Steam Next Fest showed me a sequel I never knew I needed

Amidst the chaos of the Steam Next Fest, I found the sequel to a hidden gem released back in 2018 in early access. It’s a satirical and quirky space survival game where you play as a Man trying to not run out of breath—Breathedge.

Up until the latest Steam Next Fest, I didn’t even know the developer was making a sequel, but now I have yet another addition to my wishlist. The demo has a considerably different start compared to the original game. While Breathedge starts off mainly with you surviving in the open space, Breathedge 2 focuses more on the story.

The demo takes you and your companions through a train depot in an attempt to find a way to leave. Since it’s still a survival game, it’s all about collecting materials, crafting new tools, and gathering more materials with those tools. As you collect everything you need to repair a shuttle, the game suddenly throws you into a small boss fight.

Outside the main story objectives, the starting zone has quite a few places of interest to explore and secrets to find. From a destroyed taxi center to a ticket machine that can put a warrant out for your arrest if you decide to smack it too many times. However, considering there are a ton of places to explore even in the starting zone, limited oxygen quickly becomes a pain. There are tank upgrades and alien… things that give you oxygen, but sometimes I just want to explore.

Because that’s what the game felt like it was about—I wanted to explore every corner of the map, find all the jokes and references, and mess around with different objects in the open space until I was abruptly shot in the leg by the arrow (literally) that said “Demo” from a cartoony Legolas.

Just like the original Breathedge, the sequel feels incredibly polished with high attention to detail, despite it being a demo—even small things like the “No messing around!” line on the train’s emergency lever instructions. It might have a ton of wacky jokes, including a guy flipping you off on the train if you bother him, but it’s a well-made game.

Some features weren’t available in the demo, including scanning robot corpses and even watching dreams when resting on the bench. I can only imagine what kind of dreams the Man might be seeing in the world of Breathedge and can’t wait for that to become available. The trailers and game description also tease the need to manage multiple companions and a variety of zones, including a few on the planets’ respective surfaces.

Is the game still overloaded with jokes? Maybe a little bit. The constant banter between the companions doesn’t help either and probably could be dialed down, especially with their often not-so-helpful comments, but that’s Breathedge for you.