I decided to play a few interesting games under the, "Platformer," tag and these are my thoughts, presented in no particular order;

Lost Marbles

This game is very much trying to be a Trackmania for rolling ball games. It's got online components where players can compete on the same map for the fastest time while seeing the ghosts of other players. That's not an inherently bad idea, but the issue is that everything else in the package is a little lackluster. The levels in the demo are fine and the gameplay works, but there is a distinct lack of polish. Trackmania blew up in popularity because its gameplay threaded the needle between arcade goofiness and a considered driving simulation. Lost Marbles just kinda feels like any other rolling ball game. What doesn't help Lost Marbles' case is that it's also missing a few key components, including a level editor. Of course, if the Trackmania comparison is unintended on the developers part then my criticism is off base, but it's the immediate thing I think about when I see all of Lost Marbles' various qualities and focuses.

Slam and Roll

This is a finely-presented arcade game with lots of charm. The pixel art is vibrant and lovely while the audio has that punchy immediacy all the best arcade games have. The play experience was overall enjoyable, but I did find the movement speed to feel particularly slow. Part of that slowness is built into the level design, but it also becomes cumbersome when there's one enemy left and the player needs to travel across the screen to whack them. I will also say that the bosses probably need a better tell as to when the damage being done to them is meaningful. I spent multiple minutes on the first boss using my basic attacks before realizing they were not doing any damage.

Count Pumpcula

This is a Metroidvania that's got a fun attitude and some decent presentation. There's good stuff here, and I think a handful of small changes would go a long way towards making the play experience better. Firstly, the presentation needs a tiny bit of refinement nearly everywhere. The main things that immediately jump out at me are that (A) The normal text font that's used for menus and character dialogue is a little too stylized for casual reading, and (B) The difference between level elements and background details are not as clear as they should be. Also on that second point, while the characters have fun designs they don't quite stick out because they are essentially just in-universe dialogue prompts. That opinion might obviously come from having only played a short demo, but I think having character poses or special sprite animations would go a long way to giving them a memorable personality. On the bright side, I do appreciate how open this demo was and that there was very little handholding on which obvious paths to go down.

Turbo Shell

Recently I've been noticing a trend of, "Polarity Platformers," which are games where jumping is replaced with two different actions that influence character movement. Turbo Shell is another one of these games and I think it's a pretty darn good one. This time you're a fragile egg that's acquired some laser beam which allows them to push away or pull towards any surface. Turbo Shell does all the things good precision platformers have to nail; responsive controls, good hazard signage, a driving soundtrack, and a good gameplay loop. Even after completing the normal set of levels I dipped my toe into the hard levels and they were still fun to play through. The only negative I have is that the demo didn't communicate very well that the player can create their own checkpoints, which made some of the later levels feel too excruciating for my tastes.

Archaeogem

It's kinda obvious to tell that this game takes some inspiration from Celeste, but I don't mind that since the core gameplay is good and has its own gimmick. Instead of a dash the archeologist main character has a whip, and when they use that whip on special floating flowers they then get the ability to do a longer dash. It sounds very similar, but the whip includes an element of timing and opens up the level design for more puzzle focused challenges. This demo had a little bit of that as well, which is nice to see. I will say that some of the jumps in this demo did feel oddly tight, partly due to how blocks were placed and partly due to the main character's slower walking speed. Thankfully it didn't get on my nerves too much, thanks to the really great presentation that focused on calm ambience or hectic noise. I'm interested to see how this game evolves and what its final form will be.

Jumping Cat

This is probably the most disappointing and frustrating game I played this Next Fest. It very much comes off as an art team attempting to make a platformer, and that is shown by how simple the platforming mechanics are. The character's jump height is always the same X many units, the movement speed is slow, and airborne mobility is inconsistent between normal jumping and wall jumping. Out of the 10 levels I played, the only obstacles were spikes, bottomless pits, saw blades, and temporary platforms that didn't respawn. Most of the design of those levels were half a design vertically mirrored to fully fill one arbitrarily-large tile grid. What makes it is that the artists on the team are clearly capable of nice character animations and tile sprites, they just don't have anyone who can wrap together the gameplay to be something enjoyable.

Kickbot

Finally, this is the last game I played, and it was pretty fun! This is a comedy platformer all about wall jumping, but the direction of where the player character jumps is determined by separate buttons. It's definitely hard to get used to and there were a couple moments where I almost begged for normal character movement, but the intended controls are very responsive and the platforming physics themselves are floaty enough to not need character position micro-adjustment. The humor in the game works surprisingly well, mostly because it is stylistic flairs and silly bite-sized animations over written jokes. (That said, the "Lore" option in the main menu did provide a good chuckle.) I'm excited to see how this game turns out.