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14 Steam Next Fest demos you should absolutely check out this JuneSome curated demo highlights to kick off this latest Steam Next Fest
Some curated demo highlights to kick off this latest Steam Next Fest
Image credit:Valve
Image credit:Valve
Just in case your Steam wishlists weren’t already stocked up from this year’s Summer Geoff Fest bonanza, here we are with another edition of Valve’sSteam Next Fest, which has unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of free game demos on us, starting from today, June 19th, until Monday June 26th. You can view theentire June Next Fest line-upright here if you’d rather browse at your leisure, but we’ve also been playing some of the demos in advance to bring you some curated highlights of what we’ve enjoyed so far. We haven’t have access to every demo in this year’s Next Fest, I should note, but think of these more as some initial tasting suggestions to get you started, rather than a complete overview of what’s worth playing.
14 Indie Games We Can’t Wait To Play In 2023Looking for even more stuff to add to your Steam wishlist? Here are some more indie games we’re looking forward to playing this year, too.Watch on YouTube
14 Indie Games We Can’t Wait To Play In 2023
June’s Next Fest has positively oodles of excellent games to try this week, and some of them we’ve written about already, such asSpirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To, murder mysteryGhost Trick: Phantom Detective, surreal first-person adventureSludge Life 2, excellent puzzlerViewfinder, brilliant citybuilderSteamWorld Build, motor roguelikePacific Driveand loads more. Honestly, I could keep chucking game names at you all day, so I’ll pause there and let the fine words of the RPS Treehouse take over instead. You know, to throw more games at you. Catch!
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Mimimi Games
Katharine:The latest stealth strategy extravaganza fromDesperados 3andShadow Tacticsdevs Mimimi Games,Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crewhas quickly shot (cannonballed?) up to the top of mymost anticipated gameslist ever since it was first announced earlier this year. I’ve already played a chunk of this year’s Steam Next Fest demo for it, too, so you can check outexactly what I thought of it here, if you want more details.
But in brief, you’ll be sneaking around gorgeous islands in this magical Lost Caribbean, avoiding enemy sight cones and making use of your undead crew’s supernatural powers to take down guards, slip through their ranks and generally do a lot of cool, fun murderin' as you take down the evil Inquisition. I’m so glad Mimimi are carrying on this tradition of Commandos-style stealthing, and Shadow Gambit looks to be their finest game yet. Get it played, folks. This one’s properly special.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
En Garde!
Image credit:Fireplace Games
En Garde! is charming, a colourful cartoon world of escapades and japes. It is a game where you flow between fencing moves and environmental attacks because it’s great fun as much as because it’s practical. It is a game where you enter a room (likely in a cool way, like swinging in from a flagpole), quickly note the hazards you could use to your advantage and form a rough plan, then spot a lute sitting on a table and immediately abandon all caution because you cannot resist the urge to lob that lute at some guy’s face. You just know it will make a cool twonging noise. And it does. Joy.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Station To Station
Image credit:Prismatika
Alice Bee:Trains are one of those things that make even the most besuited and booted of grown adults go “Choo choo! A-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga!” with delight because they’re good and fun. The little voxel steam trains inStation To Stationare extra cute, and they’re most useful engines, pottering around connecting all the buildings so that wheat gets to the windmill and flour gets to the bread and bread gets to the city. As you successfully connect networks, buildings send out a little glowing circle of productivity that causes the grass to burst into bright green colour, tress to pop up, flowers to grow, and all the little buildings to spring into greater life. It makes your brain do this face: :]
But although this is a very pretty game - a relaxing one, for fans ofDorfromantik- like that lovely tile-basher, there are hidden depths. You get extra money for finishing a rail network in a way that suddenly connects multiple supply chains at once, and there are random card draws to boost that money, or make a track cheaper. But also, ah, :]
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Word Factori
Image credit:Star Garden Games
Ollie:Anyone who knows me knows that I adore factory games, and I’ll try any of them once.Word Factori, I’ll definitely be trying more than once. What an ingenious idea. Instead of constructing circuit boards and pipes and solar panels, you’re churning out letters and words. It’s a word game. A factory word game. Goddamn.
