Let's Review Demos From The February 2025 Steam Next Fest - Part 2 [I Have So Many Games That Are Clones It's Not Funny]
by zombiepie
Author's Note: This is the second part to a two-part series in which I discuss and review a set of game demos I played during the February/March 2025 Steam next Fest event. If you missed the first part of this series, here's a link:
The games discussed during this blog include:
- Kabuto Park
- Static Dread: 15 Nights at the Old Lighthouse
- Moroi
- Neo Junk City
- Rogue Like Deck Builder
- Seven Seas Adventures
Kabuto Park
What is it?
It's time to talk about a Pokémon clone! Well, Kabuto Park has a bit more going for it to prevent it from being dismissed as an outright Pokémon clone, but make no mistake, your feelings about Pokémon will largely determine how you feel about this game. Do you enjoy getting one of everything among hundreds of possible collectible fighters, or do you find that and the innate grinding aspect of monster-capturing combat games mentally or physically exhausting? Your answer practically determines my and anyone's recommendation of Kabuto Park to you. Nonetheless, the game requires exploring a small set of environments for bugs you attempt to pit in combat arenas to unlock further rewards and areas to capture new bugs to test out in combat. Instead of using previously captured insects to "tame" ones in the wild, Kabuto Park immediately transitions you to minigames, where you must perform quick-time events to "capture" insects in the wild. Like Pokémon, rarer bug types are more challenging to spawn than standard varieties, but the former's stats are almost always better. The game more clearly segregates the combat from the capturing, with battles entirely found in an arena with opponents that progressively get harder. Also, to level up your bugs, you need to use candies on them, which you collect by selling duplicate insects or by outright buying them from a store. The combat also defaults to battles of 3 vs. 3, and each bug only adds its core stats to your team stats and adds just one clickable attack or buff limited by a timer.
What's in the demo?
The demo is incredibly straightforward. While it presents what I assume is the game's first world and a limited portion of that starting area, there's enough here to get an idea of what Kabuto Park brings to the monster-capturing table. You spend most of your time at the start capturing bugs in one park, selling duplicates so you can get candy and resources to level up the bugs you want to keep, and starting combat when you are ready. There's no penalty for trying a match in the arena too early and losing, and that leads me to classify this title as a "cozy game." The bug-capturing minigame is bog standard, with you needing to land an oscillating icon in a bar's green or blue portions. The good news is that the menu can make this easier or outright irrelevant, so those with physical disabilities or issues performing dexterity-based minigames don't need to worry. The grind to upgrade your bugs is also quick and mostly painless. There does come a point in the demo when you can try to continue on, but it eventually poses opponents who are just too much for you to beat, given the limited toolset and backdrops you can utilize in the demo. I actively disliked that and would have preferred a hard cut to a "thank you for playing!" statement after meeting a certain checkpoint or threshold. Weirdly enough, the combat is not the focal point and often doesn't require a ton of thought. If your team has better stats than your opponent, you'll probably win; if your team's stats are worse than your opponent's, you still can beat them, but you must be quick about clicking on your bug's unique abilities.
When you get into a match, it's essentially a game of sumo wrestling with your bugs attempting to push over your opponent's bugs beyond the side of an arena. The powers of your bugs either increase your ability to resist your opponents' attacks, buff their core stats for a short time, or deal attacks to the other side. I have to be honest: I don't entirely understand how the game's math works because there were times when my team was above and beyond my opponent's, and yet, they had me at the ropes for a bit until I clicked pop-ups to reverse the tides of battle in a matter of second. Nonetheless, grinding exists to solve every possible problem the game presents before you. Even if you don't know how to time things perfectly with the abilities, you'll almost always win if your bug teams have better stats. After playing around with some things, sticking with single bugs hyper-specialized in one of the game's core three stats caused my team to perform better than having three well-rounded ones. Nonetheless, there's something undeniably addicting when you see someone you're up against using a bug you've never seen before and going, "Man, I want that," and searching your surroundings to try and get that. The issue is that exploring new environments uses currency, and you must be careful to keep your coffers flush so you can continue scrounging for bugs where you should be optimally searching for them. I found that design foible a bit weird, considering all it does is slow the feedback loop the game establishes. Imagine if you got to a new area in a Pokémon game and it said, "Sorry, but you can't check out what's here until you can spare 20 Gold per turn to search for stuff! Why not grind out a few turns in the starting park instead?" That would be shitty, and yet, that's how things can occasionally play out in Kabuto Park.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Probably not. The grinding in this game was incredibly repetitious and not entirely rewarding. Likewise, the core combat is mindless and feels like a complete afterthought. I hope that the environment in which the demo takes place is one of at least a half dozen because while the game utilizes a cutesy art style, it gets samey rather quickly because you spend so much time seeing the same animations on the same backdrops repeatedly. Worse, because the bugs only offer one move during combat, and that move is only basically expressed during battle, there's not a lot of visual pizzazz or variety with the battles. They all feel the same even as the difficulty starts to jump. The one nice thing about Pokémon is that when you capture a new monster, you're bound to see one unique attack animation with that monster. That's not the case with Kabuto Park, and it further adds to the game's core issue of lacking the punch of the game series from which it's drawing inspiration. There's not enough game juice in Kabuto Park.
