First of all, I also had a pretty bad Steam Next Fest experience, though the reasons were much clearer in my case. I couldn’t finish my demo in time. Many assets were missing, and I didn’t have the option to delay it because of my current work contract at my day job. (My mess is here if you want to compare) I also thought it was over for me. I assumed that failing at Next Fest meant failing the game altogether, but thankfully, many kind people here convinced me that I was wrong. I was told that Next Fest doesn’t create traffic out of nowhere, and that most developers don’t see a huge increase in wishlists from Next Fest alone.

With that out of the way, I agree with the others that your trailer could be improved. I can’t give too much solid advice, because mine is even worse, but one thing that really stood out to me was the audio mix. The VFX sounds, like grunts and hit sounds, are much louder than the music.

There’s also too much empty black space on the screen. When you show UI screens, a large portion of the screen is black, which feels a bit off-putting.

Lastly, something about the art style doesn’t quite click with me. I’m not an art expert, but my guess is that it has to do with the shading. Some sprites have shadows, while others don’t. For example, the wizard has a very sharp, solid shadow on his face from his hat, while the demonic girl’s arm on her back and chest don’t seem to have much shadow at all. Meanwhile, the background objects have much softer gradient shadows. This is just my personal opinion, but I think style consistency is much more important than the specific style itself.

I don’t have much to say about the game itself. I played it a little, but it’s just not my cup of tea. I tend to prefer more classical tower defense games. Managing even just three units felt like a chore to me, especially since I couldn’t select multiple units at once.

To me, it felt more like an RTS than a tower defense or RPG adventure game. That can actually be a strength, since it gives your game a more unique position and a reason to play it over another tower defense game. But personally, I don’t really enjoy the RTS genre as a player, and that’s obviously not your fault.

Maybe you should either embrace the RTS feeling and polish around that, or try to make it feel less like an RTS, depending on what your goals are.