Enter the Dragon, picture credit to Soda Crisis (@CrisisSoda) on Twitter.
Enter the Dragon, picture credit to Soda Crisis (@CrisisSoda) on Twitter.

This article is written in English.

TL;DR

In this quick review, I reviewed some demos from a Steam event, Enter the Dragon. Sorted from the best one (in this article) for me are "Back to the Dawn" -> "The Rewinder" -> "Eastern Exorcist" -> "Afterimage" -> "卫国战争 The Patriotic War". You can read more details regarding each game below.

Notice


Notice
  • This article aimed to review and spread the information about the event and these games.
  • There is no copyright infringement intended.
  • Copyright toward images or videos or any kind of media used in this article goes to the owner, such as the developer or publisher.
  • The author is not affiliated in any way with the developer, or publisher, or any other possibilities regarding this game. This article is purely a review from a gamer's perspective.

Introduction

Enter the Dragon, picture credit to Pixmain (@pixmain) on Twitter.
Enter the Dragon, picture credit to Pixmain (@pixmain) on Twitter.

On Saturday, I discovered a Steam event through my Twitter timeline (I guess this one. I forgot which one, even though I dived into my browser history already). It's entitled "Enter the Dragon", and it was dubbed as "the first ever Steam-based event celebrating games from the Greater China region". And well... It includes plenty of games from China (only?). The event ran from 22 to 29 April 2022 (10 am PDT). It looks like the event is hosted by Pixmain. From what I counted on the page, there are 115 games available for sale and showcased in this event, but there are probably more from developers/publishers, whose product is not showcased on the page. You can watch the trailer for this event through this video below:

In this event, the games divided into seven categories/themes, which are:

  • Golden Dragon (All Stars) - nine games.
  • Black Dragon (Horror and Thriller) - eight games.
  • Blue Dragon (Strategy) - twenty games.
  • Green Dragon (RPG & Adventure) - eighteen games.
  • Red Dragon (Action & Shooter) - twenty six games.
  • White Dragon (Simulation) - eighteen games.
  • Yellow Dragon (Puzzle & Narrative) - sixteen games.

In these 115 games, there are some demos that are available to try. So... Will any of these games actually be worth buying and playing for a long time? Let's see. Anyway, before jumping into the quick reviews, Pixmain also released a video on YouTube presenting 40 out of 115 games in this event, which you can watch below.

My Device Specification

This is the specification of my device, which I used to play these games below.

Laptop Brand and Type, OS CPU GPU
Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5, Windows 11 AMD Ryzen 5 4500 U AMD Radeon™ Graphics
Graphics RAM Gamepad
Radeon Graphics 2.38 GHz 8 GB Gamesir T4 Pro (configured automatically as XBox One)

Quick Reviews and Gameplay

So, in this section, you can see details, steam link, short review, my rating, and my gameplay video, for each game. For details, and Steam link, I copied the data from their Steam/steamdb page. Then for the short review, and my rating, is based on my opinion. Lastly, for gameplay video, each video is currently "Unlisted" and will be set to public later as scheduled (you can see the schedule and database of all games I've played on this page. In case the developers/publishers/anyone related to the game (even you as viewers/readers) wanted to change the video status from "Unlisted" to "Published", just feel free to Reach Me. Also, these short-reviews below are sorted by the order of time when I played the game, and it's not based on the best till the worse one (in this article).

Eastern Exorcist

Thumbnail of Eastern Exorcist (Demo) - First Time Impression - Gameplay [Till Die] - Reaction As Playing
Developer(s) Publisher(s) Released At
Wildfire Game(无锡野火数字科技有限公司) bilibili 08 July 2021
Played At Current Price
27 April 2022 IDR 68249, USD 11.69.

Link to the Game

"Eastern Exorcist" is an action-slashing game, where you will act as an exorcist who'll evict demons in forms of various creatures by slashing them. Later in the middle of the demo, you will meet three colleagues, who captured a demonic creature in the form of foxy-woman. So, how is it?

Quite fun. The demo is playable, and enjoyable, and felt not too hard to complete. In my decent laptop, the movement of each character felt a bit slow and smooth-en, but it didn't affect my experience that much. The control of this game using my gamepad also doesn't feel too much to understand. Even defeating the boss in this demo also felt do-able, so it doesn't leave me feeling frustrated after. So... Probably #WorthToBuy?

My Rating

😄👍🏻 So Good

81/100 pts

My Gameplay


Afterimage

Thumbnail of Afterimage (Playtest) - First Time Impression - Unfinished Gameplay - Reaction As Playing
Developer(s) Publisher(s) Released At
Aurogon Shanghai TBD (To Be Determined) Late 2022
Played At Current Price
27 April 2022 No price available on the page, yet.

