issues in this one on Linux)