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16 great Steam Next Fest demos to play first this FebruaryOur top demo picks to get you started
Our top demo picks to get you started
Steam Next Festis back with a veritable truck ton of fresh game demos to sample, and we’ve been plunging our eager little mitts into the latest batch of indie delights to unearth some handy recommendations for you to hit first. Running from now until February 13th, there are always oodles of demos to try in a Next Fest, so sometimes it’s nice to have a helping hand in working out what’s worth sinking your time into. Below, we’ve rounded up 16 of our favourites so far, and we’ll be writing about plenty more demos we’ve yet to try over the coming week.
Steam Next Fest - February 2023 Edition - Event TrailerWatch on YouTube
Steam Next Fest - February 2023 Edition - Event Trailer
Xenonauts 2
But, even after it threw me out of the frying pan, clobbered me with it, doused me in oil, and chucked me into the fire of a UFO crash site, I came out with a wide grin. It’s tough. Really tough. These little troops barely stand a chance. But, after months of having superhero strength inMarvel’s Midnight Suns, that’s exactly what I need.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Mr Sun’s Hatbox
This is a platforming roguelike that feels both tightly controlled and wonderfully chaotic in the hands. With only a set number of fulton balloons at your disposal, you’ll be swapping hats and weapons throughout your run, chucking soup vats for springy punching gloves and baguettes for bow and arrows. It’s entirely unpredictable, and I absolutely love it. What’s more, each rotund blob dude you recruit has their set of randomized quirks and personality traits you’ll have to deal with too, which includes wigging out at the sight of corpses (of which there are many in a general run of Mr Sun’s Hatbox), and having a ‘skin condition’ where medkits actually hurts you. Honestly, I should have guessed from the name ‘Bandages’ Alvarez. Not all traits are bad, though. The more you level them up, the better they become, with my blob guys growing out of bad habits and into newer, more useful ones. Alas, the 20-odd minute demo in this year’s Next Fest doesn’t leave you a lot of room to get to know many of your round lads, but cor, what a great first impression all the same.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Shadows Of Doubt
Image credit:Fireshine Games
Ollie:Shadows Of Doubtis a game you should be interested in even if you don’t intend to play it. It’s a sandbox detective game where everything is procedurally generated, from the rain-soaked hyper-industrialised noir city to its hundreds of inhabitants, and even the crimes and cases themselves. That’s right - not even the crimes are scripted.
I played an hour or so of an admittedly rough demo and it was overwhelming, frequently stressful, but honestly quite staggering in its ambition. Following a lead, I journeyed to an apartment where I came across a dead body. I skulked around for clues on what happened, pinning dozens of tidbits of information to my investigation board, and drawing links between the pins as I saw fit. Completely under my own steam, I phoned numbers in the deceased’s address book, scanned fingerprints, and was about to leave to chase my newfound leads when I heard police at the door. With seconds to spare I hid inside a cupboard, and remained there while they searched the place, adrenaline pumping, wondering if they would ever leave or if they’d open the cupboard door and I’d have to somehow fight my way out - if I even could. There’s so much I still don’t understand about Shadows Of Doubt, and I’m not entirely convinced that I actually hadfunplaying it, but it’s fascinating and incredibly impressive, and I felt an immersion while playing that I haven’t felt probably sinceCyberpunk 2077.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Mr Saitou
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
It’s A Wrap!
Rachel:I first spottedIt’s A Wrap!at PAX West last year and was immediately intrigued with its gimmick. It’s a platformer where you use the different tracks of an editing suite to affect the scene above, then when you press pay you have to guide your character through the perfectly timed chaos you’ve just coordinated. It’s such a smart idea for a platformer, and one that also works incredibly well in practice.
Each level plays out like a Hollywood film set: you’re given a script to follow and then have to synchronise the set and the actor so the action scene will play out perfectly. One level had me working out the timings of some falling rocks in an Indiana Jones-style film, where I had to get the order and the timings of each one correct so that when the action phase kicked in, my little dude could jump out of the way of each one just in time without getting splatted. In another level, I had to get the timings of set pieces correctly so that the main character could sneak past a giant robot on the set on a sci-fi film. It’s such a fun and smarty idea! I loved this demo and am definitely keeping my eyes on the Steam page for a release date.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Shady Knight
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
City Of Beats
James:I’ve been enjoying the recent surge of rhythm-violence games as much as the next amateur bassist, though I very much appreciate how twin stick shooterCity of Beatsbuilds that zen, in-the-zone feeling without demanding perfect adherence to a metronome. You’ll still get further through its roguelite rooftop runs once you learn to time charge attacks and dodges to the beat, but for most of your damage output, there’s nothing wrong with simply holding the trigger down.
