Can you tell which of these seemingly identical bits of Steam iconography were generated using AI (trick question, it’s none of them).
Aurich Lawson
Back in the days when E3 was still a thing, a relative handful of approved journalists and industry members had to pack themselves into the Los Angeles Convention Center once a year to awkwardly stand in front of demo stations to play some of the hottest upcoming games. Today, any PC gamer can easily sample similar early preview demos from the comfort of their own homes during Steam’s periodic Next Fest events.
While we weren’t able to try all of the literally hundreds of demos on offer during the most recent Steam Next Fest, we did have a great time trying out a few dozen offerings that caught our interest. Here’s a selection of the demos that made the biggest impression on us over the last few days.
Backpack Battles
Developer: PlayWithFurcifer
Planned release date: March 8, 2024
Steam store page
Too many RPGs these days are layered with a lot of unnecessary cruft. Backpack Battles distills the genre down to one core component: inventory management.
It may sound like an odd basis for an entire game, but Backpack Battles really is, at its core, a game about stuffing as many weapons and items as you can into that titular backpack. The game then makes use of that assembled item grouping in automatic battles that play out against other real-world players at a similar level. After each fight, it’s time to take your winnings and go stuff your backpack some more.
Things start off simple enough, but pretty soon, you’re buying expansion compartments for your backpack and arranging items using complex positional interdependencies to boost each item’s effects. I spent a good ten minutes at one point trying to squeeze a veritable fruit salad into my pack in just the right arrangement to maximize the stamina-boosting and enemy-poisoning effects of every individual component. What’s more surprising is that I loved every minute of this careful arrangement.
Backpack Battles is great for that part of your brain that needs to have everything organized just so and wants a tangible on-screen reward for exercising that skill.
Balatro
Developer: LocalThunk
Planned release date: February 20, 2024
Steam store page
Video Poker doesn’t seem like the most likely basis for a compelling roguelike experience. After putting more hours than I’d care to admit into Balatro‘s demo, though, I’m just glad that the game doesn’t charge real money for its in-game deals like a casino would.
At its core, Balatro is a game about crafting the best possible poker hands from nine randomly dealt cards, using a limited number of discards to manage and replace bad cards. Each hand comes with its own base value and multiplier, and each round requires you to earn more points to progress.
Between rounds, though, you can use accumulated cash to buy all sorts of jokers, which add to a hand’s base value or multiplier in specific situations (playing spades, for instance, or playing exactly three cards). Things start to get ridiculous with rare jokers that multiply the multipliers, leading to an exponential scoring effect that can really help as the scoring requirements build up in the later rounds. And that’s all before you account for the vouchers and booster packs that can add to, subtract from, or just modify your deck of cards in any number of ways.
Managing the delicate economy of all of these shop options—and adapting your play to whatever options get randomly offered to you—forces you into some deep strategic planning if you hope to make it through a full run. That’s true even in the limited demo, which offers tantalizing hints at unique jokers and unlockable options that will be in the full game. If my time with the demo is any indication, I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time unlocking all of those bits when the full game sees its imminent release.
