Steam Next Fest means another week of playing demos in every spare moment I can find and I didn’t even give in to the temptation to call in sick to work! Here are my ten favourites. I hope you find something for your wishlist.
Ever wondered what Vampire Survivors would be like if you were a giant wandering castle on wheels? In Wanderburg you weave a trail of devastation across a once beautiful countryside in a massive trundling mediaeval fortress, battling other tank-like castles of all shapes and sizes.
Everything has wheels in this chaotic fantasy world of mass destruction. Windmills and farmhouses flee when they see you coming, and fields of crops are laid waste in your castellated wake as you plunder resources to fund upgrades for your careering citadel.
Building up your castle is so much fun. You can stock your battlements with archers, cannons and mortars, build up your defences and increase the speed and size of your vehicular monster. It plays like a cross between the aforementioned Vampire Survivors and a tower defence game.
The dopamine hits come quick and fast as the rousing mediaeval-themed soundtrack gets your blood pumping. The castles and other buildings look fantastic. They seem to take on personalities of their own, like they’re sentient hulking giants, and the pastoral landscapes are gorgeous; it’s such a shame to decimate them. I had a blast motoring my way through this mediaeval land of mayhem.
Set during the disastrous Gallipoli landings during the First World War, this sombre first-person walking simulator feels like it’s going to be a striking piece of historical fiction. In the demo you play as a young recruit from Newfoundland who’s sent on a reconnaissance mission with his childhood friends to locate a downed plane in no man’s land. Moving through the maze-like trenches and the eerily ravaged landscape is scary and harrowing.
It’s a world made up of mud, dead bodies and barbed wire, periodically illuminated by flares, the air punctuated by sporadic gunfire. You feel, even just a little bit, what it must have been like for these young men, so far from home and in constant mortal danger.
As with their previous game, Two Falls, Unreliable Narrators’ commitment to historical realism is admirable. Inspired by real testimonies, The Caribou Trail has clearly been meticulously researched. There’s so much attention to period detail, from the items you use to the uniforms and weaponry. But you don’t use your rifle (at least, not in the demo). This is a game about empathy and the harrowing brutality of war. It plays like a psychological horror game, all the more scary because this insane barbarity actually happened.
Don’t let the cute look and chirpy music fool you; this game is rock hard and decidedly punishing. I would describe it as Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy, only you play as a cat with a jetpack.
Nyanjet (‘nyan’ being a Japanese onomatopoeic word for ‘meow’) is a very vertical precision platformer that requires a light touch. The adorable little cat in the jetpack (I love how its tail dangles out from the bottom) is tricky to manoeuvre. The controls are very simple, but the thruster bursts are short, and the next safe platform is often precariously narrow. And if you fall, it’s a long way back down. This is certainly one for the more patient platforming fan.
The minimalist pixel art is very lovely, and the low-key cyberpunk aesthetic of the buildings you’re ascending forms a charming backdrop to your challenging perpendicular adventure. I don’t know where this cat-in-a-jetpack is going, by the way, but I’ll definitely be helping them with their climb when the game releases next month.
Deep down in the ocean live the mysterious anglerfish, their glowing lure radiating an infinitesimally small spot of the infinite darkness of the abyss. I’ve always been intrigued by these strange, otherworldly creatures, so I immediately stopped scrolling down the endless list of Next Fest demos when I noticed this one staring out at me.
Lumara is a 2D puzzle platformer – or, to be more precise, a swimformer – in which you use the light of the anglerfish protagonist to solve puzzles and light your way through the darkness.
It’s a slow, meditative game that reminded me a bit of the underrated SILT, down to its silhouetted art style. The anglerfish sprite is beautiful, and its subtle animations, especially when it changes direction, are most pleasing. It feels so good – if somewhat lonesome and eerie – swimming about in its body, feeling what it must be like down there in the pitch black.
I think that ‘wacky’ might be one of the trickiest forms of humour to pull off successfully. More often than not, it only makes me cringe. But, somehow, The Dungeon Experience manages it with aplomb. I laughed consistently as I played through this wacky demo.
You play as a visitor to a rather crummy fantasy theme park in this first-person adventure. The dungeon master and proprietor of the (rather dilapidated) attraction is an anthropomorphic crab who desperately wants you to enjoy your experience. He is just one of a host of what promises to be a joyful cast of characters.
In the first two rooms of the ‘Experience’ you encounter two down-on-their-luck actors, one operating and voicing an animatronic barbarian, the other a ‘fellow adventurer having a blast role-playing being bludgeoned by an orc’. Spoiler alert: they continually slip in and out of character, and it’s hilarious. The writing and voice acting are exquisitely silly and funny.
