Preamble

It's been a minute since I last graced Giant Bomb with a write-up and even longer since the last time I did one of my Next Fest wrap-ups. For a variety of reasons, I skipped running down my demo impressions for Next Fest in 2025, but hoping to jerk myself out of writer's block, I decided to ink up my penmanship and get to jotting down my thoughts about the most recent incarnation of the event. For those unfamiliar with this feature of sorts that I tended to publish on the old version of the site, I like to run down a dozen or so games during Next Fest while relaying my impressions and whether I plan to follow through and buy the full game once it comes out. It's really that simple, and because I had such a blast with Next Fest in February/March 2026, I'll be doing two write-ups instead of just one. In this edition you're reading right now, the games I will be reviewing are:

• Burglin' Gnomes

Burglin' Gnomes

What is it?

Friendslop is reaching all-time mainstream heights on Steam, with the sub-genre seeing a surge since the meteoric success of games like Peak, R.E.P.O., Lethal Company, and Content Warning. In the case of Burglin' Gnomes, you and a cadre of friends co-operatively work to complete missions connected to a house that is populated by a lone resident, or, at least, that's the case in the game's demo. Furthermore, as the game's title might suggest, you are all gnomes from a magical forest. You are spawned into the real world to do favors for a freakish anthropomorphic tree, which kills you whenever you fail to clear a tasklist during any phase of your session. Those tasks involve collecting random knick-knacks, momentos, or chachki, or engaging in various forms of mischief or sabotage, such as plugging a toilet or destroying a television. Obviously, the latter of these tasks is more involved and requires you to manipulate objects and tools around you, which leads us to the game's most significant mechanic: the way you control your gnome's arms. Whenever you need to lift or operate an object, you use your mouse and keyboard or controller to extend and retract your hands and arms forward and backward. If you attempt to lift or open something too heavy, you can rip your arms off; luckily, they can grow back. And much like any friendslop game, if you fail to complete missions within a given time, your session ends, and you'll have to start a new one without any upgrades or purchases you made previously.

What's in the demo?

The demo repeats the same house with the same inhabitant. The tasks you need to complete in that home are different and cycle through a laundry list of a dozen mission types, which has me hopeful that more are in the works for the game's full release. Somewhat annoyingly, the checklist uses the gnomes' language when collecting items in the house, and these terms often refer to the material the items are made of rather than what you and I would call them. The person who lives in the house is the first, but not the only, impediment to your success. There are also mousetraps and hostile cockroaches. When you die, your friends can respawn you if they use a gemstone in the gnome hut in the yard of the house, but this gemstone has a limited number of uses. Once you have used it up, any additional player deaths cannot be resolved until after your session is over or if everyone in your party has died. Speaking of which, death can happen quickly and without warning. Sometimes the house has a roving Roomba, and while it looks harmless, butting up against its bristles even slightly will immediately KO your character. One of my big criticisms of the game stems from the inordinate amount of downtime that can happen if you aren't careful or the RNG goddess is being especially moody. Sometimes, the room that has the items you need to collect is infested with cockroaches, and the game hasn't spawned the tools for you to deal with that, so you pretty much are screwed in that case.

Which leads me to the most pressing issue with Burglin' Gnomes: it lacks any notion of balance. Some missions are wildly difficult, while others can be completed in one to two minutes. Sometimes the game spawns you into a house with plenty of tools to kill enemies, but an environment with nothing to kill, and other times it does the opposite. The human enemy is especially irksome because when he grabs you, he either inconveniently tosses you out of his house or he immediately murders you by throwing you into a fireplace. Sometimes he'll lock you in a freezer or an oven, which gives your teammates a chance to rescue you, but whenever using either appliance, I found the human NPC's script would often break. In my eight runs with the game, I consistently saw the human NPC hover over or get stuck on appliances, rendering rescue missions impossible. Unlike in Lethal Company, failure on a single checklist or map immediately forces you to restart your entire session. There's no such thing as a second or third chance in Burglin' Gnomes, which I found especially frustrating. Finally, the game's tasks are sometimes too esoteric or opaque. For example, it took one of my groups a while to figure out how to properly plug the toilet, as we found placing objects one at a time would simply teleport them into a sewer for safekeeping. Trial-and-error isn't the worst thing for a game of this type, but considering how swift and immediate player death can come in Burglin' Gnomes, missions like those felt a bit too tense.

Will I buy the full game when it's released?

