9 Demos You Need to Play During This Month’s Steam Next Fest

Steam Next Fest, which began in 2021 as a successor to the Steam Game Festival, remains one of the best ways to see what good games are coming up. The event, which takes place several times a year, gives gamers the opportunity to try out demos of a number of titles in development. We’ve looked back at the latest batch to highlight some of the best from the current festival, which runs from October 14th to 21st.

Steam Next Fest usually gives us our first taste of tomorrow’s indie gems or indie hits. Games seen during this year’s previous Steam Next Fests since launching to great acclaim include 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.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Star Vector

If you only have time to play a demo during Steam Next Fest, you should pick up Citizen Sleeper 2. The sequel to 2022’s stunning TTRPG-influenced sci-fi adventure is set to release in early 2025, and the demo lets you play the game. opening hours. I previewed the same demo a few months ago and was impressed with how Starward Vector maintains the first game’s sense of risk and reward, while also introducing new mechanics like the ability to manage a crew and go on dangerous missions, as well. like a breaking system that completely changes how the game’s dice rolls work. Fans of the first game won’t want to miss this demo, and it’s only available until the end of Steam Next Fest, so try it out while you can.

Empty Suns

Everyone has an opinion on the soulslike genre, but Void Sols has to be one of the most unique I’ve ever seen. It’s essentially a minimalist Souls game that distills the genre’s gritty combat and navigation into a top-down adventure in which the protagonist and all enemies are reduced to base forms. While the presentation may confuse you, the core gameplay closely follows the main pillars of the genre, so you’ll still need to memorize enemy patterns, navigate winding environments, and level up your stats while trying not to die. So far, Void Sols only proves how mechanically the soulslike genre sounds, regardless of visual presentation.

Keep driving

What’s more American than a cross-country road trip in a beat-up car? Keep Driving is about the unique charms and problems that come with life on the road. Choose a low-quality vehicle and set out to see the country while doing odd jobs along the way to pay for gas and other essentials. Keep Driving feels like part riveting management simulator and part Kentucky Route Zero-style pastiche of often forgotten parts of the country.

Blown by the wind

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 movement and combat, which let you zip through the roguelike’s isometric world in the blink of an eye. You can now try out the game during Steam Next Fest, and if you like what you see, you can continue the fun when Windblown enters early access on October 24th.

Proverbs

Perhaps the best way to describe the unique puzzle that is Proverbs is to call it a giant game of Minesweeper. Inspired by Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 painting “Dutch Proverbs,” Proverbs places you on a single giant board made up of over 54,000 individual squares. As you solve the puzzle, you’ll also learn more about the painting that inspired the game (as well as some real proverbs). This is the perfect demo for you to watch TV or listen to a podcast in the background.

Mushroom Musume

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 simulation, part roguelike, and all old-school fairy tale, Mushroom Musume is a unique narrative game about parenthood and plants. Like the fairy tales of old, this game will seduce you with beauty and terror in equal measure, and you will always want to know how its story will unfold. The Mushroom Musume demo offers a generous sampling of the game, so don’t be surprised if you fall down the rabbit hole.

Are you kidding me

Think of Are You Kidding Me as a cozier version of WarioWare. Gameplay is mostly microgames that ask you to complete a series of wild tasks in a matter of seconds, but there are also a handful of characters to talk to and meet in the game’s setting, Nowhere Space. If combining high-anxiety WarioWare-style gameplay with laid-back character interactions seems like a bad combination, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well it works in the game’s demo. It’s also really nice that you can have some fun with WarioWare outside of a Nintendo platform.

Heartworm

It seems no Steam Next Fest roundup can be truly complete without at least one retro-inspired horror game in the mix. So here’s heartworm disease. 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 dream and reality, as well as its unique use of a camera as a weapon. This last part clearly has ties to the game’s broader story and the themes that the demo only touches on, but it’s a great teaser for a game that horror fans should keep an eye on.

Building Relationships

I can explain Building Relationships in simple terms, but that won’t do justice to the kind of weirdness of this game. You play as a house on an island full of other houses and structures and your goal is to fall in love. You’ll do this by rolling and bouncing around the 3D world, then starting conversations with potential matches. Additionally, there is fishing. I told you it was weird. However, Building Relationships is also charming, mainly thanks to some great writing that leans into the absurdity of the premise, without ever detracting too much from some interesting meditations on the struggle to find love.

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