Played a bunch of Demos I had left over from the last SteamFest and some from this one again, Adventures mostly so far:
Loretta: A sort of murder mystery Adventure game taking place on a farm in 1947. You play as "Loretta", whose husband disappeared two weeks ago and move about with A and D and click on stuff. I imagine this would also be Controller-friendly. It seems to have some alternative ways to solve things, you can skip over certain events or actions. There's dead ends in the game, at the very beginning for instance if you choose to poison a private investigator he decides to shoot you. There's these weird mini games between every "scene" the game has. It's a bit boring. Has the feel of playing one of these experimental student Indie movie projects.
Foolish Mortals: A UK-made classic Point&Click Adventure with a Louisiana flair taking place during the Prohibition in 1933. You play a brown-haired guy called Murphy McCallan who walks around like he has to
really urgently take a shit. There's something about a Mystery of Bellemore Manor, a treasure and a Voodoo practitioner. Seems to play in the Caribbean. There's lots of dialogue, but voice acting is amateurish. Art style of the screens feels basic for a fully drawn game and it seems a bit dull.
Decarnation: Ostensibly a RPGMaker-looking Horror Adventure game by a French studio or guy set in Paris. You play Gloria, who works at a cabaret. Plays more like a Visual novel. Animations and some of the effects are well-made for what it is. Only instead of monsters or horror it hits you over the head with Muh Feminism, Muh abuse and Lezbos of color. Woman shout! Quicktime Events!
I think this probably sums it up. Don't bother.
Splittown: A Finnish homage to Day of the Tentacle and other Lucas Arts classics. There's subtle references to Sam&Max, Star Wars, Command & Conquer, Magic the Gathering, Space Odyssey and similar. Left-click to interact, Right-click to change verb (Look/Grab/Talk). There's lots of pixel hunting involved, although important items do tend to stand out. You play as Leonard Nimby, a Science Officer at a Secret Agency called IM5 during what seems to be the Cold War. It has a stylized Overworld map with 8 screens in the Demo where you start at the Agency. Most promising so far and borderline amusing at times. It's also the longest Demo and there seems to be a lot of hidden and missable stuff in there (it ends when you inject someone with a syringe). Leaving on my Wishlist for now.
The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo: Feels like playing a Pink Panther sketch. Interesting "cinematography" and scene composition, but a lot of it feels like playing a video and pressing "Start" when it Autopauses. There are also puzzle sections where you have to do stuff in order to proceed, but there's only hot-spots to click and no dialogue. VERY short, only gives you a most base impression of what this might be, but not altogether uninteresting from an "artistic" point of view at least.
Moth Lake: It's mainly a Controller game where you move left or right with the sticks, run with the Shoulder button (WASD + SHIFT on Keyboard) and interact with objects by pressing A (look), B (push) or Y (inventory). At first you play as Billy Yokel, a foster child living in a scary-looking farm house whose foster parents apparently beat him. There's some sort of tree monster involved and there's a dog companion. Kind of simplistic puzzles and having to hide from monsters like some sort of Scarecrow/tree monster thing. Gets very formulaic quick, since they usually appear when you change a screen where you have to hide and then disappear after. There are some A and B choices, some of which can lead to a "Game Over" and giving you a do-over where you choose the "correct" one. After the scene with the young boy is done the game switches you over to playing some crater-face named "Toby" in a school setting. The characters in close-ups look like they seem to be part of the horror as well. Some bad/lame puzzle game mechanic is introduced where you have to change the objects you target with the right stick while using arrows on the left to move them left or right, as well as concepts like "body shaming" and "incel" in interpersonal communication with other characters. The dialogue in general seems to be very Reddit-tier. The game prospectively lets you play with 7 characters overall, but before you can properly switch it ends. Not exactly impressed.
Death Corp: Seems to be one of those Tablet-friendly Adventures on Unity-basis that only have one-click interaction and you can drag objects from the inventory on things to use them. Graphics don't seem bad. You play as a ginger guy that's looking for a job and due to his historically bad luck he seems to cause other people to die. So Death offers him an apprenticeship to help his business and help people along to the afterlife, while being immune to dying himself and invisible due to new-found special abilities. Not voice-acted yet at this stage and still with a bunch of typos. Text also moves along too fast automatically without player input in parts of this and the previous game. There's not much there, basically 3 simple screens.
Nothing particularly special or outstanding in there. Closest is Splittown I guess.
its like ag devs were chronically lacking in imagination