Demo

Next Fest: Umigari – The Fish Might be People, The People Might Be Fish

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I downloaded a few demos for this quarter’s Next Fest but played very few. Rather than trawling through categories to find interesting demos, I let Steam pick for me via the “Recommended for You” section. Having recently playing the likes of Hell is Us, Yuppie Psycho, along with a smattering of Devour and Outlast Trials, it is understandable that Steam suggested mostly horror titles.

One was a typing battle royale. Like playing Russian Roulette with Mavis Beacon. Sadly, I didn’t find it all that fun. Umigari caught my eye because there’s a big ole’ unsettling fish on the thumbnail. Horror and fishing? Sign me up!

Hmm what’s that? Have I heard of Dredge?

Yes! It’s even in my library, I really should play it some day…..Anyways, back to Umigari.

I started the demo awakens on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. The only other inhabitant? A fish merchant who tells me to go catch some puffer fish so I can buy upgrades from him. Seems like he’s the enterprising type then.

Armed with a harpoon, off I went to spear some fish dutifully placing them in my ship so I could sell them to the Fish Merchant. Who, by the way, looks vaguely like a fish himself. I think it’s the eyes, those bulging, spaced out eyes.

I gathered enough fish to upgrade the reel speed of my harpoon and increased the boat’s speed. The rest of the money I used to gas up the boat and set off for a nearby island.

This too was a small island. It’s only inhabitant a school girl. She asked for a ride back to the island I just came from and got in the boat.

On the way, I catch some tuna, and right before we reach the island, the girl disappears! Maybe she didn’t like all the dead fish touching her feet. At least she left a map with a treasure chest and what looks like another gas station location.

The tuna sold for more than the pufferfish so I was able to upgrade my boats fuel capacity. I ventured off towards the treasure chest on the map which lead me to a sunken wind farm. I used my harpoon to hit the targets on the windmill blades to get them spinning. One of them dropped the treasure, a sonar system for the boat.

Much easier to catch those fish now that they can’t hide.

I purchased the final upgrades for the boat and harpoon. I’m assuming it’s the final ones for the demo.

I set off towards the next gas station. I didn’t take the most direct route which resulted in my boat running out of fuel and sending me back to the original island mere feet away from my destination.

Once againI set out, this time on a straight course. Along the way I spotted a massive fish the shape and size of a freight train breaching the surface. It didn’t seem to take notice of the small vessel right next to it. Lucky me.

As I once again approached my destination, I saw the burning husk of my previous vessel. What does this mean? Am I doomed to return to the Fish Merchant until I unravel the mysteries of this ocean? Wandering the oceans and facing it’s horrors until the end of time? I do not have time to ponder these questions. The boat needs gas, the Fish Merchant needs fish.

My fish were still aboard unharmed. I picked those up and sold them to the fish seller (the same one from before!) on the new island.

Across the way was a high school, half submerged. There were new fish to catch here. They looked strange from my boat, bigger, and wrapped in something. They were also very fast. I managed to land one and as pulled it out of the ocean, it was indeed wrapped in something, a jacket by the looks of it.

I ventured off the boat into the high school and that’s where I found even more of these clothed fish. I…I…I think these fish may have been people at one point. Now I’m harpooning them to sell for boat upgrades. Such is life in Umigari.

There wasn’t an option to save that I could find and I had to step away from the demo. It didn’t kick me out and I think there was at least a little more there to do. I didn’t feel like repeating the hour I’d already done and an hour is plenty of time with a demo for me.

Umigari is going on the wishlist. I’m intrigued to see where this one ends up. Are the fish actually people? What’s the deal with the Fish Merchant? Can I harpoon that giant, train sized, fish with my human sized harpoon? I kinda have to know.

Tavern Keeper Demo Impressions

Kluwes2 Comments

I got an email the other day from Greenheart Games that the demo for their new game, Tavern Keeper, was available. Admittedly, I didn’t actually read the email, just skimmed the subject and kept a mental note to check it out some time. Had I read the email, I would have known this was a limited time demo ending on July 29th. Lucky for me, because of the recent changes to Demos on Steam, the demo was extended for a few days. I couldn’t track down the new end date of the demo, though I didn’t try harder than clicking on the latest game news in Steam. If it’s a game you want to take a look at, you should probably check it out sooner rather than later.

You might know Greenheart Games for their last successful venture, Game Dev Tycoon circa 2013. That’s one of those games that’s always recommended when I’m trawling Reddit for “recent” tycoon games. I played it, it’s holds up to the hype, it’s on mobile, PC, Switch, and Netflix – wait Netflix has games now?

I digress, I’m here to talk about the demo for Tavern Keeper!

Do you like cozy, fantasy vibes? I like cozy fantasy, vibes and Tavern Keeper’s got ’em. The graphic’s are of the inoffensive, cartoony variety. Though, the people don’t seem to have arms connecting their wrists to their shoulders which is, well, a little unnerving. And the music! The music is lush and warm and makes me want to curl up with a book in front of a large fire place. If there’s a soundtrack I will buy it, without question, on release.

You’ve probably already guessed the premise of the game. You run a Tavern. Surprise! But not a serious tavern, no this is a rather silly place. Full of parody’s of fantasy characters and staff who were fired from their last job for impersonating the elderly. The writing is full of quipy, quips made even better when narrated by our Narrator, Steven Pacey. I didn’t know who that was but when I got around to reading the demo announcement email it says:

You might know Steven’s work from the many audio-books he narrates, for example from Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy works, and several books of the Doctor Who bibliography, to name just a few. Recently, he’s also been featured on House of the Dragon, World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, and Love, Death & Robots.

Well I don’t know Steven’s work, but I would sure like to. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have a bunch of audio books to put on hold.

There are some patron’s who you can interact with via a book above their head. There are two of these in the demo and they are read and voiced by the Narrator. You have two choices at the end of every page that seem like they are the “Nice Response” and the “Mean Response”. Depending on your choices different events can happen. With the narration as good as it is, I’m definitely looking forward to going through more of these on release.

I can see this style of writing and parody wearing thin for some after a while. Personally, I think it’s great and want more of it/ It’s like a family friendly version of Hello from the Magic Tavern.

Along with managing your staff and ordering ale from the traveling merchant, you are tasked with decorating the place. Now I’m not a huge fan of free form building systems, and especially not ones where every piece can be move around on an x,y,z axis. I’m just not that creative. But if you do like that, Tavern Keeper seems to do it pretty well.

Look I made this owl with a top hat and placed a rug underneath the table and it wasn’t horrible:

You can also do some wonky things, like create the tavern’s new Teapot overlord:

The UI can get cluttered at times. It didn’t get in my way of doing things but with a bunch of menus up things can get a little claustrophobic. I also found it slightly confusing when I unlocked some furniture but couldn’t use it in the demo.

Overall, the demo did it’s job. My interest in Tavern Keeper has been peeked and I have not removed the game from my wishlist all in under an hour of game time. You can tell they’re holding some systems and menus back from the demo. There are still some menus that are boarded up and haven’t been unlocked during the demo. Furniture and items seem to have a durability meter so maybe they can break. It also looks like things can be set on fire so I’m interested to see how that all plays out. It looks like Tavern Keeper will have some added complexity over Game Dev Tycoon with more resources to manage. But it looks like it will maintain the cozy, chill vibe, that Game Dev Tycoon has as well. With that said, it’s not an immediate buy for me right now when it releases in Early Access at the end of this year. I’m not in the market for a tycoon game at the moment but in a few months I might be.