Valve has revealed the ten most played Steam Next Fest demos, and based on the hours I’ve spent browsing the more than 4,000 demos, I’m not super surprised by the results. Bandai Namco’s forthcoming Sword Art Online RPG, Echoes of Aincrad, is grabbing a lot of expected attention, and so is the offroading sim by the creators of Art of Rally. There’s a Soulslike extraction RPG, a new 6v6 Titanfall-like by the Splitgate studio, and a cheerful looking dollop of friendslop.
Here’s the full list, which is provided in no meaningful order:
Echoes of Aincrad – Anime third-person ARPG set in the Sword Art Online worldMistfall Hunter – An extraction RPG, supplanting the usual shooting with Soulslike third-person combatover the hill – Chill but gruelling offroad adventuring by the Art of Rally devsIRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator – A heavy turret simulatorEMPULSE – A 6v6 shooter by the creators of Splitgate that kinda looks like Mirror’s Edge blended with TitanfallDust Front RTS – A vintage-looking RTS for ’90s PC gaming headsThe Mound: Omen of Cthulhu – Four-player co-op about scouring a dangerous, slightly sci-fi jungle for treasureEmbers of the Uncrowned – Nexon’s next big dark fantasy MMORPGBOMBANANA! – Whimsical friendslop about monkeys defusing bombsCasualties: Unknown – A survival platformer about exploring a murky, dangerous subterranea
There’s some decent stuff in there: I’m especially keen to try Casualties: Unknown and Over the Hill. Mortal Shell 2’s absence is notable, and I’m surprised that Valor Mortis—the new first-person Soulslike by Ghostrunner devs—isn’t listed. Half of these games are multiplayer, and only one of the games listed have an AI disclosure.
That one’s Embers of the Uncrowned, the next Nexon MMO which, ironically, appears to have the biggest budget of the lot. “During the development and live service of the game, AI-based tools may be utilized to support in-game visual content creation, marketing materials, live chat translation features, and partial in-game dialogue and script localization,” reads the disclosure.
“In all such cases and regardless of the workflow, the final product is a reflection of our own development team’s creativity and artistic expression.”
The latest Next Fest has plenty of games with AI disclosures. Of the 4,397 products listed as Next Fest demos on SteamDB, 551 have the AI Content Disclosed user tag attached. Of course, user tags on Steam can be exploited, but assuming there’s not some widespread concerted effort to tarnish non-AI games with the AI tag, that’s a very high figure. Last week over 300 games were released on Steam, and 120 of them had AI disclosures.
The floodgates are open but that doesn’t mean we’re wilfully drowning. I think a new Nexon MMO—or any big budget MMO, really—is going to attract a lot of curiosity no matter how it was made. But I’ve noticed this week while browsing Next Fest that I’ve fallen into the habit of scrolling directly to where the AI disclosure normally sits on a Steam store page, without reading the description, watching the start of the trailer, or looking at a screenshot. It’s not a brilliant user experience, and given how common antipathy towards AI in games seems to be, it’s probably about time Steam included a filter.
