Image: monthbug & offbrand games

I am flying at a thousand miles an hour, weaving between missile strikes, frantically abducting an entire planet's population to throw into my hybrid blackjack parlor/pachinko pinball table, all to pay for the gas to keep me one step ahead of the alien mafia, to whom I owe a sum with far too many zeroes. Being little green spaceman John Gleep isn't easy, but it sure as hell isn't boring. It is, in fact, one of the most chaotic and funny demos I've tried so far in this Next Fest.

I won't spoil the setup because the demo's intro is so good, but this is an absolutely ridiculous mash-up of genres. An incremental roguelite arcade game that's also an idle casino pachinko machine, somehow. And that's before you even get into the minigames and stock manipulation. But the simple goal is to make a whole lot of money, because you owe trillions to the mob because you somehow lost an entire galaxy.

You do this by drawing assorted gambling activities from a gachapon machine, and then install them - as pins - into a pachinko board, each pin having its own quirks, synergies, and upgrades to make them more profitable if a 'guest' hits one. So far, so Balatro. But how do you get guests? By picking a planet to raid, where you play a 3D arcade game, boosting between settlements, weaving between missiles and beaming up thousands of innocents to throw into your casino, which takes up half the screen.

That's a lot by itself, but then you start getting permanent upgrades, like minigames you can play on the casino side for payouts while flying your ship, or pinball flippers that you can control to launch guests back up the board for extra time. Or you can just install a meat-grinder in your casino so some of the guests get processed into health for your ship so you can keep abducting for longer each run.

It is loud, manic, very silly, and shockingly well-written stuff in the demo so far, and I can't wait for the full game. Normally incremental stuff and Balatro-adjacent games lose my attention pretty quickly, but with the combination of arcade hands-on stuff, narrative weirdness, and seemingly more minigames and events to look forward to, I can see myself sticking with this one until the credits roll. Plus, who can't appreciate Mrs Gleep? Tall, dark, all right angles and made of incomprehensible cosmic obsidian.

The full version of John Gleep is only a few weeks off, landing on November 11th. But I highly recommend trying this demo. It's an impressively daft experience, and surprisingly lengthy.