I've only gotten through a few, myself. House Flipper 2 seemed like an interesting iteration on the original (from what I played of that). Not necessarily for me, but I think it'll please those that are looking for that. I played quite a bit more Kingdom Eighties than I expected I would. Having just played the first Kingdom for the first time not too long ago, Eighties had a lot of changes that I was pleased with, and the theme is great. I will say that making an army of young children is...a bit iffy, hah. Though playing the "big kids" trying to protect their town is pretty nice.

Still have a The Invincible and Lies of P to check out this weekend, and whatever else seems interesting. Any recommendations for other demos that shouldn't be missed?

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[–] porotoman99 4 points 1 year ago

Stuff I liked:

Viewfinder: My favorite demo of all of the ones I played. A really neat puzzle mechanic that seems well implemented with lots of creative variations.
The Invincible: I was interested in this one before the demo, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It seems to mostly be walking around, examining things, and listening to conversations between the player character and someone else. The graphics are quite pretty and it seems like the story will be good, so I will probably take a look at it at some point in the future.
Crime O'Clock: An interesting take on the hidden object genre where you have to examine a sequence of scenes from an event to solve a crime.
Cipher Zero: A simple puzzle game with a neat aesthetic. New mechanics are introduced in a way that makes them intuitive by the time another one is introduced. Some puzzles have multiple solutions, and each one is counted for full completion of a level.
Kanji Industry: An automation puzzle game where you build Japanese letters from their component parts. Needs some serious polish, but it is an interesting concept.
Cuisineer: A game where you inherit your parents' restaurant. You need to explore dungeons and kill monsters to gather ingredients to make food, and complete quests for people in town to earn recipes.
Word Factori: A similar concept to Kanji Industry, but with more polish. You build English letters and words using only the letter "I" as a base to work with.
Little Kitty, Big City: Great animation, funny characters, and lots of little things to do with the end goal of returning home.
Station to Station: A puzzle game where you have to connect various buildings with train stations to create a complete network of supply and demand.

Stuff I didn't like (or at least not enough to buy):

Sea of Stars: The art was very pretty, but the gameplay just didn't capture me for some reason. It seems like the demo takes place somewhere in the middle of the story without providing any context, making it feel like you have just continued someone else's save file in the middle of a game.
Pygmalion: The puzzles were fine, but it got a bit annoying to constantly have the gameplay interrupted by story, and the story constantly interrupted by gameplay. Maybe it would have felt better if there were large story chunks at the end of a set of levels instead of a few sentences after every single level. It probably didn't help that the demo only shows the first 3 sets of levels, which are probably the easiest in the game, all able to be solved in just a few seconds.
Cardbob: The aesthetic of cardboard robots is cool, and using the trailing bandana to show remaining HP is super unique, but the gameplay felt a bit generic and I could never find a way to survive the room immediately after the first boss.
Robotherapy: Very funny story, but that's about all it has going for it.
Tiny Room Stories: Rift Escape: This one was pretty good and seems like it has an interesting story, but I ended up getting stuck in a room for about 10 minutes before giving up since there was no hint option available in the game.
Broken Lens: A spot the difference game where you play as a robot with a broken lens in one of its eyes. The screen is split into two halves, and you have to click and drag to explore a scene to find discrepancies. It has a hint function, but none of the objects are randomized in the scenes, which trivializes the gameplay if you don't feel like finding the objects yourself. I liked how there were hidden papers in each of the levels that had a little bit of lore in them.
Street of Secrets: Another hidden object game, the gimmick of this one seems to be that the objects are hidden in multiple rooms within a house that you have to navigate between. Nothing really wrong with this one, it just doesn't stand out to me in any special way.
One Lonely Outpost: I was previously planning on buying this one, but the demo convinced me otherwise. Terrible inventory management, the days are too short to do anything meaningful, and there is little explanation of what you are supposed to do.
Lovux: A neat puzzle game, but the music got really annoying really fast, and the animations for interacting with things took a long time, making a large part of the game just waiting for animations to finish so you can click on the next thing.