The number of free demos included in Steam Next Fest has been getting higher and higher through each event, and with only so much time to play them, finding what's worth your time can be tough. We offer some tips in our Steam Next Fest guide, but if you just want some pure recommendations, then stick around. Even running alongside Summer Game Fest, I've still made the time to check out some great demos, and below I highlight the ones I really think you shouldn't miss.

Ranging from blockbuster demos you can finally try at home for yourself like Onimusha, to a Lovecraft adaptation you play from the perspective of a penguin, the great thing about Steam Next Fest is how so many unique experiences of any size and scale can stand alongside one another. It's the perfect time to try something new. Ending on Monday, there's still time to dip into some potential new favorites before it's over.

Read on, and allow me to run through the best Steam Next Fest demos from this June 2026 event that you should be downloading, playing, and wishlisting!

12. Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Developer: Capcom
Release date: September 25, 2026

The GamesRadar+ team are massive fans of all the best ARPGs, so Onimusha: Way of the Sword has been on our list as one of our most anticipated games for quite some time now. And, the good news is that, after playing through its demo, Capcom's latest entry to the beloved historic fantasy series doesn't disappoint. Playing as Miyamoto Musashi in a fictional version of Edo-era Kyoto, in Onimusha: Way of the Sword you are charged with defeating monsters (known as Genma), slicing through them with your blade. The demo really does give you a great window into the atmosphere of the title, lets you face a boss fight, and the combat also gives us God of War vibes during our time playing. Basically, it's an adrenaline-filled marvel, and ahead of its September release, I highly recommend downloading this one before Steam Next Fest ends.

Play the Onimusha: Way of the Sword demo here

11. Valor Mortis

Developer: One More Level
Release date: October 13, 2026

Out of all the demos currently available at Steam Next Fest, Valor Mortis is the best Soulslike that I've played so far. From the creators of Ghostrunner, this first-person action game has you taking on the role of an undead soldier, now a member of Napoleon Bonaparte's new supernatural army. The game is set in an alternate version of 19th century France with a zombie virus running rampant, forcing you to slay your brothers in arms. Along the way you'll see plenty of gore, unsettling but oddly pretty environments, and even get some story hints around Napoleon's true intentions. Personally, I was always a fan of that supernatural concept, but the demo fully sold me to add this game to my wishlist after experiencing its slick combat. In fact, we mentioned how the demo gave us flashbacks to the first time playing Dark Souls 3 and Shadow of Mordor, high praise indeed.

Play the Valor Mortis demo here

10. Virtue and a Sledgehammer

Developer: Deconstructeam, Selkie Harbour
Release date: TBC 2026

"Most people resort to therapy. But you chose the brave option. A sledgehammer." Virtue and a Sledgehammer's anger isn't subtle, entirely based around using the controller's trigger to lift and strike with a massive sledgehammer to smash apart your woodland hometown and the machines that now populate it. Somehow sporting the personalities of those you grew up alongside, you're taking revenge for the deaths of everyone you knew. With an abstracted and strikingly told story told through fragmented flashbacks, the satisfaction of going ham on robots, objects, and houses is sold through the crunchy feel. This generous demo allows you to play from the beginning, through a sizable starting area that you can wreck to your heart's content.

Play the Virtue and a Sledgehammer demo here

9. Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!

Developer: Strange Scaffold
Release date: July 29, 2026

When Carissa is struck down by a delivery truck days before her big promotion in Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World's opening, she's actually transported to a fantasy world of swords and sorcery instead of dying, in typical isekai anime fashion. But, you play as the hapless delivery driver accidentally did the deed, and she's able to guilt-trip you into helping her revive back to the real world by causing even more havoc, wrecking the city with outlandish stunts to 'isekai' even more people as low level monsters so she can cheat through her experience and resurrect. The result is an oddball mix of Crazy Taxi and Grand Theft Auto as you juggle police chases, deliveries, and monster combat, all within a colorful world. This demo lets you off the leash to try out some timed, arcade-style runs for yourself.

Play the Truck-Kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! demo here

8. Screenbound

Developer(s): Crescent Moon Games, Radical Forge
Release date: September 10, 2026

Screenbound is an upcoming puzzle platformer that will no doubt capture the hearts of any retro fans out there. Brilliantly combining a 2D and 3D world, you as the player are tasked with navigating and beating levels with the help of a very Game Boy Advance SP looking device called a Qboy. The world is reflected in 2D via your Qboy screen and you need to alternate between using your handheld and moving through the 3D world to progress. I won't lie to you, juggling the changing perspectives is a lot at first, but it does soon become second nature, especially once you surrender to the fact that Screenbound is all about timing, logic, and just a little bit of luck as well. From what I've played so far, the game is super comfortable to play and easy to get into too. It's also one of those titles that will have you itching for more.

Play the Screenbound demo here

7. Mistfall Hunter

Developer: Bellring Games
Release date: July 29, 2026

If you like Elden Ring Nightreign but wish the Soulslike formula was more of a pure Extraction experience, then Mistfall Hunter is aimed squarely at you. With considered, dangerous combat against monsters and rival players alike, this is a fantasy twist on the Extraction Shooter genre where you take up sword and shield, magic, bows, or other weapons instead of guns. Starting out weak, you have to team up in co-op or go solo to enter deadly Gyldenmist-afflicted lands, extracting before you become corrupted in order to bank gear or precious Gyldenblood. Even surviving an excursion requires you to kill a bell creature in order to magically return. If the genre isn't usually your thing but you're a Dark Souls diehard, you may find the loop compelling here anyway, so it's well worth giving this demo a try before its full launch to see if you like it.

Play the Mistfall Hunter demo here

6. About Fishing

Developer: The Water Museum
Release date: TBC 2026

Ever since the release of Dredge we have seen an influx of fishing games with a dark twist. However, even with a bunch of titles in the genre, About Fishing's demo had me hooked (pun intended) thanks to its tactile fishing gameplay and the promise of a creepy mystery linked to our discovery of a dead body and, um, a mermaid? Sporting some very nostalgic visuals, the game follows a woman in a yellow raincoat who ends up uncovering secrets via the powers of fishing. The demo is very simple, and only gives us the opening chapter, however, it's still very effective in keeping us intrigued about the story. I also love how the meditative act of fishing is paired with such a sinister undertone, giving me big David Lynch vibes. I do wish that there was a release date for the game, but for now I highly recommend checking out this demo, especially if you are a Twin Peaks fan.

Play the About Fishing demo here

5. Tanuki: Pon's Summer

Developer: Denkiworks
Release date: TBC

The Tanuki Festival is one month away and it's up to the lazy tanuki, Pon, to fix up the shrine before time runs out. Tanuki: Pon's Summer is an adorable game that follows Pon working in his part-time post-office job. Speed around on his BMX, develop friendships with residents, and decorate the shrine – all the ingredients are there for a new cozy game icon. During this demo you get the chance to play through multiple days in-game, letting you experience some odd jobs and giving you a charming introduction to the characters. Since our goal is to get as much cash as we can for the shrine, mini-games are the star here. I'm expecting that we'll probably see more at the full release, but so far the gameplay loop has me in a chokehold. Tanuki: Pon's Summer may not have a release date but its demo is already hilarious, fun, and also runs pretty great on the Steam Deck as well (always a bonus in my book).

Play the Tanuki: Pon's Summer demo here

4. Penguin Colony

Developer: ORIGAME DIGITAL
Release date: TBC 2026

2026 has seen a ton of Lovecraftian horror games, however, something that we haven't seen is Lovecraftian horror through the eyes of a penguin. That is until now. Penguin Colony is a strange but also faithful adaptation of HP Lovecraft's novellas, At The Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, but in this version you are a cute low-poly penguin belly sliding around Antarctica. In this take on At The Mountains of Madness, it's Nazis who are trying to uncover something buried in the ice, while the Kaitiaki work to stop them. But, our job is to waddle through the story, doing some light platforming and watching humans in horror whenever we encounter them. And, trust me horror is still very much present even in the demo. While playing through it ourselves we got to see someone's head explode next to our cute penguin, and I'm sure that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the virtual trauma that is in store for us.

Play the Penguin Colony demo here

3. Vampire: The Masquerade – Oaths and Ashes

Developer: Revive the Spark
Release date: TBC 2026

Vampire: The Masquerade – Oaths & Ashes' Steam Next Fest demo is a prologue to their visual novel RPG, so it's a breezy narrative adventure that sets the stage and doesn't fully showcase all the mechanics on offer. But, like any good vampire tale, the blood has me itching to taste more already. Playing as powerful Ventrue vampire Alice as she's on the cusp of getting her fangs into her dream job as Archon serving under the Parisian Justicar, she's sent on the unenviable task of sowing discord in Berlin, controlled by a rival vampire network. While the action has yet to really get going, the politicking as the prologue progresses has compelled me, and I like the idea of this narrative-heavy game still having you manage spending blood to use your powers, hunger, and the keeping up the titular masquerade in front of mortals. The full game promises deeper systems and a second thinblood protagonist. Now my appetite has been whetted, I hope it can pack a punch beyond this prologue – but I'll be patient as I stalk this particular quarry.

Play the Vampire: The Masquerade – Oaths and Ashes demo here

2. Fractured Blooms

Developer: Serenity Forge
Release date: TBC

From Doki Doki Literature Club publisher Serenity Forge, Fractured Blooms has been on my radar for ages, and thankfully the Steam Next Fest demo doesn't disappoint. In fact our senior writer and fellow horror fan Ashley Bardhan, has stated that it is "better than anything you'll play" during Valve's event, and if you love psychological horror, I fully support that stance too. Stuck in a timeloop, you follow the teenage Angie in a world brimming with Appalachian mysticism. During said loop you'll need to manage Angie's resources and get her to perfect her chores from farming, cooking, and cleaning to the point of pain. Each day something will shift and slowly you'll begin to remember and see things that will put your hair on end. Fractured Blooms seems like it will be a narrative goldmine and its demo will stick with you long after this Next Fest ends, trust us.

Play the Fractured Blooms demo here

1. Mortal Shell 2

Developer: Cold Symmetry
Release date: TBC 2026

Mortal Shell 2 follows the Soulslike playbook, but isn't afraid to scribble in the margins, either. One such doodle – a granite-like cuboid shotgun, is one of a number of new tools your 'Shells' can wield that make this feel like a metal album cover come to life as much as it is a challenging combat gauntlet. Slick and reactive in a way few in the genre manage to be, clashes with deadly foes – ranging from hulking, caged brutes to weird witchy women with accordions that actually make music – feels incredible. While the fundamentals are nailed throughout what becomes at least a semi-open-world quest, there's a lot of customization on offer, even in this generous demo. That includes Seals, gear that can alter your parry button to become, say, a petrification block that freezes you mid-animation, or allows your gun to break enemy stun meters. And, of course, Shells themselves, class-like roles that are actually the bodies of named, specific undead characters. This is the most excited I've been for a Soulslike in a long time.

Play the Mortal Shell 2 demo here

One of the best VR games is finally getting a non-VR port with Moss: The Forgotten Relic, and it's some of the most fun I've had this Steam Next Fest

"OOF," I say out loud after wiping out trying to pull off a double backflip on my bike. Coincidentally, narrator dialogue says the same thing, adding insult to injury. That's OK though, because I'm a lazy tanuki with a big bouncy belly, and I hop back on my bike and rail-grind my way over to another ramp, this time using the sprint button and holding down jump to catch flight and give myself enough airtime to backflip twice and land safely with a satisfying flump. It's summertime. I'm applying for a job at the local yakitori restaurant. I'm delivering packages on a bike. I'm a freakin' tanuki. I'm playing Tanuki: Pon's Summer, and it really is Pon's summer.

I was sold on Tanuki: Pon's Summer within minutes after seeing its Steam page. Right behind black cats specifically, tanuki are my favorite animals. They're chubby little trash goblins, they hibernate by cuddling with other tanuki, and they're endemic to Japan, my favorite place in the world. You give that tanuki a bike and some sick BMX tricks, and my tail's a'wagging. You throw in grilled chicken yakitori, sushi, beer, and give that tanuki a job as a mail courier, and well, that is a video game I will very much want to play.

The new Tanuki: Pon's Summer demo released for this year's Steam Next Fest is fairly barebones, but what's on offer is so charming that I can't wait to play more after work. At its core, the game is all about cycling around town delivering packages to weirdos in effort to raise enough money to restore the town shrine before the Matsuri Festival. That gameplay loop is made infinitely more enjoyable thanks to the addition of a genuine, surprisingly in-depth trick system very similar to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. You can backflip, double backflip, do Superman moves, rail-grind, and rail-hop, and that's just what I can remember from my limited time with the demo.

Having played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 relatively recently, Tanuki: Pon's Summer is much simpler and more approachable by comparison. It helps that the cycling mechanics themselves are impressively smooth and intuitive, but the system itself is also a lot more forgiving. Like, you have to really beef it for the game to register your trick attempt as a fail and send you crashing to the ground. Most of the time, even if you land at a crooked angle against opposing momentum, the game will just autocorrect you and send you on your way. It makes rail-grinding and doing tricks something you idly do as you cycle between jobs rather than something you have to work to perfect, although maybe that'll change in the full game.

There's more – like, a lot more – to Pon's Summer than delivering packages, and you get a taste of some of it in the demo. Even as proudly strange as this game is, I was surprised to find myself tangling with a sumo wrestler at one point. I was equally surprised and delighted to find myself serving beer to patrons of a local izakaya. I was even surprised by just how cute and cozy Pon's homebase is, a little Hobbit-hole cluttered with trash and dimly lit by the changing hour and a retro TV and games console.

Everything from the level of detail in the food to the irresistible wobble with which Pon carries himself, is so innocently delightful. And I apologize for over-using that word, but it's very much intentional. I can't think of a better word to encapsulate what I felt playing Pon's Summer than delight, and so I will throw it around irresponsibly. In this increasingly cynical world, I think games like Pon's Summer will grow in demand in tandem, and although I've only played the demo, I'll be waiting impatiently for the full game to come out. And when it does, developer Denkiworks says demo progress will seamlessly transfer over, as it's essentially "the first arc of the game."

Here's a bunch more upcoming indie games to keep on your radar.

The Steam Next Fest demo for Echoes of Aincrad, an upcoming action RPG based on massive anime and light novel series Sword Art Online, takes me right back to the days when I was 19 and SAO was the coolest thing in the world. Given that it's the third-ranked demo for the whole Steam event, I'd say I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The presentation is spot-on. So far, Echoes of Aincrad is a convincing portrayal of an RPG styled after an imagined MMO – and not just any MMO, as the series hook goes, but a "full-dive" game where you are cybernetically transported to a digital world while physically controlling your character's body as if it were your own. Bandai Namco has fortunately seen fit to exclude the feature that fries your real brain upon death.

But just as rewatching Sword Art Online as an adult affirmed for me that the main series falls apart outside a very limited collection of inspired scenes (and has bad narrative habits that frequently dip into the disgusting), the moment Echoes of Aincrad has to walk the walk, cracks appear. I genuinely have a lot of appreciation for Sword Art, and the prospect of dropping a custom avatar into the anime and watching them kick butt is an appealing one, but nostalgia is not making this combat any smoother or this world any richer.

The demo presents a serviceable mix of light and heavy attacks, blocks and parries, special and counterattacks, and some light NPC coordination for your small party. These things feel fine in isolation, and the parry actually feels pretty good, but as soon as I try to string them together or seriously engage with enemies, it all goes to hell.

Attacks feel oddly staccato – extremely stop-and-start, with no flow or combos to speak of. Enemies are as dumb as the rocks they stand on in the opening level – a cave temple stuffed with humanoid beasts called kobolds – and about as agile. Perhaps a higher difficulty setting inaccessible in the demo would help, to say nothing of more complex encounters, but even bosses feel trivial and lack presence.

I love janky anime action RPGs. But like a dolphin choir stricken with sore throats, this one is not clicking. My hope is that full progression and customization, with access to more weapons and skills, can shore up the combat, but the core actions just don't have that razzmatazz right now.

It was after I cleared the opening level that my worries really set in. I can only glean so much from a limited vertical slice of Echoes of Aincrad, and perhaps this demo shows a very old version of the full game, but its vaunted world, meant to fill gaps in the first arc of the Sword Art story by exploring levels of the titular game, feels sterile. Landscapes too big for their own good are sparsely dotted with largely dull enemies, and environments lack the charm of the game's fantastic character models. I say that, yet in towns and conversations, your main character is less emotive than a Scrub Daddy brush.

Echoes of Aincrad nails the look, but I'm shaky on the feel. All the menus, animations, and graphical effects that I'd expect from an SAO game are here. This is by far the most impressive visual recreation of the full-dive MMO every viewer has fantasized about, even if it is a single-player game. I'm sure character creator access would liven things up further. But once I rip off the incredible wrapper, I find an action RPG that I probably wouldn't give a second glance were it not for the IP. The full game has its work cut out for it. I don't think watching a custom avatar pal around is going to be enough for me.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World might be the weirdest Steam Next Fest demo I've played this year, but I wasn't ready for it to so neatly blend together the vibes of going on a vehicular Grand Theft Auto rampage with arcade-style Crazy Taxi deliveries and objective clearing. Despite the cutesy, anime-style graphics, your goal is to use your delivery truck to wreak absolute havoc across your seaside town. But, for a good cause. Sort of.

In Truck-kun's opening, you, a hapless delivery truck driver, accidentally run over corporate marketer Carissa just before her big promotion. In the style of an isekai anime or light novel, though, that means she's transported to a fantasy world of monsters and experience points – but also that she's now haunting you. She has the chance to resurrect in time for her promotion, but only if you can help her cheat her way through experience points as quickly as possible. How? By striking down more pedestrians, turning them into low-level monsters she can instantly destroy. It's the circle of isekai.

Trucked up

The dark premise clashes in a fun way with the vibrant, cutesy presentation that isn't a far cry from Katamari, but the actual driving action is more like Crazy Taxi by way of GTA – with a touch of The Simpsons Hit & Run – in how it rewards you for both making deliveries and causing chaos. It's an oddball mix, but I don't know what else I expected from developer Strange Scaffold (who also made I Am Your Beast, Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3, and many more). Their demos are always well worth checking out – and our Steam Next Fest guide has more information about the ongoing event.

Given a time limit for each expedition, you have to juggle multiple goals across that limited time, though they accumulate into game-wide progress. Deliveries themselves work by driving into a circle and then following an arrow. Meanwhile, the bottom of the screen has RPG-style pixel art of Carissa as she slashes through any slimes, skeletons, or other monsters you 'summon', otherwise twiddling her thumbs if you aren't causing enough chaos.

More objectives stack up at the side of the screen, constantly refreshing, challenging you to drift, jump, or smash through objects to earn Carissa more experience points. Chaos is good, of course, but also brings heat, police cars chasing you down which can be boosted into or side-slammed to destroy them for even more points.

It's a deliberately overwhelming amount of information that complicates its simple premise, making it hard to even keep an eye on the ticking clock at the top of screen while you also have to monitor Carissa's monster slaying progress. While she can take care of business on her own eventually, you can also send her energy for a special attack that'll help her mop up a bunch of enemies in one go. All without crashing, of course.

