Assembling furniture is anything but "wholesome" in this fantastic Steam Next Fest demo

You know those wee indie games about opening boxes and organising items and assembling furniture and they're all very cute and colourful and fun and "wholesome"? Miniatures is not one of those games. Oh certainly you will open boxes and organise items and assemble furniture in its Steam Next Fest demo, but it's not cute or colourful or wholesome. Miniatures is more of a psychological horror game, laden with tension and uncertainty. For such a short demo, it built a great mood, and I'm excited for the full game to come later this year.

Miniatures - Gameplay Trailer

The full game will be a series of four short stories, each somehow focused on a different object contained in a jewellery box (a screwdriver, a shell, a toy lizard, and what I think is an embroidered moth) and playing differently. In the Next Fest demo, we're taking out the screwdriver to assemble flat-pack furniture.

This is not a fun task, and not in the usual "Ha ha Ikea and their wacky instructions and missing parts, eh?" way that many games might make it unfun. It courses with terrible familial tension, even as some characters try to make it fun. It's not an empty edginess, mind, it's mood building until it overflows and oh it's very pleasing. Even getting frustrated by trial-and-error figuring out what to do with a puzzle is part of the experience. The muted colours and shifting hand-drawn art style really sell it too. No dialogue, heaps of personality expressed by gestures. Lovely. I was holding my breath towards the end. What a perfectly lovely unpleasant time.

Miniatures is due to launch on Steam this year, at some point from March to the end of May. That's where you'll find the Next Fest demo too. I understand a demo was in a previous Steam sample-o-rama but I didn't play it then so I can't tell you what's different.

It's made by Other Tales Interactive, the studio behind Tick Tock: A Tale for Two. The 2019 cooperative puzzle game saw two players working together while seeing quite different things, as our old vidbuds Matthew and Alice L demonstrated way back when:

Let’s Play Tick Tock: A Tale For Two | Creepy Co-op Conundrums

See our Steam Next Fest tag for more demo recommendations. The event runs until Monday the 12th, so grab demos while you can.