An Array of Demos pt 2 - Steam Next Fest (June 2025)
Got through another handful of demos in the last couple of days, and a couple stood out as interesting projects.
Dispatch
Dispatch is probably the highest profile demo I've played so far. It's a narrative choose-your-path Telltale-like, with what's essentially a worker-placement human resource-management game attached. It's clearly the sort of game that will add whatever mini-game fits a situation, and I'll admit to being a real sucker for that.
The premise is that the protagonist Robert is working as the resident dispatcher for a Suicide Squad-esque group of misfit superheroes, telling them where to go and what to do and occasionally helping remotely. The mechanics of it all really aren't the point though, this is all about characters and snappy writing and the demo delivers.
I was already leaning like 80% towards buying Dispatch, but the demo made that 100%. Really clean presentation, and the only reason I stopped playing was a softlock.
Formula Legends
I got put onto this one by Egan's Not-E3 post - Formula Legends is a sort of arcade nearly-kart racer with a Formula 1 theme, but what sets it apart from other kart racers is a real commitment to the theme.
Cars understeer, oversteer, and lock-up. You can overjuice the throttle and spin out very easily, and if you try to turn while braking you will not in fact turn. You can slipstream your opponents, and in some cases deploy battery charge or active aero.
The really tasty hook is that you're not just playing with a modern Formula 1 premise. The demo has 3 eras - 1970s, 1990s, and 2020s. Only the last of these has active battery and aero deployment, and the 1970s cars in particular feel extremely temperamental to drive. Add to this multiple era-appropriate variations on each track and you have a very compelling non-sim-racer for fans of F1, and I'll be really keen to play some of this when it comes out.
(I finished 2 races, 14th and 12th out of 14. I had a great time.)
I actually played quite a few more demos, but this round was much less focused on obviously strong offerings so I'm OK with not liking the others as much. Still, across a total of 8 demos I've put 5 on the wishlist so that's a pretty good success rate. The plan is to do another pass of 3 or 4 demos this weekend before Next Fest ends. You should too!