The driving controls themselves are relatively simple. In my demo, I only play a few runs, but it doesn't have the same depth of tricks as Crazy Taxi. Still, combining drifts, boosts, and jumps still gives an arcade thrill, and it's offset by how many different objectives need to be kept in mind in addition to driving the truck. Considering I spent a lot of time back in the PS2 days ignoring my missions in GTA in favor of going on rampages to see how long I could last, it's great to see that feeling distilled down in an arcade style here. I'm not expecting the full game to get much deeper. It doesn't need to. This is a world that's pulling me back already – I just hope it doesn't fully isekai me. Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! launches on PC on July 29.

Steam Next Fest's top demo is basically Dark Souls but PvP Extraction – Mistfall Hunter's ARPG twist on the genre might finally hook me

I couldn't comprehend the woods. As a child in New York, I saw that sleepy horses trotted around the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park, and I waved to the lonely polar bear at the zoo without wondering why she lived in the Bronx. But the demo I'm playing at Summer Game Fest 2026 for Fractured Blooms, the upcoming farming horror sim from Doki Doki Literature Club publisher Serenity Forge, makes me feel like I've started life over again from a filthy forest in West Virginia, and the odd thing is, I don't mind. I'm also sure that the Fractured Blooms demo available now is more intoxicating than anything you'll touch during Steam Next Fest.

It gives me the sensation that I've walked into someone else's dream – there are some concrete reasons for that, as Fractured Blooms is based on a true story, Serenity Forge founder and Fractured Blooms creator Zhenghua "Z" Yang tells me, though he evades me when I ask him for more details. I suppose I don't need anything as finicky as that, as Fractured Blooms is soaked in the sugar of Appalachian mysticism, and perhaps the wrath of God.

Teen protagonist Angie begins my Summer Game Fest demo with confession: "Can I tell you a secret? I'm not scared." She talks about mud caking the white skirt of her dress on her way to the old church, where I think something covered in fleas is probably waiting for me.

That's the feeling of Fractured Blooms – Angie speaks with a childlike evasiveness I relate to, being a Christian who loves Jesus as much as she is aware His wound is always bleeding. It's obvious something is wrong with these woods, even though Serenity Forge has cleverly depicted them with lovely gauziness, and it makes me want to lie down for a nap among the poppies…

Angie remembers trudging through this particular forest path with a shining white bouquet of flowers, but it's red petals that fall from the sky as I make my way inside the church, where... there's a plate of raw meat staring at me from the altar as a congregation recommends I partake in His flesh.

Yang tells me later that this demo represents the start of Angie's time loop of chores, where she must farm, cook, and pick up after herself to the point of pain. This is the kind of idea that really frightens Yang, who realizes he isn't scared of much else over the course of our interview. Daily dramas – folding the laundry while your unmade bed is pleading for your return, picking all the fresh tomatoes before the bugs get them first – upset him more than the average horror game or film, which he rarely interacts with.

"The most difficult part about launching a horror game in general," Yang says, reflecting, "is to try to break through the noise of a now established and generic formula, which is typically some kind of combination of mascots, jumpscares, asset store flips, and some kind of PS1 graphics." Fractured Blooms is a soft bunny in comparison, eager to lead you to a more contemplative horror rather than shit your pants.

For example, "I think it's very important for players to see the version of God in their own way, because I believe that that is the truth of how it works," Yang says.

The Fractured Blooms demo currently available to play on Steam showcases some of the rituals players will carry out while weighing the idea: harvest a tomato from the golden garden, notice the treehouse is rotting, make venison stew with noodles and thyme. At one point, Angie sobs mid-sentence, because the work never stops. During my Summer Game Fest demo, she eagerly drowns herself at the behest of an anime redhead (Yang tells me there will be "a major payoff" to why Fractured Blooms' character and environmental art styles are so different).

"I split the self apart to bud anew, and shrank into the dirt as she advised," Angie says unremorsefully. I understand. It's complicated – her crying, her temporary suicide don't read as purely tragic to me. Angie seems to act out of commitment.

Again, I relate to her, being a woman who loves life as much as she is aware it requires suffering. Yang shares this grim understanding, as he tells me when I ask for his greatest fear, "I don't think I am scared of death, just like how I'm not scared of before I was born."

"I don't know if you know too much about my history," he says, "but when I was 18 years old, I was diagnosed with a near-fatal illness that caused me to be hospitalized for two years. I was told I was going to die in three hours when I was 18.

"At that point, I was writing my will, I was thinking about how to come to terms with death. For the next two years, I was going through chemo, and I kept on being told by doctors that maybe I have a couple days. Maybe I have a couple weeks. I spent years just expecting to not have a future and to only have a very limited amount of time to live.

"It kind of removed my fear of death, because I just had to be so OK with it from such a young age. It also removed my fear of needles. I find a lot of comfort when needles enter my veins."

Nestled in the burnt heart of the Virginia woods, Fractured Blooms seems like a comfortable place to consider these kinds of human peculiarities. I feel safe here, even with the leaves and sliced venison telling me I should question that, and Jesus' cut continues to drip.

It seems I've finished the journey from New York to Fractured Blooms' cracked porcelain, Appalachian kitchen from just my Summer Game Fest demo. 20 minutes of gameplay has never made me feel this way before.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Mistfall Hunter kicks off in a familiar fashion for anyone who has played Dark Souls, or most any other Soulslike – I'm a husk revivified by a mysterious energy and shunted off to fight through a dying land. Shambling dead lunge at me, huge gates must be opened, and I'm jumped by a hulking monster right at the end and smashed into pieces. But, this Steam Next Fest beta has a twist of its own to offer.

Along the way through this brief tutorial, I've been shoving loot into a swelling inventory, and once felled by the boss monster at the end I have one more chance to steer my spirit back to my body to get back up again. From there, I summon a strange bell creature onto the map, tracking and slaying it to gain the ability to make it ring and extract with my collected loot. From here, it's all about deploying into and extracting out of bigger fantasy maps, filled with goodies to collect, monsters, and other players (and if you want to give it a go, you can check out our Steam Next Fest guide for more).

Misty mountains

Mistfall Hunter is the debut project from Bellring Games, and it feels like the purer action RPG take on the extraction genre that I expected from Elden Ring Nightreign pre-release (which is more focused on providing a randomized co-op challenge). Mistfall Hunter has more in common with the likes of Arc Raiders or Marathon, except, of course, it's a fantasy ARPG. One we've been hotly anticipating since we first played it last year.

I spend most of my time playing with a melee focused build, the mercenary, just because that's what I'm used to from playing Dark Souls, but there are multiple classes on offer (which you can swap between back at the hub – though you can also level up a skill tree to enhance each). Archers and sorcerers round out available weapon types, but more specialized roles are in the mix too – such as the stealthy Shadowstrix or the magical healer Seer. Able to group up, assembling a varied team will give an edge on being able to extract with the best loot possible, and keep rival players at bay.

Naturally, some of the loot dropped by monsters can be equipped there and then – important if you've lost all your stuff or are just starting out. But, the best goodies I find are locked in chests, or dropped by boss-level foes (and usually, to unlock the former, you must defeat a stronger enemy anyway). Rare ingredients are handy, but precious Gyldenblood will goop out of certain foes, the major currency that's used for core progress. There's a time limit on each match too as the Gyldenmist threatens to corrupt everything in the land, so extracting before then is vital if you can fight it out over a bell or come to an understanding between fellow players.

Playing as my melee character, combat is familiar – hitting the right bumper to slash with my sword, and the left to raise my shield to defend. Triggers, meanwhile, are essentially weapon arts, which operate on generous cooldowns so I can drop deadly abilities with ease. Swapping to a big hammer changes these abilities instantly, while giving me more powerful attacks with, as expected, more wind-up.

Combat itself isn't as refined as FromSoftware's Soulslikes – what is? – meaning there's an amount of chafing against hitboxes and animations that can at times feel weightless, but with the dip in and out extraction structure the lightweight nature suits it so far. Will I feel the same if I lose gear I've spent hours collecting in the full release because of it? Perhaps not.

Yet, I find my first few loops through Hallowgrove, on the path to Brandrgarde (the two maps in the current build, which also have 'chaos' variants) compelling. In the past, I've struggled to get into extraction shooters because I prefer my blasting to come in the deathmatch variety.

Something about considered fantasy RPG combat – the hallmark of the Soulslike – just fits the extraction vibe better to me, and I definitely wish instead of writing this I was stepping into the Gyldenmist afflicted land to hoover up more loot for more go-around. It's easy to see why Mistfall Hunters has been Steam Next Fest's top demo so far – so play the beta while you can.

If you miss it, there's not long to wait. Mistfall Hunter launches on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 29, with its beta running through Steam Next Fest.

Looking for more along these lines? Check out my best Soulslike games list!

Developer One More Level is proficient in making gameplay feel smoother than a stick of yellow butter, as it exemplified with cult hit action platformer Ghostrunner in 2020, but I wasn't convinced I'd be interested in its upcoming title Valor Mortis during Summer Game Fest 2026, when I first had the chance to try the demo now available during Steam Next Fest. But Valor Mortis' first-person Soulslike combat is so slick, even more silky than a vat of canola oil, the historical horror game easily convinced me to become another one of its loyal zombie soldiers.

I awake on the battlefield in reddish mud, tinted with the blood seemingly oozing from my arm until Napoleon Bonaparte himself commands me to stand, and my wounds miraculously disappear. At this point I think, Who does this Napoleon guy think he is, reanimating me like that… but Valor Mortis is a game about supernatural warfare in an alternate version of 19th century France, so I go with it. Napoleon better have a freshly torched crème brûlée waiting for me if he's going to wake me up from my eternal slumber, just to serve his selfish goal of building an army that cannot die.

But Valor Mortis protagonist William doesn't seem to mind. The Foreign Legion soldier is resolute in his love for Napoleon, so I glide over bodies of my fellow blue coat military men like my extremist daddy tells me to, not questioning the glowing turquoise vial of… stuff I now need to crush in my fist to stay healthy. Though, Valor Mortis is made with your death in mind, and I find myself better able to carry out perfect parries each time I'm slain and need to restart from my last checkpoint a couple hundred corpses back.

The entirety of France is apparently sick with sudden zombie disease. I've been chosen to slay my former brothers in arms, some of whom are now spending their time mindlessly slicing up their horses, and shooting each other in the head. If I'm not quick about grabbing them by the shoulder for a backstab, or aggressively slashing at their torso until it completely severs in two, I'm the next victim of their mutiny.

So I cut them. And I send rivulets of blood shooting across the grass stars. I push on, scampering around the French forest One More Level has made a lovely, fairytale green – though what I suspect are snowflakes of ash fall softly around me, never letting me forget that for every pretty, upturned tree root I see, there's at least 10 men slowly bleeding to death. It's a complex mood, both idyllic in the woods and uncomfortable from the irregularity of the situation, the zombie-ness of it all, and I'm impressed. Valor Mortis is a potent warning, it seems, of how dangerous it can be to let ridiculous men in power feel special.

I also get glimpses of Valor Mortis' other supernatural elements during my time with its demo during Summer Game Fest, like paths blocked with a yellow goop William says he's never seen before, trees stuffed with a different, more orange goop I can shoot to knock them down, and shadowy time rifts that tell me army secrets – like a soldiers' suspicion that Napoleon doesn't really love all of us children in the army.

By the end of my demo session, I'm having my own, more pleasant flashbacks to the first time I played games like the intuitive Dark Souls 3 and Shadow of Mordor, both of which made combat feel easy to learn and satisfying for me. Like those other action games, Valor Mortis requires a bit of patient strategy with maneuvers like parrying, but it also rewards a flurry of hack-and-slashing – my preferred method of handling Soulslikes. I'm eager to pick the sword back up once Valor Mortis is out in full on October 13, though I really need to set some boundaries with Napoleon first.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Mortal Shell: not bad. Developer Cold Symmetry's debut Soulslike had real style and interesting ideas, plus it was pleasantly short, but some clunkiness and dull levels held it back. Luckily, Cold Symmetry was able to make Mortal Shell 2, an expanded sequel which just dropped an open beta in time for Steam Next Fest, Valve's big demo blowout. At the time of writing, it's the most popular true-blue Soulslike in the event, and based on my limited time with it, Mortal Shell 2 has made some solid upgrades. (Mortal Shell 2 beta rewards and progress transfer explained in depth here.)

Mortal Shell 2 will feel fairly familiar if you played the original. If you're coming to it from other Soulslike action RPGs, such as Lies of P or Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, it may feel incredibly different. The titular shells frame an interesting class system: each comes with its own abilities and bonuses, though there's further room for customization in weapons and upgrades. Combat just has a different heft to it that's hard to compare – somewhere between the original Dark Souls and the modern Lords of the Fallen, perhaps. It's profoundly heavy, but not in a bad way since the game feels adequately built around it. For example: there's no stamina bar, so swing away.

From the jump, the starter knight shell commands weight and crunch, and even as a heavier shell, doesn't have the same clunk that was discussed with the first game. I was still a little iffy on the feel of melee combat until my parry reflexes returned. That first, perfectly timed flash of gold was enough to jolt me right up. I'm also a big fan of the greatsword attack where you club dudes with the hilt.

There's a thick sense of forward aggression here, cleaving through crowds with the expected light and heavy attacks, but weaving in a petrify spell to make enemies vulnerable to stun damage and finisher attacks that fit seamlessly into combos.

Also: a gun! Ranged attacks seem heavily pushed in Mortal Shell 2, and the satisfying chonk of the first gun, a sort of ballista shottie, is a good sign. Maybe the modders were right and Dark Souls really did need a shotgun.

It's pretty impressive to pull off third-person shooting and slashing in a way that flows naturally. Enemy design has a rock-paper-scissors thing going on that encourages you to use whatever attacks certain enemies are weak to, and while this could theoretically limit variety, so far it feels great to chew through enemies while rotating through my arsenal and conserving specific resources.

The main appeal of Mortal Shell 2, for me, was something I can't possibly experience in this limited demo: "more than 60 dungeons," as Cold Symmetry promises. If this game can actually serve up a world worth exploring, I figured I'd be all over it. But after messing around with the combat for a little bit, I kind of just want to hit more dudes, and moreish definitely wasn't a word I busted out for the first Mortal Shell. For a free sample, this is about as good as I could ask.

Years ago, we spoke to the makers of Mortal Shell as part of our develop-led explainer on what defines a Soulslike.

Steam Next Fest 2026 keeps getting bigger, with 8,600 demos arriving as part of the event, including almost 1,700 that use AI. Oh no.

The second Steam Next Fest of 2026 is now underway until June 22, and it's time to once again ruin your Steam wishlist and free time by playing a ton of demos throughout the next week or so. But as Steam Next Fest grows in popularity, it naturally gets bigger. And this month's version of the beloved Steam staple is huge. Steam Next Fest June 2026 has 8,682 demos in total, which is roughly double the entire PS2 game library, for those keeping count.

Unfortunately, this many games also come with downsides. As pointed out by a user on ResetEra, 1,694 of those games have an AI Content disclosure included on the Steam Store Page. As evidenced by the likes of the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, and, of course, the Steam Store itself, low-effort AI slop is flooding storefronts, making it even harder for the average person to discover something great.

While some stores have attempted to cull shovelware, such as Sony deleting an entire publisher (the fourth-biggest on PS4 and PS5, at that), the problem persists. And players aren't falling for it either, as evidenced by the reaction to the news Crazy Taxi: World Tour used AI in development shows.

I already have misgivings seeing games from major publishers – the likes of Capcom's Onimusha: Way of the Sword – appearing in what is generally a great way to find new indie games, but with the ever-growing flurry of AI crap filling up the Next Fest page, it's going to be a lot harder for gems to be found.

However, there is some good news, as a reply on ResetEra notes: "I'm happy to report that 'BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER BEFORE 4: DEMONS FROM THE PORTAL TO HELL I OPENED ARE STILL IN THE FAVELA AND NOW I HAVE TO SAVE MAMADAS FROM RONALDO' does not use AI!"

Oops, someone just uploaded Steam Machine Geekbench results early, so I'd be surprised if Valve's box doesn't arrive next week

I like playing VR games more in theory than do I in practice, which is exactly why I'm so pleased to see that Moss: The Forgotten Relic is part of the Steam Next Fest line-up this year, and has a free demo you can play right now (check out our Steam Next Fest guide for more)! I've always had a soft spot for developer Polyarc's tiny mouse hero, Quill, and this re-release that collects together the first two Moss games in a non-VR package makes it much easier to recommend for those who haven't shelled out for virtual reality headwear just yet, or who can't always be bothered to set it up (guilty!).

The original Moss first released for PlayStation VR in 2018, a couple of years into the system's lifespan – but I remember it being one of the first to really sell me on the idea that it could support full game experiences (alongside Resident Evil 7 and Astro Bot, if you were curious). Peering into a tiny world of fantasy animals, Quill needs my help as a headset-wearing invisible force to help her with her across two games worth of action-adventure questing: performing light platforming, solving puzzles elements, and the odd bit of sword-swinging. Going hands-on with the upcoming Moss: The Forgotten Relic, I'm charmed at how well the experience translates into non-VR.

Head free

Moss: The Forgotten Relic's approach to moving from virtual reality onto a flat screen is to not change too much at all – and I think that's a great move for ensuring that the experience still feels like the adventure I already know and love. While playing with a controller and simply looking at my monitor, I can still tell Moss was originally designed for virtual reality – but by accepting that context I'm able to enjoy my demo that takes place partway through Moss 2 for what it is.

In fact, that original VR design gives Moss: The Forgotten Relic a unique feeling texture. Controlling Quill directly, the camera still gives you room-wide views, shifting to track Quill as you continue to hover over the action as you did in the original. The almost-fixed camera works better than I expected, only occasionally do I miss the ability to properly stick my head in and poke around – but this is a well done adaptation. Likewise, it feels a bit odd without a VR headset strapped on that Quill's journey has to load so many rooms in a row – which made more sense for simply having to shift perspective in its original iteration. But, I get used to it quickly.

Similarly, I still have to reach into the environment directly to help Quill out. From dragging platforms into place, holding enemies still to give her an edge in combat, or to pull them onto timed switches, I now control a glowing circle with the analogue stick instead of my VR controller of choice (you can also use a mouse – which feels appropriate).

It's easy enough to use Moss: The Forgotten Relic's new control scheme even when things get hectic with some hammer-based armored combat towards the end of my hands-on. But, the full game even promises a 'skip combat' option for those more endeared to seeing Quill's fantastical journey through Moss' ruined kingdom than having a scrap.

Without the extra immersion of VR, alongside the novelty it provides, there's absolutely the chance that Moss: The Forgotten Relic will feel like too lightweight an adventure for some. There is a slight detachment inherent in how this faithfully takes the VR elements into non-VR, and it can make Moss feel a bit simplistic in a way that it avoids with the headset on. But, that doesn't mean I think it's not well worth taking Quill's tiny hand to experience it this way instead. I'd hesitate to call this non-VR take lesser, it's just different – and if you can rock with (or maybe even fall in love with) how this faithfully adapts the VR adventure into a non-VR form, there's a wonderful fantasy tale to be had here. Moss: The Forgotten Relic releases on PC and consoles on July 16.