In a move of beautiful simplicity, there’s only one production building in the game, and it only creates one thing: the letter “I”. From this humble character, you can create the entire alphabet. Run an “I” through a curving machine and it will bend it into the letter “C”. Create two “C"s and rotate one of them 180 degrees, then combine them to create the letter “O”. With such intuitive multi-step processes, you can create all 26 letters of the alphabet and then combine them to create the words that you need to complete each level. It’s one of the cleverest ideas I’ve seen in the genre, and if you’re interested at all in factory games or word games (or both), then give Word Factori a quick go and see what you think.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Underground Blossom
Image credit:Rusty Lake
Rebecca:There is no such thing as too muchRusty Lake, and I’m so pleased that the next game is set to come out hot on the heels of last year’sThe Past Within. While these games are well-designed to be playable in any order, Underground Blossom feels like a particular treat for long-time fans, but also an accessible starting point for newcomers. It envisions the life of Laura Vanderboom — whose surreal and gruesome murder is a central event in the Rusty Lake mythos — as a tube train ride through a succession of “stations” representing key moments in her life. Laura hasn’t received much focus in a while, so a whole game dedicated to piecing together her story has the potential to open up a lot of interesting new avenues for the series.
This 15-minute demo whisks you through the game’s first two chapters, charting Laura’s infancy and childhood with her enigmatic mother Rose. While what we’ve seen so far is light on revelations, it’s satisfyingly full of all the slightly twisted logicpuzzleswe’ve come to know and love from the series. Expect the full two-hour game to unveil new hints to the overarching Rusty Lake mystery when it launches later this year.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Lies Of P
Image credit:Neowiz
Ed:Lies Of Pis a dark, broodingSoulslikebased on The Adventures Of Pinocchio. Does the most unlikely of alliances work, based off the demo? Ehhh, I’d encourage you lovely Soulslikers to see for yourselves. As for me, I think it’s an incredibly pretty effort which ticks the boxes you’d expect from a game clearly designed to mimicBloodborneas closely as it possibly can. If you’re happy to settle for lots of doors “that can’t be opened from this side”, difficult mechanical bosses, and cryptic item descriptions, I think you’ll like it.
For me, though, Lies Of P requires settling. So far, I think it strays so close to Bloodborne it turns into a constant reminder that it isn’t, in fact, Bloodborne. But hey, Bloodborne still isn’t on PC, so maybe this is the next best thing.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes: Definitive Edition
Image credit:Dotemu / Gamera Games
Katharine:Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroeswas always one of those Nintendo DS games I meant to play back in the early 2010s, but never quite got round to. I also missed its original 2011 PC release at the time (shame on me), but thankfully the remaster wizards at Dotemu have brought back Capybara Games' excellent puzzle RPG for the modern era with this shiny new Definitive Edition. It’s actually out in full next month, but this brief demo of its first three-odd levels has certainly whet my appetite for it.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Ebenezer And The Invisible World
Image credit:Play On Worlds
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Jumplight Odyssey
Katharine:This is another Next Fest demo I’ve already played in advance this year, and yep,Jumplight Odysseyhas certainly sunk its teeth into me. You can find out exactly why League Of Geek’s roguelike colony sim is just the right balance of spaceship pressure cookerover here, if you wish, but in short, this is a great mix of spaceship management and roguelike planet hopping that combines the best bits of FTL, Rimworld and Theme Hospital in a single, space-themed soup. Hence the pressure cooker.
As well as managing the health and happiness of your crew, you’ll be fixing up your ship as you work to escape from the evil Zutopans - upgrading modules to get you further on your path toward the Forever Star, and clearing up the damage they caused in the aftermath of your initial escape. They’re hot on your trail throughout a run of Jumplight Odyssey, too, so you’ll need to think fast and plan ahead to keep one step ahead of them. The Steam Next Fest demo limits you to just three of these jumps, but with procedurally generated universes to explore, you could feasibly play it again and again and get a different experience every time.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue
Image credit:Aksys Games
Rebecca:Inescapableleans heavily intoDanganronpaas its main inspiration and boasts music from the composer who scored theZero Escapegames, so there should be very little ambiguity about what you’re getting here: a closed-circle murder mysteryvisual novelwith a huge (but rapidly diminishing) cast of eccentric characters. While the games that inspired it are distinctively Japanese, Inescapable is a Finnish production featuring a largely European cast, which makes for an interesting mix of influences. Protagonist Harrison gives off vibes of a former kid detective à la a modernised Famous Five, and — like so many of his fellow Brits around this time of year — is hoping to reconnect with the gang on holiday in Spain when he finds himself instead sidetracked into an all-inclusive killing game.
