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Game of the Week: Hauntii is a ghostly game that never runs out of ideas

Boo.

A screen from Hauntii showing a monochrome landscape with craggy rocks and some strange machinery. The whole thing has the hand-drawn style of a great children's book.
Image credit: Moonloop Games/Firestoke

I love demos, so it's no surprise really that our game of the week is a Steam Next Fest demo. There are plenty I could have chosen, but the one that has stolen my heart is Hauntii.

Hauntii's first draw is its art style. It's black and white for the most part - or rather it's monochrome with various tints. And it has that stylish hand-sketched look that would be equally at home in a Mac Barnett kids' book or a New Yorker cartoon. (If Mac Barnett is new to you, BTW, do check their work out. I recommend Leo: A Ghost Story or any of his books with Jon Klassen as a great place to start.)

Before I shoot off on a major kids' book tangent, let's come back to Hauntii. And it's harmonious, really, because Hauntii is always itching to go off on a tangent. It's a game of ideas, and that's why it feels like such an ideal Steam Next Fest demo to me. Because with a demo, you're always secretly playing the same game anyway, a game called: what is this thing, how does it work?

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