Absolute crap.

I play a lot of demos, partially because I’m a cheap bastard and also because I’m always looking for interesting games that might be overlooked to share with the greater world. Unfortunately most of Steam’s demos, like most of its games, are utter garbage. Either horribly boring or just really low quality. Which makes my job much easier even if it doesn’t make for good videos.

So I’m writing it down instead. Here’s some demos I played this week.

#1: Spilled

For the record, Spilled is not a bad game but I can only do so many cozy games on the YouTube channel before I get my balls kicked in by even my otherwise accommodating audience. I’ll do a video on this when the full game comes out. Spilled is a game where you pick up garbage in the water and bring it to a recycling station for money, which you use to upgrade your ship to collect more stuff faster for more money faster.

That’s it. There’s no real challenge or tension, it’s just a cozy game to play on a rainy day. Or a snowy day. Or just any day.

I do enjoy these games on the grounds that I’m that much closer to death once I’m done playing them. They’re also pretty good for catching up on podcasts while playing. I realize most of the gaming audience has absolutely no interest in these games and they don’t make for great video content, so I try to keep them to a minimum on my channel.

Five stars.

#2: Terracards

Terracards is another bad candidate for videos, as it’s intensely boring to look at and I uninstalled it after ten minutes. This falls into the category of indie games that very poorly explain their mechanics and just start stabbing the player with a beer bottle the moment the game begins. I don’t think I got through ten turns without going bankrupt, as the game starts you off with barely anything, gives you little in the way of money making, and just kinda expects you to figure it out on your own.

Zero stars.

#3: Madhouse Madness Prologue

Madhouse Madness Prologue is a good example of why making horror games is really difficult. You play as a live streamer going into a haunted building with his crappy camera and crappy flashlight. Your chat is running throughout the stream in the lower left hand corner, and a couple of times I ended up getting scared by the sudden sound of someone subscribing to my channel.

The big problem with a game like this is that it relies heavily on keeping up an illusion that breaks almost immediately. Specifically when the chat starts commenting the same phrases over and over again. The character voice doesn’t sound invested in what’s going on at all. The game wrenches control of the camera away to force you to watch the spookies, which is bad scene direction, and the game mechanic of determining if you’re attracting ghosts by keeping the light on just isn’t good or well conveyed to the user.

A lot of horror games don’t really do game overs because there’s a very thin line from scary to frustrating to boring.

#4: Loddlenaut

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a sucker for these cozy cleaning games. Loddlenaut’s demo is perfect; you’re a scuba man cleaning up an area of the ocean polluted by evil polluters. Your job is to simply go around and clean up the dirt while keeping an eye on your oxygen meter to make sure you don’t run out of oxygen. As you collect pollution and sell it, probably to the original polluters, you can afford upgrades to make those duties more efficient.

Perfect. No notes. Full game comes out November 16.