If anything, it’s encouraged, as City of Beats’ laser weaponry is itself part of the soundtrack. The more firepower on-screen, the more beeping synths are layered on top of one another, and each run culminates in a bullet hell boss fight that captivates eyes and ears simultaneously. A fitting and quite literal crescendo to twenty minutes of tuneful, nicely atmospheric blasting.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Wandering Sword
Katharine:When Wandering Sword was first announced last year, this wuxia take on Square Enix’s HD-2D-style ofRPGsinstantly caught my attention. In this substantial Next Fest demo, Wandering Sword sees you take up the mantle of Yuwen Yi, a warrior who suffers a near-fatal accident after a brush with some frosty frog poison. As you recuperate in a picturesque mountain village, you get to grips with its turn-based grid battles, levelling up your Qi and Meridian paths to boost your stats and, of course, learning key martial arts moves based around swordplay, sabers, fists, polearms and hidden weapons.
The UI still needs some work - in battles, it throws a heck of a lot of text at you at once and discerning what your attacks actually do and what range they have can be difficult through all the different coloured fonts, description and large text boxes that obscure the action. But there’s no denying there’s a lot of potential in its large, grid-based arena battles - thinkThe Banner SagameetsOctopath Traveler- and I’m intrigued to see how it develops how it heads toward release. If you’re in need of a pretty pixel art RPG to tide you over until Octopath Traveler II arrives, this is well worth a shot.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Super Auto Battlemon
Ed:Taking cues from Super Auto Pets,Super Auto Battlemon(SAB) sees you command a queue of monsters that look like cardboard cutouts. And as SAB is an auto-battler, “command”, is a loose terms for pressing play and watching them duke it out against a rival line of monsters. What’s neat is the game’s roguelike elements, which see you selecting a path on a map in a similar way to, say,Slay The Spire, with the ultimate aim of reaching the big boss at the end. As you defeat monsters, you’ll get to pick certain ‘mon to add to your collection, or upgrade them with EXP, or grant them certain affinities. It could work on communicating its effects and passives and the like a bit better, but hey, I still had a lot of fun optimising my perfect queue of cutesy critters.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Amanda The Adventurer
Rebecca:This time last year I wrote about how the >Steam Next Festdemo for My Friendly Neighborhoodhad me feeling excited for indie horror again. I’m pleased to say that the publishers atDreadXPhave repeated the trick withAmanda The Adventurer, another absolutely cursed game based on a fictional(ish, it’s not hard to see where the inspiration comes from) children’s TV show.
To be clear, I’m not accusing DreadXP of pigeonholing themselves or the developers under their banner. Outside of sharing a broad premise, Amanda The Adventurer plays out very differently toMy Friendly Neighborhood. While in MFN you were fighting back with an arsenal of colourful weapons, Amanda The Adventurer just wants you to find and watch a few videos, answer some basic vocabulary questions, maybe complete some simple typing training. All activities appropriate to pre-school edutainment programming. Don’t worry about those messages scrawled in blood all over the walls (although, if you do choose to study them, you might spot a release date tease being revealed among the gore the more you play).
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Cook Serve Forever
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Tape To Tape
Ollie:Am I really so simple? Can a game developer really just slam together two such disparate ideas - hockey and roguelites - and I am fated to enjoy it immensely despite the obvious ridiculousness of such an abomination?
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Super Adventure Hand
Rachel:Okay, so this one is a little weird, but hear me out. You play as a disembodied hand on an adventure to… well, I’m not exactly surewhatthe hands wants, butSuper Adventure Handis a great demo regardless. Playing as a disembodied human hand, you need to make it from the beginning of each level to the end, scuttling on the tips of your fingertips, grabbing at nooks in the walls to climb, and using your nimble fingers to leap from platform to platform.
The platforming is fine, nothing special honestly, but what you’re really here for is the hand itself, which feels strangely satisfying to control. You don’t have to hold the triggers for each individual finger or anything, just holding the joystick to move is all that’s needed, but there’s a rubbery-ness to its movements that just adds to the overall feel of scuttling along each level. Just boot it up for the hand-feely-ness alone, and if you’re into it, definitely stick around long enough to see the creepy feet with googly-eyes, too.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Outlanders
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Mail Time
Alice Bee:I don’t know what it is, but things where you are a Borrower-sized person running around are fucking well good. They light up so many parts of my brain, and make me kick my legs like a happy toddler grabbing a cat’s face.Mail Timeis one of these, a sort-of-collectathon where you’re a newly trained tiny woodland mail carrier with a mushroom for a hat and an acorn for a backpack. The demo is the first level and it’s the most utterly charming thing I’ve seen this year. You run through a forest of nodding flowers, and bounce on mushrooms to reach a hedgehog who lives in a tree. Beatrix Potter eat your bloody heart out.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
Coven
Ed:Covenis a retro-styledFPSwhere you play as a young girl who’s been wrongly accused of witchcraft in the 1600s. The demo starts with you literally burning at the stake. It’s a horrible, gross thing. But a grisly part of me relishes the game’s fast-paced movement and explosions of gore. There’s something a bit Soldier Of Fortune about it all.
More than the gore – and literally being able to cannibalise corpses to regain health - it’s the game’s haunted woods and its attention to detail that surprise. You’re able to shoot flung axes in mid-air, causing them to plop to the floor. Boxes can be lifted to create makeshift platforms. Wheels of cheese can be consumed. I’ll be following this game with a morbid curiosity.
Download thedemo on Steam right here.
