For the last month, I’ve been indulging in an experiment over on Twitch, which I’ve tentatively labeled my “frontlog,” wherein I accept a handful of keys (or demos) without reading much about them, and then give them a fair shake with all the live and wild impressions that come from walking into a room where you don’t know anybody directly.

First off, this is fun, and I encourage people to give it more of a try! I’ve focused mainly on indie games, which tend to be more of a mystery because they tend to be more experimental and take bigger risks, but also because it’s not so expensive. (And because I’m playing them for under two hours on Steam, if you really, really, absolutely had to, you could request a refund.) But if price is an issue—admittedly, I’m not always paying for these games when I accept a key—you can always just check out demos.

Second, and this is something I’ve tried to emphasize with the live cryptic crossword solving that I also do on Tuesday nights, a “waste” of time is really just a matter of perspective, much like “gambling” comes down to intent and purpose. If you’ve chosen to spend a specific amount of money (to go to a movie, a concert, a museum, a restaurant), you’ve done so with the agreement to exchange that money (and time) for an experience; if that happens to be playing poker, and that could theoretically be finished after a single bad hand, so be it! You were willing to spend that money. Similarly, if you’re choosing to play games on, say, a Friday night after your kids finally fall asleep (and then your wife does as well), that’s the experience you’ve chosen. There will absolutely be games that you’ll purely enjoy more than others, but you have the opportunity to learn from whatever experience you have, and there’s a real value in trying to understand why something clicked for you and why it didn’t.

That’s where the live streaming comes in. I’m forcing myself to even more actively play a game: to make observations and follow through with them, and to engage with what I’m doing and how it might be perceived. Too many people mistake criticism for a “buy/don’t buy” consumer report, as opposed to what it should be, which is the stepping stone to a deeper conversation. It’s good, actually, when people disagree with you; the problem is when they can’t (or won’t) explain where they’re coming from. Talking things through, especially in discussion with a live audience, can only ever strengthen your perspective (even if that first comes from being convinced to change it).

Anyway, here are the takeaways:

THE DEMOS

For me, the best use of a demo is as a proof of concept. Your screenshots, your title, any sort of video clip or PR description serves to get my attention; the demo shows that it can maintain it.

Colorbound quickly demonstrated what made it tick: if the demo had any issues, it was that this puzzle platformer dragged things out by showing certain things off multiple times, essentially overexplaining its mechanics instead of allowing players to stumble into them. Thankfully, it’s a gorgeous game that plays very smoothly, and which follows its heart(-felt metaphor) at all times: to honor your recently passed grandfather and the way his music painted a room, you’re seeking out his former bandmates, using his panpipes to “paint” your way through obstacles. I only really saw the music/paint used in one specific way, which keeps it from attaining Celeste-level perfection, but I was successfully convinced that there was room for the game to grow, especially with the inclusion of three “hidden” levels and one hard-as-nails “bonus” level earned from finishing those other hidden ones. That world map gives me Super Mario World vibes (the Yoshi-like llamas don’t hurt that impression), so I’m there.

Chronoscript: The Endless End was the biggest test for me. It has an absolutely stunning art style that makes it look like you’re genuinely traveling through pages that have been scattered across a library, and I just feared that it wouldn’t play as well as it looked. I needn’t have been concerned. It’s a genuine page-turner, and I didn’t want to put it down, and the demo’s choice to include a bonus boss challenge from a bit further in the game (where you’d have more skills) felt a bit like how pre-binge television used to convince people to come back by teasing the next episode. Playing is sometimes believing, and watching how the impressive map screen operates, or seeing your inky skills in action—I mean, don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself.

And finally, Afterbeat had me from the jump. It helps that I had just been playing through Just Shapes and Blocks, which had a similar rhythmic bullet hell approach, as well as vivid/stasis, which baked its classic track-based rhythm games into a fourth-wall bending narrative. I was primed, in other words, for something that mashed up both, especially with such a slick presentation and a compelling batch of songs. If there’s a downside to demos, it’s that if I really like the game, I can’t keep playing it immediately; on the other hand, if the feedback the developer gets from running a demo lets them make it even stronger before launch, well, I like that even more than Early Access.

THE MISSES

They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, but I did my best to give these titles a fair shake and they just didn’t hold up.