Static Dread: 15 Nights at the Old Lighthouse
What is it?
The first line of Static Dread's Steam page says everything you need to know about this game: "Lovecraft meets Papers, Please." The developers are being that blunt on their Steam page. The game starts with your character, who sees everything from a first-person perspective, starting a job manning and operating a lighthouse. There's some light foreshadowing that a global calamity has happened, and this lighthouse is an invaluable resource in making ships arrive safely at a nearby dock. However, while things appear somewhat quaint in the daytime when the game transitions to night, the Cthulhu-base hijinks start to happen, and with the passing of each night, further risks appear. At the same time, your attempt to perform your duties becomes harder and more problematic. Sometimes, you'll notice an aura emanating from the ground, and that is your cue to hide in a closet to avoid being dragged into a dark abyss. Other times, you'll need to check on computer terminals or lamps to make sure their needs or timers are met while needing to calculate when you need to move to a different safe area to avoid taking damage or facing harm. Unlike Papers, Please, you navigate a 3D environment and need to traverse through a handful of environments to avoid experiencing fail states or game overs.
What's in the demo?
The demo presents the main game's first handful of night shifts. The basic tasks involve listening to radio calls and using a clipboard to determine if a ship meets the qualifications to dock. The "conflict" with your decision to allow ships to dock, which the game openly says ties into "multiple endings," is if you kindle the lighthouse's lamp to guide them to town or tell a coastguard to send them back into a maelstrom that will likely kill them. Also, there are early hints that the nearby village's denizens pray to ancient sea gods that may or may not be the source of your hostile nighttime encounters. Therefore, if you do not give them enough "ammunition" to view you as one of their own, they are more than happy to entirely off you at the drop of a hat. Though the game's developer, a small Siberian indie outfit named "solarsuit.games," openly advertises it as being cut from the same cloth as Papers, Please, it's a much more mechanically driven experience. The menial tasks the game presents have a much more immediate impact on you and your character's safety, and your ducking and hiding from Cthulhu-based threats reminded me a lot of Five Nights At Freddy's. Also, the game is more direct about depicting the results of your choices than Papers, Please. If you decide to send a ship to be consumed by a cosmic deity, you'll overhear on the radio its captain screaming in agony while they shared all of the gruesome details.
So, let's tackle the elephant in the room. How do we all feel about an indie developer making a clone of Papers, Please, stripping out the political commentary, and making the gameplay more of a focal point? Is that fair game for an indie developer, or is it gross? You don't need a doctoral degree to know the repetition of "Papers, Please" has a purpose. While your character toils away at the doldrums of working at an immigration checkpoint, they have to assess their safety with their employer while wrestling with their humanity as they hear people out and struggle with internal and external threats to their wellbeing. Not only did the game speak to how easy it is for totalitarian states to force good people to work with "the system," it also challenged people to think about the long-term impacts of what might first appear as one-off flippant decisions. It's one of the most potent games ever made, yet it is also popular in the streaming and Twitch crowd, where people obsessively talk about being "experts" on how to speed-run the paperwork mechanics. Like popular culture's obsession with the Squid Games, with most failing to comprehend its political and social commentary, the same has happened to Papers, Please, and games like Static Dread aren't helping. For those people and the over-the-top reaction YouTubers, Static Dread seems perfect for them. The spooky vibes are incredible, and the gameplay hooks are far more prompt. And yet, I can't help but feel bad that someone else is exploiting the present disconnect between how most people play Papers, Please and what the game's developer intended for people to learn from it.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Maybe. I might be coming across as too harsh on this game, considering it provides a compelling world with an impeccable sense of atmosphere and a largely riveting twist. Even in this short and small exhibition, there were times when I felt a sense of tension with the game's underlying conflict. Either I sent ships away to meet their doom against a monolithic eldritch god, or I let them in and rolled the dice on cultists not sacrificing them to a blood ritual. If there is one oddity worth mentioning, the demo doesn't provide compelling reasons for you to open your door when villagers knock. Presently, the result is always a creepy interaction that physically leaves your character worse off. There could be an endgame strategy that doesn't manifest during the demo. Still, the game clearly shows the village's denizens being broadly in line with the malevolent forces in play. And therein lies another problem that may or may not be addressed in the game's full release. Static Dread plays out its cards almost immediately. It is a game about fighting against the malevolent forces of cosmic horror and never lets you forget that fact. If that's the case, what honestly will differentiate its promised multitude of endings, and what emotional swings can or will exist? Papers, Please benefits from multiple endings because you're never all that clear on whose allegiances you have locked yourself into, and thus, its endings are genuinely surprising. But because Static Dread essentially lays everything out in its first act, I don't know what it does to capture even half of Papers, Please's weightiness.
