I have a lot of things to do and a lot of worries about my personal future, but guess what? Steam Next Fest is back… kinda. I took too long with this and Next Fest ends tomorrow… But hey, I checked out a few games, let’s hear about them!

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The first thing I decided to check out was Spinny Dungeon, by Typing Monkey. You know me, I’m a sucker for games with gambling aesthetics. Here, I’m stepping away from card games to look at slot machines. You are a poor hapless hero that got sucked into a slot machine run by an evil lord, and the only way out is through. Never stop gambling.

The game might bring Luck Be a Landlord to mind, both games being deckbuilding roguelikes with slot machine theming. Here though, you’re not just gambling for money, but gambling with your life in a game with more action-y vibes. Enemies start spawning in the slot machine, and with each spin, they inch closer to the left side where they can start striking at you (though, ranged jerks can take snipes at you). Besides that, spinning the slots takes up food, so you need to make sure you don’t starve to death, too.

Spinny Dungeon is a bit of a management game with what symbols you want to add in play. You’ll need to add weapons to the slot machine, and physical weapons will hurt enemies if you roll one next to an enemy, though weaker ranged weapons can also take a snipe at them if they point toward an enemy. You can also use abilities to more freely attack or upgrade weapon icons, but that requires mana. Besides weapons, you’re also stuffing the slot machine with things that generate mana, food, and cash, and all these resources and the threat of death makes for an interesting balancing game. Do you add more food to avoid starving? Maybe more mana so you can rely on guaranteed damage more often? Or more money in hopes of buying something good when the shop comes around?

Defeating an enemy has them dropping chests that let you add symbols. Ideally, you should be aiming for stuff that makes synergies. The game is actually fairly generous about symbol removal, so feel free to experiment with how you play. The more interesting symbols you can get are prisoners you can free. They usually require more food upkeep and cash, but they bring some stronger synergies on board. Farmers improve the food they get spun next to, squires make weapons stronger, a witch destroys plant symbols in return for growing mana regeneration, a drunken master that gets stronger with every drink he drinks, a knife juggler that makes adjacent daggers ranged, etc. Sure, it’ll be a drain on food and money, but that’s just the price of friendship, you know.

Maybe this is just my gambler heart speaking, but I had a lot of fun with this. It’s a nice and simple roguelike. The screenshots on the store page point at more playable characters getting added, and maybe it’d be neat to check out in the future.

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Vegangsters is a game by Poison Pill Games and it’s a deckbuilding roguelike that’s… due to come out in a few days, actually. The city is rife with crime, and the Patt brothers are on the case to clean it up. Well, just Inspector Patt for the demo, but Detective Patt’s around in spirit.

What Vegangsters does to differentiate itself is its speed mechanic. Characters do actions according to speed and will set their actions off when their icon reaches a checkpoint at the bar at the top of the screen. When your icon gets to the end of the bar, a cycle is completed and your hand refreshes.

Cards take varying amounts of time to play, modified off everyone’s innate speed to manage on top of that. What makes the system interesting is how it plays with cards with conditionals. There’s a card that buffs your speed when played against an enemy that’s attacking. Seems nice… but if the enemy gets their attack off before you use the skill and they’re not gonna attack again, it’ll be a wasted card, so you need to keep the speeds and enemy behavior in mind. There’s an attack card that also debuffs the enemy if you’re behind them on the time bar, so as long as you get it off before the enemy cycles back to the start, that’s free real estate. With speeds in mind, do you think you can get a defend off before it’s the enemy’s turn to strike? It all offers a pretty good layer to deckbuilding roguelike action.

Vegangsters also tries to chase an identity with a food themed jokey noir setting. It’s kinda hit or miss for me. Maybe it’s because of having to bear witness to it for years, but man the Jojo reference pissed me off. But! I think it’s good to have all this stuff because it helps establish an identity for the game. Having a strong identity helps differentiate yourself from others and keeps things a bit more memorable.

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The next game I checked out was Silver Daze, by Gem Games and led by Sawyer Friend. Full disclosure, but Sawyer is a colleague of mine and I actually supported the game’s Kickstarter.

High school is ending, and the future is a big question mark for a lot of a friend group. For main hero Pinn, his future is further thrown into question when his girlfriend Kani tells him that she’s planning to move for college and end their relationship because she doesn’t know if she can handle a long-distance relationship. Pinn copes about it to their friend Geo and he heads home…

…And wakes up to a whole new world that seems to be stuck in time. Reuniting his friends, Pinn sees the potential for a summer that lasts forever. But oh right, the new world has monsters. Thankfully, the trading card game that caught on with kids can manifest their fictional powers in the new world. It’s too bad that Pinn sold his collection for a card he can’t even play, but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

The game is an interesting take on turn-based combat fare. Normal card attacks take up EP to play and there’s a whole lot of them. Cards have color types and cost is cheaper when played by someone that specializes in that type. Up to four cards can be equipped and it may be worth equipping a card outside of that character’s typing to help keep your bases covered.