In terms of gameplay, it seems like there’ll be (unusual) tasks for you to complete in each room before moving on to the next one. But it seems like the stars of the show will be the room’s occupants. I’m excited to meet more of them.
Lost Host features a central concept that falls somewhere between Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Toy Story. You play as a remote control car whose owner, a young boy, has mysteriously disappeared. Naturally, you gain sentience and set out in search of them. It remains to be seen how sensitively this story will be handled over the course of the game, but what is not in doubt is how wonderful it feels to drive this little four-wheel drive around each of the gorgeously designed mini open-world levels.
You must find your way out of each area – the first level is a garden; the second a bedroom – picking up clues about the boy’s disappearance along the way. The controls are responsive, and the simple driving mechanics are easy to pick up but harder to master (I especially enjoyed doing three-point turns in tight spaces).
This is important, as it soon becomes apparent that this is essentially an off-road driving simulator: books leaning against furniture become perilous inclines, piles of fluffy towels turn into spongy, uneven surfaces and tabletops transform into perilous plateaus. Everyday household objects become a precarious obstacle course. Look out for that pesky robot vacuum cleaner prowling about in the living room, though!
As a huge fan of the art in Sable, this third-person sci-fi fantasy action-adventure game immediately caught my eye. The cel-shaded landscapes are breathtaking; the ancient desert ruins tell tales of a lost civilisation. The movement of the unnamed silent protagonist is pleasingly smooth, and there’s a double jump and a dash to help you gently parkour your way up through the ruins (the demo is quite vertical). Exploration and movement are clearly key components of the game.
But there’s also combat, which is fluid and satisfying, although a boss encounter I experienced felt a little bit clumsy. Perhaps significantly, the enemies were few and far between in the demo, leaving lots of space to take in the very beautiful and mysterious surroundings. It’ll be interesting to see how this rhythmic flow between contemplative exploration and combat works over the duration of the whole game.
In this ultra-minimalist 2D retro spaceship runner, your ship is constantly moving forward; there’s no brake. From the moment the hypnotic robotic voice of the announcer said, ‘Welcome player, go,’ I was completely locked into a just-one-more-go spiral of laughter and fury. Attempts quickly piled up, a situation only compounded by the near-instant respawns.
The movement is simple, but it feels so elegant manoeuvring your ship from left to right to match the lines and curves of the mazes. In the main competitive mode the ship moves fast (you’re racing against that most implacable of opponents: yourself). The longest I’ve survived so far is 25 seconds.
However, if you want a more chill experience, you can switch to ‘explore’, in which the ship moves slower and the corridors of the maze are wider. There will also be other modes to unlock when the full game releases in April. I fear that I’m fated to hear the words ‘the maze wins’ many times in 2026.
This is the best traditional 2D precision platformer I played during Next Fest. You play as a frog who can use their tongue as a kind of grappling hook. This enables you to enact death-defying last-minute tongue grabs at platforms, as well as bounce off walls pinball-style in order to cover longer distances.
The movement is very responsive, the weight and fall speed of the frog protagonist are satisfying, and the ability to scope out upcoming screens is a lovely touch (you can send a little flying friend ahead on reconnaissance missions). The cartoony art is cute, and the animations are quite lovely. It’s also set up to be an excellent speedrunning game, with detailed results – time, deaths, coins collected – at the end of each level. This feels like such a fun and fresh platformer, which is quite a feat for a game in this genre in 2026, considering how many there are.
This mediaeval deckbuilder drew me in, if you’ll forgive the pun, with its macabre art. The opening cinematic, the villagers’ character portraits and the designs of the cards themselves all blew my socks (or should I say hose?) off. You play as a barber surgeon in a village, attempting to heal the townsfolk with cards representing the superstitious healing methods of the late Middle Ages.
The game works in day-night cycles. In order to protect villagers from ‘the Entity’ – a metaphorical representation of the plague – which comes at night spreading sickness and distrust among the villagers, you must take care of their health and purity by day with your trusty deck of magical cards.
Replenishing their purity and health by dealing the most efficacious cards is a tricky balancing act, eased somewhat by upgrades, which you earn by visiting the villagers in the evening. It’s an engrossing loop that I lost well over an hour in. Definitely one for fans of deckbuilders to check out.
Unfortunately, there are always demos during Next Fest that simply get away from you. For instance, some games don’t run on my beloved Steam Deck or my oldish Mac. This was true of the surreal-looking WOODROT. (Let me know in the SMG Discord if you played this one). Honourable mentions, too, for three games that just missed out on my top ten: the beautifully tender Swan Song, the original little puzzle platformer RESEED and the achingly nostalgic Eternal Afternoon.
