The demos that didn't quite make the cut in this month's Next Fest
At least twice a year we feral games journalists rummage through the bins of Steam like malnourished city foxes, looking for the best demos during Next Fest. It is a ritual of survival that we sometimes loftily call an act of curation, as if we are refined museum directors and not a gang of scurrilous weirdoes seeking sustenance from pixels.
The upshot is that you readers get a few recommendations, a short list of cool stuff to keep an eye on. But what about all the demos we played that didn't quite pass our cryptic taste test? Surely that'd be equally useful. A "not all that" list. A "save yourself some time" list. Here are all the leftovers we chewed once and spat out.
Altered Alma
Graham: I feel bad calling this a leftover, because it's a slashy-dashy-grapply metroidvania with a cyberpunk world and dating sim elements, and it feels good to play. It's somewhat reminscent of Iconoclasts, an oft-overlooked but excellent action-platformer. The problem is that the metroidvania genre has become rapidly overstuffed. I haven't finished Silksong yet and I've barely put a dent in MIO: Memories In Orbit, both of which are obviously stellar. From the