It takes a lot to sell me a fantasy game because I just generally don't like fantasy settings. However, if you take a fantasy setting and word replace everything with sufficiently advanced technology, I'm going to be all over it.
From a CICADATAMATA" trailer where it's just white text on a red background with a faint player character in the background. The text says: I AM OKAY. THE AIR JUST HEAVY TODAY. I AM OKAY. THE AIR JUST HEAVY TODAY. I AM OKAY. THE AIR JUST HEAVY TODAY. I AM OKAY. THE AIR JUST HEAVY TODAY.
I'm so hyped for this game.
Yeah I don't think this move converts PC gamers to PS5/PS6. Maybe it's just me, but if you're the type of person that was buying Sony first party games on PC, you probably never bought, or would have bought, a console anyway. PC ports were just extra income on top of what they sold on console.
Snowrunner still haunts me in my dreams.
Decided to play through the CICADAMATA demo one more time before the demo self-destructs. This game is so goddamn cool. I'm really looking forward to full release.
this was funnier in my head
The box art for Brute Force for the Xbox, featuring a dinosaur man, a redhead woman with 2 futuristic laser pistols, a brunette woman with a sniper rifle, and a 00s Xbox space marine guy with two (2) miniguns.
You ever think about how, after making the greatest space sim of all time, Digital Anvil made Brute Force and then went out of business?
CICADAMATA is Xen but instead if it was awesome and had a breakcore soundtrack and glitchy super animated and stylish graphics. Has to be seen to be believed. I am nowhere near good enough at this game to make it look as cool as the trailer, but I am loving it.
I appreciate the commitment to 4:3 aspect ratio.
Dropping off a delivery.
vitvitDRIVER 3D is proof that Easy Delivery Co. might inspire a new microgenre of kei truck arcade driving games. Thought this was Crazy Taxi, but it's actually more Tony Hawk. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the scoring system, so I didn't like it as much I wanted, but I love the look.
VS2026 WAS a great upgrade from 2022 3 months ago, but not anymore. I don't know what changed other than I've noticed a lot of VS2026 updates happening in the past couple weeks.
It's just so funny how all of Microsoft's massive negative PR in the past few years is 100% self-inflicted. Nobody forced Microsoft to make Windows 11 bad. Nobody forced them to make Visual Studio bad. They've just completely lost their minds top to bottom.
Since I haven't touched it in a while, VS2022 has updates and now I'm deathly afraid to ever patch this thing for fear that it gets infected with whatever is in 2026. It's just so crazy how Microsoft has been making all of its core products measurably for literally no reason.
The UI is simultaneously one of the coolest I've ever seen and also one of the worst.
I can still rewatch that old trailer though, and wish I was playing a video game version of that instead. It's such a great trailer.
Tried Marathon because Bungie still has enough residual goodwill that I'm willing to try a game that I probably won't like, and as expected I don't really like it. Everything I find interesting about Marathon would be better served by it just being a normal singleplayer shooter.
The way it was failing, did remind me of when I tried out the Copilot autocomplete last year (it sucked). 🤔
Okay so not just me. I'm not really surprised it got worse, because that's the trend for everything from Microsoft now. Only makes release 2026 even more of an outlier, because clearly somebody caught wind they got away with releasing something good and have now "fixed it."
Flak!
Going back to VS2022, this is working like how I remember it. 2022 isn't as responsive as 2026, but Intellisense working a whole lot better and being a lot less intrusive means it doesn't matter how fast 2026 starts up.
I don't know what changed, but VS2026's Intellisense autocomplete seems to have gotten much worse? It's weird too because I swear about a year ago (in VS2022), it was getting really good, and VS2026's initial release period I thought it was a pretty marked improvement overall.
Can't have flat shaded particles in a mid-90s game, we need giant sprites I'm afraid. So I've brought out _The Explosion_. Got it down to 23 colors and merged into the main palette, and then hacked in playback. Next to clean that code so I can throw sprites around like Super Mario. #gamedev #lowpoly
Honestly I have a hard time with "building" games these days, because it's sort of antithetical to a lot of the things that interest me in terms of game design. I clicked off a lot of Next Fest trailers as soon as I saw a construction UI. Shout out to Aviassembly for being a big exception I loved.
SimplePlanes 1 is a lot jankier and weirder in a way that, while I also didn't really get into it (Kerbal Space Program scratches that itch for me), I thought was cooler. My takeaway from playing the demo was mostly that I'm sure a lot of people will like this game because it's very well made.
A Chinook-like thing with a ton of weapons on it including most hilariously a Maverick.
That's just a boat! The game has surface and underwater stuff.
This is the first time I've ever seen the P.1214 in a game. This is a big moment! It even has VTOL.
There's cars too.
The only one I've played so far is SimplePlanes 2, which I didn't really vibe with. I can't help but be impressed by the breadth of its physics, but something about the "so polished that every corner and rough edge has been rounded off and sanded down" feel of it turned me off.
Next Fest demos downloaded for the February 2026 Steam Next Fext CICADAMATA FIRESTARTERS Lost Host MUSYNX:RETURN nophenia Poolscape Sherman Commander SimplePlanes 2 TOHOTOPIA vivitDRIVER 3D
After spending about 2 hours scrolling through Next Fest this is what I ended up downloading. It's pretty nuts how big this is now that you'll probably never see the end of any list, but that's how it goes. Apparently writing your game's name in ALLCAPS is in style too.
It's been a while I do an Unreal check in, but I think they're phasing this out? They look really bad, and they used to be (still are?) part of the default post processing settings, so it's one of those tells when I see it that somebody didn't put much thought into messing with render settings.
The documentation for the stock lens flare in Unreal Engine circa 4.27, but it still looks like this apparently because I keep seeing it in trailers for Next Fest games.
Every time I see the Unreal Engine stock lens flare effect in a Next Fest trailer 😩
Description I create immersive worlds designed to soothe the mind, inspire contemplation, and transport you into dreamlike serenity. All of my videos are created using 3D software. I do not use generative AI.
I appreciate it when people put stuff like this in their descriptions.
Ancillary is a word that I really, really want to mean something like "unrelated to" but every time I look it up to make sure that's what it means before I say it, that's not what it means 😔
Everything else about the demo aside from the flight models, sounds, and camera is really rough. I'm kind of surprised they decided to release this given how early it feels, but at the very least the actual airplane related stuff so far is great.
