Lil Guardsman review: a simpler, fantasy-fuelled take on Papers, Please

Open the gates

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Versus Evil

• Developer: Hilltop Studios
• Publisher: Versus Evil, tinyBuild
• Release: Out now
• On: Windows, macOS
• From: Steam , GOG
• Price: £16/€20/$20
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i9-11900K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 10

Lil Guardsman is a game that wears its heart on its sleeve. In a victory for normative determinism, this is a fantasy adventure about a small girl named Lil who somehow becomes the first (and seemingly only) line of defence at a city’s border patrol as a guardsman. At various points, both Lil and those around her frequently call attention to the fact that, yes, you are merely a 12-year-old child who is massively underqualified for this task, and that if you’re going to continue filling in for your good for nothing father who’s down the pub gambling on the latest ball game, then really, what do your superiors expect? It’s very self-aware in that sense, and occasionally verges on breaking the fourth wall. This alone will probably be a fairly good indicator of whether you’ll gel with Lil Guardsman’s sense of humour or not, but for the most part, this is a sweet and jovial narrative adventure whose characterful animation and charming voice cast help bring this oddball tale of fate and consequence to life.

It’s also not shy about where it’s taken its main source of inspiration from either. This is fantasy Papers, Please through and though, albeit one that’s more about interrogating and probing would-be citygoers for information than checking documents and spotting inconsistencies. During the day you’ll be working your post, dealing with the increasingly large, but fixed queues of fantasy species all trying to enter the city gate to go about their business. When you’re off the clock, it’s time to pick up the game’s wider plotlines, with Lil able to travel around the city to set locations where she can chat with other townsfolk, sometimes partake in the odd mini-game or two, and visit the local shop before toddling off to bed. It’s admittedly quite a straightforward interpretation of Lucas Pope’s magnum opus, with star ratings denoting clear right and wrong answers for how you deal with each day’s horde, but you know what they say about first impressions. Good ones go a long way.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Versus Evil

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Versus Evil

A big part of this comes down to Lil Guardsman’s appealing Saturday morning cartoon visuals. Every character you meet is so handsomely drawn and voiced that they instantly make every encounter stick in the memory. Sure, those visuals often undermine its sense of mystery and intrigue when you’re sitting in your guard hut – you can spot someone’s who’s sus as soon as they step up to your gate a lot of the time – but simply calling out their nonsense and refusing them entry is only part of what makes Lil Guardsman tick.

To get the full four-star rating, for example, interrogation is essential, the idea being to reveal the usually obvious reason why ‘yes, this old granny on her way to see her grandson’ should be let through or, ‘definitely not, this riff on a singing Disney princess is clearly a mass murderer and shouldn’t be let anywhere near anyone’ (even if the blood on her hands and dress were a dead giveaway). However, with only three action points to spend on each individual before giving them a big fat ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on your control box, you’ll need to weigh up whether to keep asking them questions, or use one of your five special tools to help you along.

These tools comprise of a (rather OP) truth spray, a metal detector, an x-ray machine (because, I don’t know, anachronisms seem to abound here), a whip and a special ring that lets you read runes and inscriptions. Use the right combo of actions to make them cough up the truth, and hey presto, you get a big medal for a job well done. If you only get part of the way there, however, then the end of day summary text will hint at other information you might have been able to get out of them had you been more precise in your questioning.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Versus Evil

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Versus Evil

It’s all quite gentle puzzle fare at the end of the day, though, and as long as you meet the average (and quite easily met) rating set by your gaggle of three advisers, you’ll be paid the same regardless of whether you interrogated everyone perfectly, or were only semi-successful. Later levels do ramp up the difficulty a touch, but you’ll rarely feel truly stumped or fail completely - and if you do, there’s a magical time-travelling macguffin just for this occasion. A character’s dialogue and behaviour usually make it clear which tool is most appropriate, and even though they all have limited uses per day, the threat of ‘running out’ of power crystals for them was never an issue for me. Early on, the power crystals you do have feel perfectly calibrated to how many times they actually need to be used per day, and soon you’re earning so much money that buying more of them isn’t a problem.

With the stakes set quite low, this can make the latter half of Lil Guardsman’s six-hour runtime feel a little samey - or at least like you’re just going through the daily motions over and over while you wait for the wider (and quite engaging) story to happen. It does make some good attempts to mix things up, though, with both return visits from repeat offenders (always a treat) as well as other light twists on the ‘yes/no entry’ formula. These include recruiting appropriate citizens for the ongoing war effort in the second half of the game (your choices writ large in Street Fighter-style beat ‘em-up segments at the end of the day), and at one point you even help plan the princess’ upcoming wedding by deciding what caterers, entertainment and tailors to let through. Honestly, whoever drew up this town’s labour laws needs a good talking to - or thrown in prison with all the goblins you’re told to ban entry for. Essentially, though, you’re doing pretty much the same thing at the end of the game as you are right at the start, with little growth or evolution in how you go about it.