Probably. As already stated, Burglin' Gnomes is a wildly imbalanced game. Some tasks reach solutions with little thought or care, and others involve a soul-crushing amount of RNG. Likewise, the game's death spirals, at least as I experienced them in this incredibly early build, are a real problem. The minute my party of four dropped to two players, we found ourselves practically locked into losing. Furthermore, whenever friends ended up nabbed by the human NPC and put into timed-death scenarios, everyone found it incredibly difficult to break them free, what with hostile enemies running about and a giant human NPC capable of shooting you in the face with a gun and all. So, this game is rough; I won't even sugarcoat this one: This demo is barely past the alpha stage.

Nevertheless, the game made me laugh endlessly, and even when I found myself KO-ed unfairly within the opening five minutes of a session and shit out of luck for upwards of ten to fifteen minutes, I still had a giant smile on my face. If the game's developer can nail the balance and downtime issues, Burglin' Gnomes feels destined to become an A-tier comedic delivery system. Its fantastical set pieces and wacky visuals are unlike any I have ever seen before, and when plans really get into the swing of things, you can relish its game juice.

The Mermaid Mask

What is it?

The Mermaid Mask is the third entry in the Detective Grimoire series, which first saw the eponymous Detective Grimoire in 2014 and Tangle Tower in 2019. After developer SFB Games took a break from point-and-click games to make Crow Country, they have returned to their roots. The Mermaid Mask sees Grimoie and Sally investigating a sprawling submarine following the murder of the sub's captain, Captain Mortuga. As you transition through what I can only assume is the game's prologue, your two characters locate the submarine and the cauldron that apparently killed Captain Mortuga in an effort to establish if foul play was involved. Much like the previous games in this series, most screens have a set number of items and objects for your characters to observe as clues. There are also plenty of ancillary items to click on to get funny quips and dialogue between the two characters. Near the end of the demo is the lone puzzle, which involves turning dials to place shapes whose sides add up to corresponding numbers. For example, you need a single triangle for 3 and a triangle and a square for 7. Once you complete that puzzle, you find yourself in the final level and needing to complete an observation or conjecture in the form of a fill-in-the-blank mini-paragraph.

What's in the demo?

This game has been in the works and has been a recurring promise from SFB Games for a while, so color me slightly disappointed that it amounts to six explorable screens, half of which have no puzzles, and ends after about twenty to twenty-five minutes of playtime. On the positive side, the game has a lush, impressionistic art style, and when you see the full portraits of the characters as they animate, the game really shows its visual chops. The dialogue is playful and whimsical, with Grimoire being the proverbial dipshit that is always close but not quite there with his theories, and Sally chiming in to pick up the slack. Even if you haven't played the previous titles of this series, the demo makes it clear that you are not going to struggle to understand its world or characters if you start with The Mermaid Mask. Even if it is a completely different genre from SFB's earlier Crow Country, their adventure games are cut from a similar cloth, coasting on vibes rather than gameplay grit. The lone puzzle is rather easy to complete, and the conjecture isn't exactly a toughie either. If you aren't clicking everything on every possible screen, the game goes by quickly. Much like Tangle Tower, the chemistry between the game's two leading characters and the pleasant and sometimes impressive visual design are The Mermaid Mask's main selling points.

Will I buy the full game when it's released?

Maybe. I wasn't a huge fan of Detective Grimoire, but I did find myself enjoying Tangle Tower. As you can see from the above section, I wish this demo were a bit longer or placed in a different section with more gameplay elements than this snapshot of the prologue. The clues you scan and collect are interesting worldbuilding trinkets, but they aren't enough to make you feel like you really know what's going on in this game. It's a pleasant game to look at, but there's no denying that it feels "safe." The dialogue is mostly banter that follows the typical funny-man straight-man routine, and the demo lacks any friction or gameplay grit. Complain about the franchise's heavy reliance on matchbox puzzles all you want, but at least the Professor Layton games know how to ramp up their difficulty as you progress in an adventure. I'm a sucker for games that have you making conjectures based on clues that you collect, but in the case of The Mermaid Mask, as was the case in Tangle Tower, it leads you into solutions a bit too much, and that leaves me concerned it might be a bit too "fuzzy mittens" for my tastes.

Tabletop Tavern

What is it?

