I Spent Steam's Summer Next Fest Playing One Co-Op Multiplayer Online Game and Don't Regret It | OGR

mmorpg.com:

During Next Fest it’s quite common for me to sift through the hundreds of games available on the platform, pick out a few choice gems from my favorite genres, and then wait patiently for them to release later in the year. I’ve found a lot of great games this way, and I’ve always been happy to share them. For this Summer Next Fest round of games, I spent many hours downloading games, and spun a few up to see what they were all about, especially those on my most anticipated list.  What I didn’t expect, is to find a game that really hooked me. It’s a game I didn’t see coming, and yet, I’ve spent every day during Next Fest playing it.

Next Fest is always an interesting experience. Often you’ll find hoards of Indie games that are dressed in their Sunday best, as they try to snag your attention. When you’re dealing in the volume of games that Next Fest provides, sometimes it’s really tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, the moment I laid eyes on MythForce by Beamdog, I was already intrigued.

While it’s clear that cel-shaded games and anime inspired art styles have grown more popular in recent years, MythForce’s art style was appealing in a way that I didn’t know I was missing. Self-professed as “Saturday Morning Cartoon” visuals, I found that watching the trailer was instantly reminiscent of playing Dragon’s Lair as a kid, more so than any Saturday morning cartoon I watched. Then when I read that the game was a co-op rogue lite, I knew that this was going to be a game that I absolutely had to try.

What was particularly peculiar to me, is that MythForce has actually been available on the Epic Games Store in Early Access since April of 2022, and I hadn’t heard anything about the game until it dropped unexpectedly