Moroi
What is it?
Moroi is a top-down or isometric action game that plays like Diablo but with a more overtly "metal" tone. The game starts with your character waking up in what I assume is a torture dungeon in a grotesque world wherein your fellow prison mates are subject to awful and visceral forms of bodily torture. The game has puzzle-oriented sequences mixed in with action combat arenas in which your character needs to use either direct physical attacks(i.e., swords and battleaxes) or ranged attacks(i.e., guns and railguns). The melee-focused weapons have some basic combos for those who want to get your Square-Square-Triangle on, whereas every gun in the game is subject to a cooldown wherein you need to avoid overheating it. As you off wave after wave of enemies, you fill in a blood lust meter, which allows your character to perform incredibly graphic finishing moves depending on which weapon you are using when you attempt to trigger it; it could involve using a knife to disembowel someone or shoving a gun down someone's throat and pulling the trigger a half dozen times. Moroi is a checkpoint-based action game with you often restarting at the start of a combat arena and during its initial phases should you meet a premature death. The game also has a linear story oriented around your character being a long-fabled force for chaos but who has completely lost their memories of that.
What's in the demo?
The game's starting environment is an odd mix of highly visceral combat and isometric adventure game puzzle-solving. There's a correct sequence in which you must explore the starting hub world, which serves as the game's tone-setter. There is an assortment of grotesqueries to talk to, and each ends up providing an item that needs to be redeemed by another NPC. The demo has a few other moments like this where it hits pause on its up-tempo combat arenas to lay its horrifying world on you. Near the end of the demo, there's another cinematic sequence wherein you play as a prince of a forest and are implored by your mother, who is displayed as a wooden doll, to talk to your brothers and ask them about what ails them. You are a regular cloth and cotton-filled toy, and as you meet with your tree brethren, they slowly rip off your body parts and leave you as a shambling corpse that drags its husk to a grave site that unleashes some horrible evil on the world. Moroi is graphic both during its story sequences and especially when combat begins. When things do pop off, you face enemies in waves and either engage in a combo-based melee strategy, which is limited slightly by your stamina, or a gun-based technique, which I mentioned has a cooldown. On anything that isn't the lowest difficulty setting, death comes quickly if you are not careful, and if there is one complaint I have, it is that I don't think the game does enough to visualize you getting at or near low health or in danger of facing a game over. The game also surrounds you with enemies when you least expect it, which can be annoying considering how the checkpointing works. I would also say that the combat is a bit "safe," with you needing to pop off your standard Diablo-like hotkeys while mashing away at your mouse, and the combat arenas themselves aren't exactly rocking the boat.
