Whilst browsing for various interesting games on Steam over the past few days, I discovered that demos aren't just available during various Next Fests anymore — you can access quite a few during various sales too!
At the moment there is a "Tiny Teams" showcase on, to proudly display games that have been created (or are being created) by tiny teams of developers or even, in the case of games like Stardew Valley, a single developer.
Seekers of Eclipse is a deckbuilding citybuilding rogue-lite that reminds me a lot of Slay the Spire, and it's one of the main demos that struck out at me despite glancing over several really good looking demos! I think that was mainly because at this point in time I was looking for something a little more casual and less sandboxy (for a change).
In the demo only one leader is available so we begin with Natalie The Butcher. As such, our deck starts with a lot of food generating resources.
Our welcoming mission tells us our goal and how to achieve it. We generate resources with the deck at our disposal and try to generate as much points as possible in order to destroy the enemies structures.
What the tutorial DOESN'T TELL ME is that I should build towards the stars and gems. I mean, that does sound pretty self-explanatory, but I didn't realise that's what I should do. I saw them on the map and didn't know what they were for.
With stars you can unlock perks for future playthroughs, as is the rogue way. And with gems you get an extra turn if you have the extra card available.
I realised this on my proper playthrough after completing the tutorial playthrough. XD
While our goal is to destroy the enemies in our way in the main missions — the overall goal is to reach our destination where we will be viewing the eclipse.
When a round is completed and you've vanquished your enemies, you troddle along a path to the next area. This path has a few stops along the way and each stop can remove a few days off your journey, which isn't good, because we want to get to our destination on time!
You can stop at an inn and gain a few more days, hop by the market and buy some more cards, upgrade/remove cards, buy some perks. And the gold mine where you can find gold so you can spend your money at the market.
The gameplay loop is very simple and yet quite satisfying.
You get your cards, you have 3 turns (plus another if you build on top of a gem), and you need to strategise the placement of these card-buildings so that they maximise their production. With your production you'll get gems with which you can use to protect yourself, clear land or rubble, and destroy your opponent.
You need to watch out for enemy buildings, as sometimes they'll be placed near you and will unleash explosives to ruin your hard work.
It can get a bit intense managing the points, too! At one point I really struggled to continue on because the enemies kept popping up in bad spots, I had to destroy them, and then I didn't have enough points at my disposal to annihilate the main foe.
When you win you get to choose a benefit for your next match, too, which is really nice. You also get to choose a new card to add to your deck.
In my last match I had to destroy a massive wall to continue on towards our exclipse-watching destination.
This one seemed like it would be difficult because the wall had so much health and all these aggressive towers kept spawning to destroy my own buildings. But overall it was the easiest map I got to experience in the demo and I managed to destroy the wall with one day to go!
I made it to the eclipse-watching destination! Woo! xD
All in all, I quite enjoyed this demo.
I feel like a few more things could be added, but, I also keep in mind that this is a demo of a game still in development and I know I'm not getting the full intended experience.
I've added this to my wishlist! And if you're curious, I really recommend you try out the demo. It's quite fun!
Until next time! 😊