Papers, Please eventually fell into similar routines as well, of course, but the brilliant thing about that game was the room it gave you to take a more human approach to your decision-making, so you could compassionately fudge the numbers if you felt like being kind or empathetic to someone’s plight. Here, though, the star rating clearly implies there’s a ‘correct’ way to deal with these folks, which at times can rub up against your desire to break the rules when you know they’re unjust. Case in point: those goblins I mentioned. Yes, this is another fantasy game using different species as a veil for racism, but to have the game effectively frame the best outcome as to ‘always obey the man’ and chuck these poor folks in jail doesn’t really sit right.

Of course, it’s not like you have to obey the man if you don’t want to. You still, fundamentally, have that choice, and one of the more impressive things about Lil Guardsman is just how much your decisions do actually matter over the course of the game. As small as they might seem initially, they do end up having surprisingly large ripple effects, and best of all, you get to see them play out in front of you, and then adapt and react to the consequences as the game reaches its dramatic climax. Who you draft up for the war effort will have quite a profound effect on whether your kingdom actually wins that war, for example, and even those wedding providers get a second outing in a way I didn’t see coming. There are other neat touches, too, that I won’t spoil. All I’ll say is that if you pay attention to your guard hut’s daily noticeboard announcements, there’s a lot of narrative satisfaction to be had in seeing some of its more extended plotlines evolve over time.

It’s deftly done, and goes a long way in smoothing over some of the cracks that emerge from its simplified take on Papers, Please’s gate-keeping. Overall, I had a very good time with it, and wolfed it all down in almost a single serving. It’s probably a good one to play with kids and young teens, too - a kind of Baby’s First Papers, Please, if you will, that can introduce them to the core concept while also giving them a jolly good story at the same time. For adults, Lil Guardsman may ultimately miss the point of what Papers, Please itself was trying to interrogate all those years ago, but you can’t deny its heart always tries to be in the right place.

This review is based on a retail build of the game, provided by publishers Versus Evil.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

Lil’ Guardsman

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC , Nintendo Switch

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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14 Steam Next Fest demos you should absolutely check out this June

Some curated demo highlights to kick off this latest Steam Next Fest

Image credit:Valve

Just in case your Steam wishlists weren’t already stocked up from this year’s Summer Geoff Fest bonanza, here we are with another edition of Valve’s Steam Next Fest , which has unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of free game demos on us, starting from today, June 19th, until Monday June 26th. You can view the entire June Next Fest line-up right here if you’d rather browse at your leisure, but we’ve also been playing some of the demos in advance to bring you some curated highlights of what we’ve enjoyed so far. We haven’t have access to every demo in this year’s Next Fest, I should note, but think of these more as some initial tasting suggestions to get you started, rather than a complete overview of what’s worth playing.

Looking for even more stuff to add to your Steam wishlist? Here are some more indie games we’re looking forward to playing this year, too.Watch on YouTube

June’s Next Fest has positively oodles of excellent games to try this week, and some of them we’ve written about already, such as Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To , murder mystery Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective , surreal first-person adventure Sludge Life 2 , excellent puzzler Viewfinder , brilliant citybuilder SteamWorld Build , motor roguelike Pacific Drive and loads more. Honestly, I could keep chucking game names at you all day, so I’ll pause there and let the fine words of the RPS Treehouse take over instead. You know, to throw more games at you. Catch!

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Mimimi Games

Katharine: The latest stealth strategy extravaganza from Desperados 3 and Shadow Tactics devs Mimimi Games, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew has quickly shot (cannonballed?) up to the top of my most anticipated games list ever since it was first announced earlier this year. I’ve already played a chunk of this year’s Steam Next Fest demo for it, too, so you can check out exactly what I thought of it here , if you want more details.

But in brief, you’ll be sneaking around gorgeous islands in this magical Lost Caribbean, avoiding enemy sight cones and making use of your undead crew’s supernatural powers to take down guards, slip through their ranks and generally do a lot of cool, fun murderin’ as you take down the evil Inquisition. I’m so glad Mimimi are carrying on this tradition of Commandos-style stealthing, and Shadow Gambit looks to be their finest game yet. Get it played, folks. This one’s properly special.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

En Garde!

