Quoting: alexleducIt's nice to know that the other 55% of people gaming on Linux are doing it on regular PCs. Since there are millions of Steam Deck sold, that could mean millions of PCs used for gaming on Linux.

In other news, the stat counter worldwide desktop market share survey has been plummeting back down from its 4.05% milestone in March. It's at 3.77% in the May results.

Real world is messy and there are fluctuations into both directions. What matters is the longer trend, too bad Statcounter doesn't display that. Data can be exported though, so if somebody would want to do more useful graph, it's possible.

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Been playing it for a bit and full version seem to have lot more stuff. Also silver key drop rate seems to be bit higher so opening both chests in one floor is possible. Demo was one silver key for each floor.

Should be relatively short game, though I doubt I manage to finish it in one hour. Six hours could be more likely.

If you're unsure, try the demo.

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Maybe at least one post fest update as there's bunch of demos still available, games that didn't reach top 50 just get less visibility.

Aloft
One among many openworld survival craft games, but this time around there's floating islands and you're able to fly them. You can also glide, which makes traversal between the island possible.

Crafting does nice compromise. You don't know the recipes beforehand, but ingredients that belong to undiscovered recipes are marked, so there's not that much trial and error.

You can also restore islands ecology, though that's something you need to discover on your own, at least in the demo. And one important part of the ecology restoration is not implemented in full yet.

Good fun, despite some frustrations.

Die in the Dungeon
Can Slay the Spire with dice work? Apparently it can. Die placement and buffing are cornerstones of the gameplay and bit more rare dice unlock more options. Dice can be improved too.

Feels bit too easy or I just got too lucky by having health regeneration.

Still surprisingly fun.

Spilled!
Self published ecology cleanup game. Basically you steer a boat that can clean up oil spills and collect trash. There's also animals to be rescued and you have few different upgrades you can buy. Quite simple. There's at least more biomes planned, so probably gameplay will evolve a bit in the full game.

Demo was simple and fun.

Silence of the Siren
Sci-fi strategy game. Playing tutorial is optional, though there's lost of mechanics to teach, so you'll probably miss lot of the things if you don't play it.

Mechanics are fun enough, though I got bit bored in the first real mission as it's cleanup mission. Root cause might be that I'm just playing it in boring way or it might be that there's not many interesting decisions during the turns.

The overhead map feels bit like a boardgame and tactical battles are played on one screen with simple map. There's danger things getting bit repetitive.

So I guess it's fine. Somebody else might have more fun time with it.

Reka
There's not that much exposition, but basically it seems that you want to become a witch. Before that you can do small side quests. Game starts up properly when you get to build your chicken legged house. Though even before that you get to do some witch things.

While the map is small, there multiple point of interests around the map.

Base building actually feels easiest that I have seen in 3D game, usually you need lot of corner pieces to integrate roof to wall properly, but this time around the wall pieces just change into corner pieces automatically. One problem might be though that once you create a piece, there's no way to transform it back into wood.

Bit janky, but I like that they are doing at least something that feels unique. The openworld survival craft part is bit shallow and focus seem to be bit more on the story and quests. Which might be good decision as this is the studios first game.

Worth trying out.



This time around top ten changes around a bit as some of the games were quite good. All of the demos are online still.

Alters
Tactical Breach Wizards
What the Car?
Aloft
Schim
Just Crow Things
Aska
Heroes of Loot: Gauntlet of Power
Die In the Dungeon
I Am Your Beast

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Quoting: ToddLI know Steam Next Fest ends tomorrow but whatever you do, don't play the Fera demo on the Steam Deck because the framerate isn't good and you can't adjust the resolution in the main menu or in-game.

Try Aska or Aloft. Both offer graphics settings, though I don't have Steam Deck to check how they perform. Aska I described few posts up, Aloft has gliding and base building from parts. Latter also has vibrant colors like Fera.

Also if other people have same bugs than I do, you won't get far with Fera.

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Quoting: NezchanLinkito (Native): Electronics puzzles with a mid-20th century corporate/propaganda vibe. Looks like a solid game, but I don't have sufficient brain for the genre. Runs very well though, and the vibe is on point.

Tried it as well and due repeatable crash during tutorial, I switched to Proton. I was way too tired to properly enjoy it, but as far as the difficulty goes, it feels easier than Zachtronics games, though demo is almost all tutorial. Last few puzzles start to give some challenge.

I think I can recommend this, though might not be in my top five demos.

