Another Steam Fext goes by, plenty of good games to try. I was also impressed, by the number of Linux Native games to be tested this time around.

Games are listed in no particular order. Demos are still available.

Akuma’s Bloodrain

Steam: Akuma’s Bloodrain
Tags: Boomer Shooter, Blood, FPS, Gore, 1990’s

Fast-paced Linux-native shooter. Very simple: you have a shotgun and a claw. Try to fit your crosshair snugly inside the enemy for maximum damage and finish them with your claw when they blink orange. All while avoiding damage with dashes and double jump.

Oh! Robot: Legendary Mechanic

Another Linux-native game. You control a mecha in this top-down shooter, cleaning the city from rogue robots. Plenty of weapons to collect and a bunch of ways to upgrade your vehicle. I just hope the full version does not become a grindaton.

Steam: Oh! Robot: Legendary Mechanic
Tags: Action, Adventure, Shooter, Arcade, Action-Adventure

Mad King Redemption

Steam: Mad King Redemption
Tags: Action Roguelike, Arcade, Side Scroller, Beat ’em up, Roguelite

Got it because the promo video reminded me a bit of Golden Axe, but while playing, there were a bunch of things that reminded me of Shadow of Mystara. I had fun playing and did not feel like the roguelite mechanics were that bad, I did not feel like I had to buy stuff just to progress the game as most of my deaths were for stupidity (jumping to certain death thinking there was a secret there). I just hope they do not add those predatory roguelite mechanics when they release the game.

Skate Story

Steam: Skate Story
Tags: Indie, Adventure, Action, Sports, RPG

Cinematic skate journey. You are a glass demon adventuring across a psychedelic world on top of your skate. While you have some good controls and can do tricks, they are more to navigate the world than to achieve “high-score”. It is not a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater style of game.

MOTORSLICE

Steam: MOTORSLICE
Tags: Parkour, Atmospheric, Anime, Action-Adventure, Singleplayer

Kind of a ICO/Shadow of the Colossus meets The Sands of Time. You hunt small and giant machines with your chainsaw sword, while navigating endless construction zones with wall-rides, climbing and jumping around. Camera can be a bit annoying sometimes.

Jackal

Steam: Jackal
Tags: Violent, Top-Down Shooter, Unforgiving, Bullet Time, Shooter

The closest thing to Hotline Miami I played recently. Top-down shooter where you can defeat your targets with weapons, house furniture or your bare hands. Fun, hectic, and a bit forgiven as you can take some damage before dying.

Bloodgrounds

Steam: Bloodgrounds
Tags: Rome, Turn-Based Tactics, Turn-Based Combat, Perma Death, RPG

Bloodgrounds was the game that I spent more time playing during this Next Fest by far (and one of the reasons it took me so long to post this). As a former gladiator, you now have your own ludus, you recruit, train, and bring your gladiators to combat across this fantasy realm with. I really enjoyed the turn-based combat: very tactical, against other gladiators and fantastical creatures. You also get bonuses for making the crowd happy, what adds a lot to the challenge, I think because of that, it reminded me a bit of Showgunners.

Shadow of the Road

Steam: Shadow of the Road
Tags: Tactical RPG, RPG, CRPG, Turn-Based Strategy, Story Rich

Owlcat (Roguetrader, Pathfinder) is publishing but another developer makes it. The bones are there, turn-based combat, with an RPG full of decisions and outcomes. I like the settings of feudal Japan meets steampunk and magic. I also liked that your options on dialogs do exactly what it says, and you can enable a setting to show the tone and outcome even better. I hate when I play a game that says something like “disagree”, you expect a polite decline but your character curses and explodes the vendor’s head (looking at you Cyberpunk).

Regions of Ruin: Runegate

Steam: Regions of Ruin: Runegate
Tags: Action, Dwarf, Action RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Hack and Slash

Linux-native and great to play with controllers (Steam Deck wink wink). There is some base building while you try to reestablish your ancestral home, but I mostly focused on exploring, doing quests and fighting. I enjoyed the options for fighting, from being a tank warrior, or a mobile stealth assassin. At some point, I soft locked my travels because of the lack of food to complete the journey and the monsters nearby were not providing much food. I probably should have paid more attention to the base build tutorial.