Nonetheless, Moroi is a game that bleeds metal. It's going to be polarizing, but Moroi has a look. It utilizes a mix of traditional 2D animation, stop-motion physical objects, and fully rendered 3D models. And no matter what aesthetic it is, everything is incredibly gross. While the game is actively repulsive at times and not everyone's cup of tea as a result, mechanically, the game is very approachable. The game has a decent number of quality-of-life features and various difficulty settings, making it mechanically more approachable than its visual design suggests. On the easiest difficulty setting, the game practically becomes a Musou, with you chaining fatality moves after only a few basic combos. In contrast, on harder difficulties, you have to put far more consideration into items, hotkeys, and your usual Diablo-like cooldown abilities. I also have to praise the game for its pacing. The combat sequences almost always happen in arenas that lock you into place until you kill everyone, and atmospheric puzzle sequences always complement them; as such, the game has "breathing room." These quieter moments also did a great job of keeping me interested in following its story. It's an effective comparison that many in the games press have already made, but Moroi is narratively and visually reminiscent of Mad God (2021) by Phil Tippett. If the visual and narrative rollercoaster that was Mad God got your blood running, Moroi is something you should add to your Steam wishlist immediately.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Yes! I'm not one to use the word "metal" as an adjective in everyday conversation, but it does feel like the best descriptor for Moroi. The game bleeds style, even if its core mechanics are basic or rote. The combo system is "nice" because there's more to it than just mashing away and hoping for the best, but it's not the most in-depth system. Switching between melee and ranged attacks often proved dicey in part because the enemies almost always rush at you, and you are almost always positioned to do one or the other. Unless something changes from the demo, you likely won't switch between combat styles like in a Supergiant Games joint. But the game remains memorable thanks to how much it is willing to push the envelope with its visuals. Furthermore, it is something that this smallish team has pacing down to an art form while other bigger studios struggle with it. The game isn't aiming to be north of twenty hours, and I'm perfectly content with that. Moroi knows that it needs to get its shit in and out before its budget runs out or the setting wears thin. It actively revels in juxtaposing from one uncomfortable moment to the next, and trying to learn what's "up" with the game's world proves compelling enough. I can't wait to see what other wild turns this game has.
Neo Junk City
What is it?
I tend to play at least one RPG for my Next Fest review series. Neo Junk City is an amalgam RPG. It has vehicle sequences, open-ended exploration, side quests, and many action set pieces. The game is gorgeously animated and uses a neon-heavy retro aesthetic with chunky but detailed pixels. As its title suggests, the game takes place in a futuristic world where androids, aliens, and all sorts of life populate the world. However, your main character is a female robot police officer attempting to investigate a recent murder; the murder of her creator. The game plays a lot like a point-and-click adventure game when exploring environments for clues. You need to click on various objects until you collect all necessary quest items to cash in a side quest or progress the main storyline. Sometimes, you'll need to open up your inventory to apply or use other objects or tools on things you see in the world. When you do bop into combat, which happens using a random encounter system, you face enemies from a first-person perspective and move your cursor to shoot them in real-time. The enemies move around your screen, and the combat is a mix of a gallery shoot game and a traditional CRPG. When moving between environments, you play an arcade drifting minigame, which may be my favorite part of the game because it has such an incredible vibe.
What's in the demo?
The demo is the game's first chapter, and that's about an hour and a half, plus change, worth of gameplay. In terms of how the gameplay breaks down, the adventure bits outweigh the action-oriented ones by a fair margin. A large part of the demo involves your android cop avatar first getting a feel for the core mechanics and then following a variety of leads about suspects possibly involved with the murder that serves as the story's inciting action. The random encounters only kick off after about an hour, and they follow Final Fantasy logic in that only certain areas or environments will provide any combat encounters. The game's first act feels more like a proof of concept as there aren't any upgrades for you to nab or explore, and your character's HP stays relatively the same. Nonetheless, the game does give you currency for successfully beating any combat encounters you face, and you use that to buy healing items. The adventure game sequences are standard point-and-click affairs. There's a bit of pixel hunting involved, but the game gives you a mission log that clarifies what you are looking for and the interactives in every environment don't ever feel illogical. The demo also gives you a few side quests with decent enough rewards that make you want to avoid blindly following the main quest, which is nice.
The lack of gun upgrades is a slight concern. The gallery shooting isn't terrible, but I struggle to see how it carries a multi-chapter roleplaying game without more options or upgrades in the future. Nonetheless, I enjoy how you can shoot incoming enemy fire to prevent your character from taking damage. Still, even then, there's not a lot of strategy or variety with the random encounters until you come up against bosses who have specific patterns for you to follow and take note of. I also think the game should consider having more quality-of-life options to make that part of the game more accessible. The adventure game parts are not free from foibles either and sometimes go on for too long, and more often than not, clicking on everything on the screen seems to solve almost every exploration-based impediment in the demo. All that aside, the game looks incredible. The vehicle sequences are great, if not unforgiving until you get the hang of things. Each new environment oozes style as they try to evoke a different subset of the 1980s or cyberpunk fiction. One warning: while the game is a looker, the character designs are sometimes a bit thirsty. I would be bereft not to point out that your protagonist is an android who runs around wearing a blue leotard like Cammy from Street Fighter and is incredibly buxom.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Probably! It has an odd mix of gameplay mechanics and ideas, but it might be the most visually impressive game I played during Next Fest. I'm curious how many more RPG trappings there are in this game, considering you go through the whole demo without a single upgrade to your character. While I did not hate the shooting-heavy gameplay, I was begging for a little more variety by the end of the demo. Likewise, while I did love the driving sequences and some of the minigame-based bits, there were times when I wished I could skip them entirely due to exhaustion or repetition. Regardless, it's an interesting mix of gameplay mechanics that all function in a gorgeous world. We have seen plenty of pixel-based retro-throwback games in the past, but Neo Junk City compares admirably to an increasingly crowded field of indie games that are trying to coast on 80s neon-drenched vibes.