Having played Akatori, I know that it’s a Metroidvania. Is there anything else I can tell you about it that would be distinct from dozens of other games of that ilk? No, not really. It has a fluid animated style that reminds me a bit of Xenogears and Suikoden, and you can swap between two dimensions at certain key points, but there’s no real sense of place or purpose behind them, beyond just serving to give you platforming obstacle courses. The combat’s also irksome, with players taking so much damage so quickly that progressing is more sluggish than it should be. Not every game can or should be like Hollow Knight, but if they insist, they should study a little more the fairness of its enemies and give you some way to dodge or parry your foes earlier. Look, every game needs some sort of compelling reason to forge on: the mystery of the worldbuilding, the invitation of a robust skill tree, a direct plot or character you can’t stop following. Akatori feels like a game designed by a checklist, and the sort of game that will be completed only by those who feel obligated to dutifully follow through on those.

I’m just not sold on the genre in which The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline exists. I get that there’s a whole class of people (like me) who struggle with the constant fear of being pursued in certain first-person games like Alien: Isolation or SOMA, but I a walking simulator (with the occasional puzzle) plays it way too safe. Gameplay should at least meet the narrative halfway, and if this character is truly a once-in-a-generation “sacrifice” who must descend into a version of Hell (like his ancestor Dante), then the journey should be a bit more disturbing, and no, writhing limbs at a distance, or reddish pools cutting through the gray like some sort of bleeding chiaroscuro isn’t exactly doing it. It also feels notably overstuffed in trying to adapt the poetry, and I say that because the player moves as if they’ve eaten so much that they can only move like molasses, which is particularly annoying when you have to slog through the world seeking out the items you need for puzzles. A tighter version of this game would’ve just cut directly to the puzzles and would’ve “padded” out the game by having more of them, but even though those are the strongest part of the game, I’m not sure that would’ve entirely helped. After all, there are plenty of games with puzzles, and even the ones that are successfully Inferno-themed aren’t so good that they stand out in a crowded field.

As for Sil and the Fading World, it succeeded only in showing me that you can make a solo WOW-like based on raids (although I knew that already from the wonderful Rabbit and Steel). I’m not sure why you’d want to demonstrate that you kept the worst and most grindy parts of the raid instead of allowing me to focus on learning neat mechanisms and phase changes. Repetition is a thing that should come only at the end-game, for players who really want to master their builds and face increasingly tough bosses. Expecting players to grind from the start—there’s a reason the main campaign of Diablo IV doesn’t require players to progress in The Pit—suggests a weak, padded game. Simply put: I don’t like the choices this game is making. If stripping out co-op requires you to add in a tome that explains all the mechanics of a raid encounter before you’ve even attempted it, then you’ve not sufficiently done a good job of indicating to players what they should be doing, or how things work. And the most damning thing about this title is that even with all the extra text, I still often wasn’t sure what was happening in the thick of things; even with a DPS-check meter, I had no true gauge of success or danger. I felt trapped in an auto-battler. In short, I think the boss-raid-only style has legs, and I’m interested in playing more of this ilk, but it needs to be way more focused.

THE MIDS

This one’s not really a miss, so much as a missed opportunity to be fully recommended. The Sinking City 2 has an amazing setting for a survival horror game (a flooded city and its various facilities), and the detective puzzles that Frogwares has been perfecting since the Sherlock Holmes days are a great fit for that genre, giving you a real reason to look closely and return to previous areas. But it also feels wildly imbalanced; an early visit to a fire station flooded the area with monsters, and I enjoyed figuring out how to flee without engaging foes. Except that there were hidden collectibles I had to later return to, and doing so absolutely drained my limited ammo and healing. This happened again and again, often with multiple enemies instantly spawning in extremely cramped and confusing corridors, always pushing me toward fighting, but seemingly punishing me for doing so. It’s a shame, because I loved the puzzles and Lovecraftian lore, and there were some genuinely creepy bits and character designs. Just set it to the easiest combat difficulty, I guess, and soak up the atmosphere.

I’m told that Staffer Retro simply has a weak first case, and I can understand that. There’s a lot of lore to explain, and the game has a slow build of investigatory techniques to make sure that players understand just how much depth there can be in its simple-seeming “match something from the list on the left to something on the list on the right.” It’s not as if the similarly themed Ace Attorney games don’t hit the exact same snags, after all. Thankfully, the “Retro” mechanism of this title kept me intrigued enough to push through the most trope-y bits, and I admire the fact that each case is “solvable” in multiple ways. Players can proceed once they’ve arrived at a solution, but the really attentive ones will notice where the facts aren’t quite adding up, or where there are still some unresolved threads, and can investigate further to find a darker truth behind them. This is basically detective catnip to me, closest in vibe to the Zero Escape games, where there are layers beyond what you think you’ve figured out.