Given the familiar set-up, the demo is mainly focused on providing an intro to the characters and scenario specific to Inescapable. Nevertheless, the references to influential predecessors range from blink-and-you’ll-miss-them to borderline out-of-context spoilers, and this preview even opens with a Team Rocket quote to demonstrate just how well the devs know the specific type of weirdo they hope to lure into playing the full game. (It’s me, I’m the weirdo.)
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Lil' Guardsman
Image credit:Versus Evil
Katharine:In this fantasyPapers, Please-like, you play as 12-year-old Lil who’s subbing in for her dad on guard duty while he’s down the pub and may or may not be doing a spot of Goblinball gambling. Not exactly the best example of ‘good parenting’, perhaps, but Lil is a surprisingly capable young lass whose sass and witty disposition makes her a good guard shed hang. It also helps that Lil’s home, TheSprawl, is considerably less bleak than Papers, Please’s Arstotzka, with the developers seemingly more concerned about making fun jokes than grim social commentary.
But the rhythms of this short demo will feel instantly familiar to Lucas Pope’s masterpiece. You have three actions you can take for each citizen that rocks up at the guard shed, including asking them a question, phoning a member of the council to ask for more information, or using an item in your special locked cupboard of tricks. The daily royal writ may also include certain objectives for you to take note of as well - such as phoning councilwoman Ashe if a speaker for the guild shows up, or watching out for old grandparents who might just be smuggling drugs into the kingdom under the pretences of food for their loved ones. Then it’s a case of letting them in, or denying them entry. You know the drill. It’s good, puzzle-y fun, and at the end of each shift you get a strange little story scene that moves the plot forward. The demo includes a surreal quiz show dream sequence about Lil deciding who to send off to rescue The Sprawl’s lost princess, for example, which is both endearing and horrifying in equal measure. A very strong opening.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Wood & Weather
Image credit:Paper House
Rachel:PlayingWood and Weather’s demo was an absolute delight, and now I can’t stop thinking about how easy my life would be if I were a little wooden person living in a clunky toy town. It’s a sandbox god game where you play as a disembodied hand who is helping the residents of this little paradise with their problems. Is someone having trouble moving their car? Just pick it up and move it back onto the road. Does someone want a pineapple? Scour the toy town and bring them one!
It’s a lot of fun interacting with the world, and you can be as helpful - or as mischievous - as you like. Everything is physics-based so you can politely help out, or feel more chaotic and fling objects around like a toddler having a toybox tantrum. You can also change the weather with a giant weather machine, and the wooden folks will react to their newly changed surroundings - it’s adorable. I can’t wait to poke and prod my giant blue finger around Wood & Weather when it eventually releases (hopefully soon).
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
New Cycle
Image credit:Daedalic Entertainment
Ollie:New Cycleis giving me some seriousBanishedvibes. It’s a pretty, laid back post-apocalyptic citybuilder that steadily ramps up the complexity and challenge over time, forcing you to make some trickyFrostpunk-esque decisions for the overall betterment of your people. Certain things are a bit rough around the edges in the demo, but all the information is very nicely presented across the main UI and various info panels, so I never really felt lost. I also dig that you can toggle at any time between snapping new buildings to a grid or placing them in a completely freeform manner.
On release, the game will have a campaign and other modes set across multiple biomes and map types. In the demo, you can only choose to play the sandbox mode on the same pregenerated Meadows map, but it still gave me a strong taste of the engaging, competent settlement simulator that New Cycle may become.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Let’s! Revolution!
Image credit:Buck / Hawthorn Games
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