Rogue Like Deck Builder
What is it?
I had to review at least one "meme game" with this feature. This game appears to be mocking Steam's SEO by including the words "Rogue," "Like," "Deck," and "Builder," all in sequential order and interpreting those words literally rather than figuratively. The game itself tasks you with hammering planks on an incomplete deck using nails and a hammer. You get points that translate into in-game currency, in this case, US dollars, every time you hammer a nail perfectly or adequately. You lose points and income every time you strike your hand. With every plank, you must use your mouse cursor to select an acceptable position to hammer a nail. Then, by moving or shifting your mouse up and down, you mimic the motions of hammering to affix the nail into one corner of that plank. As is usually the case with games of these sorts, the process and motions of hammering are incredibly frustrating, and in my case, it was physically painful. In the game, hitting your fingers is incredibly easy, and the game mocks you when it happens. There are occasionally special nails that give you bizarre visuals to comprehend, but usually, they give you a specific task to gain bonus income. For example, in the demo, there is a nail of a mostly nude man who asks you to hit him as hard as possible, and then there is a nail that is shaped like a bomb that requests the opposite.
What's in the demo?
The demo is an almost endless stream of missions wherein you swap between your in-game boss and a porch or patio in which you build your deck. Based on what little I played in the demo, the size and shape of the deck do not significantly change. The roguelike element is that you have upgrades, but the challenge before you seems endless. For example, you can buy gloves to lower the odds of smashing your fingers with your hammer or buy better hammers to reduce the precision you need to gesture to get "Perfect" hammer hits for bonus compensation. The "story," if I can even call it that, is that you are in jail and must work away at a debt of $1,000,000. To make that task easier, the game has those special nails I mentioned earlier that crop up twice or so per deck to give you an opportunity to make more money. Also, you can use your hammer to squash bugs to make some additional cash as well, but with the controls being so unwieldy, the odds of you hitting your hand instead of the fast-moving insects are relatively high. The best way to describe how the controls feel or work is to say they are deliberately frustrating, much like Getting Over It with Bennett Fody or QWOP. The game is also hideous, but deliberately so, and the boss who gives you your missions is an abomination and disturbing to look at.
Let's not beat around the bush. This game is a shitpost. It looks like shit; it plays like shit; its sense of humor is annoying internet shitpost humor. I'm not immune to these sorts of games, and some of you may even recall when I penned an essay related to I Am Part-Time Worker. Nonetheless, the core humor and appeal of this game lie in its craven mockery of Steam's dogshit search engine and the industry shift towards roguelike and deck-building gameplay mechanics. The game is already out and on sale for less than $3, and you don't need a college degree to know what you are getting into when you play this game. One thing that truly bothers me about this game is that it is genuinely painful to control the hammer during the first few decks when you haven't been able to upgrade your hammer or tools even the slightest bit. With a mouse, you have to click to hold the nail and then move your mouse up and down to mimic the hammering motion the game will accept. You can't switch to a simple button push or mouse click, and by the time I got halfway into the second deck, I stopped playing because the first inklings of RSI started to flare up. As expected, there's likely an optimal way to play it. I can only imagine this game will eventually get a weirdly obsessive speed-running community that blows through all its challenges in less than an hour. I am not built that way, and you will not be surprised to hear me say I don't think you or anyone should support this game.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Hell no! It's hard to get too offended by these sorts of games. They end up getting incredibly popular thanks to streamers or Vtubers because it allows them to supply viewers with an endless series of over-the-top reactions to every possible weird or wacky scenario the game provides. Beyond that, Roge Like Deck Builder is visually repulsive and made my hand hurt after about two hours of play. There's a blunt simplicity to some of these meme games in how they bring attention to Steam's incredibly lax and loose moderation policies and the state of the marketplace. However, you get the game's "joke" just from looking at its title and don't need to go further. And that last bit is my piece of advice. You may find joy in watching someone else play this during a livestream in the coming weeks or months. Beyond that, no moral or ethical reason exists to support this game or most of its ilk.
