This week in PC games: Next Fest demo excess and Double Fine's sentient lighthouse

Alright readers, here’s the atrocious news: the Maw ate Edwin. I know, it’s unfortunate, but we each saw it coming. You can’t provender a Stygian fearfulness thing but PC crippled releases and expect it to simply hide astir protein. The good quality is that the Maw isn’t a peculiarly thorough masticator, truthful I ideate Edwin volition person clambered backmost retired by, ooh, say, Wednesday. Like that occurrence of the Samurai Jack reboot, but helium spends adjacent much clip successful a loincloth.

No tract battle-sized megagames this week, but determination is different Steam Next Fest launching aboriginal today, Monday 13th October. That means demos: escaped demos, loads of demos, acold excessively galore demos, beloved God however did you radical marque truthful galore demos. Who’s got a crippled they’re hoping to spot demo-fied? I proceed waiting successful quiet, immoderate mightiness accidental unsighted anticipation that Resistor emerges from its years of silence. But we’ll see.

Monday 13th October

• Undusted: Letters from the Past is simply a breezy entity restoration crippled successful which you polish, scrub, and mini-vacuum aged tat to larn the stories of its owners.
• Spindle, a pixelly action-adventure, casts you arsenic Death successful a satellite wherever nobody’s dying. That leaves plentifulness of clip to spell sportfishing and thin to your favored pig, mind.

Tuesday 14th October

• Mohrta is simply a free-roaming phantasy FPS with an abundance of Morrowind-y weirdness.
• Chickenhare and the Treasure of Spiking-Beard is intelligibly going for 2000’s 3D platformer charm, and looks family-friendly astir to a fault.

Wednesday 15th October

• Ball X Pit would similar 1 of each genre, please. It’s a Breakout-influenced endurance schmup (with, to beryllium fair, amusingly chaotic bouncy-ball projectiles) that ties successful base-building and is, of course, a roguelike.
• Anarchic drama escapade GlitchSPANKR seems a spot large for me, though I enactment much developers making Jazzpunk-style jokefests.
• Lords of Ravage has you playing the baddie, namely a commandant of mishmashed monster units you’ll beryllium pitting against heroes successful turn-based battles.

Thursday 16th October

• Fellowship, a co-operative phantasy dungeon raider (sans MMO grinding), launches into aboriginal access.
• Quacking parody Escape from Duckov replaces Tarkov’s extraction shooting and gross imperial undercurrents with silly vibes and twin-stick-style, purely PvE action.

Friday 17th October

• This Is No Cave. Then what is it? A single-button, high-speed grapply platformer, apparently.
• Double Fine’s Keeper lets you play – yet – arsenic a lighthouse with legs. Looks a spot linear, but previews suggest this has immoderate beauteous clever puzzling, often involving the scraggly vertebrate who’s perched atop your bulb.

I’d accidental this was a quiescent week earlier we someway get Jurassic World Evolution 3, Ninja Gaiden 4, Dispatch, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 each wrong a two-day window, but there’s nary specified happening arsenic a quiescent Next Fest week. It’s just... Christ, demos. Everywhere.