I love Steam Next Fest, even though it’s an increasingly time-consuming business trawling through it, scrolling down the endless thumbnails, and seeking out those rare gems (there were over 4,000 games in the June 2026 event). Thankfully, my filtering system has become relevantly efficient. Here are the ten games that made it through.
A link to each game’s Steam page is embedded in each title.
You play as a coroner in this classy late-1950s detective game. Set around the eponymous British manor house, the period detail is a delight, reflected most obviously in the meticulous 1960s comic book art style, which is absolutely gorgeous.
In terms of gameplay, it’s your job to search for clues at crime scenes. Each of these static scenes is remarkably detailed and dynamic (I won’t say full of life, out of respect for the victims). You gather evidence by clicking on objects, which then manifest as words that you use to fill in blanks on official documents. Fans of Agatha Christie and The Case of the Golden Idol will enjoy sherlock-holmesing their way through this one.
This demo felt very original. It’s set in a rather seedy club, in which a game similar to chess is played by an intriguing group of idiosyncratic geniuses. It’s your job to run this dilapidated place, taking care of maintenance (the toilet is in a terrible state!), looking after the clientele, and earning enough money to pay the rent. Oh, and you also play the chess game within the game. It’s called METACHESS, and it quickly got me hooked (or rooked, I should say). It’s easy to pick up but seems to riff on chess in some potentially complex ways.
The demo has some Disco Elysium vibes in terms of its darkly witty tone and impressive writing (although the dialogue is considerably less verbose) as well as its isometric view, which flips to first-person when you’re playing METACHESS. The pixel art in the isometric club scenes is superb, as are the hand-drawn comic book-style character portraits. I can’t wait to discover more about the fascinating clientele while (hopefully) getting good at METACHESS and keeping that toilet in good working order.
The movement in this first-person parkour game is exhilarating. You run (including along walls), jump and slide your way at great speed through a crumbling, faceless city, attempting to hit target times in order to progress to the next section. There are gold, silver and bronze times to chase down, plus online leaderboards and other players’ ghosts to keep you coming back to perfect your runs. The controls are tight. and the level design is highly imaginative, inviting experimentation with the flexible movement mechanics.
But it’s the city itself that makes this game stand out from others in the genre. It is a drab, deserted, unfriendly and oppressive place, utterly devoid of communal spaces – an architectural expression of the grimly authoritarian rule of the city’s political elite. There are no overt story beats in the demo — the cityscape tells its own tale. However, the Steam page reveals that the protagonist, Robert, ‘is on a bureaucratic quest to restore his family’s ration tickets’. His movement thus becomes a kind of political protest, an expression of freedom in the midst of the hostile, prison-like architecture. I’m excited and intrigued to play more of this stylishly melancholic game.
Walking around an empty art gallery has always been a little fantasy of mine. In this demo you get to do exactly that. It provided an oasis of calm amidst the sometimes overstimulating process of searching out and playing NextFest demos. The bright Proteus-like art style is so gorgeous and calming. Indeed, it feels a lot like that timeless classic of the walking simulator genre from way back in 2013; it likewise invites you to slow down and look closely at the world around you.
There are also little mini-games which you must complete in order to progress and open up new sections of the exhibition, which are accessed by clicking on the signs that are strategically placed around the gallery. They play a little bit like the bullet-hell fights in Undertale, only considerably less intense: essentially minimalist mazes in which you must avoid certain obstacles. I used the mouse on my Steam Deck to move the little dot about in these signpost minigames; it worked well. They are rather hypnotic and tie in nicely with the main theme of the game: quiet observation and contemplation. I look forward to returning to The Exhibition, which apparently gets more surreal as it progresses but hopefully maintains its soothing atmosphere.
This cinematic stealth puzzle-platformer has such a striking art style and wonderful cinematography. You play as a human, or perhaps some kind of human-android hybrid, who seems to be escaping from the computer simulation they were (physically) attached to. There’s no introduction to the world, no writing or voice acting; this nightmarish tale is told entirely through the visuals and gameplay.
The mysterious protagonist, who is beautifully animated using motion capture, is silhouetted against a background of bright colour (a fiery yellowy orange in the opening scenes) as they move through a creepy environment crowded with hanging bodies connected by a forest of wires to strange machines. Deadly, prowling robots shine their searchlights, hunting you, creating shadows in which you can hide. You can reconnect to the computer system to move things about and solve puzzles, helping you to stealth your way through this technological hellscape. It is incredibly tense; its atmosphere put me in mind of Inside. The demo is punctuated by a highly dramatic cut scene, via which the perspective shifts from 2.5D to 3D. It’s a remarkable moment. If the stealth is as well-executed in the full game as it is in the demo, this could be a landmark cinematic platformer.
This is not only the best frog-based 2D platformer I found during my adventures through Next Fest (and there were quite a lot!), but it’s also the best precision platformer I played. From the moment the chirpy, chippy title screen music hit my ears, I was in a state of pure joy. The game starts out in a laboratory — a rather dark place for a game with such a cheery tone to start. I wonder if this will be reflected upon later – with you jumping out of a window, on a dare from a frog buddy. You find yourself in a sewer, at the beginning of a long trip back up to your (problematic) home, hopping and jumping your way through diverse regions. Along the way you meet other animals, for whom you can do secret little side quests. This is a lovely feature, encouraging you to attempt some of the harder, optional platforming sections — I mean, that duck needs its hat back!