Seven Seas Adventures
What is it?
Do you remember Sid Meier's Pirates? I don't care if you're thinking about the 1987 version or the 2004 remake. Do you remember leading a ship full of pirates and commandeering other ships, looting cargo, digging for treasure, and conquering the land of other nations for your sponsor nation? Remember being able to do all that in a mostly open-world re-creation of the Carribeans while legendary pirates from lore or history try to take you down a peg or two? Regardless of whichever version is in your head, that game is what Seven Seas Adventures is attempting to emulate, though it errs more towards the 2004 remake. The game's character portraits are 2D facsimiles of ones you'd expect from Sid Meier's Pirates, and the game overall utilizes a playful tone. Where it diverges is in its mission structure and world design. Seven Seas Adventures uses a fictitious world with a more deliberate and guided story for you to follow. However, I'm unclear if that's just the game's tutorial or Seven Seas Adventure's emphasis on crafting a story. Nonetheless, the game has sailing, commodity trading, swashbuckling, ship combat, and many of the same mechanics as the 2004 version of Sid Meier's Pirates, though it mercifully doesn't have any minigames. On the flip side, Seven Seas Adventures emphasizes the commodity trading and realism factor.
What's in the demo?
First, I strongly encourage that if you decide to give this demo a shot, you play the game with its tutorial enabled. While it has plenty of visuals that evoke Sid Meier's Pirates, the game is mechanically denser by a whole order of magnitude. Unlike the game or games from which it draws inspiration, buying and selling commodities and illicit cargo is the game's preferred mechanic for making money. It also is a slower game and lacks Pirates' arcade-like and freeform gameplay. While Pirates did have currents and wind that impacted the speed of your ship, Seven Seas Adventures takes it to a whole new level with you needing to examine wind vanes to plot routes between two ports and forcing you to constantly refer to spreadsheets. Ship upgrades are also much more difficult to gain or acquire, and you can't go on an immediate warpath when you start the game, which is the most prominent point of divergence between it and the vastly superior Pirates. For whatever reason, you must complete a whole involved questline to gain the ability to join the pirate way of life; unlike in Pirates, you don't immediately start with the ability to lay waste on one or two in-game factions. As a result, you're stuck performing fetch quests to gain the rep necessary to ask for a right to be a privateer.
This game is so painfully slow that it hurts. The game starts you much like any pirate-based game. All you have is a tiny sloop, and that locks you out of beating 90% of the field in front of you. What makes this immediately more frustrating is that Seven Seas Adventures forces you to toil away at buying and selling raw materials until you can make moderate upgrades to your starting ship, which then only levels the field marginally. If you like looking at spreadsheets and determining what to buy low and when to sell high, there's something here for you, but the presentation is so sterile I don't know if it's for trading sim fans either. You're better off playing even the worst game from Paradox. And it is not as if the game has a story or questline that sweeps you off your feet. You have to perform a series of tasks before the pirates welcome you as one of their own. That also is the only direction you can take in the game, as the governors of towns all seem corrupt or incompetent and offer nothing significant to add to your experience other than to serve as intermediaries for more fetch quests to please a far-off king or queen. The RTS and romance bits of Pirates were far from the game's best parts, but at least they opted you into a modicum of roleplaying that allowed you to have differing experiences. Despite having a wide-open world, Seven Seas Adventures feels linear during its main campaign and empty and sterile when you try out its sandbox mode.
Will I buy the full game when it comes out?
Nope! I have no idea how a game can so cravenly copy key art from a classic Sid Meier work and not capture even one-sixteenth of the heart of what made that game even remotely fun. What makes Sid Meier's Pirates! so addictive is that it has a little bit of everything and is incredibly loose in how it interprets 4X or trading sim standbys. If you want to go whole scorched earth and wage war on every ship that approaches you, there is a way for you to do that. If you want to be a company crony ferrying tobacco or cocoa shipments between two trade hubs, you can do that as well. But, when you get tired of one strategy or approach, Pirates welcomes you to flip the script immediately without a single protest. Putting up a half dozen guardrails before I can get to the meat of what your game presents is its main appeal is a wild decision. If your pirate game plays and feels like Paradox made it, then there's a different aesthetical approach you should have taken. However, in its current form, Seven Seas Adventures is a plodding adventure that doesn't even scratch the trade sim-oriented itch. So, this game does not satisfy anyone, and that's a shame.