Link to the Game

“Afterimage” is an exploration game where you play as a woman-like-human to collect items and defeat some enemies on your way. How is it?

Hm... Not that good. The game felt so heavy on my decent laptop, and whenever I died, I had to go back to the beginning, and not from where I died previously. Also strangely, instead of reducing some graphics behind the gamer, such as background, or details of characters', they chose to change characters' appearance into some square/block items on the screen, which makes it... not enjoyable to be seen. Controlling the game also felt... hard to follow? Even the sea transition between each round also felt super heavy. Like a few times in the game, I pressed a button which was supposed to attack the enemy, yet, it's not appearing on the screen. Kinda understandable as this is still a work in progress, it seems...

My Rating

😐 Quite Bad

59/100 pts

My Gameplay


Back to the Dawn

Thumbnail of Back to the Dawn (Demo) - First Time Impression - Gameplay (Part 1) - Reaction As Playing
Developer(s) Publisher(s) Released At
Metal Head Games Metal Head Games 2023
Played At Current Price
27 April 2022 No price available on the page, yet.

Link to the Game

My Review

"Back to the Dawn" is a management game, where you'll manage the daily life of a reporter-turned-to-prisoner. In this game, you'll manage all of his daily life, from life-choices, actions, where to go, what to do, and more.

As a demo, this one was so... so... good. Well, the game plays smoothly, storyline goes smooth too, tutorial and tips doesn't make you feel overwhelmed too, graphics are good, and so the music/audio, instruction are clear (well probably some needs two/three times reading, but still okay), and much much much more things I believe to praise from this game. I couldn't pinpoint any downside from this game when I wrote this, as I remember the session felt so enjoyable, even though it felt kinda overwhelming in the beginning.

Then I just remember that I found a bug in the game, where I was stuck inside the infirmary, and sometimes it felt heavy when there are a lot of things going on in the screen (for example, if I move in front of cells, it's gonna lag a bit, but still moveable).

In short, in my opinion, this one is so-so-so #WorthToBuy. I'm so ready to spend my money to buy the full one. And hopefully........ My progress in the demo could be imported to the full one :)

My Rating

😄👍🏻 So Good

97/100 pts

My Gameplay


The Rewinder

Thumbnail of The Rewinder (Demo) - First Time Impression - Full Gameplay - Reaction As Playing
Developer(s) Publisher(s) Released At
MistyMountainStudio Gamera Game 10 September 2021
Played At Current Price
28 April 2022 IDR 114999, USD 14.99.

Link to the Game

In this game, "The Rewinder", you will play as someone who has the ability "to rewind" things that happened in the past, to uncover some cases that's not been solved yet, then change the fate. But this theme leaned more toward the spiritual/psychic world, where there are two angels (?) come into you (as The Rewinder), asking you to help them to solve a problem, where someone's soul can't travel into another world, and is stuck in this world.

As a demo, this one also sold its idea to me. This is the second game I bought using my Steam account (yay~ 🙌🏻), but I'm still waiting for further information, whether I could import my progress in the demo to the full one. The developers haven't answered my question yet for days, so I guess they are probably busy...

Anyway, even though it's kinda frustrating sometimes (duh that rewind steps at four god-statue is super-frustrating 😠). But it's so good. Graphics are good, audio is good too, instruction/information also clear too (even though sometimes the translation felt off, but no biggie), the puzzles are also challenging (like super-challenging. good god...). So in short, it's a really enjoyable session and so #WorthToBuy.

My Rating

😄👍🏻 So Good

93/100 pts

My Gameplay


卫国战争 The Patriotic War

Thumbnail of 卫国战争 The Patriotic War (Demo) - First Time Impression - Unfinished Gameplay - Reaction as Playing
Developer(s) Publisher(s) Released At
Tracer Studio INDIECN TBA (To Be Announced)
Played At Current Price
28 April 2022 No price available on the page, yet.

Link to the Game

For the last game in this article, it's entitled "卫国战争 The Patriotic War". Here you will play as a controller of a tank or an infantry. Is it good........?

No. Controllers are hard, gameplay is still rough, even though the graphics and the audio are good enough. Probably as this is still a super-early work-in-progress released as a demo, hence why it feels this raw..........

My Rating

😐 Quite Bad

36/100 pts

My Gameplay


Closing

Well, in this game there are at least three out of five games that I actually enjoyed a lot and won't hesitate to say it's actually #WorthToBuy. Next, in two more articles, there are nine more games (seven demo, and two full versions) that I will review quickly like this one. Stay tuned :)

That's all for now. Thank you for reading this review, and see you in another post. Bye! 👋🏻