Sorry to be that guy but that's almost a JoJo reference

I took a shot at Bubsy's design from Bubsy 4D. I love the idea of the "car salesman dad" look but I found the face uncanny and the torso messy, so I tried making his face closer to other designs and closed up his suit so the tie reads more like an exclamation mark.

Nintendo when you just want to do proper laps in Mario Kart World online instead of straight lines

▫️Dead Finger Dice

This is how Shufflepuck Café haunted me as a kid. It's Poker Dice where you can craft new dice with special faces. Could use a different scoring method, matches are too long before the roguelite kicks in then it's suddenly overpowered. Tons of potential and art style was nailed!

▫️The Royal Writ

Your deck is your army, you drop them in the left column, then each turn they attack (Balatro score style), move right and increase damage. If they reach the end, they permanently die. There's so many layers of planning, I'd almost say it's over-designed, yet I want more!

▫️Dog Witch

A cute roguelite card battler, except you don't need to keep reading your cards; it's just 5 dice with the same 6 abilities each! As you upgrade them (+ 3 perks), the way each ability interacts with one another becomes super varied fast. Probably won't scale, but it's fun short games.

▫️CloverPit

I'd describe this game as Balatro if the poker gameplay was just pulling a lever and sometimes pressing a button, but that's underselling it. The whole game IS the metagame: how you spend your coins & tickets and how you stack your luck.

Got through another round of Steam Next Fest demos! Lots of roguelite deckbuilders, I figured I'd focus on my favorite 4 related to that genre:
▫️CloverPit
▫️Dog Witch
▫️The Royal Writ
▫️Dead Finger Dice

[Impressions and clips below] #SteamNextFest

As soon as this appeared I let out a "SAKURAI???", I still can't believe he's back on Kirby AND it's Air Ride 2. I really think it's because he wanted to do it and it's an IOU from working on Smash for so long. Same as with Kid Icarus 3DS, Nintendo wouldn't have taken a chance if it wasn't for him.

Last night I was stuck in Assassin's Creed Shadows' tutorial mission for 1h30... I was like "these games are way too hard wtf" (I've never played AC before). I had to look it up, turns out I never got the prompt to instakill from above. You're not supposed to get that silver trophy first lmao

▫️Haste: Broken Worlds

Tickles my brain the same way Source surf levels and Tiny Wings did! The procedural generation is great, though I'm not sure how much variety the full game will have if it's relying on clutter to keep it hard. Maybe more depth by adding tricks and combos? Either way I'm sold!

▫️Megabonk

I've never played Vampire Survivors but now I get it. The fact that this game is in 3D and uses verticality adds a lot and doesn't feel like a clone. There's tons of variety even just in the 1 level demo.
Also opening chests feels super satisfying.

▫️Squeakross: Home Squeak Home

Picross + customising your house like Animal Crossing. Nothing particularly new but it's a perfect mix of these concepts, it does both extremely well and it's as polished as a Nintendo game. Both my gf and I spent hours on the demo!

▫️Projekt Godhand

Beatmania but it taps into what your lizard brain wants to do when you play a chart that's too hard.
When it's overwhelming, you only care about held notes and button mash the rest. When it gets easy, spam keys on purpose to keep your multiplier.
It's actually brillant.

Finally got through my backlog of Steam Next Fest demos! I'm sure I've missed a few but these were my favorite 4:
•Projekt Godhand
•Squakross: Home Squeak Home
•Megabonk
•Haste: Broken Worlds

[Impressions and clips below] #SteamNextFest