I should point out at this stage that this is a tough old vertical platformer. As the frog protagonist, you can only move by jumping. The jumps are executed via a directional metre, which is used to control the height and length of your jumps. Careful calibration of distance, trajectory and momentum is thus required. If you misjudge a jump, you are liable to fall a long way and lose a fair amount of progress. But the controls are tight, and it feels like a much more manageable and forgiving game than the likes of Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy, or even Nyanjet, from earlier this year. Add to this the game’s undeniable charm (the lovely frog sprite croaks every time they jump!), and I’d wager this will be a hard game to get mad at. And it’s a perfect Steam Deck game.
In this impressive isometric spatial puzzle game you play as a faceless cube, manoeuvring along narrow platforms around a mazelike structure. You must merge with the blocks beneath you in order to move up or down when you hit a wall or a mini-precipice. It’s a simple premise, but with great depth, and it seems like it’ll get rather tricky.
Everything about this solo-developed game is elegantly designed. Firstly, the movement of the titular hero is so chunkily pleasing; I loved moving them around. (The cube protagonist is not ostensibly anthropomorphised, by the way; it doesn’t have a cute wee face or anything, but I felt a connection nonetheless). The minimalist visual design is all greys and black, aside from the bright orange of my new cuboid friend. It is a stark and beautiful use of a muted colour palette. The relaxing electronic music is soothing and will perhaps be needed to calm the mind when the puzzling (presumably) gets difficult later in the game. This should be on the radar of all puzzle game fans.
This isn’t usually my type of thing, but I found this turn-based visual novel utterly gripping. I didn’t want to stop playing. The gorgeous pen-and-ink art style drew me into the game’s fascinating fantasy world, and the writing and characterisation kept me firmly in its clutches. The genre writing is vivid, terse and lucid. The two main characters — mercenaries, or freelancers, as they prefer to be called — are immediately engaging, as is the narrator, but without being obtrusive. The world itself — a dangerous forest, perilous paths, a camp, a cave — is classic fantasy RPG, but the art, writing and characterisation make it feel distinctive. And the wider world is beautifully evoked through well-judged references. Fantasy is not, generally, my genre, but I was fully absorbed in this fictional world.
The gameplay consists of exploration, meeting and talking to the cast of highly individualised characters, and JRPG turn-based combat. It seems like there will be plenty of new weapons, items and skills to amass and upgrade, which will hopefully keep the combat fresh. But it’s the story and characters that will take me back to the dark world of Eadmore when the full game releases.
This first-person science-fiction puzzle game is a hard one to write about without spoilers, as something very structurally important — both mechanically and narratively — happens in the demo, which is best left as a surprise. But let me try to set the scene. You are part of a science expedition that has crash-landed on a mysterious planet. The first-person visuals are marvellous. (For those of you who suffer motion sickness, fear not; the camera is very stable and smooth). You are quickly confronted with a mysterious, crumbling city that you must explore. The architecture is spectacular. It looks like a mix of some of the best cityscapes in Star Wars. The buildings are derelict and covered with graffiti but maintain their awe and sense of wonder. The graphics are fantastic, and the exploration is enthralling.
It soon becomes apparent that this is a puzzle game centring around vision. As you move from room to room, plaza to plaza, you will encounter things that only react when you are looking at them. The puzzle possibilities inherent in this premise are very intriguing, not least because they are directly linked to the culture of the lost civilisation of the city. This game is dripping in atmosphere and mystery. I strongly recommend you try the demo or add it to your wishlist.
One of my favourite Christmases ever as a kid was the year I got a Scalextric set (in the UK, this brand is synonymous with slot car racing). It was a relatively cheap one, the ‘Mighty Metro’ set, if I remember correctly (in this case, I trust my old man memory: one doesn’t forget something like that!). I had many, many hours of fun racing those little cars around that track, trying to best my (cheating) brothers.
Turbo Loop captures this excitement quite brilliantly. Your controller becomes one of those iconic handheld triggers, with the shoulder button acting as the accelerator. As with the physical version from my childhood, one needs a steady hand in order to gently squeeze the trigger, applying just the right amount of pressure to avoid skidding off on those tricky corners. But it feels just right. Indeed, it was so evocatively tactile that I had a rather Proustian experience with this lovely demo. The top-down view and simple visuals work well, and you’ll be pleased to hear that there’s local multiplayer. So, does anyone fancy coming around my house for a game?
I also tried out some of the higher-profile demos. Well Dweller is a slick and beautiful metroidvania, as you’d expect of a game by Kyle Thompson; Over the Hill is a relaxing off-road driving sim by the makers of Art of Rally (it didn’t run well on my Steam Deck, but it has bags of potential); and Screenbound is one of those games that slightly rewires your gaming brain, having you play a 2D handheld game as you simultaneously traverse a synchronous 3D world. I recommend them all.