Heroes of Loot: Gauntlet of Power
Pretty solid roguelite. There's bit of arcade feel in there, though that could be the Gauntlet influence. Clear rooms and collect loot. I like how you can mount weapon to each direction when leveling up. Too bad the weapons don't have any explanation what they do.

Developer mentioned that the aim is that everybody is able to finish the game at least once. Which is rare in games like this.

If you like bullet hell games or rogue lites, this one is worth trying out.

Moon Mystery
Sci-fi FPS, with some actual plot thrown in. Demo is bit incoherent mess at times and at times it's easy to get lost what to do as the demo jumps through the game in random order. Ambitious for sure though and maybe they're even able to deliver some kind of game in the end. Maybe even too ambitious as there sure is some jank.

If you're starving for FPS, it might be worth taking a look, though I am Your Beast might satiate you better as it's in better shape. And there must be better FPS demo out there as I have tried only few so far.



Now it feels that I have played enough good demos to enlarge the top five to top ten. Sorted in level of excitement:

Alters
Tactical Breach Wizards
What the Car?
Schim
Just Crow Things
Aska
Heroes of Loot: Gauntlet of Power
I Am Your Beast
Linkito
Endzone 2

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Alters

Base builder mixed with crafting and mining. On top of that is sci-fi story wrapped in AA package. Slight Control vibes.

Basically you get stranded in alien world and have to figure out how to survive. Good fun, especially if they can keep the story going in the full game and there's hints that that will be the case. I have hunch that these AA quality games disappear fastest.

I think I played this with Proton 8 (I switched the default to 9 after this)

Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter

Souls like side scrolling RPG influenced platformer. There's lot of exposition in the beginning, though far from worst offender. Fights have lot of telegraphing and once you get hang of it, one or two enemies should be easy enough to handle. Though problem for me was how to keep my weapon sharp and health from running out in middle of battle. I gave up before I figured it out, though there is easier difficulty.

The RPG part seems to be collecting loot and choosing what to use. Seems solid enough, so if you like the genre, it's worth a try.

PS: gamepad works maybe for a while in the menu, rest of the demo you need to use keyboard (game suggest using a controller though, so maybe that will be eventually sorted out)

Aska
Openworld survival craft with vikings. Compared to Valheim though, the textures have higher resolution and objects have more polygons. Building are premade though, so there's less room for creativity.

Higher fidelity means though that seeing objects is harder. It takes a while also to figure out what can be interacted with. For example there's lot of bushes and stones that are there just to look pretty. Game has workaround for that as there's option that let you scan for interactive things.

The tribe management might slightly more unique feature. Tribe people do have some basic requirements, but after you get that sorted out, they can start doing all sort of tasks. I haven't played the demo all the way through, but there seemed to be several buildings that let you automate lot of the manual tasks if you have enough workers.

If you're not already bored with the genre, it's worth trying out.

I think I had Proton 8 still when playing the game, didn't notice any issues though.

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
Does Balatro feel too complicated? In blackjack your decisions are just to hit or stay. Like Balatro there's lot of cheating opportunities, though I got bored after a while. Higher difficulty might make things bit more interesting. Though Balatro still wins hands down. And for those looking for simpler experience, there's also highly addictive Luck Be A Landlord.

PS: I had odd issue that if hit esc, hit and stay buttons stopped functioning. As keyboard user, I have instinct to do that.

VR

None of the interesting VR games happened to work. Lot of crashes and things not rendering in the headset. Only one game almost worked, but had double vision.

Switched back and forth between Proton Experimental and Proton 9.0, but that didn't fix any of the games.

Here's list of games that I tried:
- D-Day VR Museum (didn't start)
- On Point (started, but there was double vision)
- Pirates VR: Jolly Roger (crashed)
- Subside (not sure, but i think problem was that I didn't render anything)
- Frenzy Blood (didn't render in the headset)
- Rune Bender (didn't render in the headset)
- Phantom Bound (didn't render in the headset)

So probably just in case need to test game that's know to work, just in case if something is wrong in the VR setup. The On Point would be nice to get working as it's basically lightgun minigames.



Top five is now as follows:
Alters
Tactical Breach Wizards
What the Car?
Schim
Just Crow Things

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Quoting: Nezchan

Quoting: AnzaEndzone 2

This one feels like simplified Surviving the Aftermath. Not necessarily in bad way in some cases. It's post apocalyptic city builder where plastic and scrap are important resources.

Wait, it's not an American football sim?

As developers are from Germany, they might not have know the term. So now there are sports game developers who are pissed that they didn't using that name first...

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Just quick one today, spent lot of time with Endzone 2.