Image credit:Fireplace Games

Alice0: Here’s the pitch: the colour-coded dodge/counter combat of Batman Arkham meets the trap-filled levels and mighty kicks of Dark Messiah Of Might & Magic for a 17th century swashbuckling adventure. A typical battle in En Garde! might see you quickly poke down one weak foe, take guy number two temporarily out the fight by tossing a bucket onto his head, then defeat three and four in a duel of dodges, parries, and counter-attacks, and just as the bucketman gets it off his head, you kick him off a ledge. Then as reinforcements arrive, slide coolly across the table and kick over a stack of barrels that send the new group tumbling down the stairs like meat skittles.

En Garde! is charming, a colourful cartoon world of escapades and japes. It is a game where you flow between fencing moves and environmental attacks because it’s great fun as much as because it’s practical. It is a game where you enter a room (likely in a cool way, like swinging in from a flagpole), quickly note the hazards you could use to your advantage and form a rough plan, then spot a lute sitting on a table and immediately abandon all caution because you cannot resist the urge to lob that lute at some guy’s face. You just know it will make a cool twonging noise. And it does. Joy.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Station To Station

Image credit:Prismatika

Alice Bee: Trains are one of those things that make even the most besuited and booted of grown adults go “Choo choo! A-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga!” with delight because they’re good and fun. The little voxel steam trains in Station To Station are extra cute, and they’re most useful engines, pottering around connecting all the buildings so that wheat gets to the windmill and flour gets to the bread and bread gets to the city. As you successfully connect networks, buildings send out a little glowing circle of productivity that causes the grass to burst into bright green colour, tress to pop up, flowers to grow, and all the little buildings to spring into greater life. It makes your brain do this face: :]

But although this is a very pretty game - a relaxing one, for fans of Dorfromantik - like that lovely tile-basher, there are hidden depths. You get extra money for finishing a rail network in a way that suddenly connects multiple supply chains at once, and there are random card draws to boost that money, or make a track cheaper. But also, ah, :]

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Word Factori

Image credit:Star Garden Games

Ollie: Anyone who knows me knows that I adore factory games, and I’ll try any of them once. Word Factori , I’ll definitely be trying more than once. What an ingenious idea. Instead of constructing circuit boards and pipes and solar panels, you’re churning out letters and words. It’s a word game. A factory word game. Goddamn.

In a move of beautiful simplicity, there’s only one production building in the game, and it only creates one thing: the letter “I”. From this humble character, you can create the entire alphabet. Run an “I” through a curving machine and it will bend it into the letter “C”. Create two “C"s and rotate one of them 180 degrees, then combine them to create the letter “O”. With such intuitive multi-step processes, you can create all 26 letters of the alphabet and then combine them to create the words that you need to complete each level. It’s one of the cleverest ideas I’ve seen in the genre, and if you’re interested at all in factory games or word games (or both), then give Word Factori a quick go and see what you think.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Underground Blossom

Image credit:Rusty Lake

Rebecca: There is no such thing as too much Rusty Lake , and I’m so pleased that the next game is set to come out hot on the heels of last year’s The Past Within . While these games are well-designed to be playable in any order, Underground Blossom feels like a particular treat for long-time fans, but also an accessible starting point for newcomers. It envisions the life of Laura Vanderboom — whose surreal and gruesome murder is a central event in the Rusty Lake mythos — as a tube train ride through a succession of “stations” representing key moments in her life. Laura hasn’t received much focus in a while, so a whole game dedicated to piecing together her story has the potential to open up a lot of interesting new avenues for the series.

This 15-minute demo whisks you through the game’s first two chapters, charting Laura’s infancy and childhood with her enigmatic mother Rose. While what we’ve seen so far is light on revelations, it’s satisfyingly full of all the slightly twisted logic puzzles we’ve come to know and love from the series. Expect the full two-hour game to unveil new hints to the overarching Rusty Lake mystery when it launches later this year.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Lies Of P

Image credit:Neowiz

Ed: Lies Of P is a dark, brooding Soulslike based on The Adventures Of Pinocchio. Does the most unlikely of alliances work, based off the demo? Ehhh, I’d encourage you lovely Soulslikers to see for yourselves. As for me, I think it’s an incredibly pretty effort which ticks the boxes you’d expect from a game clearly designed to mimic Bloodborne as closely as it possibly can. If you’re happy to settle for lots of doors “that can’t be opened from this side”, difficult mechanical bosses, and cryptic item descriptions, I think you’ll like it.