Check out our best VR games list if you'd rather have a new adventure while keeping your headset on!

Amid a sea of captivating Steam Next Fest demos, I've ended up finding peace in a blue and green-tinged life sim that has me building up a reef and ensuring it thrives – a wholesome little gem called Turquoise.

If you haven't seen Turquoise yet, it's one of those games that catches your eye immediately thanks to its oddly vibrant color scheme. While the colors grabbed my attention initially, it's the cozy core gameplay loop that's kept me hooked. It has all the calming, quiet open water vibes of survival titles like Subnautica, without any of the more horror-aligned adrenaline boosts. You're given an environment to decorate and shape – it's entirely chill.

And, I love it. Indie developer Low Flame Studio describes it on Steam as "a cozy collecting and building game that immerses you in the heart of a protected marine area," and yeah – that's about right.

You uncover new fish, but along the way, you're editing pretty much everything to suit your tastes. You can place corals, rocks, plants, and all sorts of themed objects to give your space the glow-up you'd like – and boy, did I decorate.

Amid all the decorating, though, is the collection of marine life. I adore getting to read about every fish that comes my way, but where Turquoise really shines is in its ability to simply… be.

I never feel any pressure, and I can literally just sit there and observe all of my beloved fishies going about their business. It's got the same sort of charm that Zoo Tycoon and Planet Zoo have for me, albeit with none of the stress.

"A calm, educational, and inspiring experience," as Low Flame Studio puts it. So, if you're anything like me and spent far too long staring at that Windows 98 aquarium screensaver as a child, don't hesitate to give this a go – Turquoise ticks all those dreamy waterscape boxes and so many more, with its focus on creativity and serenity.

I have a good feeling this is going to end up being one of those random games in my library with 100 hours clocked come its full April 14 launch.

Hoping to unwind even more after Turquoise? Browse through our big roundup of the best relaxing games out there available to play right now.

It has happened again. Steam Next Fest has served me up another Balatro-style gambling-inspired roguelike that has eaten away at my entire week and severely curtailed the number of other demos I might have played. It's a pattern that has repeated across the last three major demo drops, and which I do not see myself breaking any time soon.

This time around, the main offender is Raccoin. Like Balatro, it's a game that uses a vaguely gambling-shaped framework to encourage you to create builds capable of scoring ever-increasing numbers of points. Here, the 'gambling' is one of those coin-pusher arcade machines. Instead of enhanced cards, you can purchase special coins with different effects; some are sticky, adhering to nearby tokens to ensure they all fall into the prize bin together; others are explosive, blasting coins towards the precipice instead; plenty more augment the value of coins they touch, offering more points once you claim them.

Those arcade machines are all about timing, and Raccoin plays off that by offering a combo meter. Each dropped coin refreshes the timer, building a score multiplier and enhancing the prize you get when the meter eventually runs out. Get really lucky, your payout will be a towering stack of hundreds of coins or a glut of power-ups that throw the entire cabinet into chaos as multipliers stack atop multipliers and your score runs up before you're even entirely aware of what's happening. At its grandest cascade, Raccoin is a deliberate hyperstimulation simulator that asks you to just sit back and rack up the high score.

The problem with that kind of dopamine dispenser is that it's easy to forget that you're supposed to be aiming for a high score. Raccoin is not an easy game to strategize around, but throw too many coins haphazardly into the machine, and you'll quickly find yourself out of credits, nowhere near the threshold for the next level. Having fallen foul of the game over screen this way a few times too often, I was determined to beat Raccoin's Steam Next Fest demo. And eventually, after far too many hours with the tinkle of falling metal ringing in my ears, I hit the god run, clearing the twelfth and final stage without even realizing I'd done it.

In isolation, that would probably be ok, but I've realized it's part of a pattern of reckless roguelike behavior that's repeated over the last few iterations of Steam Next Fest. This time it was Raccoin, with a limited showing from a Chess-like twist on the Balatro formula called Gambonanza. Last time, it was Slots & Daggers, which I was so determined to beat that I deliberately grinded for the strongest power-up right from the start of the game. Before that, it was CloverPit, which enveloped me in its gritty slot machine-fueled Saw trap.

Balatro's influence on those three games is clear, and in successive Next Fests, I pushed both their demos and my sanity to their limits in my attempts to beat them. And I'm not alone - October 2025's Fest also saw Dice a Million and Ballionaire get their hooks into my colleagues. All of them are marinated in Balatro's secret sauce, each with their own RNG-filled starting point that ensures they feel instantly familiar but never stale. That winning formula, and the commercial success that tends to accompany it, means that Steam Next Fest's close relationship with Balatro-likes isn't likely to come to an end anytime soon - and that means that every four months or so, I'm going to lose another week of my life to making sure I beat my latest roguelike obsession before its demo goes away.

Raccoin isn't the only roguelike that's absorbing us - this cute Spore-like game is one of the biggest in Steam Next Fest, with 99% positive reviews.

Two red dots loom out at me through the inky green ocean depths. Playing the Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss free Steam Next Fest demo, I've just pushed through an undersea rocky tunnel that was so cramped it made me anxious, only to find, emerging, that the opposite is so much worse. I shudder at the wide, low-visibility expanse, alone in just a diving suit with only an AI assistant voice for company.

I swim forward, continuing to follow the pipes that have been my guide towards the abandoned underwater research facility I've been sent to investigate. Soon, those red dots reveal themselves to not be some monstrous behemoth, simply two lights on the base. My sigh of relief is short-lived, there's always the sense there might be something lurking just out of sight in the palpable Lovecraftian atmosphere developer Big Bad Wolf Studio have crafted for their take on the mythos. If you're interested in trying this opening for yourself, you can learn more about the demo festivities in our Steam Next Fest guide.

Rolling in the deep

So far, everything I've played of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss has centered around detective-style investigation. Playing as Noah, a member of a mysterious agency who investigates the paranormal, means getting my hands dirty. In first-person, there's a tactility to interacting with this world, picking up clues, rotating them, scanning them, organizing clues on an evidence board, and sometimes putting objects back down again.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss' introduction chapter takes place slightly above sea level, picking through a disappeared contact's half-flooded house. Set in the near-future, climate change continues to run rampant, making the encroaching sea an ever-present threat. In the watery basement, a strange altar. To activate it, the correct rocks need to be placed on plinths, but I can narrow them down thanks to my sonar technology. Scanning one rock allows me to set 'mineral' as a flag, so I can see matching objectives as temporary markers around me. From there, I scan documents for clues about which of the rocks I find are the correct ones.

It's an interesting system for cutting through a density of space that helps me feel like an active participant in an investigation. Back to the research base at the bottom of the sea, this allows me to scan for which opaque fuel canisters actually have hydrogen in them to switch power back on. When thrust into the watery depths once again, I can then use it on the missing diving team's copper hooks to identify the rope path they left behind as it twists and turns through a labyrinth of geometrically impossible tunnels.

I can also scan, erm, human blood. I'm sure that particular sonar data will come in handy in the future, but I'm not sure I'm going to like what it leads to. Poking around this area's strange twists and turns I begin to once again flip back to feeling a bit claustrophobic. Prompted to return to the base to determine how the expedition before me made it through the non-Euclidian maze, the demo ends in dramatic fashion. I wish I could have spent a bit more time exploring and investigating, but leaving me with an itch to return is rarely a bad thing.

I've been looking forward to Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss since before it was even announced. Big Bad Wolf Studio also developed terrific narrative RPGs with the underrated The Council and Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. This approach is a lot more freeform, but I'm already intrigued at how detailed the investigation mechanics are, and eager to unravel the mystery. The game promises to have multiple ways to solve puzzles, some of which will be easier to do at the cost of corrupting your brain with the cosmic influence. I can't wait to try that for myself, and hopefully manage to survive with at least some of Noah intact. Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss releases on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X on April 16, 2026.

Uh-oh, I can't stop playing Vampire Survivors' new roguelike deckbuilder thanks to this free Steam Next Fest demo

You simply will not guess the nature of Everything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite, an upcoming game from developer Odd Dreams Digital. This, you see, is a roguelite not far off the vein of Vampire Survivors about – and this is the clever part – evolving animals, specifically your animal, the one you're directing around fields and tundras and deserts filled with other animals doomed to become your next meal. It's a lovely little Steam Next Fest find, I'll tell you that.

Everything is Crab is less bullet heaven – which I've just accepted as workable shorthand for Vampire Survivors-likes – and more biological hoarder. By hunting and eating other animals, or simply scarfing down whatever loose fruit you happen across, you can level up and gain new adaptations. Your little blobby hero changes dramatically as you evolve, gaining horns, fur, eyes, limbs, teeth, tentacles, and potentially a lot more.

My neurons activated when I began to read into the types of traits and how you can tilt the odds in your favor for buildcrafting purposes. Bigger is better in some parts of the animal kingdom, but perhaps you're better off stacking your Social stat to charm your fellow beasts. Exploring new areas of the map becomes easier when you draft heat or cold resistance. The value of mobility skyrockets when you start facing enemies that do more than just bite you and, occasionally, bite you slightly differently.

Then, of course, there are difficulty scalars and the meta-progression of unlocking more and more and more abilities, which are the real meat hooks that roguelikes like this so regularly lodge in my brain. I just love a bowl of soup that not only refills itself automatically, but regularly becomes different, even tastier soup.

There's a melee combat focus to what I've played and seen, with fangs and claws shredding animals on short cooldowns, but opposing critters can get pretty out-there with their attacks. Before long you'll be a chimera of your own, ostracized by all species as an unnatural harbinger of death, yet rightly feared for your strength. Where you walk (or flap, or trot, or just kind of drag yourself like a slug), blood follows. Yet Everything is Crab is very cute – unnerving and Spore-like in its snowballing absurdities, but overflowing with pixel art bunnies and birdies. They'll never know what bit them.

At the time of writing, Valve says Everything is Crab is the tenth most-played demo in Steam Next Fest (in no small part, I suspect, because it's perfect for Steam Deck) and has 99% positive user reviews. You can add me to the list of folks who are looking forward to playing the full version come May 8.

This might be the fastest I've gotten sucked into a roguelike all year: building the perfect war machine in this Steam Next Fest demo is so fun it's hard to stop.

We have nearly sandblasted through February's Steam Next Fest blowout before it ends on March 2, so Valve is commemorating the event's halfway mark with official details on what made up its 10 most-played titles. I just… I think there's something a little wrong with the publisher's parameters. According to Valve, Bungie's Server Slam for Marathon counts as a demo.

The Marathon release date is set for March 5, but the Destiny developer is testing its new extraction FPS' strength with the Marathon server slam beta period that began February 26. The idea was to run "a technical stress test," as Bungie writes in a blog post about the event, which offers a sample platter of the game – like a few zones in the Tau Ceti IV colony, access to five factions, and even upgrade trees. I don't think it's comparable to the many brief demos all kinds of developers, including those with far fewer resources than Bungie, have put out.

The Server Slam reached 143,000 concurrent Steam players on just its first day, while other Steam Next Fest participants might not even dare to dream of those kinds of numbers. In any case, according to its parameters, Valve lists Marathon at the top of its top 10 most-played demos. Burglin' Gnomes was robbed!

You can see Valve's full list below:

• Marathon
• Burglin' Gnomes
• Windrose
• Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors
• Far Far West
• Outbound
• John Carpenter's Toxic Commando
• Wanderburg
• Fate Trigger
• Everything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite

But what makes your Steam Next Fest top 10?

As Steam Next Fest gets bigger and more crowded with free demos, these developers are still finding wins: "It's kind of early access for Early Access."

About eight years ago, indie developer Christoffer Bodegård began roughing out what would eventually become Esoteric Ebb, an ambitious single-player CRPG inspired by the likes of D&D, Disco Elysium, and Planescape: Torment. The project, Bodegård writes in a "pre-mortem" post ahead of the game's launch on March 3, nearly drove him to bankruptcy before he was saved by its now-publisher, Raw Fury. And boy, does this RPG sound good.

Esoteric Ebb, which has a Steam demo you can try for yourself, is an "isometric, Disco-like, TTRPG-turned-CRPG set in a bizarre post-Arcanepunk fantasy setting" and stars perhaps the worst cleric known to man. Promising "staggering" depth in choice and consequence, the game invites you to "become the most interesting player at the table and completely ruin your DM's day." It looks like a ball of RPG yarn that will be very fun to untangle, and it's come a long way in nearly a decade of development.

With "basically no studios working on narrative RPGs" in Sweden, Bodegård says, he pretty much had to make one himself. So, "I tried making Planescape: Torment + Disco Elysium by myself."

"Not the greatest idea," he reflects.

"I spent four years on it, to start off, without ever getting anywhere of note," he explains. He scrapped the whole thing in 2019 after struggling to marry combat and branching narrative, but then inspiration struck like a meteor with the release of Disco Elysium.

"The next month and a half I spent playing the game and researching," Bodegård says. "Just diving in, trying to learn how and why they managed to create this genius design. Immediately I started to understand that the one thing that really made the game so good wasn't just the writing, even if that's what you'd naturally focus on. The non-linear design itself was the thing that (in my subjective opinion of course) really made the game pop."

More prototypes of Esoteric Ebb followed, but "prototype 2 and 3 were complete shit" as well, Bodegård says. But in 2020 and 2021, "something changed" and the RPG began to come together.

"I might have gone insane from sitting inside for weeks at a time. Or maybe it was the lack of sunlight during those long Swedish winter months. But I felt like I'd found some type of clarity," the dev remembers.

With a boost from a PC Gamer article praising the demo, Esoteric Ebb began to find traction, and was ultimately able to find a publisher in Raw Fury. This couldn't have come at a better time for Bodegård. "I had been burning money since 2022," he says. "Just before the first advance payout arrived, I did not have enough money on my account to pay rent – something that is embarrassing to admit but also, it didn't matter! Ebb was happening, for real! And I finally had money to hire all the freelancing artists I needed, as well as throw cash on my sound designer and my composers."

In the past four years, Bodegård says he's written roughly 1.25 million words for Esoteric Ebb, growing the RPG from the 300,000-word pitch to a stonking 700,000-word script today. Raw Fury "got a bit more than they expected," he jokes.

The tale is a cautionary one, Bodegård stresses: "I’m mainly writing this to share the journey that led to Esoteric Ebb, no matter how well it actually turns out. While also making it clear that I took a ridiculously stupid path. I kept full control of the project throughout it all, refusing to bring on other writers and designers. I burnt all my resources in a reckless way that I would strongly dissuade ANYONE for ever replicating. And I did it all for a game that was entirely sold on 'aesthetic', i.e. if the story sucks – which is very subjective – it won't sell."

There are a few auspicious stars in the sky for Esoteric Ebb's sales: it's among the top-rated RPG demos in this week's Steam Next Fest, and while it's not dominating the wishlist charts, Bodegård says it's gotten quite a following. It's certainly on my radar, and not just because it's clearly a labor of love.

As Baldur's Gate 3 devs decide what to do next with Divinity, Larian publishing lead celebrates the D&D RPG's late rise in players on Steam: "We on the upnup."

The Moomins are white sugar creatures plump with visceral fat and love, and Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson built them a perfect world when she created them in 1945. It's not perfect in the sense that there is no pain – the cow-snouted Moomintrolls are capable of being as unhappy as the rest of us – but tragedy usually comes with a lesson. Life is unpredictable, but nature isn't always, and it's this philosophy that punches me in the nose when I play the Steam Next Fest demo for Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth.

The cozy puzzle adventure Winter's Warmth is the spiritual sequel to Oslo-based studio Hyper Games' first Moomin game adaptation, the devious, anti-authoritarian folk tale Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. Like that narrative-rich game from 2024, Winter's Warmth, due on April 27, seems to balance the watercolor whimsy of its landscapes with a Stoic's commitment to temperance. Yes, the green leaves of the trees look blue and lovely in this weather – but don't be upset when the wind breaks the branch over your head.

These are the kinds of tough cookies Moomintroll has to swallow when his hibernation suddenly ends early, leaving him without Moominpappa and Moominmamma's guidance (and hot breakfast) for the first time in his young life. Eventually, he has to embrace the cold winter on a mission to help his friends welcome spring with a towering bonfire, but for now, I feel his trepidation when I ease the sensitive guy out of bed and into the cellar.

The furnace needs tending. A squirrel's broken into the house, and it went rogue. It blew open the windows and knocked over everything else – even Moominmamma's jam, a sticky red pulp now stuck to the floor, making the snow-kissed kitchen look like an episode of Law & Order.

But once he lights all the oil lamps and gets more confident, Moomin starts feeling sorry for the squirrel, which he scares into running back into a midnight snowstorm. So, even though he's only a summer creature, Moomin follows his rodent friend into the dark.

I try not to get distracted by neither shimmering snow banks nor the frozen crystals collecting on my Steam Deck screen, a sign that Moomintroll is on the way to becoming Moominvanilla ice cream.

I'm in survivalist conditions. As efficiently as I can, I complete medium-difficulty environmental puzzles reminiscent of the Melody of Moominvalley, which never discouraged a confused roam around the map or two. Moomin looks like a cotton ball when he, at one point, slips and tumbles down a snowy hillside, but still, we continue on.

The squirrel's tiny footsteps lead far into the forest, until they don't. Then Moomin spots the creature, but Is this squirrel fucking dead?, is my first thought. The snow picks up Moomin tries to yank the squirrel off the ground, but it's frozen on its back.

I'm shocked. Naive Moomintroll is in anguish. So, swiftly, his benevolent neighbor Too-Ticky whisks him away to her nearby bathing house, and to issue some advice: "Death is… part of life. The Lady of the Cold gives and takes."

As heartbroken as I am about the squirrel I'll never get to apologize to, I know Too-Ticky is right. Moments like this, of shocking honesty, thorns on the rose of an otherwise idyllic European fairytale, is exactly what made me love Hyper Games' first trek into Moominvalley.

I'm thrilled the developer is taking the same bold approach to its "cozy game" Winter's Warmth rather than capitulating to genre conventions, like false optimism. It's more cozy, I think, to welcome the storm rather than hide from it.

I've been writing about new indie games for years, and these are the 10 best Steam Next Fest demos I recommend you play this weekend.

The first Steam Next Fest of 2026 is absolutely filled to the rafters with demos for some of the most exciting upcoming indie games. In fact, there are so many fantastic future releases included in Valve's February demo fest, that I've frankly been spoiled for choice. But as the resident wrangler of the Indie Spotlight series here at GamesRadar+, I consider it my duty – nay, my honor – to dive into the event with reckless abandon and try out some new games ahead of release.

Of course, I'm not the only one here that loves the event, and many of my fellow writers have been tucking into demos and rightly shouting about them. So, if you're looking to get stuck into some demo goodness over the weekend for some very promising new indie games, then I'm here to shine a light on the 10 best Steam Next Fest demos you absolutely need to try while they're around. From my own personal picks, to my fellow writers' favorites, now's the time to get Steam open and ready as I take you through the demos worth downloading.

