Valve has revealed the 50 most-played demos from 2024's Steam Next Fest, and topping the list is the dungeon crawler RPG Dungeonborne, the self-styled "next-gen" RTS Stormgate, and my personal favorite, the moody survival driving sim set in the lush Pacific Northwest rainforest, Pacific Drive.
Filling out the top 10 are the strategy space RTS Homeworld 3, the auto-battler strategy game Backpack Battles, the zombie survival sandbox Dread Dawn, the turn-based strategy game Millennia, the roguelike deckbuilder Balatro, the online co-op dungeon-crawler Rotwood, and the derivative, aptly named Metroidvania Deviator.
You can check out the full list for yourself here, but suffice it to say there's an eclectic mix of all sorts of different genres and themes in there. I'm a little bummed to see so little love for horror on the list, especially after playing demos for this gorgeous Dark Souls and Princess Mononoke-inspired boss rush horror and this unimaginably dark PS2-style indie horror game, but I'm both surprised and happy to see a couple of new co-op horror games on the list which previously had escaped my radar.
In a press release, Valve said: "This event racked up more than 3 million wishlists across all available demos; the most of any Next Fest so far!" Last week, I reported on the indie developer community's response to the unprecedented amount of engagement in this year's Steam Next Fest and how helpful it is to smaller studios fighting for some precious exposure.