Marsupalami 2: Salsa Palombia is one of those games that I knew I was going to like going in, and, unsurprisingly, I did. It’s a colorful Donkey Kong Country Returns-esque platformer with more than a few musical beats that bring Rayman to mind. But I wasn’t blown away by this in the way I wanted to be. I wanted each new level to introduce some clever trick, and instead, I spent the first world basically repeating similar platforming challenges. The neat twist here, and which elevates this one, is that you have three characters, but the game automatically assigns two of them to each level. Sometimes you’ll be able to double-jump, sometimes you’ll be able to air-dash, and other times you’ll be able to turn into a ball that can bounce along spikes. Frequently, even in the early levels, you’ll have to swap between the two characters to pass an obstacle, and that tickles the right part of my brain. Couple this with the game’s “Salsa” remixes, where you have to replay a stage while avoiding damage and collecting as many items as possible, and you’ve got a game that rewards but never requires mastery. It’s pleasant, but maybe I’m a masochist for wanting something even tougher?

Anomaly President feels like a funny version of Absolom, swapping out the fantasy rogue-like beat-’em-up mechanics for those of a political campaign that’s settled with one’s fists. And for someone like me who is meh on both rogue-likes and beat-’em-ups, this game gets about the maximum mileage it can. The bosses are fascinating, there’s new lore each time you have to replay, you’ve got a campaign-bus-building game between runs, and it hits good. But it is also inescapably repetitive, and done so in that cheap way where you’re probably going to lose not necessarily because of skill, but because you haven’t gained enough political support yet. And, I mean, that accurately sums up the American electoral process more than anything else, but hey, I thought this was a satire meant to help me punch my way out of the dread?

THE HITS

I don’t get the appeal of all those simulator games; powerwashing and painting are chores. But the Tom Sawyer-ish developers at Ambrosia Sky found my sweet spot: wrap those “chores” in a rich science-fiction narrative, where you’re basically cleaning out a dangerous fungal growth as you explore damaged stations in space. Oh, and you’ve got a nifty grappling hook to not only get around faster, but to really make the most of some vertical, secret-passageway-ridden areas. All of this is to say that it’s taken a passive act and turned it into something more active: painting a kitchen, but a kitchen that’s trying to kill you, or washing a garage, but a garage that folds in on itself like it’s from House of Leaves. That’s the lever that gets me moving—burying the chore inside something more directly aligned with my interests, like exploration.

I would have played through all of Backpack Boy in one sitting if I hadn’t gotten an unfortunate fatal crash, and I think that’s the highest praise I can give for any of the games on my frontlog. Usually, I play just long enough to get a sense of what the game has to offer, but this particular title went all Godfather on me, and every time I thought I’d seen enough to get out of that initial session, it pulled me back in with a new twist on its central hook: i.e., you have a flashlight, and whatever you shine it on reveals the past. (Later, you’ll be able to invert this, so that you are now in the past, and you shine things to reveal the future.) You have to actively platform around while also changing the environment strategically as you go, and not only did I not tire of the puzzles, but I was also invested in the time-traveling lore. This is the sweet spot all puzzle games should aim for, however long they go: if you reach a point where players are just repeating the same thing over and over again, you need to end sooner. Better to emulate this game’s style, where even if the backpack isn’t an infinitely large bag of holding, it makes you want to keep playing just to see if you’ll ever actually exhaust all of its tricks. (You won’t.)

Finally, He Who Watches is just a really well-designed puzzle game in the style of meta-hub First Person Puzzlers like The Talos Principle (but without all that plot getting in the way). Levels have names that hint at the techniques you’ll need to learn and master, and as you progress, you’ll need to take those skills into the actual hub, using them to reach secrets that once seemed impossible. Above all, it takes the best hint system I’ve ever seen (from Can of Wormholes, and I know that probably wasn’t the first), which ensures that you’re always learning by doing: instead of showing you a series of steps to take, the hints here are separate, smaller puzzles that help to demonstrate a part of the more complex version you’re trying to complete. All of this keeps the player completely immersed in this gravity-defying world, sopping in the symbols and trying to make sense of this magical world. What I think is most telling about the natural learning curve for this puzzler is that if you get stuck, walk away for a day, and then return once your brain has had time to process the impossible things it is being asked to do, you’ll likely make new progress. And that is the kind of puzzle-brain learning I go for.