10. Puppy Park

Those yearning for the return of Nintendogs are in luck. While we may still be (not so) patiently waiting for Nintendo to bark up the right tree and bring the beloved dog simulator back, we at least have Puppy Park from developer TM39 to fill the void.

With a demo now live during Steam Next Fest ahead of its expected launch in March, you have the chance to try out becoming the manager of your very own little dog hotel, complete with puppy pampering sessions, walks, and more. If one of our resident Nintendog appreciators, Anna Koselke, is sold, then fellow fans and cozy game enjoyers won't want to miss this one.

Play the demo here.

9. Windrose

Arrrrr me hearties, a new pirate game is setting sail in the future, and right now you can check out a Steam Next Fest demo before it takes to the seas. I'm talking about the upcoming open-world PvE survival adventure, Windrose, from developer Windrose Crew.

With shades of Sea of Thieves meets Assassin's Creed Black Flag, our staff writer Jordan Gerblick (who often moonlights as a pirate in the world of video games) has plenty of praise for the sizeable demo, which features Ark-like crafting, some supernatural elements, and plenty of swashbuckling action. If you want to be a pirate captain, Windrose awaits.

Play the demo here.

8. Wanderburg

GamesRadar+'s very own Austin Wood is an expert when it comes to the best roguelike games, so when he starts joyfully yelling about a new bullet hell roguelike that's hard to stop playing, I know it's well worth paying attention.

Wanderburg from developer Randwerk is, in the words of Austin, like "Vampire Survivors on wheels", and that's because you actually command a castle on said wheels that's yours to customize and upgrade. With a bite-sized sample that lets you steer across a medieval landscape, taking on opposing roaming strongholds, roguelike fans shouldn't skip this one.

Play the demo here.

7. Forbidden Solitaire

If you're a fan of horror or you're drawn to indies that dial up the retro vibes, then have I got the Steam Next Fest demo recommendation for you. Forbidden Solitaire comes from the same creators behind Home Safety Hotline, with developers who also worked on Shadowhand and Regency Solitaire.

As an FMV survival horror meets card battler, you'll find yourself in 2019, where you're trying to get to the bottom of a mysterious, cryptic 1995 CD-ROM that you picked up at a thrift store. It nails the 90's CD-ROM aesthetic, and this is a great opportunity to get a taste of its unique "card-slashing" horror.

Play the demo here.

6. Vampire Crawlers

Speaking of Vampire Survivors, the same developer behind the gothic bullet hell roguelike that took the world by storm in recent years is bringing us a new roguelike, and you can try it out right now. Titled Vampire Crawlers, Poncle's upcoming release takes what worked about Survivors and moves into the realms of a card battling deckbuilder.

The result is already very promising, with a first-person dungeon crawling format setting the scene for some card-based action. In fact, it's already sunk its fangs into our games editor, Oscar Taylor-Kent, who simply can't stop playing the demo – and the best kind of recommendation.

Play the demo here.

5. Denshattack!

Imagine performing slick ollies and grinds like you would on the back of a skateboard, only you're instead pulling off tricks as a literal train across railway tracks throughout a dystopian Japan. Well, that's essentially the premise of Denshattack, another colorful new indie I've had my watchful gaze on for quite some time.

The demo certainly gives you a fast-paced slice of stylish chaos as you flip and multi-track drift as a customizable locomotive - with our very own Dustin Bailey highlighting its distinct Dreamcast vibes. With the first three levels available to try, it's well worth getting on board with this one.

Play the demo here.

4. Zero Parades

Following up a game like Disco Elysium can't be easy, especially when it received so much critical acclaim. But the studio behind one of the best RPGs in recent times isn't resting on its laurels, because we're about to see a fresh RPG experience with an espionage twist in Zero Parades.

And if you can hardly wait for the next game from ZA/UM, a Steam Next Fest demo is here for you, and it's well worth checking out. As Oscar states, it's already proving to be a worthy successor, with its own uniquely weird and wonderful edge. If you loved Disco Elysium, give this a try.

Play the demo here.

3. Find Your Words

As soon as I learned about Find Your Words and its heartfelt concept, I was immediately keen to check it out. Created by two dads who took inspiration from their non-speaking kids and their journeys using ACC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), Find Your Words is an adventure set within the grounds of a summer camp.

The demo gives you the chance to see how you collect symbols for your communication binder to express yourself as you meet other campers, and you can try out a few activities, or enjoy exploring the scenic area. It's already very charming.

Play the demo here.

2. Alabaster Dawn

As soon as I heard about the inspirations behind Alabaster Dawn, I just knew I needed to give this one a go – and you absolutely should too. From the same developer behind the 2018 2D action RPG CrossCode, Radical Fish Games' Alabaster Dawn draws from the likes of Devil May Cry and Kingdom Hearts for its deep, fast-paced combat, which Austin notes feels "like lightning in your hands".

The top-down RPG and its pixel art style really pops in the updated demo, which is easily a Steam Next Fest highlight – it's definitely wishlist worthy.

Play the demo here.

1. Inkonbini: One Store. Many Stories

As a big fan of games like Unpacking, Camper Van: Make It Home, and Tiny Bookshop, Inkonbini has been high up on my wishlist ever since it was first announced two years ago. So, naturally when I learned I could finally get my hands on it thanks to its Steam Next Fest demo, I practically ran to my PC.

Offering up the prologue which lets you get a taste of Mokoto's job at a local convenience store in '90s Japan, I'm happy to report that it's only made me more excited for this game to release. Thoughtful, laid-back, and visually beautiful, I can't recommend this demo enough for fans of cozy life / management sims.

Play the demo here.

Get ready for more Steam events with our guide to all of the Steam Sales for 2026.

Data Center Demo is climbing the Steam Next Fest charts, despite the irony that increased AI use and data centers are currently plaguing PC gaming, and are basically the reason for the Steam Machine's delay.

Simulation games have seen a huge boom in the last few years. While life simulation has long been popular, few other types of simulation games were standouts like Truck Simulator and Farming Simulator. Over the last few years, the genre has seen a boom, and you can play a simulation game for pretty much anything you can think of. Type 'Simulator' into Steam and you'll be hit with thousands of them.

It's not just the big names and genuinely fun games, like Powerwash Simulator, but also hundreds of low-effort asset flips looking to get in on the trend. Without playing Data Center Demo myself, and not having the technical understanding to really 'get' it if I did, I can't tell which category it falls into.

Luckily, there is a way to better understand it through the opinions of people far smarter than me. Heading to the user reviews to better understand its mystique, the top-rated comment at the time of writing reads, "I don't recommend buying it, but I do like the idea! The demo lacks depth, I hope in the future they add more complex systems meaning: failures, ddos, power fails."

Another user with nine hours on record says, "No game has ever yet made me pull out an Excel spreadsheet, let alone make it almost 3MB." Not all the vibes are positive, however, and alongside the depth lacking, there is some irony in that generative AI was used in the game's development.

"In-game logos and the store description are clearly shitty genAI," one review reads. "For some reason the tutorial contains a shit ton of info on real-life data center management, 99% of which has absolutely no application in the game. Not an asset flip but it looks low-effort all around."

Might not be the next TCG Card Shop Simulator then.

Modder takes Valve's AI measures one step further with a browser extension that adds an unavoidable gen AI warning to Steam games to cut out the slop

I stumbled onto a new Steam page because of the extremely long name of its publisher, but stayed for the merging of two of the sickest games known to man.

Finding games on Steam is rough. There's so much AI slop flooding the marketplace – which has made this Steam Next Fest in particular a tough one to deal with at times – so it's becoming increasingly hard for games to stand out, especially without backing from a big publisher. But I spotted a game called Delivery Must Complete the other day from a different kind of big publisher, the big in this case being its name.

The publisher in question is: "It was a dark night after a storm and I had been torn apart from the despair of realizing I needed money to make video games. In my depression, I gazed upon a pristine pool of water on the sidewalk and a beautiful expression gazed back; every inch of his beauty encapsulated in the tiny portal to the realm blessed by his mortal presence. He pulled out his phone with grace and I followed suit - logging onto my bank account and showing that I had money saved up. With his delicate finger he pointed at the number written on the savings account. 'This is our budget for the game', his silk-like voice rang. And thus, through his sheer wisdom, the funding for the game was secured. Despite never seeing that absolute sage of a man ever again, I still consider him and his insight into the solution for my troubles deeply integral to the development of this game, and thus, he, in spirit, is my publisher."

Not only a great publisher name, but a great way for me to hit my minimum wordcount on this article.

Gimmicky or not, I'm very glad to have run into it, given that the elevator pitch is "Devil May Cry meets Ace Combat," which is a shorter way of saying "the two coolest series of all time are having a roguelike baby. The Steam page even mentions parries, which I have no clue how you would do with a fighter jet. But I love a good parry, so who cares?

Ace Combat is already one of the most over-the-top series of all time as is, and adding a Devil May Cry-like rating system is a moment of "I didn't know I needed this" if I ever saw one. Even the name Delivery Must Complete is a nod to Capcom's classic action game.

If anything, the biggest problem is that it isn't a part of Steam Next Fest this time around, because even from the little bits of gameplay on the page, I'm already hooked.

Super Meat Boy 3D's Steam Next Fest demo proves Team Meat's masocore platformer translates to 3D shockingly well.

The Eternal Life of Goldman opens with an absolutely stunning animated sequence following the embers of a fire springing to life on a tropical island before a plane swoops in to airdrop in our platforming hero: an aging, white-bearded adventurer with a cane slung over his shoulder who only goes by the name Goldman. Enraptured throughout this free Steam Next Fest demo, this hefty couple of hours is more than enough to get me hooked (yes, like Goldman's cane) on trying more.

Developer Weappy Studio has cracked blending Tintin-like animation throughout The Eternal Life of Goldman's vibrant world with maintaining platforming clarity. If you want to try it yourself, our Steam Next Fest guide will help you get started. Blasting through the fiery first level, I joyously bounce on enemies with my cane – right out of DuckTales – use it to hook onto ledges, and stylishly dispatch a horde of some kind of ghost monkeys. Also, I find out that the disaster, happening during a festival, has resulted in a terrible death toll. Ah, perhaps not so joyous after all?

Bouncing, sadly

There's a thread of melancholy running through even the opening hours of The Eternal Life of Goldman that, so far, is tonally judged well. The archipelago Goldman has been called to is in turmoil due to strange, supernatural occurrences, and the untimely death of their community leader – many meeting Goldman's aid with an amount of deserved cynicism. But that's not going to stop him hopping and bopping enemies with abandon in order to track down the necessary items to restore a train that'll take him face-to-face with a mysterious deity.

Even outside of the dark fairytale energy of Goldman's adventure proper, the whole thing takes place as a story being told to a sick, bedbound child – including one cheeky moment when the mother telling the tale pretends Goldman falls to his death (echoing the stylings of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time). More than a charming, Princess Bride-like framing, even this has a touch of darkness to it – the child seems seriously sick, and uncomfortable topics mirroring the themes of Goldman's adventure are brought up at times.

At least this far into The Eternal Life of Goldman, this platformer hasn't revealed itself to be a full Metroidvania, but there are echoes of that progression style there. Tracking down cane upgrades, Goldman can access new mobility powers. The hook, for instance, is one you get during the tutorial, alongside an upgradeable metal pole to replace the wooden one which allows for higher bounces. Except, at times, you'll want to bounce lower. All three parts of the cane – grip, body, and base – can be hotswapped out with a touch of the d-pad at any time.

Bouncing on enemies isn't just a means of attack, but Goldman's main method of traversal across plenty of perilous pitfalls too. Working my way deep within Fort Elephant – part military base, part luxurious manor, part strange scientific laboratory – I end up having to time bounces on enemies and levers between spurts of fire and dripping goo, avoiding flaming foes and occasionally swapping to jumping using hooks. Side routes containing gold pickups, healing items, and collectibles tempt me from the critical path with tricky jumps of their own.

With levels littered with fast travel points, The Eternal Life of Goldman's Metroidvania-like aspects seem to come through by having you swap between levels, using upgrades obtained in each to push a little further past points you couldn't before – like a sequence of high wires with fiery vents of their own in an icy level I don't manage to get that far into yet. But I'll definitely be back. The Eternal Life of Goldman's story has surprisingly intrigued me so far, the art across every screen is simply gorgeous to look at, and it brings the goods when it comes to the platforming action as well. I'm still curious how it'll all slot together in the full game, but it's off to an excellent start, and this generous demo is well worth getting lost in for yourself. The Eternal Life of Goldman launches on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch soon.

What if Bloodborne was on PS2? Dark horror No Vacation for an Executioner is so old school even the dev insists to try the free Steam demo before buying "to make sure you like this control style"

Every time I think I've had enough of the Vampire Survivors formula, some new roguelike will pull me right back into wave after wave of chaos. Enter: Wanderburg, a bullet hell roguelike about piloting rickety castles turned war machines through medieval battlefields. Developer Randwerk of Abriss fame put out a demo in this week's Steam Next Fest, and I had to physically stop myself from playing it long enough to write this article.

The brilliance of Wanderburg, so far, is how temperamental it is. You are not a perfectly controlled instrument of war weaving effortlessly through crowds of enemies. You're a top-heavy tower of stone and wood screaming across grassy fields at Mach fuck. Learning to pilot your castle – how you turn, how your movements affect weapons aimed from the side or rear, and when to deploy the video game-mandated nitro boost – is a huge part of the battle, and it's immediately fun in a profoundly silly way. This is a rare instance of keyboard and mouse controls seriously elevating a game like this, because keeping track of your perspective and what left means adds to the lovable jank.

The tempo is broken up by high-value resources and targets scattered around the map, which is hemmed in by a deadly no man's land. Boss-level castles will invade after a certain amount of time passes, but plenty of other elite enemies will chase you down throughout each level, to say nothing of distinctly Vampire Survivors horde waves. Saving your big cooldowns and budgeting your (likely dwindling) health brings some real tension to all the madness.

Customizing and upgrading your castle is the backbone of Wanderburg. You can pick your basic frame, commander, and mounted units and weapons, all with unique advantages as well as upgrades chosen through a pick-one draft level-up system. As you pillage fields and blast rival castles in levels, you'll earn gold and obtain artifacts to upgrade your cannons, mortars, mines, and more, and strategically layer in transformative or multiplicative effects that take it all to the next level. Completing levels will unlock new customization options, and major progress points let you dramatically change the shape of your fortress.

Yep, that sure is a roguelike. And for as many times as I've heard a game sing this song, it still hits. Wanderburg is going straight on my Steam wishlist, and I'm going straight back to the demo as soon as I get off work.

A dev made their own little Factorio about feeding a monster instead of growing a factory, and the name Snacktorio is just one clever part of its Steam Next Fest demo.

A good game name, I've heard, is easy to say and memorable, and maybe even descriptive. Snacktorio is checking all three boxes: it's Factorio but with snacks. That is to say, it's an automation sim about perfecting robot kitchens rather than factories that must grow, propelled by a familiar and engrossing web of conveyor belts, harvesters, processors, sorters, and all manner of assembly line fun.

Snacktorio caught my eye in Steam Next Fest – partly because of its clever little name, but also because its pixel art reminded me very much of the original Risk of Rain. That cute, simple style hides a deep automation sim which is smartly divided into islands with their own unique challenges. It's a little less sandbox-y and a little more like a kitchen, fiercely judging you for punctuality, creativity, and consistency.

Your goal is to command an army of little imps to build and operate giant kitchens capable of producing enough food to satisfy and stave off world-consuming monsters. You aren't processing steel; you're boiling pasta. You aren't forging computer chips; you're frying chicken. But you are still very much filling furnaces with coal and wiring them to other machinery. It is, after all, Factorio but with snacks.

My time with the Snacktorio demo, and a scan of the complex processing teased on its Steam page, tells me that this is one of those games that scales almost exponentially. You start with simple transformations: power a line of machines that might pick up one ingredient and put it through one cooking method before combining it with other intake goods according to a recipe. But there's a huge range of ingredients, hazards, and factory layouts with level-specific limitations, plus each type of food has clever risks associated with it.

"Dairy curdles with heat, nuts spread allergens, meat carries food poisoning and dough rises over time," developer ellraiser says. "Learn the rules, exploit them, and build factories that won’t implode... probably."

As someone who can get sandbox fatigue but loves puzzles and cooking, Snacktorio feels right up my alley. It doesn't have a release date yet, but its developer says it found a new publisher, the core mechanics are done, and "the rest of the game development is pretty much just designing a fuck tonne of levels." So that sounds good.

I finally got to try the cyberpunk Metroidvania I've been following for years: its Steam Next Fest demo is a little bit of Mega Man, a little bit of Star Wars, and more of an RPG than I expected.

House Flipper first hooked me when I had just grown into an adult with its cozy renovation loop, providing me with the relaxing outlet I needed amid all of college's chaos – and now, eight years later, it's drawn me back into its surreal world of home-refurbishing havoc.

If you're anything like me, you have hundreds of hours in House Flipper and its more recent sequel, House Flipper 2, because what better way to spend your evenings unwinding than to complete jobs for strangers who leave televisions upside down and undefinable stains on all of their ceilings – right?

If so, you won't want to miss the House Flipper Remastered demo this Steam Next Fest, with the full game launching later in 2026.

I'm happy to report that developer Frozen Way delivers on its promises to revamp House Flipper with refreshed visuals and an improved user interface, brand-new content with six jobs and over 800 items, and an overhauled storyline with fresh faces as well as full voice acting.

There's so much to love, really, both old and new, leaving me with just one wish – that the Steam Next Fest demo let me do more.

I've re-experienced two jobs from the original House Flipper – one from the base game and another from DLC, because House Flipper Remastered comes with all $120 or so worth of expansions from the OG title – and I've gotten to enjoy sprucing up a home that wasn't in the 2018 gem.

It does everything Frozen Way's first game did right, and then some, only in a bigger and brighter way (literally, just look at those crispy new visuals).

Some of my personal highlights include the photo mode – because let's face it, the few snaps you get at the end of a job usually just don't cut it – and area selector tools that hasten up the clean-up shenanigans we House Flipper stans know and love (or hate, because why are there so many spills and pieces of trash?) from Frozen Way's original game.

The top-down mode is also hands-down one of the greatest things the dev has done. I will die on this hill.

So, if you are indeed a fellow House Flipper aficionado like me, I recommend heading over to the official Steam page for the remaster and slapping that demo download button as fast as you can. Dare I say, it's better than House Flipper 2 (in my nostalgia-pilled brain, anyway).

Hoping to unwind even more after House Flipper Remastered? Browse through our big roundup of the best relaxing games out there available to play right now.

"It's the first time we've ever launched something on Steam first, so that, in itself, was quite a… feeling," says Reanimal producer and Tarsier Studios co-founder Andreas Johnsson, pausing slightly as he recalls Reanimal's Steam Next Fest demo in October of last year. "I was going to say positive feeling!"

"Fans weren't super happy at times, were they?" chuckles Dave Mervik. Historically a PlayStation-first studio, a Reanimal demo for PS5 launched weeks after my chat – but for Steam Next Fest, the team threw themselves into the PC experience, inviting fans to check out their first horror adventure since leaving behind Little Nightmares. In our Reanimal review, we called it "a feast of twisted weirdness".