So, imagine if a Total War game scrapped its grand campaign map in favor of a roguelike run-based map. That's what Tabletop Tavern is in a nutshell. You command troops on a battlefield much like any RTS, but the troops you employ are cards in a deck and, depending on your performance, will take damage that carries between battles, with an option to heal two cards between your turns. You move towards an endpoint on any given map, which, as the game's title suggests, is a board game in a tavern, and if your army is ever defeated in battle, you restart at the beginning, which causes you to revert to a starting default deck. As you progress, you gain new cards that add better or more specialized units to your army, but most of the units in the game follow the rock-paper-scissors logic codified in the Total War series. Spearmen are great against cavalry but slow and easily flanked by regular ground soldiers; shock troops like dire wolves or berserkers are glass cannons that deal massive damage after an initial charge but can't hold the line for long. When you are victorious, you can choose if you want to capture an enemy unit or take gold. When selecting where you want to go on the map, there are non-combat locations that can upgrade your cards or even provide elite units you can't find anywhere else. Calling this game "Total War meets Slay the Spire" feels more than apt.

What's in the demo?

For anyone who enjoys watching YouTube videos that show troop movements using blue and red bars with checkered patterns or stripes to signify what type of unit they are, this game is right up your alley. Unit pathfinding and movement fluidity could use a little tweaking, but the grand commander feel of Tabletop Tavern is outstanding. The roguelike elements blend surprisingly well with an RTS, as the press-your-luck elements force you to really think about your actions and army compositions. Do you take gold that you later use to give your current roster better equipment, or do you check out what a new unit card has to offer? There's some trial and error, and it can be frustrating when you bet big on a new unit only to find its shortcomings are too great to allow it to hold a place in your deck, but that's also part of the appeal in the Total War games. Sometimes you follow an upgrade path or tier to build one specific building that unlocks one elite unit, only to find out they're absolute dog water. The game also allows you to edit your deck before starting a new round, after you have wrapped up or failed a run, which is a godsend for people like me who want to go big on specific strategies like an all cavalry or keepaway archer-focused army. If there is one minor quibble, I do wish your deck were just two cards bigger. At just ten cards deep, it feels like you're always one or two cards away from having a nice, proper army that can lay waste to everything before you.

As is usually the case with Next Fest demos, the balance in this game isn't quite there yet. While the game tells you to cycle charge cavalry or feign retreats with shock units, I found that difficult to pull off, with units sometimes getting glued to whoever they were fighting and retreating next to impossible. Corner camping remains an incredibly useful tool, as the AI does mindlessly charge after you every single battle, with little regard for hammer-and-anvil tactics or double envelopment. But the biggest misstep in the game, at least in my opinion, is the inclusion of an "Autoresolve" button with every fight. I get this is a recurring feature in the Total War franchise and many other grand campaign RTSs or 4X games, but it is ill-suited in Tabletop Tavern for a few reasons. First, it makes the same mistake as Total War's autoresolve feature in that it simply lops off a point or two on all of your units, regardless of their type. With units that have smaller numerical values, like cannons or monster units, this is a devastating blow, whereas if you field a bunch of spearmen, it allows you to cheese the campaign a bit. There is a stat at play that factors in the "quality" of the unit to determine whether you will win using autoresolve, but that doesn't change what I ended up doing on the final map of the demo. I hit "Autoresolve" as I didn't have anything else in front of me, and I won the run. It was as simple as that, and it was as unsatisfying as you can imagine.

Will I buy the full game when it's released?

Probably. I definitely think Tabletop Tavern is a game where I will wait and see how its launch pans out before taking the plunge. There are some minor to moderate foibles I'd like the developer to iron out before the game's full release, but there's no denying that the game has decent guts. Despite rougelike deckbuilding mechanics seeming like an awkward or illogical fit for an RTS game, the combination works exceptionally well. Charging mounted units into unprotected archers is as satisfying here as it was in OG Rome: Total War, so the developers did indeed nail the fundamentals. But again, all of that is fine and dandy; what really matters to me is whether the game can pull it together towards a satisfying endgame. Expecting that in a Next Fest demo is ridiculous, that I do admit, but press yourself to think of the worst part to any Total War game or any 4X Firaxis game, and it's always the endgame. Is using the guts of a roguelike deckbuilder going to change that? Only time will tell, but I will stand by my belief that the Autoresolve button should either be reworked entirely or ditched completely.

Underkeep

What is it?

Underkeep is a blobber RPG. For those unfamiliar with that term, a blobber is a first-person party-based RPG in which the player controls a group of characters through the eyes of a single individual, sometimes with arms and legs being displayed. The Wizardry franchise pioneered this type of RPG, and it has persisted thanks to the likes of Might & Magic, Legend of Grimrock, Etrian Odyssey, and recently Vampire Crawlers, the latter of which I will discuss in Part Two of this mini-feature. Underkeep plays things relatively safe, with you needing to either manually assemble a party of four using a limited suite of races and character classes, or select a handful of preset parties populated by four pregenerated characters. Those presets will likely carry over into the main game, and they provide balanced builds that allow you to jump into the main game rather quickly. Once you spawn into a hub town, which you only exist in briefly, you acquire a simple job of searching for mushrooms in a forest so a tavern keeper can make a stew. Gaining this mission then results in you warping into a forest, which leads to the demo's lone dungeon. As you kill enemies, you'll have to click on character portraits to deal standard attacks or initiate special maneuvers or flourishes, and even worry about character death. There's one shrine that can bring back one KO-ed character from the dead, but that's it. Nonetheless, the demo itself is short, and once you get the hang of things, I wouldn't call this vertical slice of Underkeep all that "difficult."  

