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The best Steam Festival demos: RTS and city buildersTwo thirds of these games are about dwarves or pharaohs.
Two thirds of these games are about dwarves or pharaohs.
Since theSteam Game Festival: Summer Editionhas so many demos in it, we’ve all run off to harvest our own little crop to recommend, picking different genres as our guiding principle.
As ever, though, the concept of “genre” has tripped me up like a rake in the dark, and left me flailing to define what connects the six games below. I guess, if there’s a unifying concept, it’s plopping buildings down. Although whether you do that from the top or the side, and whether you use those buildings to create resources, to make little fightoes to attack other buildings with, or to do a bit of both, varies from game to game. Altogether, if you like to wolf down big plates of base-building, with optional side orders of logistics and violence, there’s going to be something in this pack of treasures for you.
I wish I could screenshot the clanks.
Iron Harvest
Honestly, play this, if you’ve got any love for the genre or the art style. September can’t come soon enough.
Get the free Iron Harvest demo here.
Ra has so many sons. Hundreds of ‘em, born with spears in their hands and desperate to rush headlong at an enemy fortress.
Sons Of Ra
But you’re also playing as a god, see (there’s a selection available, although good ol’ birdface Ra was obviously my main dude). And because you’re a god, you’ve got a second currency - Heka, I guess? - accumulating alongside the gold with which you buy troops. Using this spiritual power, you can smite enemy towers, buff your troops, or do other cool, god-specific stuff. Anubis, for example, can create necromancery priests who resurrect dead enemies as mummies who turn around and wade back towards their home base. As I say, it’s simple stuff, and nothing that’s not been seen before in the genre, but if you like a bit of lane-based slaughter, with a classy archaeological theme, Sons Of Ra is well worth a punt.
Get the free Sons Of Ra demo here.
We heard you liked strategy games, so we put Factorio in your AoE2 so you can Factorio while you AoE2.
Dwarfheim
Please note, the demo included in the summer festival doesn’t actually support multiplayer play, unfortunately. However, Pineleaf Studio are about to bring the game into open beta, which you can sign up for onDwarfheim’s discord.
Get the free Dwarfheim demo here.
I do love a nice warm forge glow effect.
Hammerting
There were some enticing hints of what’s to come in the main game, such as regular bulletins on the progress of a great war raging in the overworld. From what I learned from talking with the developers, it seems as if your dwarves will be arms dealers to that war, rather than actual combatants, but personally I think that’s way more intriguing. Since the demo was limited to an hour of play time, I didn’t get the chance to delve too deep into Hammerting, but it’s got all the style I’d want from a mountainhome construction game, and promises plenty of the substance too.
Get the free Hammerting demo here.
Building castles in the sky.
The Final Earth 2
Well, The Final Earth can’t have been that final if it got a sequel, can it? Nevertheless, I enjoyed this cute, subdued, pixelly little city builder, which plays out in classic ant farm fashion. The game takes the form of a series of scenarios, where you generally begin on a little floating island, with access to a few scraps of wood and stone. As little dot-sized humans are dumped on your head demanding housing, you have to make them a city out of perfect squares, keeping a close eye on your flow of resources as the towers stack up. It seemed at first like it might be a little sterile and unlovable, and I spent a little longer than I wanted to waiting for resource totals to tick up far enough to be able to afford the things I needed, but when I found I’d been playing three hours, it became apparent that I’d really warmed to the Final Earth 2. It’s certainly a game to relax with, which is a commodity worth its weight in gold right now.
Get the free The Final Earth 2 demo here.
I’d love if this whole thing was a giant bait and switch, and the full game was just an incredibly depressing visual novel about the collapsing family life of two bricklayers in modern Cairo.
Builders Of Egypt
I’ve not got a vast amount to say here, as I already covered this demo quite extensivelywhen it came out, but it has returned for the Steam Fest, and is worth a shot if you were a fan of the classic city builder,Pharaoh. Who knows, the demo might have even been expanded since I played it - it certainly felt like it should have been a little more generous with content.
Get the free Builders Of Egypt demo here.
If you’re looking for RTS or city builders, action games, strategy games or management games, check out our otherbest of the Game Fest lists here.
Whatever you call it, hit ourE3 2020tag for more from this summer’s blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check outthe PC games at the PlayStation 5 show,everything at the PC Gaming Show, andall the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.
