9 Demos You Need To Play During This Month’s Steam Next Fest
Image: YCJY Games
Steam Next Fest, which kicked off in 2021 as the successor to the Steam Game Festival, remains one of the best ways to see what good games are on the horizon. The event, which runs several times a year, gives players a chance to try out demos from a slew of in-development titles. We’ve been through the latest batch to highlight some of the best from the current festival, which runs from October 14 through 21.
Steam Next Fest often gives us our first taste of tomorrow’s indie gems or sleeper hits. Games seen during previous Steam Next Fests this year, since released to widespread acclaim, include the religious horror title Indika, the Resident-Evil-inspired Crow Country, and noir parody Duck Detective. Here are ten from this month’s event that could very well do the same.
If you only have time to play one demo during Steam Next Fest, you should make it Citizen Sleeper 2. The sequel to 2022’s stunning TTRPG-influenced sci-fi adventure is slated to come out in early 2025 and the demo lets you play the game’s opening hours. I previewed the same demo a few months back and came away impressed by how Starward Vector retains the sense of risk and reward from the first game while introducing new mechanics like the ability to manage a crew and go out on dangerous missions, as well as a break system that completely changes how the game’s dice rolls work. Fans of the first game will not want to miss out on this demo, and it’s only available until the end of Steam Next Fest so try it out while you can.
Everybody has a take on the soulslike genre, but Void Sols’ has to be one of the most unique I’ve seen yet. It’s essentially a minimalist Souls game that distills the tough-as-nails combat and navigation of the genre into a top-down adventure in which the protagonist and every enemy are reduced to basic shapes. While the presentation may throw you off, the core gameplay hews closely to the core pillars of the genre, so you’ll still need to memorize enemy patterns, navigate twisty environments, and level up your stats while trying not to die. So far, Void Sols just proves how mechanically sound the soulslike genre is, regardless of visual presentation.
What’s more American than a road trip across the country in a beat-up car? Keep Driving is all about the unique charms and troubles that come with life on the open road. Pick a crappy vehicle and set out to see the country while picking up odd jobs along the way to pay for gas and other essentials. Keep Driving feels like one part enthralling management sim and one part Kentucky Route Zero-esque pastiche of the oft-forgotten parts of the country.
Earlier this month my colleague Moises Taveras previewed Windblown, the new game from Dead Cells developer Motion Twin, and came away impressed. He praised the game’s incredibly fast-paced movement and combat which lets you zip around the isometric roguelike’s world in the blink of an eye. You can now try out the game for yourself during Steam Next Fest, and if you like what you see, you can keep the good times rolling when Windblown enters early access on October 24.
Perhaps the best way to describe the unique puzzler that is Proverbs is by calling it one giant game of Minesweeper. Inspired by Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 painting “Netherlandish Proverbs,” Proverbs drops you into a single giant board made up of over 54,000 individual squares. While solving the puzzle, you’ll also learn more about the painting that inspired the game (and some actual proverbs, too). This is the perfect demo to chip away at while watching TV or listening to a podcast in the background.
In Mushroom Musume you raise your mushroom daughter to be the best woman/funghi she can be, and things only get weirder from there. Part visual novel, part TTRPG, part farming sim, part roguelike, and all old-school fairytale, Mushroom Musume is a one-of-a-kind narrative driven game about parenthood and plants. Like fairytales of old, this game will entice you with beauty and horror in equal measure, and you’ll constantly want to know how your story will unfold. The demo for Mushroom Musume offers a generous taste of the game, so don’t be surprised if you fall down a rabbit hole.
Think of Are You Kidding Me as a cozier version of WarioWare. Gameplay is mostly made up of microgames that ask you to complete a number of wild tasks in a matter of seconds, but there are also a handful of characters to chat with and get to know in the game’s setting of Nowhere Space. If the combination of high-anxiety WarioWare-style games with laid-back character interactions sounds like a bad match, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well it works in the game’s demo. It’s also just nice that you can get some of that WarioWare fun outside of a Nintendo platform.
It feels like no Steam Next Fest roundup can be truly complete without at least one retro-inspired horror game in the mix. So here’s Heartworm. It’s a—say it with me now—retro-inspired horror game that bills itself as a love letter to the likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. What makes Heartworm stand out is its striking environmental design that always feels somewhere between a dream and reality, as well as the unique use of a camera as a weapon. This last bit clearly has ties to the game’s larger story and themes that the demo only touches on, but it’s a great teaser for a game that horror fans should keep their eyes on.
I can explain Building Relationships in simple terms but it won’t really do justice to this game’s brand of weirdness. You play as a house on an island full of other homes and structures and your goal is to fall in love. You’ll do this by rolling and jumping through the 3D world and then striking up conversations with potential matches. Also, there is fishing. I told you it was weird. Yet Building Relationships is also delightful, mostly thanks to some great writing that leans into the absurdity of the premise while never detracting too much from some interesting meditations on the struggle of finding love.
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