What's in the demo?

As I suggested earlier, the demo involves you exploring an introductory forest environment that guides you towards the entrance of a single dungeon. There's a bit of RNG in that trees and foliage can spawn fruit for you to pick, and none of them are guaranteed to have resources with any given run or playthrough. What are fixtures, at least in the demo, are NPC encounters. There's one where you can check out the crack in a stone and can skill check your way to avoid getting bitten by a snake, and another encounter where you can assist a traveler beset by monsters. If you have certain character classes, these encounters can be easier, and from what I experienced, there's no penalty for trying character skills when they present themselves; in fact, you should always use them first if they are there before starting a round of combat. For those wondering if this game offers a good on-ramp to the blobber sub-genre, it does. After failing my first playthrough, I completed the demo on my second attempt, as I was better prepared for what the forest and dungeon had in store for me. Underkeep seems more closely related to Might & Magic than Wizardry, which means it is a bit kinder to its players and attempts to lean into its goofier sensibilities when appropriate. The paper doll inventory is basic but not overwhelming, and the game, at least in the demo, avoids inventory management anxiety.

However, the demo makes it clear this game is still a work in progress, and Underkeep's developer has been fairly transparent about that, given they continue to list its release date as "TBA" on Steam. One aggravation in the game I butted up against is that your core mission is about collecting specific objects (i.e., mushrooms), and with the mushrooms being fairly small, it was easy to walk past them and not know it. A more prominent sparkle or glow effect on quest items would have been great, and I was slightly odded out that the mushrooms sit in your general inventory without a "Quest Item" tag or indicator, as they sit alongside general foodstuck and potions not slotted into your hotkeys. I was also surprised that your first level up didn't happen after a couple of combat encounters; for me, I only had two characters in my party unlock their next level after pretty much killing everything in the starter dungeon. Considering the demo is going to be people's first impression of the game, I would have predicted that gaining your first level would be easy, but that wasn't the case. A related issue, but I didn't find the UI all that intuitive when trying to swap one special move or ability for another. All of this grousing is likely to be resolved or partially addressed in time, but while the game certainly looks sleek, it still has some rough edges here and there.

Will I buy the full game when it's released?

AWW, HELL YEAH! I get that Dungeon Crawlers has been getting most of the dungeon-based CRPG hype recently, but don't sleep on Underkeep. Ever since the demise of Almost Human Games following the release of Legend of Grimrock 2, I have been pining for a good traditional blobber. Last Next Fest shared a demo for Thysiastery, which also scratches that itch, but the more the merrier if you ask me! And with Thysiastery going for a more Wizardry direction and Underkeep a Might & Magic approach, both games feel unique enough to warrant further appraisal on my part. Furthermore, near the end of the demo, the game provides you with an alternate resolution to your quest where you don't need to surrender the mushrooms to the tavern keeper. So, there does seem to be some replayability between playthroughs, though I do question some of the RNG in the game. When using a class's skill during an event, is it a skill check you can fail, or is it always a guaranteed success? There are certain parts to Underkeep that I think need or call for greater transparency.

Esoteric Ebb

What is it?

Esoteric Ebb is a single-player CRPG that tries to take the skill-check-based sensibilities of tabletop roleplaying and graft them onto a traditional CRPG. When creating your character, you mull over the usual slate of skills and proficiencies as if you were playing Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons, but with a twist. Those skills have personalities and talk to you as you explore your surroundings, attempt to navigate a world layered in political intrigue, and research crime scenes and community-based squabbles. On top of that, the game has several overlapping plot threads, including an election with competing factions vying for victory and a recent attack on a coffeehouse, the latter of which your character becomes the lead investigator on. As part of that investigation, as well as your general need to figure out how you ended up in the coastal village you're in, you use those aforementioned skills to finesse situations, complete quests, and pry NPCs and quest givers for more information that they may not have wanted to share at first blush. But, be careful, as failed skill checks can lop off points to your HP and sometimes cause NPCs to cut you off from further inquiry. The game also employs a lush cel-shaded graphical aesthetic that wonderfully complements the village's initially cozy vibes.