Steam Next Fest's roots began in 2020, when quarantine uncertainty led to the necessary cancellation of in-person events and Steam kicked off its Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition – loaded with demos to bring the future of gaming into the hands of players at home.

Rebranding as Steam Next Fest, it's become a regular fixture in the gaming calendar, now running three times a year (usually February, June, and October). Serving a massive amount of demos with a mix of randomness and user-based algorithms, the event updates throughout its weeklong run to spotlight certain games and make it clear which ones are surfacing across multiple charts. All of which you can find out about in our own Steam Next Fest guide, too.

Steam itself sees a tremendous number of game releases that grows each year, with 20,282 games released in 2025. There are valid fears around what it takes to stand out in a marketplace as daunting as that. Likewise, as more successes have come from Steam Next Fest, demo season helping to put games on the map through wishlists and other attention, participation has swelled – Steam Next Fest October 2025 had almost 3000 demos. But, even with such a packed crowd, for developers that are able to find wins through the event it can make a huge difference.

Big dreams

Even with a different franchise, Tarsier Studios has a dedicated fanbase eager to see its next project, but that didn't stop the team being anxious about testing that. "It was quite nerve wracking the day before and the day when the demo was released, and being [...] potentially highlighted during an event like Steam Next Fest," shares Johnsson. "But it was extremely fun to see the reactions from the game."

It's a completely different environment to showcasing a game to press at an event like Gamescom. "[That's] kind of cozy, because a bunch of people come in, and you get that nice energy from people, and you're sitting with them, and you can kind of laugh along with them if something goes wrong, or explain, contextualize stuff," says Mervik.

"Here, it's kind of like you press go, and then [stressed grunt] They've got it now, and they can think what they think with no input from us. So, for me, it was still quite unexpected when the positive reactions to it started to come in, and we were like 'Fuck man, this feels quite nice!'"

Despite some flaws, which Johnsson describes as "performance issues" and "bugs", he was surprised that they were taken in good stride by players as part of the early look. "I just love those comments that we read where, you know, 'I had this issue here and the issue there, but I don't mind. It's still good.' Oh, OK!"

From watching streamers play it to hoovering up comments, it was a positive experience for the team. "It does give you that blast of energy, just when you need it most [...] It could have blown up in our faces if the demo had been received shit. And we were like, 'Oh, let's finish it anyway," says Mervik. "But instead [...] You get a bit of wind in your sails, like: All right, come on, then! You almost now have to deliver more because people really love this. We've got to nail it!"

New school

For a team like Mango Factory, though, preparing to release its debut game Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter, there's no built in fanbase to lean on. Unashamedly inspired by Danganronpa, Kumitantei, according to creative director Selina Kibara, was "100% a fan game" in early development. Even so, it's not easy to stand out from the crowd.

The road to launch has been a tough one, fueled by passion and the dedication to community engagement. "The Kumitantei team does a really great job of Fan Art Fridays," says Fae Monique, marketing lead for Kumitantei at Akupara Games. But to encourage fan art, people need to actually see or play the game enough to become a fan in the first place. Akupara Games has only come on board recently, as Kumitantei was still set to be self-published when I played it back during the Steam Next Fest in June 2025 (and spoke to the team towards the end of last year).

"On our side, getting a lot of press and new followers off of Steam Next Fest certainly, I think, helped boost the morale on the team to keep looking for a publisher," says Kibara. "Since we had been through so many rejections at this point we had kind of decided that we're probably going to have to launch Episode One just solo and see how it goes."

Kibara approximates that from our own Kumitantei preview, it got approximately "1500 wishlists", which can be vital for a smaller indie release. Kibara notes how funny it is that, so far, its biggest bits of press coverage haven't been tied to any specific press releases.

For my part, I simply scrolled through hundreds of games served up to be during Steam Next Fest, wishlisting and downloading what interested me and trying to prioritize playing what grabbed me the most – and Kumitantei was near the top. In that respect, something must be working, but I do personally spend an above average amount of time combing through storefronts because it's a part of my job. As ever, discoverability through the algorithm, or positive word of mouth, can be a challenge. Still, while the result is I just get to play a cool demo for free, for developers like Mango Factory it can be the difference between getting enough resources to finish your game or not.

"The incredible response that we got from the Next Fest demo really pushed us to keep looking and trying to find the right group to work with us on this, because we really wanted our game to have a home and to be able to be alongside other similar games in a catalog. That's something that was really important to us," says Kibara. Akupara Games has also published the likes of Cryptmaster, Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, and Sorry, We're Closed – putting Kumitantei in very good company. "Coming off of Steam Next Fest and into our publisher agreement – I imagine that the wishlist count certainly helped – but the biggest thing on our side was just being able to prove that we had something here that was worth paying attention to and worth investing in," says Kibara.

"I'm a little more removed from the numbers side of the pitching, to be completely honest. But when we're considering games, we obviously do look at your wishlist count, interest that you've gotten," says Monique.

It's not just Steam Next Fest that's benefitted Mango Factory. Kumitantei also featured in the earlier Storyteller's Festival in 2024 when "it had no voice acting at all," Kibara tells me, which is what put it on VO director Mia Paige's radar – leading to a collaboration that now sees the mystery game fully voiced by incredible talent. Crowded though Steam may be, it can still put you in the right place to be seen by the right people, and whether that's a potential player, collaborator, or publisher, that seemingly small thing can have a huge impact.

That's something that Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender certainly agrees with. The publisher has done very well from getting momentum on Steam, with the upcoming Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era becoming the number one demo on Steam during October 2025's Steam Next Fest and quickly breaking one million wishlists. Speaking shortly after that achievement, he tells us that "Steam is a wonderful platform that is engineered to show players things that they like, no matter how narrow or wide their interests are. It's amazing how advanced Steam is for that purpose."

Horsing around

For the developers at Unfrozen working on Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, the success has given them the space to roll up their sleeves and engage with their audience ahead of the proper Early Access launch. "It's kind of early access for Early Access," laughs CEO Denis Fedorov, who we spoke with for our Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Big Preview last year. Launched during Steam Next Fest, the demo that became a sensation is still live, and has even received a few updates itself.

"We knew for sure that the game is good [from] our internal tests," says Fedorov. "But from the beginning, we decided, well, we will just give the players the game. [...] In the current market, you should be honest with the people. You should be fair with people, and you should show [them] respect."

Despite the confidence in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, director and lead designer Leonid Parmenov said the team "didn't expect that much attention" from the demo. "During Steam Next Fast we collected an enormous amount of feedback from the players," he says, echoing Fedorov's comments on the early release. "In a way, we could call it like the beginning of early access because it was the first time when we could test all our theories and hypotheses, and to see how the players react to them."

The wishlists have been important, but for Unfrozen it's really the community engagement that's been so important from Steam Next Fest. That's included feedback it didn't predict, and has actually altered the priority of some tweaks ahead of full Early Access. While PvP multiplayer has been important, getting new opinions from PvE solo players has been hugely important.

"The game has been in development already for a long time, and during these years the way we see the project began getting a bit blurry," says Parmenov. "This kind of public demo helps us to have a fresh view on the project, to hear new opinions from new people, and to polish the game and make it actually enjoyable."

Steam Next Fest has grown, showcasing more demos than ever, and likewise each year Steam hosts even more games in its marketplace. But Bender believes that pure numbers aren't the best way to look at it. "There's often those headlines like, 'Oh, steam has this many games that came out this year,' and everyone's like, 'Oh, there's so many games – you can get buried.' The truth is, that number isn't very significant in terms of understanding what's going on on Steam. [It's about] whether good games are getting surfaced and identified for people, and whether the platform allows them to be discovered by the people who love them."

That, according to Bender, is exactly what Steam is best at. "The platform knows what it's doing. Its algorithms work well," he says. While he acknowledges it's true that the growing number of releases includes an increasing amount of solid games, he notes that "the gaming audience is growing" alongside it. Across regions, and especially in Japan he notes, "If anything, I think it means there's more opportunities to be discovered by them. We constantly see how even small teams that weren't necessarily predicted to be the big hit, or had all the attention, they're still able to succeed huge on Steam when their game is out there, and it really delivers for a group of the audience."

"Steam is so good at showing players what they want, and it's also so good at allowing games to be surprise hits and succeed. It's so good at allowing a game that's catching traction to go to that audience, and sometimes that's being shown to the niche audience that will really love it, and sometimes that means allowing this unknown game to be shown to everyone, because everyone's loving it," says Bender. "It's so good at doing that, that I think it fights through the general problem of getting it out there. It's an amazing discoverability tool for games."

After 9 years, this underrated Lovecraftian FMV detective game is getting a sequel, and its free Steam demo makes a strong first impression

Vampire Survivors sunk its fangs into me as it did many. Its mix of reverse bullet hell and run-based roguelike upgrades proves incredibly moreish as ludicrously massive waves of enemies crumble under a bevy of attack animations around my hunter. A surprise success, many developers have tried to recapture its lightning-in-a-bottle quality. Vampire Crawlers gets close. After spending a bunch of time playing its free Steam Next Fest demo, its true stroke of genius is taking the Vampire Survivors formula in a new direction.

Coming from developer Poncle, who also created Vampire Survivors, this is a true followup that feels in safe hands – and it's well worth trying the demo for yourself (you can check out our Steam Next Fest guide for more information on the demo festival). Instead of just recreating the original Vampire Survivors with new twists or trying to dial up the chaos, Vampire Crawlers instead identifies what worked so well about the first game and applies it to another genre – the roguelike deckbuilder. I'm always up for slinging some cards, so that's more than enough to hook me, perhaps even more so than Vampire Survivors.

Unbeating heart of the cards

Vampire Crawlers plays out as a first-person dungeon crawler, having you move tile-by-tile through each floor through connecting hallways and rooms. Which means it's a lot less immediately chaotic than Vampire Survivors, as you move into enemies on the map to initiate a battle rather than being endlessly swarmed by foes with no room to breathe.

In battle, you're dealt a hand of cards, your starting build determined by your 'crawler' character, fulfilling the same role as the survivor you control in Vampire Survivors. So far, I've been having an easier time with starting crawler Antonio Belpaese, a whip-wielding hero who gives you a healthy opening mix of zero-mans whip attack cards with an armor and might card to match. Imelda, on the other hand, can supercharge your experience point growth so you'll eventually be more powerful by the end of a dungeon crawl, or Gennaro is built around increasing attack power.

Mana determines the cards you can play each turn before you have to allow enemies to either advance or attack. Encounters start out with simple single rows of enemies, but in true Vampire Survivors fashion, you're quickly taking on masses of enemies that stretch far back on each screen.

The trick comes from Vampire Crawlers' combo system, which multiplies the effects of your cards when played sequentially. Playing a zero-mana card will boost your one-mana card which will then boost your two-mana card. Or, you can squeeze in two boosts of zero-mana to one-mana, perhaps. You're limited by your max mana per turn, but some upgrades you can find on the map can boost that permanently for the run, while some cards can do so temporarily – likewise with other stats from power to range, or even hand size.

Before I know it, I'm summoning waves of twisting bibles, fireballs, and then slotting on rainbow armor to tank enemy attacks, with almost unlimited choice because of how many cards I can hold in hand. Equipping gem slots into each card means I can customize my chaotic hands further, whether that's simply doubling damage to really power-up my combos, returning a card back to hand so I can re-use it, or allowing a draw on play so I can keep dipping back into my deck for more moves to make.

While Vampire Crawlers can be a bit slower to get going than Vampire Survivors, so far I've found it just as much of a blast to play, and being able to take my time figuring out combos is appreciated. It remains to be seen if it can extend that feeling across multiple zones, but having played and finished full runs of both the forest and library zones it's off to a terrific start.

Vampire Crawlers is releasing on PC on a date still TBC.

Zero Parades proves itself a worthy Disco Elysium successor in this free Steam Next Fest demo that has me debating music formats, trading anime swords, and feeling like a fool for doubting this follow-up

It's been a few years of rough sailing for fans of pirate games. Without naming names, I feel like there hasn't been a whole lot of treasure on treasure island recently, but it looks like a cask of salvation has washed ashore in the truly shipshape Steam Next Fest demo for Windrose, an open-world PvE survival crafting game blending influences from genre titans like Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Sea of Thieves, and Ark.

In my many seasons playing Steam Next Fest demos for work, I've scarcely come across one as well-optimized as Windrose, which is really saying something for an open-world survival crafting game. This thing is a full-blown PvE base-building sim with resource and health management, in-depth sailing, naval combat, boarding and melee battles, and a story with beautifully animated cutscenes, and yet, in my 30 minutes with the demo it ran like an absolute champ on my ancient, RX 580 desktop.

Developer Windrose Crew says the game's SNF demo offers about 4-6 hours of gameplay, so needless to say I hardly scratched the surface. That said, I pinky promise you I legitimately can't wait to get off of work so I can play more. It's that good. The story, which involves supernatural elements as well as characters inspired by real-world history, kicks off with a pirate captain (you) being attacked by the fabled Blackbeard and becoming a castaway after falling from his ship and contracting a curse that seemingly saves his life.

You start out by creating a character, slashing your way through a few basic combat encounters, and then waking up stranded on a tropical island. The demo walks you through your first steps toward redemption, including setting up base by gathering resources and making essentials like a tent, cooking fire, and crafting tables.

I learned pretty early on that Windrose does not play around. "Kill a bore and obtain its hide," read an onscreen quest objective. Easy enough, I thought, I have a big ol' cutlass and pistol. Man, that pig F'd my S up. Thankfully, I had already established my tent as a respawn point and managed to find the same pig, its HP still slightly drained from the one sword attack I managed to land before it gored me, and still, it took two or three respawns to finally take that sucker down.

Naturally, I was a lot more cautious approaching my first encounter with a "drowned" enemy, which looks and behaves like a zombie. It was during this battle I learned that the Ctrl button acts as a backwards dodge, a massively useful tip that the demo didn't alert me to (either that or I just missed it). Combat feels a lot like Sea of Thieves, with a basic slash move and block assigned to the left and right mouse clicks, and a gun you can pull out and use in ranged encounters. That said, enemies are a lot spongier than Sea of Thieves, and dare I say, they're a little smarter too, with unpredictable movements and devastating attack points that make encounters tense and dangerous.

Here's where I disappoint everyone: I did not actually make it to the sailing parts of the demo today. The game makes you craft a bunch of stuff, including crafting materials themselves, before you can summon your flagship, and unfortunately the time allotted to me was gone by the time I had made everything. That said, I watched a few gameplay videos and it reminded me a lot of Black Flag, which is about the highest compliment I can pay this game.

Yes, all I've seen and done is the opening to the game and the very beginnings of base-building, but already I can just tell there's something special in Windrose. I don't know if it's the immaculate level of polish, the story, the simple but fun combat, the beautiful tropical sunsets, or just the fact that there's a new pirate game with real potential, but I'm not the only one with the same feeling. Wishrose Crew recently celebrated a million wishlists on Steam, and if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go max out this demo and then twiddle my thumbs at my desk while I wait for early access.

Here are the best survival games you can play right now.

I've had my eye on a cyberpunk Metroidvania called Altered Alma for over a year now, so I was excited to give its demo a play in this week's Steam Next Fest. After clearing a few areas and getting some upgrades, I'm pleased to report that it is indeed good. I am also surprised to report that it's taken a page or two from Cyberpunk 2077, not just in its RPG elements, but also in some very sexy romance scenes that caught me off guard in the latest trailer.

A problem I often have with action game progression systems is how the early sections may suffer from limited gameplay options. You get tons of cool stuff later, but the opening minutes or hours – arguably the most important part of a game – are extremely one-dimensional because all the cool stuff is backloaded. Altered Alma has this problem, but only for about 10 minutes. If the game feels a little slow and difficult at the start, that's because it is, but stick with it and you'll soon find a fast and responsive platformer with delightfully violent combat.

Altered Alma stars an android (I think) girl named Jack and her robot companion Vera, who are on the run in a cyberpunk, Star Wars-y spin on Barcelona after refusing to kill a bunch of space babies for the military or something. I'm shrugging it off a bit, but this game was written by Resident Evil and Dead Space veteran Antony Johnston and Still Wakes the Deep's Emma Beeby, and it shows. Jack is quippy but not grating, and the character interactions I've had have been a mix of sweet and serious. For a limited demo, I'm remarkably invested.

Movement and combat are the real stars, though. Jack controls a bit like Mega Man, albeit with more slashing, parrying, and blood. But as soon as you discover the teleporting dagger that the entire game is built around, the whole vibe changes.

You start executing enemies with finishers that are as lavishly animated as the rest of this gorgeous game. You fly through and around walls and enemies, chaining parries and combos together to maximize your damage and the amount of health energy you regenerate (not unlike Soul for healing in Hollow Knight). It isn't perfect – the parry is wimpy, and the ledge grab is far too slow – but Jack is a fun heroine even with many upgrades missing.

The RPG influences called out by developer 2Awesome really pop up in the screen for those and other upgrades – with Metroidvania-style discoveries flanked by new moves and gear tied to resources – and in the companion system. I've only met one friend so far and it's clear from the trailer that he's very romanceable. That trailer also makes it abundantly obvious that Jack is playing for both teams here, so if you like the look of anyone in the cast, there's some good news for you RPG romantics.

It's hard to judge deep systems like this from a free sample, but the demo for Altered Alma certainly didn't disappoint me. It made me want more of a game that's been on my radar for a while, which is about all I could ask for.

A fantasy Fallout opening pushes me right into one of the most promising RPGs I've played in ages, and it's by far the best Steam Next Fest demo I've tried.

For fellow FMV heads out there, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2 may need no introduction. But to those looking to delve into the rabbit hole of live action gaming, this, like the first game, throws you into the therapist's chair to half-analyze, half-interrogate former patients of your Lovecraftian predecessor, the titular Doctor Dekker. This Steam Next Fest demo allows you to get stuck in with your first patient session, and already has me swimming in possible theories about what happened to your dearly departed (...or are they?) colleagues.

Developed by D'Avekki Studios, their latest FMV mystery is well worth checking out for yourself (nose through our Steam Next Fest guide for more about the event). I've long had a soft spot for this developer's take on FMV games. Remaining with a hand in tabletop board games, rather than trying to craft overly ambitious narrative games, these mysteries are more bite-size affairs that use live action performances to sell you on a series of possible clues than simply story hooks. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2 – just like predecessors The Shapeshifting Detective or Murderous Muses – is closer to something like Immortality than it is The Bunker. I'm pleased to see this rare sequel from the studio maintaining that style.

On the couch

It's been almost a decade since the first game, but The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2 picks up threads from that adventure. Once again, you're trying to uncover the truth behind Doctor Dekker's disappearance, alongside the murder of Doctor Alderby. With random elements, the murderer you need to accuse is chosen at random so you'll need to pay attention as you speak with each patient as no two playthroughs are the same. There's even multiple takes from actors for certain scenes to reflect that (which seems to be togglable if you'd rather stick to pure facts and logic).