For me, though, Lies Of P requires settling. So far, I think it strays so close to Bloodborne it turns into a constant reminder that it isn’t, in fact, Bloodborne. But hey, Bloodborne still isn’t on PC, so maybe this is the next best thing.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes: Definitive Edition

Image credit:Dotemu / Gamera Games

Katharine: Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes was always one of those Nintendo DS games I meant to play back in the early 2010s, but never quite got round to. I also missed its original 2011 PC release at the time (shame on me), but thankfully the remaster wizards at Dotemu have brought back Capybara Games’ excellent puzzle RPG for the modern era with this shiny new Definitive Edition. It’s actually out in full next month, but this brief demo of its first three-odd levels has certainly whet my appetite for it.

Part match-three, part strategic fantasy chess, duels are won by manoeuvring your troops around your half of the battle board to create trios of similarly coloured warriors - pop ’em all in a same column, for example, and they’ll be able to launch an attack on your opponent’s half, hopefully bypassing their own troops to go straight for their HP base line at the rear. However, sticking them in a row will morph them into a defensive wall that can soak up enemy hits and protect your own HP bar in the process. It’s clever stuff, and this early taste has me itching for more complex encounters already. Do give it a try if you also missed this the first time round.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Ebenezer And The Invisible World

Image credit:Play On Worlds

James: This was revealed during the PC Gaming Show 2023 , presumably accompanied by the thuds of a thousand eyebrows hitting the nearest ceiling. Having played Ebenezer and the Invisible World ’s demo, however, I’m starting to think it deserves a little more respect. Yes, the very notion of a side-scrolling Metroidvania where you play as Scrooge is inherently odd, but in practice, the old coot’s unlikely adventure is more charming than befuddling.

Set after Ebe was redeemed in A Christmas Carol, we now find him making a load of ghost mates, his prior haunting leaving him as the only Londoner able to see and speak to them. Completing quests for certain spectres earns their special abilities – perfect for kicking down ‘vania-appropriate ability gates. The demo only offers a small handful of these spooky powers, but deploying them for platforming or combat is satisfying enough to forget that they’re being wielded by a man who is probably too old to climb stairs. It helps, too, that the hand-drawn art – especially the snowdusted London backdrop – is really rather beautiful.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Jumplight Odyssey

Katharine: This is another Next Fest demo I’ve already played in advance this year, and yep, Jumplight Odyssey has certainly sunk its teeth into me. You can find out exactly why League Of Geek’s roguelike colony sim is just the right balance of spaceship pressure cooker over here , if you wish, but in short, this is a great mix of spaceship management and roguelike planet hopping that combines the best bits of FTL, Rimworld and Theme Hospital in a single, space-themed soup. Hence the pressure cooker.

As well as managing the health and happiness of your crew, you’ll be fixing up your ship as you work to escape from the evil Zutopans - upgrading modules to get you further on your path toward the Forever Star, and clearing up the damage they caused in the aftermath of your initial escape. They’re hot on your trail throughout a run of Jumplight Odyssey, too, so you’ll need to think fast and plan ahead to keep one step ahead of them. The Steam Next Fest demo limits you to just three of these jumps, but with procedurally generated universes to explore, you could feasibly play it again and again and get a different experience every time.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue

Image credit:Aksys Games

Rebecca: Inescapable leans heavily into Danganronpa as its main inspiration and boasts music from the composer who scored the Zero Escape games, so there should be very little ambiguity about what you’re getting here: a closed-circle murder mystery visual novel with a huge (but rapidly diminishing) cast of eccentric characters. While the games that inspired it are distinctively Japanese, Inescapable is a Finnish production featuring a largely European cast, which makes for an interesting mix of influences. Protagonist Harrison gives off vibes of a former kid detective à la a modernised Famous Five, and — like so many of his fellow Brits around this time of year — is hoping to reconnect with the gang on holiday in Spain when he finds himself instead sidetracked into an all-inclusive killing game.

Given the familiar set-up, the demo is mainly focused on providing an intro to the characters and scenario specific to Inescapable. Nevertheless, the references to influential predecessors range from blink-and-you’ll-miss-them to borderline out-of-context spoilers, and this preview even opens with a Team Rocket quote to demonstrate just how well the devs know the specific type of weirdo they hope to lure into playing the full game. (It’s me, I’m the weirdo.)