What’s interesting is that everyone has a special attack they can freely use. However, the power of the special relies on how close the EP bar is to the center. It’s a really interesting mechanic for typical MP systems because it calls on you to do a balancing act with EP usage if you want to make the most out of specials. Feel free to use skills, but don’t overdo it if you want to use stronger specials. Geo’s special thankfully refills EP, so you can try to balance things back out for Pinn’s strong single target attack and Kani’s group murder. I think the gameplay’s firing on all cylinders when you have the trio together.

You get a rank after battle depending on how much damage you took and you get paid out in cards according to rank. You will quickly get a lot, mainly since selling’s going to be your source of money. Economy doesn’t matter too much though, as it seems that all you can buy are cards. The economy of Silver Daze entirely revolves around cards, the economy of this strange other world is in shambles. But hey, the economy does enable party building fun, so that’s fine.

There are items that can only be used in the field and as far as I can tell, you can’t buy them. I actually didn’t use the health recovery stuff because you can actually readily choose to return to Geo’s room as a rest point from the menu and didn’t mind backtracking too much because shortcuts were generous. I dunno, I can’t help but feel that items could just be stripped out and have health be fully recovered after fights like the EP bar.

While thrown into a weird world, the characters struggle with mundane problems. Pinn is stressed about his future and likes the idea of being in some time-locked otherworld. Kani though has a bright future ahead of her and wants out, so Pinn faces that conflict of being able to spend more time with her or enabling an escape from the otherworld – because if he truly loved her, he’d help her achieve the future she wants, right?

Also Geo’s kinda there. He’s a total bro – and having a special dedicated to managing everyone else’s EP reflects that – but also, there isn’t a lot to define him beyond slacker best friend. However, plot changes around when you acquire the red key and bear witness to the otherworld’s machinations does suggest we’ll likely see more of him shortly in the final game.

Overall, I liked Silver Daze, and it’s reminding me, man, I really got to check out Axial. Sorry I haven’t played them yet, Sawyer.

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Ending things off, I looked at Danchi Days. Its developers are director sandy powder, artist mogumu, marketers Olivia and Mei, and co-director and recurring figure on this site Melos Han-Tani.

Danchi Days revolves around the young girl Hoshino moving back to the danchi she grew up in. The place has seen better days with it lacking the sense of community it had in its heyday. On a personal level, Hoshino has to deal with her grandmother getting dementia, no longer the vibrant old woman that guided her when she was younger.

In re-adjusting to the home, Hoshino’s father discovers old flyers for a summer festival the grandmother once held for the danchi, and it sparks something for the grandmother. Wanting to seize on this, Hoshino decides a big step toward helping her grandmother is to bring the festival back. Teaming up with the local god of the festival Moro-Q, Hoshino starts a journey to restart the festival.

Within the demo, Danchi Days has you going around talking to people to try to invite them to the future festival. There’s a nice variety of folks like a woman that’s fascinated with mud and a man that teaches the dangers of heat by cooking an egg on a playground swing. Also Hoshino’s friend Rio, who honestly kinda turned into a redditor type guy after the time skip and I think he’s the dude posting online about how the danchi sucks.

When you aren’t going around talking to people and seeing things, you’re getting Hoshino to Feel the world around her. When the vibes of something is strong, Hoshino will engage in a simple minigame to soak those vibes in. The minigames of the demo has Hoshino chasing after a small goal that’s easy to figure out. She gets tired if you move around too much and may lose the trail of those good vibrations, but nothing wrong with restarting. In the end, Hoshino carries those good vibrations onward to advance her goals. It all kinda reminds me of Sephonie, with how its central minigame was a tool for the player characters to understand the world around them.

I’m gonna have to be honest: playing this game kinda bummed me out. On a personal level, I very rarely go outside anymore because of my health problems (and fear of scorpions), so guiding Hoshino to delight in the joys of nature and meet new people kinda made me feel envious. Like I dunno, some people would see it as escapism from those problems, but it just has me wishing that those experiences were real. Maybe I’m just a downer looking on the blight side of life, or maybe the fact that the story’s main conflict revolves around someone that also has a neurodegenerative disease just feels like a harsh reminder of my own circumstances.

On a happier note, I enjoy the story of a community coming together. The residents of the danchi get enthusiastic about the upcoming festival, and some NPCs end up interacting with each other as you build out Hoshino’s web of connections. The woman that’s an enthusiast for cleaning up water fountains gets along with a chatty old woman that’s happy to back her up in her cleaning endeavors, an old man that enjoys brushing away leaves provides comfort to a paranoid young man; said old man was also a friend of Hoshino’s grandmother who worked with her to make the danchi a green space. It’s a sweet narrative, and speaking as an American, it’s a nice reminder of the need and power of community.

Danchi Days is a nice sweet play, a game for the type of people that’d want to play a game about a witch finding lost cats in the Alps – and for once, I mean this as a compliment. I may have become a more bitter person, but I recognize the sway that this would have for people.

And well, that’s it for this Next Fest. I wish I checked out more games during the week, but stuff just kept getting in the way. But well, consider checking these games out!