Wizards of Legends 2

Basically rogulite where you do randomly generated trial and probably die before you finish it. Second one seems to have gotten slight Hades influences. First one had more dungeon like structure, but this one has more open arenas.

I guess it's fine and might be improvement on the first one. Though I think I would rather play Hades.

Endzone 2

This one feels like simplified Surviving the Aftermath. Not necessarily in bad way in some cases. It's post apocalyptic city builder where plastic and scrap are important resources. There are multiple bad things that can happen starting from running out of food and water. It doesn't get easier as drought can limit your production quite drastically, so you need to have good stockpiles. Radiation and sickness you cause issues too. At least in the demo, the radiation was slowly raising, so you need to produce more and more different protection gear.

Exploration by car is rewarded with resources and small scavenging puzzles, which barely offer a challenge. If you decide to play the demo, when it asks you to find another site that might contain uniquer resources, there's total three sites in total and the unique resource is revealed only after you settled in.

Small exploration is needed to get knowledge points, but tech three is mostly blocked in the demo, you might need maybe five or six knowledge points in total to unlock everything.

One thing I was confused with is that people need houses, but there's nothing where you can check how many homeless people you have. Workaround is just build another house and see if it gets full. Not sure how much it affects happiness as mostly happiness is either rising or dropping.

I guess this is best out of three city builders I have tried this time. Though it's the most traditional one as Gourdlets is more of sandbox and Fera is in third person view. So 57 demos still to try if I want to have more complete comparison.

Still, Endzone was mostly fun, even when there were few indications that some essentials are still missing. Only annoyance I didn't mention is that autosave blocks everything and cancels whatever you were doing. At least there's warning that it's coming.



I think my top five remains the same for now.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: EhvisHad initial issues because my .steam directory was not what the setup script wanted and it couldn't find the runtime. After "fixing" that, it worked and I could enable async reprojection.

Yep. Basically, run SteamVR using `bin/vrstartup.sh` instead of launching it through Steam. This might also work:

https://github.com/Scrumplex/Steam-Play-None

I have SteamVR installed in nonstandar location. Steam wouldn't otherwise like it, but I keep it happy by providing it a symlink, so it thinks the installation is in original location. My Steam installation is in slow spinning media, but I like to keep Steam VR on NVME.

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Fera: The Sundered Tribes
Seems to be some kind of openworld survivald craft thing with a tribe management. There's some verticality though some kind of grapling hook and gliding is also possibility. Sadly got soft lockup in building menu, so I didn't actually get past the tutorial. Might have potential, but hard to say now. It's indeed an alpha version.

Megacopter: Blades of the Goddes

Quoting: kaimanMegacopter reminds me of Desert Strike. Quite the fantastic game on the Amiga (at least graphically). But not something I feel overly keen revisiting, though ...

I'm also familiar with Desert Strike. Megacopters graphics at least are somewhat from that era. Graphics look slightly amateurish. Based on the screenshots I have seen, things will get even wackier and there's some taste of that in the demo.

Gameplay is fine though. There's some enemy variation and exploration is encouraged (especially if you're running out of health or missiles). Mouse and keyboard will probably make the game lot easier, but didn't try that out.

Still interesting enough, so if the genre interests at all, just try it out.

Just Crow Things
As far the technical issues, only problem I had was that the gamepad mapping didn't match to my controller. Took a moment to figure out what the controls actually where. Otherwise it's Rain on Your Parade, but with a crow. OK, not exactly, but it does feel familiar at places.

Basically there's some quests around the maps and lot of opportunities to cause mayhem.

Steam Next Fest flyers is nice touch.

Worth trying out if you have some patience with the technical issues


What the Car?

Quoting: NezchanWHAT THE CAR? (Steam Play): I mean what do you expect on this one? If you played WHAT THE GOLF? this is more of the same, but racing this time. It's very good and you should play

I don't have much to add. Soundtrack is nice, though this time around the surprise element is missing as cars form is announced before the level starts. Also wackier ideas seem to be drying out. Surprisingly demo had user created levels and it seems to be a thing in the full game too. Bad humor hasn't been drying out though, there's example bear that's waiting for steam release.

Still, had enough fun. It's worth taking a look.

Goblin Cleanup
Variation of Viscera Cleanup Detail. This time around you're goblin waifu who has to restore the dungeon for next set of heroes. Expect to die many times as the traps are intact. Some of them you can disable temporarily. So not exactly relaxing cleaning game.

It was fun enough, so it's worth trying out.



Top five at the moment, this time around they are actually in some kind of order:
Tactical Breach Wizards
What the Car?
Schim
Just Crow Things
Dungeon Clawler

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