Cohost repost: Steam Nextfest June 2024

(Reposted from Cohost: June 14, 2024. Publishing now that there's a new Next Fest up and some of these games have come out, so I can add some followup thoughts. For a bunch of these the thoughts would just be "Yup, this came out but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet," so imagine me writing that a bunch.)

Gone through a bunch this week, but now that the Talos Principle 2 DLC and 14 Minesweeper Variants 2 are out I'll be switching energy to those. I figure I'll dump my findings so far:

Puzzle:
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure: Light puzzle/adventure thing using the "shift a full row/column of tiles" mechanic
Blue Prince: Exploring a mansion while placing its rooms board game-style
LOK Digital: Rule-discovery puzzle game that's not about drawing a path in a grid [Oh, hey, I made another one of these in LD last week.]
Prickle: Grid puzzler with cute hedgehogs that stick together
The Rise of the Golden Idol: More Golden Idol. [Has a release date now, November 12! Also a new demo this Next Fest with another case, but I've seen enough to be sold.]
Riven: The Sequel To Myst.

Other:
Dungeons of Hinterberg: 3rd person dungeon explorer with some Persona-esque relationship/time management mechanics.
Kitsune Tails: SMB3-inspired platformer with a kitsune.
One Btn Bosses: Single-button avoider game, with a bunch of different permutations of how the button lets you move and attack. [Played through the "story mode" of this, it was pretty neat. I wasn't sold enough to put a lot of time into the roguelike mode, but there's some variety there if you wanted it.]
Pinball Spire: Pinball-based adventure, store page says metroidvania but the demo was linear. [Just picked this up, and I'm not too far in but it's still pretty linear. Also there's no "nudge" feature, so when the ball isn't on a flipper you have almost no control over it other than using abilities which don't (so far) change its trajectory, so if you miss a shot you're just kind of waiting to get control again. Maybe that'll get better, but the negative Steam reviews I've peeked at suggest it won't. Still mostly having fun, though.]