Tried today:

• Beyond These Stars
  Was very hyped for this, now not sure. It’s cute, and I love hexagons (they are the bestagons, after all), but the space whale had far less of an effect than I thought. Plus Against The Storm seemingly ruined me for most city builders. I think I’ll rather wait for whether The Wandering Village (where you build on the back of a giant dino) grows into something cool by the end of its early access. Kept on follow.
• Elsie
  This one was flat out disappointing. It looks gorgeous in videos, but even just playing it the visuals were… distracting? They’re individually beautiful, but they blend together badly which is really meh for such a precision and speed based game. There are outline options and all but I feel this is fixing the symptoms rather than the cause. Plus the UX was in a pretty rough state but the game is in development so that’s okay of course. Anyhow, off my follow list.
• Preserve
  Barely had an eye on this, absolutely loving it. It’s like Dorfromantik and Cascadia had a baby. Chill placing of hexagons that you transform into habitats and then have animals in them. Very pretty, too. Definitely on follow now.
• Honeycomb
  Another big disappointment, this looked like it could recreate the wondrous nature of exploring Subnautica but on land. And maybe Avatar Frontiers of Pandora with its jungle just ruined that for me, but it fell entirely flat. The UI+UX is atrocious but also clearly very very very early and placeholder so I’m not really minding that, but the graphics just… don’t look good. It’s either too artsy, or not artsy enough, with seemingly no clear line. And that ruins the atmosphere, which in turn made the entire game boring. Another one off the follow list.
• The Crush House
  This one is interesting. Only heard about it from an RPS article, you play a cameraman in a Big Brother type situation, and depending on the text comments by fans have to focus on different aspects. It’s a really unique premise, and I like what the demo showed even if it was a bit very simplistic. If more elements than just audiences and their daily likes mesh together in the final version, getting this. It’s on follow now.
• Freakid Fleapit
  A bit unsure. It takes strong inspiration from Crypt of the Necrodancer, but lands a fair bit weaker (to be fair, CotN is a damn high bar to clear). OTOH it has really cool character art and a strong visual identity to its pixel art, too. Keeping on eye on it, could turn out amazing. Kept on follow.