My demo session has me chatting with Ophelia, far from getting into the weeds of making murder accusations (although, in fact, I actually can – though she simply calls it a poor taste joke). Bounced between Doctor Dekker and Alderby, I have to ask her about the death of her mother, the claim she can hear ghostly voices within her deceased parent's house, and try to figure out if she observed anything suspicious between the two doctors. Each patient has their own supernatural problems you'll have to help them tackle. While most are new, fan favorite Marianna does return as well as the iconic green couch and stark lightning.

For once in a sequel, I'm a little thankful a feature has gotten simpler. While the first game's ability to type in every question you wanted to ask a patient was novel at the time, it could quickly become obtuse. Now, you're simply presented with a list of topics, which you can then combine into pairs to attempt more complex enquiries.

A notepad tracker that you can turn and off helps you guide your main points of inquiry, but there's a lot of optional chats you can have with your patient as you try to tease out more topics to discuss. Even in this small slice of the game, my demo has me making lots of small decisions that it tells me will help shape the ultimate fate of Ophelia (you read that right, Swifties). No discussion goes more than a few sentences without interaction, so picking through statements really does feel interactive.

I'm too early to have a suspect in mind yet, and I'm on the fence about whether I'll be clever enough to pin down my randomly assigned suspect – but I'm certainly looking forward to meeting all my patients and trying to crack what just has been going on in the late Doctor Dekker's practice. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2 comes to PC with exact console TBC later in 2026.

What if Bloodborne was on PS2? Dark horror No Vacation for an Executioner is so old school even the dev insists to try the free Steam demo before buying "to make sure you like this control style"

As the masses rushed into underground vaults, hastily shut thick doors behind them, then ducked into cryo sleep while world-rocking explosions obliterated the horizon outside, Alabaster Dawn began to remind me a bit of Fallout in its opener. Which is a fun coincidence given that it's a fantasy RPG, and 'fantasy Fallout RPG' would ordinarily suggest a modern Elder Scrolls game. Instead, here we have a top-down action RPG from Radical Fish Games, the makers of CrossCode, which is still home to some of the best pixel art and combat you can find in this space. So far, if early signs are any indication, Alabaster Dawn looks and feels even better. It is by far the best Steam Next Fest demo I've tried during this week's event and all I want to do is play more of it.

Digging into the game's newly updated demo, I shake off the Fallout-esque motif as protagonist Juno steps out of her vault and into a ruined world abandoned by the gods and overrun with demon-like beings. Armed with a divine sword and crossbow by a heavenly capybara, I realize within seconds that Alabaster Dawn is every bit the CrossCode successor I've been hoping for.

Radical Fish says combat was also inspired by Devil May Cry and Kingdom Hearts, and it shows. Each weapon has its own skill tree for new moves, like special combos for attacking stunned enemies or following a perfect parry, and the pacing is such that combat is constantly evolving. Upgrades are plentiful and meaningful, your main skill tree fleshes out your play style with offensive and defensive bonuses, and the basic attack string, dodge roll, and, really, everything are just lightning in your hands.

The backdrop to this silky-smooth combat is the kind of pixel art that makes it hard to imagine a video game looking any better. This is it, folks. I could look at this forever. Cancel Unreal Engine 6 right now. Foliage is lush, every enemy has character and clearly communicated attacks, your own hits are swift and punchy, and Juno has one of the best walk cycles I've seen. It's a good thing combat is so fun, otherwise I might resent all the fights for interrupting my sightseeing.

Alabaster Dawn is set to launch in Steam Early Access in the first half of 2026, and as Radical Fish adds and updates content like different areas and villages, I hope it doesn't change a thing about the core design pillars on display in this demo. All I want right now is more of this – CrossCode 2 in all but name, and a must-try for anyone with a fondness for games like Secret of Mana or Zelda: A Link to the Past, top-down action games, or frankly just good games in general.

"Made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2" are big words for an action RPG, but the Steam Next Fest demo for Darkhaven feels like sampling bread by eating raw flour.

Puppy Park is my latest Steam Next Fest obsession, and with good reason – it's a colorful, far more modern take on my ever-beloved childhood favorite, Nintendogs.

A whopping 15 years have passed since the last Nintendogs entry dropped on the 3DS, and while I admittedly do still play it, I've itched for something new that carries that same cozy caring-for-animals vibe… and now, I have it.

Puppy Park, as it's so aptly named, is a cute indie game that developer TM39 describes as allowing us to run "a tiny dog hotel for pups of every breed and personality" – and that's exactly what it does.

Set in the ever-so-peaceful countryside, Puppy Park takes the things I loved most about Nintendogs – taking care of precious puppies and customization – and makes them central to the game.

New good boys and girls arrive daily, each with their own unique personalities and needs. As players, we're tasked with pampering the pups with treats, grooming them so they look and feel their best, and taking them on scenic walks.

As soon as I saw Puppy Park and its new free demo on Steam, I knew that I couldn't miss it – the little girl still deep within me yearned to re-experience her Nintendogs-filled childhood again, now in her 20s. So, I obliged, and I'm very happy that I did.

I'm not only obsessed with the wholesome aesthetic or premise of TM39's game so far, but also the real-time gameplay loop that'll keep me coming back to oversee dogs daily.

It reminds me of Nintendogs, once again, and how I'd open my DS religiously every day to try and nail every competition while ensuring my puppies were walked and well looked after. Puppy Park is similar in the sense that I'll probably spend half an hour or so in-game one day, and then rinse and repeat the next.

It's the perfect after-work boost, if you ask me – second only to my real-life doggos, of course.

There's not a lot of time left now until Puppy Park releases in full, either – it's set to launch next month, on March 9. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have virtual dogs to check on.

Hoping to unwind even more after Puppy Park? Browse through our big roundup of the best relaxing games out there available to play right now.

My Steam Next Fest demo of choice has been Super Meat Boy 3D, which is a concept I never expected would work out.

Before making two of the best roguelikes of all time in The Binding of Isaac and Mewgenics, Edmund McMillen was known for creating Super Meat Boy alongside Tommy Refenes, a platformer that helped popularize the "masocore" subgenre, even if it has roots in Mario hacks and the likes of I Wanna Be the Guy and the game's flash predecessor Meat Boy. McMillen has since left Team Meat, but Super Meat Boy persists as the studio has continued the franchise.

And 18 years after he made his Newgrounds debut, Meat Boy is going where all platforming mascots go eventually: into 3D.

The Steam Next Fest demo features what I assume are the opening 10 levels of Super Meat Boy 3D. And given how precise the original game could be at times, I was concerned about how that aspect would transfer. Will it have to be dumbed-down to work better in 3D or would it just be an unplayable test of frustration? But so far I'm pleasantly surprised to report that it seems to be neither. Super Meat Boy 3D is still filled with close calls and precise jumps in the way you'd expect from Team Meat's classic.

In fact, my only real gripe with the demo is that the animation – specifically the ones at the end of each level – are a bit awkward. But that's hardly a dealbreaker when this feels like a natural extension of Super Meat Boy's gameplay and a proper follow up to the game in a way the disappointing auto-runner Super Meat Boy Forever failed to capture.

15 years later, after 700 hours of grinding and "at least" 100,000 deaths, speedrunner finally beats all of Super Meat Boy without dying, earning a "congrats" from co-creator Edmund McMillen

Within minutes of playing the Steam Next Fest demo for Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, I'm having an anxiety attack while on the phone and having to choose a stat to permanently lower. As is true in real life. The difference between me and Cascade, the disgraced espionage agent who's come out of retirement to star in ZA/UM's RPG follow-up to the legendary Disco Elysium, is that it's a reasonable reaction to having your secret mission blow up in your face before it's even begun. Just two hours in, Zero Parades is feeling like a worthy successor, and I'm feeling a little foolish for ever doubting it could be.

Arriving in Portofiro for the first time in many years, your meeting with new operant partner Pseudopod goes awry when you find him catatonic in your so-called safehouse. Ordered to burn the mission and flee, doing so would scupper your chance to complete one more mission and earn glory, respect, redemption, or simply the feeling that the mission that went so wrong you were put on ice in the first place was worth something after all. Quite what you chase and why is up to you, but one thing is clear in this hefty two hour demo – you're not going to run away again (and you can check out our Steam Next Fest guide for more on how to play for yourself).

Welcome to the opera

Zero Parade's world is one of cryptonyms, secret double meanings, and propaganda. It's also one where trying to wrangle a fax machine back to life is probably going to attempt several dice rolls and skill checks, where you can receive a luck boost for many in-game hours for rubbing the bald spot on your partner's groaning head, and where each of your spy skills will chip in to steer your inner monologue like their own characters in a conversation.

In short, Zero Parade's is an awful lot like Disco Elysium. But this is a spiritual successor that builds on its style and frequent skill-checking RPG mechanics without just feeling like a redo – Zero Parades' espionage mystery is intriguing in its own right, and its spy thriller tone is doing its own thing. Though Cascade's skills popping up in conversation is a lot like the inner thoughts of Disco Elysium, in practice they create a different vibe, one that feels like your own rusty operant experience kicking into gear to analyze each situation.

Most of my two hours with Zero Parades is spent wandering around Portofiro and investigating the local market and docks, trying to figure out what happened to my partner, who his contacts and informants were, and also just why they brought me specifically out of retirement for this job. Chatting with the locals brings up several side avenues of investigation, from a mysterious phone booth that seems to cause locals to be abducted, to discussing what's essentially anime propaganda with children. Off school due to the country's crumbling infrastructure, I barter with them to earn a prop anime sword, which pairs nicely with my purple wig to bring me several stat buffs – and I promise to show them any of the show's collectible drinking cups I can track down.

From there I end up in a lengthy conversation with the owner of the market's music stall, who eye-rollingly judges his customers because they want to buy discs that can replay songs. A 'format fetishist', he's a purist who only respects playback methods that can be used just once for a superior sound, while simultaneously shuddering at the thought of actually playing them. The philosophical conversation about the merits of types of media with him is laugh-out-loud funny. Zero Parades has a great sense of humor, balancing real observations about the likes of facism while also being able to poke fun at certain types of pseudo-intelluctalism as well. Zero Parades is strange, dark, and witty – we're so back.

All the while I'm trying to juggle Cascade's Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium to not reduce any more of my stats – playing dress-up will only get me so far. After this, I stumble into where I should be able to meet an informant, only to find it's turned into a crime scene. Investigation quickly turns to evasion as I have to massage my skills through a sequence of checks in order to stay out of sight and escape the market unseen, choosing between blending into the crowd or going for a more direct approach. It's easy to see how different builds could tackle Zero Parade's situations in a multitude of ways. Already proving a worthy successor to Disco Elysium, after just a couple of hours with this free demo I'm feeling silly for ever doubting. Bring on the full release, and I'll be here ready to roll the dice, now unafraid to be the fool. Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is releasing for PC in 2026.

What if Bloodborne was on PS2? Dark horror No Vacation for an Executioner is so old school even the dev insists you try the free Steam Next Fest demo before buying "to make sure you like this control style"

Windrose, a new pirate-themed open world survival crafting game that lets players fight on both land and sea, has overtaken Pragmata during Steam Next Fest with its free demo – and landed on over a million wishlists to boot.

Steam Next Fest is here, which means plenty of demo-shaped shenanigans are upon us as players discover what might just be their next favorite game – and I'd say Windrose will be that game for many folks, judging by how the event is going so far.

If you check the charts on Steam's official Next Fest page for all "popular upcoming" titles, you'll see Windrose sitting nicely at the top. Right behind it is none other than Capcom's own Pragmata.

It hasn't just overtaken the exciting AAA sci-fi adventure, though. The swashbuckling indie gem is celebrating over a million wishlists, too. A recent post from the developers proves as much, with the team outlining how grateful they are to fans for playing the demo and giving the game a wishlist.

"Windrose means the world to us, and we hope that, over time, it might come to mean something special to you, too," the studio writes.

"This past week has been a real whirlwind for our team with all the attention the game has been getting. And as the spotlight grows, so do expectations. We're working hard every day to live up to them. There's still a lot ahead of us, and honestly, it can feel a little scary at times. Our biggest goal is to ship a great game and let you be the judge. It may take time, but with your support, this journey becomes a lot easier (and a bit more swashbuckling, too)."

After expressing thanks to players once more, the devs conclude with a heartfelt statement: "A few weeks ago, we couldn't even have imagined this. And thanks to all of you, our game has now passed the 1,000,000+ wishlists mark. That's an incredible milestone, and a reminder of how much work we still have ahead. Thank you so much."

Incredible indeed, and seeing as the devs posted their message over the weekend, things have only gone up since then.

And, you know, Windrose has beaten out the likes of behemoths such as Pragmata. With its Sea of Thieves-esque charm and Rust-style survival gameplay, though, I'm not surprised at all – there aren't enough good pirate games out and about, if you ask me.

Looking for more? Stop and have a quick browse through our roundup of these other very exciting new games arriving this year and beyond.

What am I to make of Darkhaven, a still-Kickstarter-ing action RPG "made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2" that's now gotten an "intentionally unconventional" demo as part of Steam Next Fest? The demo is so unconventional, I fear, that it isn't very compelling, and so this question's been weighing on me after reaching the "thanks for playing" stage of this primordial vertical slice.

Dropped unceremoniously into a rocky camp in a grassy field, I start the Darkhaven demo as I mean to go on: as a witch whose favorite spell is stabbing things. I choose the lunging basic attack and, armed with itty bitty daggers, grow to regret it as my squishy witch spends a concerning amount of time in enemy melee range, hampered by a cooldown-based dodge roll that moves me in my hard-to-see cursor's direction and not the direction I am currently running.

Unlocking a proper ranged spell improves the combat immensely, in large part because it makes all the goblins and treants and giant roaches explode. But the mana cost is severe, and I haven't found a way to replenish my Recognizable Blue Orb apart from resting at camp or breaking mana crystals, which in the din of combat feels like John Wick pausing his shootout to search for discarded pennies.

Within minutes, I start to problem solve through itemization and upgrades, spending technique points on mana refunds for my spell, and bulking up through the standard suite of armor and accessory slots. Eventually I find a healing flask, which, after several deaths, felt like discovering a fireproof ring after walking across a hot bed of coals.

"What you're playing now is the beginning of that vision," the demo's Steam page insists. "It's ambitious, it's evolving. And it's still being built. We're sharing it early because we know the game will get better with real player feedback."

The Darkhaven demo is pre-alpha, fabulously unfinished, and spectacularly limited. I can, I foolishly want to believe, see what the folks at developer Moonbeast Productions are shooting for: a procedurally generated ARPG with destructible, unpredictable environments and 3D movement (that is, a double jump). That said, I have no idea what its "massively interconnected, MMO-scale network of realms" might look like, having only piddled around in single-player. It's also difficult to find a use case for the ability to build and level terrain; I could plonk down a platform to fight on, I suppose, but good luck getting those goblins to chill out while I draw up a blueprint.

I can't assess what a game like this might be any more than I can offer feedback on a statue yet to be carved from a block of marble. There is only what a game is, and my acid test for Steam Next Fest demos is always the same: do I want to play more of this? For Darkhaven, the answer is no. This? This right here? This is not very good. But it feels like that's sort of the point, and so a second question emerges: do I want to see more of this game? Yes, actually. The demo didn't grab me, but it didn't punch me in the nose and insult my mother either. By the time I see it again perhaps it will feel more like an ARPG and less like the pitch for one.

What if Bloodborne was on PS2? Dark horror No Vacation for an Executioner is so old school even the dev insists to try the free Steam Next Fest demo before buying "to make sure you like this control style."

No Vacation for an Executioner feels like a PS2 survival horror game that never actually existed. Almost certainly inspired by FromSoftware's Bloodborne, it's another bit of proof that yearning for a Bloodborne PS5 remake is a little bit tired, and that the wired option is for a demake. While Bloodborne PS1 gave us the goods in the style of Sony's debut console, the completely original No Vacation for an Executioner, which I've been playing during Steam Next Fest, translates the horror vibes into a PS2 format – complete with graphical toggles to emulate that console's specific visual style (which lean a touch more baroque than gothic).

Coming from solo developer JayO, No Vacation for an Executioner has you playing as a town executioner in the 17th century who becomes caught up in a conspiracy revolving around a bestial infection when a simple hanging at the gallows goes wrong, the people you serve becoming too hungry for blood. With only a mysterious set of killing tools provided to you by the new King, you must set out to find bloody meaning between streets filled with groaning infected and rotting flesh, and the baroque ornamented halls of the nobility. The free demo is well worth trying for yourself – and our Steam Next Fest guide can help you get started with exploring February's demo season.

Fangs for that

No Vacation for an Executioner's developer would certainly like you to try the demo – but almost as much to give you warning. Multiple disclaimers on the store page are placed to remind potential players of the "intentionally back to PS2 feeling", citing the likes of Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill as gaming inspirations. Though, if you're anything like me, seeing such a warning will only make you more eager to mash that download button – I'm always craving more games that evoke the PS2 era, and after only a short time with this demo the vibes are on point.

Also inspired by The Hangman of Paris by Claude Cueni, and the Paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński, No Vacation for an Executioner's dour color palette is stunning to look at, with sketchy textures bringing clarity to the action while the crunchy lo-fi models add just enough fuzziness to the shapes that your mind fills in the horrifying blanks when enemy skulls crunch and deform into snapping jaws.

Armed with a large sword and a massive musket, the Bloodborne comparisons are obvious. But the pace of play is a touch slower by design. You need to be careful about alerting mobs of enemies and lines of sight, as getting surrounded by groups can be super deadly, and some foes have guns of their own that can devastate your health from afar. The ability to sneak by crouch-walking means you can get the drop on enemies from behind, covering the often grey visuals with stark red as you perform an instant execution, living up to your job title.

Take enemies head on, however, and you can slash away at them to deal a basic amount of damage. If you actually want to bring the pain, parries are vital – with a fairly forgiving activation window making up for enemy strikes that can really vary in speed. Enemy attacks can come in the form of weapon slashes of their own, or their body cracking into a new deadly shape to lunge at you with pointy fangs. Timing a riposte to stab them right in their gaping mouths can definitely feel satisfying once you get used to the rhythm.

So far, maps are short and simple, which doesn't stop enemy density from getting chaotic. No Vacation for an Executioner does at least allow you the classic breathing room found from running to the next screen. A herbal workshop hub also gives you space to take a break, and access a dream realm where you can practice the timing of parries with a weird jester. This strange world has me intrigued, and its weighty and dangerous combat has me itching to play more, even if I might just become a laughing stock at the gallows. No Vacation for an Executioner is heading to PC in March 2026.

This musical turn-based RPG hits all the right chords, and you can play the free Steam demo right now

As a notorious sucker for musicals – from High School Musical to The Book of Mormon – and turn-based role-playing games – I don't want to talk about how many hours I've spent in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, thank you very much – the musical turn-based RPG People of Note from developer Iridium Studios and publisher Annapurna Interactive is basically designed to play me like a fiddle.

