By the time this comes out, Steam Next Fest should still be running. I poked at some stuff, and here’s my personal stand-outs from the batch!

You are a funny little librarian, sorting out sentient books based on the moments – a mortal’s meaningful emotional experiences – they contain. You then find something curious: Memo, a book that does not have a moment prescribed to them. You bring Memo to the library’s administrator to figure out what to do, and they have something in mind: kicking you and Memo out to explore the cosmos to perhaps find the ultimate meaning – a proper God.

Burden Street Station is an upcoming narrative-adventure game by IODINE ruled by conversation. As a collector, you’ve been imbibed with three conversational senses: a sense to be direct and observant, the sense to act compliant, and the sense to be a blunt asshole. In conversations, you have to choose a conversational trait that could continue the conversation. If you’re stuck on something, Memo will give a hint on how to act.

But those senses aren’t enough. At one point, you and Memo are stuck on a train and the attendant demands to see tickets before you leave. Unfortunately, the attendant can’t be convinced with the skills the librarian was imbued with.

But now that the librarian’s out in the greater world, they can learn new things and improve their conversational repertoire.

You progress through Burden Street Station through exposing the librarian to new things they can potentially leech off of to grow their personality. Read into the souls of other people and draw new experiences out of it so you may echo a new personality outward. Putting on different personalities will let the person you’re talking to open up more and carry the story on.

I think that Burden Street Station has a really cool structure with nice surreal vibes that I love. It makes me think of stuff made under Osamu Sato. It’s an unusual and stylish adventure game that I had no idea about before, but it’s happily on my wishlist now. This is what Steam Next Fest is truly for.

Now, let’s check out a different kind of adventure game…

Detective Grimoire and his assistant Sally have returned with The Mermaid Mask, by SFB Games. In the upcoming case, they’re tasked to investigate the murder of a Magnus Mortuga in what seems to be a locked room mystery. The crime scene submarine showing up with seemingly nobody aboard certainly promises a Normal mystery.

Off the bat, The Mermaid Mask has a more different vibe from Tangle Tower. It didn’t take long to meet other people in Tangle Tower, and even when Grimoire and Sally were on their own at the start, everything felt weird at the worst. However, the atmosphere is easily eerier in The Mermaid Mask. The submarine arrives in an ominous green light to pick up the heroes, but nobody greets them at all. Grimoire and Sally may still be jokey with the things you can interact with, but it contrasts with a foreboding loneliness.

Besides the scene of the murder, we don’t know anything about anyone. The contractor of the case, the captain that presumably was the one that pulled up to shore, doesn’t have a face. The victim? He died in a Normal way and is probably Normal, too. Overall, this is already setting itself apart from its predecessor in terms of atmosphere.

I’m glad that The Mermaid Mask still has fully voiced dialogue for even the most mundane things. Another thing to note when it comes to presentation is that the evidence you find is fully 3D modeled stuff, a sign of experience carried away from Crow Country.

The demo isn’t very long, but I think it leaves a good impression.

Now, in contrast, here’s a demo of something that can last a few hours. Do you like tabletop games? Do you like Disco Elysium? Here’s a game for fans of both.

Esoteric Ebb is a game whose development is led by Christoffer Bodegård. You are a cleric named Ragn sent to investigate the fiery destruction of a tea shop. Ragn’s a loser – not quite as much of a fucked up loser as Harry Du Bois, but a loser. Enough of a loser that he got killed offscreen, which his attributes can happily roast him over as he comes to.

At the start of the game, you can build your character with the standard tabletop stats of strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. And like the personality traits of Disco Elysium, these stats manifest themselves as abstract advisors. I’m not much of a tabletop person, so I went with giving Ragn the trickster cleric pre-build. No matter what happens in Esoteric Ebb, this Ragn will be walking away rich… though, he proudly supports the worker operated Azgalists.

Esoteric Ebb is an adventure in a high-fantasy world gripping with politics. In the midst of the tea shop investigation, the city is having an election within a few days. A lot of the dwarven population is stanning the Azgalist movement against the conservative Freestriders. Many NPCs note that it’s odd that Ragn’s order chose to send him to investigate the tea shop in the midst of a potential political storm. Was the crime political in nature? Was Ragn’s initial death an act of political violence? Where does Ragn stand in all this? It’s up to how you play him, and how far his attributes allow him to proceed in the world.

The demo is really dense and there’s a bunch to see and read. Special shout-out to Snurre Appledent, who I spent more than half an hour talking to alone. It all isn’t just relatable political talk that doesn’t make me feel bad because of (gestures at world around us). There’s a lot of world-building for the high fantasy world to dig into. You can discuss the natural of the standard alignment system in a way that feels like a canonical astrology discourse. A devil can talk to you about the stock market. Sure, it’s not voice-acted, but it’s absolutely a joy to read.

True to the tabletop game framing, you can charge skills to use. However, I didn’t really use them because I was just too into just talking to people. Also true to tabletop games, you can fail and die in hilarious ways. Unlike Mr. Du Bois, there’s a death save roll system that will help keep Ragn kicking, so he’s definitely not as much of a loser as Harry.

Do be careful with that crab, though.

Esoteric Ebb is absolutely a delight, and we don’t have to wait long for the full thing – the full game is dropping on the 3rd. I don’t know when I’ll play it again, but it’s definitely on my must-play list.

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Aaand that’s all I can really check out from Next Fest without severely pushing myself. The stress of Everything is making my body crash out more than usual. I do invite you to check these games out and to check out other games from Next Fest while that’s still going!