What's in the demo?

Esoteric Ebb offered a fairly sizable demo, which allowed you to complete the full game's first day. This demo permitted you to take up a smattering of side quests and interact with almost all of the major players in the main story. In doing so, you were able to check out dozens of interactable NPCs and see what each of your skills has to offer, and establish which scenarios they seem best suited to deal with. Huge props to the developers of Esoteric Ebb for making sure their game bleeds personality, with those skill checks being the main engine behind that. The personalities for your skills, whether they be Strength, Constitution, Charisma, et al., inject playful and memorable dialogue into what is normally the driest part of tabletop gaming: rolling to see if you can figure shit out or do something. Likewise, the skill checks convey fun relationships that take advantage of their contrasting or diametrically opposed counterparts, leading to a lot of hilarious dialogue. Equally mirthful are the times when you have all of your skill checks scream out in unison not to do something, whether it be something as minor as eating trash out of a rubbish bin or picking a fight against someone who is leagues above you. From top to bottom, Esoteric Ebb is hilarious, and the humor really ramps up when you get a goblin sidekick to accompany you.

And the game does a great job of selling you on its premise and surroundings. When you decide to take up the challenge of talking to representatives of the significant political parties at the center of the upcoming election, you have to be careful about how you interact with them. Also, the game actively makes it difficult for you to avoid expressing an allegiance to any one faction, with the clearest example being you needing to literally bite your tongue, take a major ding to your HP, and needing to find dialogue options where you explain why your mouth is full of blood whenever you try to be nonpartisan. Luckily, whenever you fail a skill check, it never feels like the end of the world. The most common skill check is to try to perceive a person and their whole deal before you attempt to strike up a conversation with them. You can still get the general vibe of the person by exploring the standard dialogue choices after a failed lookdown, and even those have additional skill check opportunities to surface more information you wouldn't otherwise know without giving things a shot. Likewise, major credit to Christoffer Bodegård, the game's main developer, for finding a decent UI/UX to make the underlying math as transparent and intelligible as possible. The inventory, mission log, and spellbook, despite being crammed with information, all avoid feeling overwhelming. The only screen that feels a bit too busy is the one showing your character's class progression and alignment with the story's factions and political parties. Esoteric Ebb uses a disc-like shape to showcase this information, and the branches quickly get incredibly messy.

If there is one significant concern that I do have, it's the combat. I don't like it, and I understand it is in the game to serve as your literal option of last resort, but part of me also thinks it shouldn't exist in the first place, or that the game would be better off being nothing but skill checks. Spoilers, but as I play the full release of the game, I feel more confident in saying Esoteric Ebb really should have leaned into the skill check system being your only manner of exploring your surroundings and resolving the conflicts you find yourself thrust into. Additionally, your character is canonically a cleric, but you are free to skew your skills and build your character towards whichever classes you want. This can lead to some wonkiness in the game, with it even pointing out when you create class-skill conflicts based on your choices, which worries me that you can build borked or unviable character builds. Finally, for whatever reason, the game's developer has decided to pull Esoteric Ebb's demo now that the full game has come out, and this continues to be my least favorite thing about Next Fest: developers wiping demos clean from their storefront when the event is over. I think there are plenty of people who might be interested in Esoteric Ebb but are still hesitant to take the plunge due to the game's tabletop orthodoxy, and a demo would do wonders to assuage that anxiety.

Will I buy the full game when it's released?

If you didn't get the hint, I ALREADY BOUGHT THIS GAME! It seems early to say this, but Esoteric Ebb is locked into the middle of my 2026 GOTY list. I'm not going to engage in histrionics and say it's destined to stay in my top slot, as I find the game replayable, but still a bit limited in scope. Nonetheless, it seems wholly appropriate for the fifth or sixth position on my list. The game has a gorgeous look with minor animations that add a lot to its character portraits and piles upon piles of personality. Whether it be the skill checks or any of the eclectic characters you encounter, the world that surrounds you in Esoteric Ebb is deeply memorable and unique. It's a sandbox so carefully crafted that you don't want to make too much of a mess, for fear of ruining it, but it was designed and made to be played with. If you ever wanted to play a game that gleefully emulates the upside of tabletop gaming without being up its own ass or endlessly depressing like Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb is exactly that. With upwards of 90% of its situations and scenarios resolvable through skill checks, and even failures fun to watch play out in real time, it ends up being one of the most authentic gameifications of tabletop roleplaying I have seen in a long time. Don't let its sometimes intimidating nature or structure scare you away; this is a hidden gem that is worth checking out.