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Lil’ Guardsman

Image credit:Versus Evil

Katharine: In this fantasy Papers, Please -like, you play as 12-year-old Lil who’s subbing in for her dad on guard duty while he’s down the pub and may or may not be doing a spot of Goblinball gambling. Not exactly the best example of ‘good parenting’, perhaps, but Lil is a surprisingly capable young lass whose sass and witty disposition makes her a good guard shed hang. It also helps that Lil’s home, The Sprawl , is considerably less bleak than Papers, Please’s Arstotzka, with the developers seemingly more concerned about making fun jokes than grim social commentary.

But the rhythms of this short demo will feel instantly familiar to Lucas Pope’s masterpiece. You have three actions you can take for each citizen that rocks up at the guard shed, including asking them a question, phoning a member of the council to ask for more information, or using an item in your special locked cupboard of tricks. The daily royal writ may also include certain objectives for you to take note of as well - such as phoning councilwoman Ashe if a speaker for the guild shows up, or watching out for old grandparents who might just be smuggling drugs into the kingdom under the pretences of food for their loved ones. Then it’s a case of letting them in, or denying them entry. You know the drill. It’s good, puzzle-y fun, and at the end of each shift you get a strange little story scene that moves the plot forward. The demo includes a surreal quiz show dream sequence about Lil deciding who to send off to rescue The Sprawl’s lost princess, for example, which is both endearing and horrifying in equal measure. A very strong opening.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Wood & Weather

Image credit:Paper House

Rachel: Playing Wood and Weather ’s demo was an absolute delight, and now I can’t stop thinking about how easy my life would be if I were a little wooden person living in a clunky toy town. It’s a sandbox god game where you play as a disembodied hand who is helping the residents of this little paradise with their problems. Is someone having trouble moving their car? Just pick it up and move it back onto the road. Does someone want a pineapple? Scour the toy town and bring them one!

It’s a lot of fun interacting with the world, and you can be as helpful - or as mischievous - as you like. Everything is physics-based so you can politely help out, or feel more chaotic and fling objects around like a toddler having a toybox tantrum. You can also change the weather with a giant weather machine, and the wooden folks will react to their newly changed surroundings - it’s adorable. I can’t wait to poke and prod my giant blue finger around Wood & Weather when it eventually releases (hopefully soon).

Download the demo on Steam right here .

New Cycle

Image credit:Daedalic Entertainment

Ollie: New Cycle is giving me some serious Banished vibes. It’s a pretty, laid back post-apocalyptic citybuilder that steadily ramps up the complexity and challenge over time, forcing you to make some tricky Frostpunk -esque decisions for the overall betterment of your people. Certain things are a bit rough around the edges in the demo, but all the information is very nicely presented across the main UI and various info panels, so I never really felt lost. I also dig that you can toggle at any time between snapping new buildings to a grid or placing them in a completely freeform manner.

On release, the game will have a campaign and other modes set across multiple biomes and map types. In the demo, you can only choose to play the sandbox mode on the same pregenerated Meadows map, but it still gave me a strong taste of the engaging, competent settlement simulator that New Cycle may become.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Let’s! Revolution!

Image credit:Buck / Hawthorn Games

Katharine: I missed the Future Of Play stream where Let’s! Revolution! debuted, but hot damn, this is the fantasy Minesweeper roguelike I never knew I needed. Big thanks to Citizen Sleeper developer Jump Over The Age for tweeting about this last week and putting it on my radar - now I can pay that forward by telling you lot about it as well.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Let’s! Revolution! not only looks gorgeous, but it’s also got a very cool puzzle-y heart at the centre of it. As you hunt down the wonderfully smug King of Beebom in pursuit of your titular revolution, you’ll need to root out his location by flipping over tiles in each level and taking out his guards. The catch is that you don’t know where these punks are, and bumping into them on road tiles will drain you of a precious heart. Non-road tiles are safe, though, and each one has a number telling you how many road tiles surround it. That’s where the Minesweeper element comes in, and you’ll need to make strategic use of your abilities (which all have their own cooldowns) and replenishing your energy (by turning over new tiles) to win the day. It’s very, very good, and the demo lets you experience a whole run of 10 or so levels too.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Ebenezer Scrooge and the Invisible World

PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S , PC , Nintendo Switch

En Garde!

PC

Inescapable

Video Game

Jumplight Odyssey

PC

Let’s! Revolution!

PC

Lies of P

PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Lil’ Guardsman

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC , Nintendo Switch

Might & Magic Clash of Heroes

iOS , PS3 , Xbox 360 , PC , Nintendo DS

New Cycle

PC

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Station to Station

Video Game

Underground Blossom

Android , iOS , PC

Wood & Weather

PC , Mac

Word Factori

PC

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