Steam Next Fest: Demon Bluff, Desktop Explorer, Blood Dungeon

What the report says

I’m at the end of a game I’m writing about, but then I remembered: it’s Steam Next Fest time again! Let’s take a break from my backlog bingo escapades to look at some stuff I liked that’s coming over the horizon…Demon Bluff, by UmiArt is a single-player social deduction game. This game’s higher profile compared to a lot of games, on account of promotion by and involvement of everyone’s favorite bald streamer. But dang it, do I really like this.A village has a deck of people with their own abilities to flip over.

Hunters will say how close they are to the nearest evil and empresses will give a list of people and say one of them is evil, for example. Then there’s a group of characters labeled as outcasts, who are neutral but shouldn’t be killed, like the wretch who’d register as evil to people like the hunter and empress, or the bald man that causes truthsayers near him to tell him to shut up – confirming them as truthsayers while robbing you of potentially valuable information. There’s a few characters with active abilities, like the slayer, who you can direct to kill someone for you and will only succeed if your chosen victim is evil.

Well, assuming that the slayer is who he says he is with a clear mind, anyhow.It ain’t a social deduction game without evil lurking around. Evil characters disguise themselves as an ordinary villager and tell lies. It starts simple with minions who are just plain liars. Then there’s the witch that prevents you from looking at the last card and a chancellor that forces an outcast in the field to muddy the waters. Your objective? Execute all evil. Are you truly the good guy when execution’s your main objective and you seem to be doing it on behalf of a demon?

Key details

(shrug)But things start to get harder when corruption is introduced. You can’t just go killing people for the crime of lying, no, they may be lying because they may be corrupted. If a corruption causing character has a chance of joining the game, you have to be more careful. Executing a knight initially seems like a safe gambit because they only get executed if it’s actually an evil disguise, but if a legitimate knight is corrupted, you’ll accidentally kill a perfectly good guy. So not only will you be figuring out lies, but you also have to figure out if the liar actually is an evil person.

Is this a person corrupted by the poisoner or a plague doctor? Is the liar just a disguised drunk who isn’t even corrupted and just lies for the bit? Executing too many innocent people removes a life and starts you over with a new village. Lose all your lives and the run ends.I’ve recently gotten into Murdoku, so I got pretty into Demon Bluff as a logic game. Am I good at this? Well, I kinda rush things and I believe lies too easily. There’s a reason why I wasn’t as caught up in the Amongus wave as a lot of people.

But it’s a good game! I especially like the art everyone’s given and I appreciate the fact that you can unlock alternative art for people. This is definitely something to look forward to if you’re puzzle inclined.The next game I checked out was Desktop Explorer, by Recurring Dream; speaking of Amongus, the game’s published by Outersloth. You are a young woman going by Guppy, and you’ve obtained ownership of your beloved uncle Hal’s computer after he was sent to intensive care. You’re looking through his files, and you find a curious program your uncle wanted you to look at: Desktop Explorer.Desktop Explorer is a point-and-click mystery adventure game framed through a 90’s computer.

More from the announcement

It’s certainly something to play in the current age of software that’s kinda hell. There’s a Clippy style mascot character named Pizarro around to give tips and I’ll be honest, I wholeheartedly welcome Pizarro in this age of AI chatbots that exist to jack you off while being extremely unhelpful. And besides, it’s nice to have a friendly face around as the game starts to delve into darker territory.The game starts out with simple puzzles with a narrative of exploring a cave. As you play on, you unlock journals from your uncle. You uncover the unfolding narrative of his declining health with amnesia, and his angst with a horrible loss that he wishes he can forget.

The adventure presented through the Desktop Explorer files becomes more personal and unsettling as you do stuff like dig into source code of text and find hidden files.