Project Warlock: Lost Chapters

Steam: Project Warlock: Lost Chapters
Tags: Boomer Shooter, Shooter, Action, FPS, 2.5D

Tingus Goose

Steam: Tingus Goose
Tags: Strategy, Clicker, Psychological Horror, Management, Simulation

Surreal clicker which goal is to make a goose’s neck grow. I liked for two reasons, one is that it can be a quite fun non-idle game (contrary to those boring idle clickers) and other is to see the weird art animations - It seems that the artist has been around making surreal animations on most social websites.

Teamfight Manager 2

Steam: Teamfight Manager 2
Tags: Simulatione, Sports, Auto Battler, Sports, Pixel Graphics

I played my fair share of DotA in the 2000’s. I also enjoy playing team management games, football, racing, you name it. This game is an e-sports team management for a game similar to DotA. It was quite fun but it could be better. There are 3 things common in team management games missing that would improve the game by a lot: coaching the team during a match (you set the tactics before and then there are not much to be done besides watching or skipping), hiring support staff, and creating a custom character (either to play the sport or as support staff).

The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike

Steam: The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike
Tags: Strategy, Roguelike, Turn-Based Strategy, Deckbuilding, Roguelite

This is a turn-based tactical puzzle battle. You play several scenarios where you have to defeat the enemies by building a manga (japanese-style comic book) page. Every turn you get 8 random panels from your “deck” (attacking, moving and other special actions) and you build the order of the action from right-to-left, top-to-bottom. To help you out, you can see how adding and moving panels affect the characters on the screen before committing to the action. While you don’t have a health-bar, taking damage would remove spaces from your page, and you usually have 5 pages(one per turn) to complete the battle. My favourite part was to watch the little action movie of the whole fight once you finish the battle.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

Steam: Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era
Tags: Strategy, Turn-Based Strategy, Simulation, Tactical, Grand Strategy

Closest game from Heroes of Might and Magic 3 I played, passing Song of Conquest for me on that merit.

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II

Steam: Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
Tags: Strategy, Action, RPG, Turn-Based Strategy, Turn-Based Tactics

I enjoyed Mechanicus 1 a lot despite being punished a lot by it (given my poor decisions while exploring). Mechanicus 2 now lets you play this turn-based tactical game with the Necrons, and it was quite nice to experiment the other side.

But wait there is more: Next Fest June 2025

Since I failed you and did not publish demo recommendations from the previous Next Fest. Here are two of the games that made the list, were not published and the demo is still available.

Windswept

Steam: Windswept
Tags: 2D Platformer, Platformer, Difficult, Adventure, Precision Platformer

Old-school platformer 90s style (trying to avoid a lawsuit from that law firm disguised as game company from Japan). You play as two characters, a duck and a tortoise, each with their skill set. I like how you can switch between characters in the middle of a skill to create combos, either to defeat an enemy or to reach far away platforms and secrets in the map.

Dead as Disco

Steam: Dead as Disco
Tags: Action, Rhythm, Beat ’em up, Singleplayer, Arcade

Spectacle fighting game with psychedelic visuals. I like that the attacks matches the music, like if the music has a quick ta-ta-ta on a beat, pressing the attack will show your character quickly punching 3 times. In my favourite map of the demo you fight avoiding incoming trains in a metro station, while trying to throw your enemies on those tracks.

Bits & Bops

Steam: Bits & Bops
Tags: Rhythm, Music, Action, Minigames, Score Attack

A bunch of rythm mini-games that brought me back to my childhood. It is like WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games! meets PaRappa the Rapper

More?

You can also check our reports for the previous Steam Next Fest Editions:

• Steam Next Fest February 2025
• Steam Next Fest October 2024
• Steam Next Fest February 2024

Have a great November!