I'd thought as much after seeing the reveal trailer late last year, and reading our own reporting from Tokyo Game Show 2025, and now that I've spent about 90 minutes roaming around People of Note's brightly colored world filled with strikingly cartoonish characters and backgrounds, I can already tell that I'm going to be obsessed with the game once it releases in early April.

The other side

The basic premise of People of Note sees protagonist and pop singer Cadence looking to win the Noteworthy Song Contest and deciding she can't go it alone; thereby necessitating the gathering of musicians to fill out her band (aka RPG party) by traveling around the world. But this is no ordinary world! Note (that's its Proper Noun™ name) is a place defined by its musical genres.

Functionally, this means there's a rock town (Durandis) and an EDM city (Lumina) and so on for Cadence to explore while taking on enemies and the mysterious "Harmonic Convergence" that's causing trouble. If that's sounds not altogether different from the hit 2020 animated film Trolls World Tour, first of all: congratulations on being a person of taste. Second of all: yeah, it's not not that.

The demo specifically drops me into the game's second chapter to explore Durandis, which also just so happens to be under attack by Homestead, which is apparently the country-aligned musical faction. While they're a bit much to take on by my lonesome as I belt out rhythm game-style pop attacks, rocker Fret quickly joins the party to help out.

People of Note only really gets going once you have multiple party members, which makes sense given the musical theme and harmonies and so on. Turns are played out across a stanza – basically a music-themed action bar at the bottom of the screen – so you have some idea of what's coming as well as how long you have to act before it. Do you build up action points to perform abilities or do you smack the enemy directly? Do you rest to build up said action points? And here's hoping you have rhythm because several abilities and attacks are tied directly to how well you can eyeball a closing circle.

This is further complicated by equipment across, both items and skills. You can equip various "stones" that represent skills in and out to change your combat lineup, and there are additional modifiers you can then use to further tailor your kit. Actual items are traditionally associated with stat increases – more Defense or so on – with the occasional more significant advantage. For example, I've come to enjoy a modifier that includes a passive heal on Cadence for her big damage-dealing skill that only gets better when used in the first action of a stanza while Fret runs around with the Rolling Stone accessory, which has him start combat full up on action points.

It's these mechanics that I experience most alongside a healthy helping of the game's particular brand of humor during my demo. A chance encounter with Weird Owl (yes, you read that correctly) featuring polka music and an accordion dog you can pet will stay with me for a long time. Also, one of the merchants is a shop with a big sign that reads "3 Stores Down," so, you know. You're either going to be constantly chuckling or groaning, but I found myself doing much more of the former than the latter.

There's also a light environmental puzzle element to People of Note, which is maybe my least favorite aspect. The demo area includes several puzzles of basically lining up lines of energy by turning emitters that then bounce to and fro to (hopefully) eventually hit a trigger. The first puzzle was novel, the second was less so, and by the time I had to do it a third time I was over it.

And while music is clearly infused throughout, and there's even a non-gameplay interlude of sorts with a lovely sequence where Cadence and Fret learn to work together, it's hard to get a read on how that all comes together in the end. With just two members of the band, the tone and vibe doesn't feel quite right when I know without a doubt at least two elements – DJ Synthia and rapper Vox – are missing.

The overwhelming impression of People of Note I'm left with, however, is that I want to see, hear, and play more.

People of Note is set to release for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch 2 on April 7, 2026. A demo is now available on Steam. If you're hungry for more games using turn-based mechanics, be sure to check out our ranking of the best RPGs.

While Steam Next Fest is over, I downloaded the demo for Birdcage, which is a shoot-em-up inspired by the games of Treasure (notably Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga), with storytelling and aesthetics that are a massive love letter to Metal Gear Solid. Which is a roundabout way of saying this is absolutely my jam.

Shoot-em-ups (or shmups, as their friends call them) are one of those genres that fell somewhat by the wayside after their peak in the late 1990s. The Sega Saturn and Dreamcast (as well as the arcades where a lot of these games debuted) were a hotbed for fantastic shooters that looked absolutely gorgeous. And while there have been occasional highlights like Geometry Wars and Platinum's Sol Cresta, it's not quite been the same.

Which is why Birdcage grabbed my attention as soon as I saw it. Not only does it absolutely nail the aesthetic of those late 90's shooters, with mechanics inspired by the best Treasure had to offer in the era, but it also lists Metal Gear Solid as an influence. And while a cinematic stealth game and lightning-fast shooter don't seem like a duo that can coexist, Birdcage somehow nails it.

Its space shooting is just as hectic and difficult as Ikaruga was, which has you blasting away at waves of enemies while hundreds of projectiles fly your way. To succeed, you'll need to deal with overwhelming odds, but thankfully, you're pretty powerful yourself. Instead of Ikaruga's defensive color-switching mechanic, you can block certain attacks by using the coolest thing about your ship: the fact that it has a sword.

Right from the main menu, you can feel the Metal Gear Solid influence – even down to it being one of the PS1 games released outside of Japan that still used the circle button to select and cross to go back. While the whole aesthetic of the cutscenes and the gameplay backgrounds has a feeling of those menus come to life. You even have optional codec calls if you fancy breaking up the action for a breather (which you'll probably need).

Birdcage is developed by Polygon Bird, which was founded by comic artist Giannis Milonogiannis and musician Barry Topping (best known for composing the incredible Paradise Killer soundtrack). And while it's out later this month, the short time I've spent with the demo has me prepped for its launch next month on November 18.

As the Steam Next Fest wraps up, Valve shares some of the seasonal event's most-played demos – and they range from chaotically comedic co-op games to brutal Braveheart-inspired roguelikes

An indie developer who claims to have had only three people playing their game a week ago is now celebrating being one of the highest-played demos in Steam Next Fest.

Steam Next Fest is one of the best times of the year to be a PC gamer if you ask me, as a ton of upcoming PC games and upcoming indie games drop demos. This month's Next Fest event gave us some fantastic demos for heavy hitters like Marvel Cosmic Invasion and out-of-nowhere surprises like Crashout Crew (and bangers made out of bad franchises like Bubsy 4D, for the true sickos). But most importantly, Next Fest can be a great time for indie developers to get eyes on their game and a better chance at hitting big.

One of the biggest games of Steam Next Fest was Desktop Defender, an idle game that effectively has a game of Asteroids playing in the bottom corner of your screen while allowing you to do whatever you're doing on other tabs (I'm playing it right now, don't tell my editor). The only input you need is to let the numbers go up and select some upgrades every now and again.

Now that Next Fest is over with, developer Conradical Games made a post on Twitter showing a message from Steam saying that Desktop Defender was one of "the most popular demos in this edition of Next Fest," and will be featured in the Next Fest most-played demo roundup.

The developer said, "1 week ago we had 3 players, today I got this e-mail. Thank you all so much."

During Next Fest, Conradical Games posted an update to Desktop Defender's news page showing its demo had almost hit 1,000 concurrent players, with SteamDB listing it as the 1,375th most wishlisted game

Don't Starve but now you're a cute little mouse is the pitch for the hit Steam Next Fest demo that's about to give me another survival game obsession.

It's that time of year, folks – Steam Next Fest 2025 has drawn to a close, with countless new games having made their way onto excited players' radars and wishlists following hands-on demos, from well-known titles to smaller indie entries.

As the Steam Next Fest wraps up this fall, Valve is celebrating with a handy roundup of the 50 most-played demos this time around. Some of them, – like PowerWash Simulator 2 – aren't as surprising to see, but others certainly stand as unearthed gems, and that's what the event is all about. Topping the list of upcoming PC games on Steam is brutal medieval combat sim Half Sword, one we found to be a "massive early breakout" at GamesRadar+.

There's also long-awaited prequel Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, a challenging yet engaging turn-based strategy entry in a 30-year series of absolute bangers – one that ended up on over a million wishlists this Steam Next Fest. YAPYAP is another highlight of my own to make Valve's top 50, standing as a new co-op horror game that combines magic and monsters for a chaotically comedic experience that sees players using their voices as protection.

Further down the list sits the demo for Braveheart-inspired musou fighter Tears of Metal, boasting an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating overall. For a more choice-heavy game with no roguelike qualities, there's zombie apocalypse sim Quarantine Zone: The Last Check – a unique title in which you're no soldier or survivor… You're a doctor, tasked with making sure that no walking infected make their way into the safety of your military holdout.

The Steam Next Fest also graced players with a new Cairn demo – one that unsurprisingly is featured on the most-played roundup, too. If you don't know about Cairn yet, it's overall a pretty zen rock-climbing experience (until you fall to your death, that is). Other picks include skateboarding adventures like Skate Story, casual idlers such as Desktop Defender, and you name it. Steam's list is the perfect place to go for games to look forward to.

Honestly, the demos that gained the most traction this Steam Next Fest span all genres – it's a nice sign that there are plenty of great upcoming indie games to anticipate in all flavors, from heavier roguelikes to cozier sims you can play alongside pals.

Don't Starve but now you're a cute little mouse is the pitch for the hit Steam Next Fest demo that's about to give me another survival game obsession

The most wholesome 40-ish minutes I spent with a game this Steam Next Fest came courtesy of Winter Burrow's demo, which was about a little mouse wading through the snow in a cute remix of Don't Starve's survival gameplay.

Like many a cozy game, Winter Burrow opens with your sturdy main mouse running away from a busy urban life and back into the cottage core home of my dreams: a hollowed out tree. Existing in the wintery depths of snow, the burrow has kinda been left in a dodgy state by our aunt, who's also missing, by the way.

So, over the course of the demo, it's your job to gather and forage for all your rudimentary survival bits. Sticks and pebbles to make a DIY axe. Nuts and insect pieces to keep your hunger meter full. Wood to craft bed and furniture. And that's all while fending off the cold, which slowly creeps up and limits the amount of time you can spend exploring the wilderness outside.

The twist, from what I could gather, is that everything is decidedly more laidback than other survival games. Sure, you still have lots of maintenance to do, but, here, increasing your cold resistance just means you need to bake a pie or knit a jumper. Knitting. In a survival game!

Everything from the gorgeous paper-like art style to the way the little mouse patters about tickles a very specific itch in my brain that comes about in these winter months. It's the kind of game that makes me wish it was raining outside, just so I can have even more of an excuse to wrap up in blankets, make a tea, and play.

Winter Burrow comes out in full just next month, on November 12th.

Help, I fed the black hole in A Game About Feeding A Black Hole and now I can't stop the approaching galactic entropy of its Steam Next Fest demo

I just spent the last hour feeding a black hole instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing, work. And, no, that's not code for anything. I was literally feeding a black hole in the Steam Next Fest demo for a game called A Game About Feeding A Black Hole and I recommend that you, too, join me in feeding this black hole.

The demo and, I suspect, the full game is pretty minimalist and straightforward. There's a black hole at the centre of your screen, a bunch of asteroids circling it, and your cursor that deals damage to said asteroids at regular intervals. Every time one of the big space rocks breaks apart, the black hole gets slightly bigger and dishes out some cash, which then goes in your pocket at the end of a round.

That cash can be spent on permanent upgrades, some of which are simply stat boosts to the radius of your cursor or the damage you deal. Some are a bit more exciting, like one that adds seconds to the round's timer each time our dear black hole levels up or another that adds electric asteroids that damages nearby ones once broken.

The result is absolutely moreish as you quickly become a machine that's essentially cleaning up this light-sucking phenomenon's orbit of any debris in pursuit of more and more cash. It's uncomplicated fun since there's no way to 'lose' a round - you're just chasing more money for more upgrades, but it's a good way to unwind regardless.

The full game comes to Steam on November 10 with more upgrades, stars and planets to destroy, and extra modes.

The original Little Nightmares devs basically made their own Little Nightmares 3, and I had more fun playing its Steam Next Fest demo than I did reviewing the actual sequel from Supermassive

If you, like me, were disappointed by Little Nightmares 3, I have some encouraging news to share: the Steam Next Fest demo for Reanimal, a spiritual successor from original Little Nightmares developer Tarsier, is superb.

I don't want to spend too much time ragging on a game that I already spent 800 words complaining about in my review, but Little Nightmares 3 isn't great. I love the series, and I love developer Supermassive Games, but the threequel just misses the mark. Puzzles are rudimentary and samey, the stealth and chase scenes are more frustrating than scary, and the lack of local co-op is a huge disappointment.

For those reasons, I was psyched to see what Tarsier has been cooking up. Surely, if anyone knows how to make a good Little Nightmares game, it's these dudes. And it looks like they are! The Steam demo for Reanimal, which of course takes place in a completely distinct universe from Little Nightmares, but nonetheless looks and plays the same, addresses pretty much all of my pain points from Little Nightmares 3 and then some.

First and foremost, Reanimal has couch co-op, something I've wanted for many years as a fan of the series. I haven't actually had the chance to try it out, but the fact that I'll be able to play something with my wife in the same room is a real treat.

Reanimal really only needs to get a few things right to quench my thirst for the unique brand of spooky platforming that Little Nightmares popularized. One, it should be spooky. Reanimal, from what I played in the demo, is downright terrifying. I was burdened by a persistent sense of dread the entire time I played it. And I won't spoil anything, but in the demo alone I witnessed some of the most grotesque, nightmare-inducing monsters I've seen across all three Little Nightmares games, and when you're on their radar, it's an utterly thrilling experience.

The other things I expect from a game like this, which are second and third to the creepy, crawly atmosphere Reanimal seems to get just right, are at least halfway decent puzzles and platforming. Admittedly, I only worked through some light puzzles in the brief demo, but Reanimal's platforming just feels so much better in the hand than Little Nightmares 3. Jumping from ledge to platform, navigating waterways by boat, and running from bad guys is much more intuitive and less clunky than the movement in Little Nightmares 3.

I genuinely regret comparing Reanimal to Little Nightmares 3 so much, as that's explicitly what I said I didn't want to do earlier in this writeup, but having so recently come off the review for that game, and considering the fundamental similarities, it's hard not to write about this demo without essentially saying, well, this is the Little Nightmares 3 we should've gotten, and I can't wait for its full launch next year.

In the meantime, here are the best horror games you can play tonight.

In amongst the thousands of games fighting for time and attention in this Steam Next Fest, Godbreakers is exactly the kind of action roguelike that I'm craving right now. It's like thirst or hunger; too long without a game like this and I'll start to break down. It's a third-person action game with four-player co-op, big bosses with MMO-style AoE markers, and draftable items that torque your build to the moon. Put it straight in my veins, please.

The Godbreakers demo, which is near the top of the most-played charts on Steam Next Fest and has amassed over 300 very positive user reviews ahead of the full release on October 23, took some getting used to. But by the time I reached the first major boss, I was locked in and hungry for more.

This game follows the Soulslike template a bit, with light attacks on the shoulder button and heavy hits on the trigger. You can end a light combo with a heavy finisher, charge up a heavy attack, jump and slam down, and burn one of your three regenerating dodge charges to interrupt your attacks or evade enemies whenever you need to. I gather that each unlockable class comes with a special move on a cooldown, and you can also periodically steal single-use abilities from enemies that deal heavy damage. It's a bit like Dauntless, actually, may it rest in peace.

This is a fairly simple action game, but it looks and feels great right out of the box. As I started to stack on passive effects – backstab damage, random debuffs, extra health, and so on – I tweaked my play style slightly to make the most of them. In a full group of four, I can see those synergies getting multiplicatively fun.

It's exciting enough battling through rooms of dudes in genuinely lovely sci-fantasy environments, but the final boss was the high point for me. For the biome I chose, that was a big floating skull that summons occasional waves of enemies, starts every DPS phase with an area-wide attack that you avoid by hiding behind walls, and regularly chucks red AoE columns your way with its tentacles and energy beams. It's all very MMO-lite and it works well with the bones of combat. There's no lock-on, at least not one I could find, but that was never a problem for me. I beat the boss on my first run – the devs say the demo biomes are deliberately easier – and had to stop myself from running it again.

So far, Godbreakers is easy to pick up, it's got that chunky and colorful low-poly aesthetic that I never get tired of, and the potential for RPG-lite progression is pretty solid. It's no Hades 2, I don't think, but it's exactly the kind of game that I want to play with my friends, and I can see myself putting some hours in solo, too.

10 Steam Next Fest demos you shouldn't miss before they're gone.

If you confronted the barely restrained cynicism in my mind and challenged it to vat-grow a Steam Next Fest hit, an anime life sim RPG would probably be near the top of the list of candidates. It's a cozy, popular, and relatively forgiving genre, so in a sense it's no surprise that – wait for it – anime life sim RPG Starsand Island is proving very popular in the latest Steam demo blowout. That being said, it's also quite fun to play and has some of the best art I've seen in the genre, making it a clear standout in a saturated space.

Starsand Island had a massive Kickstarter earlier this year, with Chinese developer Seed Lab earning over $300,000 all told, and now its Steam Next Fest demo is rolling in over 600 user reviews tallying 87% positive. I've given it a go myself, and even as someone who's generally neutral on life sim games, I have to admit it is very charming and quick to get its hooks in you.

That may sound counter to the "carefree" thesis that Seed Lab proposed, inspired by the likes of Stardew Valley and My Time at Portia but also left hungry for a more "'do-what-I-want' country life" set on a fantasy island, but what I mean is that Starsand Island is compelling. It lays out a zillion goals for you to approach as you please, and gives you the tools to make a zillion more on your own.

There are professions like exploring and fishing to learn, quests to accept and complete almost JRPG-style, and relationships to form and progress. It reminds me a bit of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, which is still a dark horse 2025 game of the year contender for me, and that is no small praise. Already, I can see myself leveling up professions, grinding mini-dungeons or bosses for certain materials, and agonizing over whether the wooden nightstand clashes with the wallpaper in my little house.

The distinctly anime art style is an immediate head-turner. Where Fields of Mistria channeled 80s and 90s shojo anime, Starsand Island nails a softer, painterly vibe closer to the likes of Genshin Impact. Character models, including your highly customizable protagonist, are cute and expressive. The island city is lovingly detailed and animals are adorably wiggly. A few areas feel bizarrely barren by comparison, but I suppose you do need some calm stretches of wilderness, and this is only a demo. Speaking of which, I noticed some mild pop-in, animation hitching, and occasional long load times that will hopefully be improved in the full release due Q1 2026.

I chased down the exploration vocation first to test out the light combat, which so far boils down to shooting cursed bunnies with a slingshot. For snacky third-person ranged attacks in an outwardly cute sandbox game, it's honestly not bad. I'm told I'll get a bow soon, the trailer shows off some proper bosses, and there's a skill tree with combat bonuses like reduced charge times and a damage shield, so I think we might actually be cooking.

So far, Starsand Island feels exactly as I'd hoped: like an anime Stardew Valley with some good ideas of its own that's elevated, but not carried by a striking aesthetic. For the right kind of cozy game glutton, I suspect it will hit like a three-day weekend after a long week.

10 Steam Next Fest demos you shouldn't miss before they're gone.

Well, they can't fire me if I make playing Steam Next Fest games count as work, now, can they? The demo festival is one of my favorite calendar events as there's always plenty new to check out, dipping into just about anything that sounds interesting. The problem is, with so many, just what's worth the time to check out? There's enough stuffed in here that it'd genuinely be impossible to give them all a fair shake before the event ended. Which is where I come in.

I've been deep in the mines, getting my gamer paws on just about anything that looks fun. I've probably installed four times more than I could possibly try. But I've played more that have excited and delighted me than I can even highlight here (and you can check out our Steam Next Fest guide for more on how to do so yourself). It's been a challenge, but here are the best Steam Next Fest demos for this October 2025 period that you really should be checking out. Get 'em downloading!

10. Constance

Developer: btf
Release date: November 24, 2025

I know, I know, Hollow Knight: Silksong feels like such a dominating Metroidvania experience that it's hard to imagine jumping right back into the fray. But, Constance makes a compelling case, and is well worth giving a quick go. Those who loved Silksong will nevertheless find Constance's paintbrush powers deliver a fresh twist on movement, while those who bounced off Silksong may find its balance a little easier to get into. With an emotional story about mental health, a gorgeous art style, and goopy paint powers, this has quickly become one of my most anticipated new games for 2025.

Play the Constance demo here!

9. Ambrosia Sky

Developer: Soft Rains
Release date: November 10, 2025 (Act One)

I love when space-set sci-fi isn't just clinical, cold hallways. Ambrosia Sky has Dalia, a scarab agent, returning home to The Cluster – where colorful, vibrant fungus has overtaken the colony. It's Dalia's job to investigate, and to claim the corpses for research materials. Melancholy rather than grim, Ambrosia Sky's immersive sim elements are right out of System Shock or Deus Ex, making exploring the station intriguing and open, even though the mission structure means you're quite focused on what you need to do in each map. Dalia's cleaning tool is the real star of the show, spraying chemicals that burn away fungus. You can even alter the spread of its nozzle and customize it with elemental powers. Creepy sci-fi PowerWash Simulator? You know I'm in. Play the Ambrosia Sky demo here!

8. Reanimal

Developer: Tarsier Studios
Release date: TBC

Reanimal comes from Tarsier Studios, the creators of Little Nightmares. But you don't need me to tell you that. This short but creep demo makes it clear that, even though Tarsier had to leave that brand behind, the larger-than-life terror it was known for with Little Nightmares is still in the studio's DNA. Sneaking through an abandoned factory as small children (either solo or in co-op), this might offer some of the most disturbing and heart-in-mouth moments of any Tarsier Studio game opening to date. I won't spoil much, but this is one to play when you're in the mood for horror – and 'tis the season! In our Little Nightmares 3 review, we came away a bit disappointed, but Reanimal's fresh angle on the genre from the original creators could be set to keep the flame burning.

Play the Reanimal demo here!

7. Marvel Cosmic Invasion

Developer: Tribute Games
Release date: 2025

Marvel Cosmic Invasion comes from Tribute Games, the developers behind the rather excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. The same love and care they brought to TMNT is evident in this beat 'em up take on Marvel as well, throughout this demo that allows you to play through the first couple of levels in arcade mode solo or with friends. There's a lot of superheroes to play as too. Spider-Man, Venom, Captain America, Wolverine, and more are available in this crunchy demo. Even by yourself, you don't play completely alone, as you actually pick two characters at once. Combo attacks mean you can tag-in your alternate selection to jump into the action at any time. I can't wait to play more!

Play the Marvel Cosmic Invasion demo here!

6. Tides of Tomorrow

Developer: Digixart
Release date: February 24, 2026

Tides of Tomorrow isn't Digixart's first narrative-driven story game – the developer also made the excellent Road 96 and its sequel. Which is perhaps why adventuring through this world on the brink of ecological collapse – an ocean planet riddled with plastic waste – is so playful with its story mechanics. Playing as a Tidewalker, awakened from stasis, there are plenty of choices to make – many revolving around how to keep an ever-encroaching plastic sickness at bay. But, the Tidewalker's decisions can affect the state of the world for other players, not just your own. Follow the right Tidewalker, and they may leave resources for you to find… or perhaps they put a criminal leader on edge so you end up having to deal with the tightened security left in their wake. This demo gives a great slice of that in action through a Marketland heist that can vary quite drastically.

Play the Tides of Tomorrow demo here!

5. Skate Story

Developer: by Sam Eng
Release date: December 8, 2025

Skate Story is a skateboarding game like no other, combining chill music with challenging skating routes, quirky laugh-out-loud writing, and a moon-gobbling quest to escape from hell itself. Taking on a strange pact, you agree to turn your body into glass in exchange for the ability to shred through the afterlife. Almost like Sayonara Wild Hearts, the bulk of the demo has me gunning it down straightforward routes, tricking over obstacles and bamboozling demon eyes to open the route ahead, while a couple of boss fights play out like combo challenges. This demo is a solid introduction to the game, taking you through a few levels as you make it to the end of the first world.

Play the Skate Story demo here!

4. Dice A Million

Developer: countlessnights
Release date: January 2026

Balatro-likes are in vogue right now, but switching cards for dice makes Dice A Million my one to watch in the genre right now. A roguelike that has you passing escalating score challenges, they all revolve around rolling the ol' bones. Beginning with humble three and four sided dice, you can progressively upgrade these to simply dice with more sides, and some bizarre options ranging from two dice sticky-taped together to matroshyka dolls. Coming up with game-breaking combos is part of the fun, and the nature of this genre as a demo makes it immensely replayable already. Give 'em a roll for yourself.

Play the Dice A Million demo here!

3. Starsand Island

Developer: Seed Lab
Release date: Q1 2026

Cozy farming sims are one overstuffed genre at the moment, but Starsand Island has stuck out to us over the course of Steam Next Fest. It's not exactly reinventing the wheel, but hitting all the cozy notes just the way we like to see them with an incredible art style to boot. Hanging out with locals, farming, fishing, Starsand Island does it all, teasing plenty of super in-depth customization while also keeping the action abstracted and arcadey – it's a neat balance that means this paradise can be what you want it without becoming a chore to maintain.

Play the Starsand Island demo here!

2. Bubsy 4D

Developer: Fabraz
Release date: 2026

Bubsy 4D means that, yes, Bubsy is finally back, just as his many fans have been clamoring for. They… have been clamoring… right? Well, nevertheless, the bobcat has been thrust into another adventure, this time heading into space to thwart an invasion of robotic sheep and retrieve the precious golden yarnballs he so covets. In all seriousness, this tongue-in-cheek revival of a '90s icon is incredibly charming in tone. But it's also got the platforming goods. Fabraz developed the excellent Demon Turf, after all, and the same creative and expressive platforming is at the forefront of Bubsy 4D, with feline-flavored movement that has Bubs comboing together pounces, wall scrambles, and furball bouncing. The first three levels give a good taste of the action, and packed with collectibles and speedrun challenges there's a lot to get out of them already.

Play the Bubsy 4D demo here!

1. Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

Developer: Unfrozen
Release date: 2026

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era has been a Steam Next Fest chart topper for good reason, and has already been propelled to over one million wishlists because of it. It absolutely delivers on the series' promise that fans have been desperate to return to for a good couple of decades. Modelled closest to the truly iconic Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Olden Era riffs off those systems while finding angles to both simplify and add depth to evolve on the tactical heroic action. Crucially, though, this demo is absolutely heaving with content. From an in-depth tutorial to multiple maps you can play as a variety of factions, a whole weekend could easily disappear with this alone.

Play the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era demo here!

I dropped dogs onto other dogs to create even bigger dogs in Dogpile's hefty Steam Next Fest demo

I'm a simple man. I load up the Steam Next Fest demo charts, I CTRL+F search for "Soul" to pull up anything tagged as a Soulslike, and I inject all of the results straight into my eyeballs. Imagine my horror when this ironclad method turned up exactly one (1) game during this month's demo extravaganza, at least at the upper crust of results. Now imagine my relief when that one game turned out to be a whip-smart boss rush that, even as something closer to Zelda than a conventional Soulslike like Lies of P, kicks ass.

Rubinite is the latest Steam Next Fest find to crown my Steam wishlist, and while I won't say its Soulslike user tag is totally unearned, developer Cup Dog Games just calls it a dark fantasy boss rush action game, and that feels more accurate. Titan Souls meets Momodora, basically. You play as a small girl named Ruby – "a princess who has escaped from the Scarlet Kingdom" and is now tearing through monstrosities on a warpath back to that kingdom.

This is a fast-paced isometric action game about dodging boss attacks while sneaking in hits of your own. We've got bosses for breakfast, bosses for lunch, and I hope you saved room because it's boss fights for dinner.

Combat is subtly layered and well tutorialized. Press attack and you'll quickly swing your dagger for light damage. Hold the right trigger and Ruby's blood-red eyes will slowly reveal weaknesses in bosses, stacking up blood markers that can be cashed in for stylish and hard-hitting critical attacks. If you get hit, you'll lose all your stacks. But if you perfectly dodge an attack, you'll instantly get another stack. The closer you are, the faster you'll build stacks. You can probably see where this is going.

Within minutes of installing Rubinite's demo, I was dancing around an arena, danger in one ear and adrenaline in the other, skirting a four-armed beast rather fittingly called The Beast. Incoming attacks are fast but fair – well-timed so you always have a good gut feeling for when to dodge. The pixel art sings, movement is spot-on, and unforgiving bosses are made more approachable by a painless retry button.

When given the choice between parrying and dodging in action games, I generally go for parrying because I find it more satisfying. Rubinite is all dodges, all the time, but exceptional sound design and animation work gives that perfect dodge such oomph that it hits my brain the same way a parry does in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. This is the first game from Cup Dog that's listed on Steam, but it feels very polished. In just this demo, months ahead of a spring 2026 release, Rubinite plays exceptionally well, and I haven't even dug into the skill tree or Hollow Knight-esque charms yet. I need this game yesterday.

I endured physical pain to keep playing this Shadow of the Colossus meets Mirror's Edge action-platformer in Steam Next Fest, which is about the highest praise I can give.

I was already interested in Everwind, an upcoming sandbox RPG heavily styled after Minecraft but with first-person combat that can't help but bring The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim to mind, after seeing its trailer and successful Kickstarter pitch. When the demo started flying up the Steam Next Fest charts, I grew more curious. Everything clicked when I realized that the publisher of this thing is Bohemia Interactive, best known as the maker of DayZ and Arma 3 among other sandbox icons (the much less iconic Ylands is probably the closest parallel here). Thoroughly intrigued, I had a run of the demo, and I'll be damned, I think we've got something here.

Everwind, by developer Enjoy Studio S.A., s a co-op-equipped adventure about gathering resources, crafting gear, and exploring scattered islands across the air and sea using your upgradeable airship base. It is extremely Minecraft-flavored from the get-to. Break and place blocks, craft tools like axes and pickaxes, repair your gear, slap on some armor, and chow down on some mushroom soup. Here's a radical change of pace for survival game openers: punch skeletons, not trees. And by punch, I mean wildly swing a lead pipe in their general direction.

The combat is probably the weakest point right now, at least as the default warrior class. (I've read multiplayer is iffy, but haven't tested it myself.) We'll get mages and engineers at some point, it seems, but good old-fashioned melee is all the demo has to offer, and it's a bit of a slap fight. You can time your swings with dodges, block incoming attacks, and shield bash enemies for an opening, but I'd like to see some more rhyme and reason to enemy behavior. Melee in Minecraft is all about knocking enemies back, whereas Skyrim brings much more engrossing pacing to duels. Everwind feels stuck in the middle, with arcade fun and more serious complexity eating each other instead of synergizing. =

As someone who has historically enjoyed Minecraft but never truly stuck with it, this demo is doing a few things that I really like. I'm a sucker for floating islands thanks to JRPG psyops, and upgrading your airship's size, speed, and maximum altitude gives you a clear goal to pursue that has a measurable impact on the world. Piloting that airship feels good, too; I carefully set my vessel down for a soft seaside landing after spotting a watchtower on an otherwise abandoned island, and hastily constructed a dirt bridge to shore.

I can easily imagine hunting for specific resources to beef up my engine, and inevitably getting sidetracked by dungeons and caves – always my favorite parts of Minecraft – on the way. The opening barrage of items and recipes is a bit much, with the demo tutorial simultaneously feeling too short and overloaded, but most everything felt the way I wanted it to. Opening chests, crafting tools, eating food, chopping wood – I just relied on my Minecraft instincts, and they did not betray me. I did totally lose track of time during my session with Everwind, which is a very good sign.

This is one of those ideas with a sky-high ceiling for potential but also a cavernous floor. But so far, Everwind actually shows a lot of promise. In my mind, I can see it becoming a legitimately good game, which is a start. The demo alone has nearly 1,000 very positive reviews on Steam already, which is a downright great start.

I endured physical pain to keep playing this Shadow of the Colossus meets Mirror's Edge action-platformer in Steam Next Fest, which is about the highest praise I can give.

Steam Next Fest is always a good place to find a new roguelike to suck up your free time, and this time around has proved no exception. I've already checked out Tears of Metal, and while Half Sword doesn't sell itself on being a part of the genre, its demo certainly fits the bill. But the clear winner so far in my mind is Slots & Daggers - a game I only discovered thanks to a roguelike I fell in love with in the last Next Fest.

That game was CloverPit, which is a slot machine twist on the Balatro format, and has been racking up hundreds of thousands of sales since its recent release. My obsession with that put Slots & Daggers on my radar, because while it's a very different kind of slot machine roguelike, it's still a slot machine roguelike, albeit with a fantasy twist.

Slots & Daggers plays out as though you're in a pub, tinkering away at a simple arcade machine embedded in your table. At the start of the game, you're given three tokens, denoting a sword, a shield, and a coin, and sent out to fight monsters. Combat borrows from Slay the Spire - you know exactly what each monster will do on their turn, and that each of their hits will probably hurt a little more than the one before.

But while the strategic element of Slay the Spire lies in your ability to pull the right card from your deck, Slots & Daggers does away with that. Instead, it puts your chosen tokens into a slot machine, and whatever lady luck gives you when you press the button is what happens on your turn. In the face of a deadly attack, you might pull three swords and get off a huge amount of crit damage to see off your foe… but you might also pull two coins and a shield and get cruelly dispatched instead.

You can tip the scales in your favor with new tiles as well as passive and active effects that play out in-between rounds. Eventually, I began crafting my build around a pair of 'skillcheck' weapons - a broadsword and a mace that based their damage off how well you could do in a minigame - and regularly opted for healing in my passives, picking up passive lifesteal and active healing spells to keep me alive. But in one run, I opted instead to hit the enemies with my wallet, taking more and more money-based upgrades so that by the time I reached the demo's final boss I could afford pretty much anything I could find in the shop.

There's an element of making your own luck. Granted, you might simply not find the pulls you need and be consigned to the game over screen, but much as in a more traditional roguelike, death is usually the end result of simply not having the gear to match up to a given enemy. Within Slots & Daggers' retro aesthetic and vaguely tabletop approach to exploration and monster design, that never feels quite as bad as it did in Slay the Spire. There's a sense of distance inherent in the fact that you're playing this game within a game, with the random chance meaning that while loss often feels out of your control, you simply have to acknowledge that them's the breaks.

But making my own luck quickly proved crucial. Slots & Daggers offers up chips at the end of each fight, and those chips can be used to upgrade your machine. In the demo, those upgrades are pretty minor, offering small boosts to damage resistance and healing. Unless, that is, you're prepared to save up the cost of 10 normal upgrades to buy the big one, which unlocks a fourth slot. More slots means better results, so obviously I saved up all my chips, bought the fourth slot, and then did it all again to buy a fifth slot. I would've bought more, too, but the demo cut me off.

That was probably for the best, because five slots meant I could dish out so much pain to my enemies that I promptly discovered I'd beaten everything the demo had to offer. That also meant that there was no real point in investing in the other upgrades, cutting my time with Slots & Daggers far shorter than I intended. That's a bit of a shame, but probably for the best, because if, as I suspect, this game takes up anywhere near as much time as Balatro and CloverPit have, then I'm going to be seeing plenty of it in my future anyway.

Check out our list of the best roguelike games.

Since Balatro's runaway success I've seen a horde of roguelikes trying to recapture the magic with little success. Dice A Million is the closest I've seen yet, rolling the dice more than a few times during Steam Next Fest. A switch from playing cards to dice is an elegant shift in direction that makes for a refreshing twist while remaining easy to understand – if anything, knowing how dice rolls work plays with shared human knowledge even more than scoring poker hands.

If you somehow missed the birth of this genre with the excellent Balatro, this style of roguelike is all about scoring points – and the same is true for Dice A Million, which comes from developer countlessnights. This twist on the roguelike tasks you with making your way through challenges that require you to match ever escalating points by playing a limited number of hands or rolls. Between each challenge you can enhance your 'deck', aiming to build combos that will power up scoring in often game-breaking ways. Where Balatro uses poker hands for scoring, Dice A Million is all about rolling dice with unique faces to achieve a total score. Extremely replayable because of this system, it's well worth trying for yourself, and checking out our Steam Next Fest guide for more.

Roll up, roll up

"What's exciting about dice?" I hear you ask. Aha! But there are some many different types of dice! Starting out with a pack of dice made up of d3 and d4 (which, believe it or not, have faces of 1-3 and 1-4 respectively), the heights of your early scores are limited. But, eventually, you'll be able to pack in the likes of the classic d6. d7! d10! The treasures and delights of any who have played a tabletop RPG. And who can forget dice like, erm, a literal coin? An explosive pinata? A matryoshka doll?

Yes, dice that roll only odd or only even are far from the weirdest Dice A Million gets. The deeper you go, and the rarer dice you uncover, the stranger they become. Often packing strong effects that can combo together, you eventually pare back your basic starter dice into a selection of some quirky little objects. One of my favorites is simply the Joined Die – two smaller dice taped together so they roll a combination of possibilities.

One of my best runs so far was based around a Prime Die that enhanced the other dice in a roll with prime number-based multipliers if they landed on prime numbers themselves. Then there's a vampiric die that can leech off of surrounding dice to boost its own power, and a paper die that leaves behind a buff where it was rolled for subsequent rounds. There's even a love die that will multiply itself and a nearby die – but only if there's only one other die in its area of effect. Yes, even where dice roll is a factor as well as what they roll.

Like Balatro, you're presented with a shop between rounds through which you can buy new die, score enhancing stamps, or rings – items that appear on the digits of your hand as you make a roll that provide boosts of their own. You can also spend currency before some rounds to enhance the upcoming rewards… if you pass a roll check, of course. Naturally, the final round of a board is against a harsher challenge with special effects like debuffing dice that have been played before or stopping you from even seeing which dice you have in hand.

Rolling the dice has been so delightfully moreish it's been hard to pull myself away from going again and again. So far, though, I'm curious if it'll have the staying power to truly make every run feel fresh, as I do find myself falling into some tactics that seem simple enough to pull off time and time again, and as score can carry over between some rounds it can be easy to shoot off ahead once you get some systems going. Yet, that's all still very early days. For now, it's well worth rolling the dice for yourself – you never know what they'll land on. Dice A Million releases for PC in January 2026.

Game of Thrones actor leads a lovingly vulgar tribute to "those old point and click adventure games that people gave a sh*t about in the 1990s" with a Steam Next Fest demo custom-built for Monkey Island fanatics