Hey, Steam Next fest is here, is anyone playing game demos?
Here’s a cool looking one that I kind of enjoyed:
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i love nextfests in theory, but since its so hard to know which demos will stick around and which are exclusive i end up downloading every demo that looks vaguely interesting and playing so many i burn out and can’t get through them all, i still have some demos from the last couple next fests on my computer (at least demos that didn’t have the license revoked after the nextfests ended) ;w;
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Yeah I feel you, but I feel like we have to try anyway. For me at least, they are super inspiring and fun to get through, even if they might not always great (or even if they suck… no offense to indie devs, it is a triumph to release anything.)
Here’s another one I’ve heard great things about:
I’ve played Denshattack! and Replaced so far. I learned of Denshattack! through a friend and Replaced was a Nextfest Discovery Queue pick. I plan to play a few more over the weekend, Scott Pilgrim EX and Mama’s Sleeping Angels are already on my list.
I’m already in love with Denshattack!, it’s exactly the type of game I enjoy. It’s going to fill that hole Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Jet Set Radio has left in my life haha. The visual style, the gameplay, the MUSIC, it’s all incredible. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a specific date but they claim a 2026 release. It already feels very close to release. Regardless, I feel like everyone should at least check this one out.
I didn’t have as strong a reaction to Replaced, but it definitely piqued my interest. I just don’t think I could get a full read on it. It’s a mix between an adventure game, platformer, and beat ‘em up—they self describe as a “2.5D cinematic action platformer wrapped in an intense cyberpunk thriller narrative”. This also strikes into my favorite niches neatly. I think it was mainly the lack of tutorialization that missed me, I feel like I didn’t get to fully explore the mechanics they presented. The narrative also started a little rough, but quickly picked up. I definitely want to keep watch on this one. It does have an April 14, 2026 release date.
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Thank you for reminding me about Denshattack! I really need to play it.
Re: Scott Pilgrim, I feel like Toronto is really making a comeback in media lately, especially if you saw Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
The other two games look awesome! I think I’ll play them today.
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Titanium Court Demo on Steam despite the soyjak banner photo, this game is awesome and excellent- someone said it was done by the programmer of Consume Me?
i will endeavor to try at least the ones recommend here, looks like denshattack and replaced were both already in my wishlist, looks like a few more from there are featured in this next fest, so i will try those too
I saw so many previews for Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie but I unfortunately missed it in theaters :/. I really want to see it whenever it becomes available for home consumption
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ok, i have gotten through 6 demos, and now have 26 left that caught my eye today…
i played enough of cicadamata to know i neeeeed more, titanium court was pretty fun, replaced visually very pretty but the gameplay itself everything felt just a bit too sluggish and slow to me, and denshattack very good probably too hard for me
i want to recommend airframe ultra a combat hoverbike, racing thing, good vibes, and last salvage squad, giant cute robot girls blasting aliens and dodging around buildings, oh and also tukoni forest keepers, which seems to be a cute cozy game about making tea and tucking animals in all cozy
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okay, went through aloooot of demos today, still got 10 more to go through tomorrow, some of the ones i really liked today include, alabaster dawn, game by the same studio as crosscode, fun action fantasty rpg
bobo bay, just chao garden as its own game, very good
boost vector ex, a really fun mechanically racing game with a fantastic style and vibe
hark the ghoul, first person bug bloodborne, had lots of fun with it, i stopped playing it before finishing the demo because i otherwise i probably would have spent majority of the day on it
nox mortalis, a mildly survival crafty dungeon crawler with good graphics
wanderburg, survivors style game but rolling around in moving castles that get bigger as you progress
starship troopers ultimate bug war, fun fps, has fmv cutscenes which are fantastic
bombun, can’t quite actually recommend this one, i adored it visually and its vibes, and i get what its trying to go for, but its controls ended up just frustrating me too much, maybe others will be better at it than me
out of everything in there hark the ghoul is the one i recommend giving a try the most
ok, last batch of demos this time around
starting off with the one im most interested in today, the wide open sky is running out of catfish, a beautiful game that made me cry a little about turning clouds into fish and then taking pictures of those fish
rig riot, armored core meets roguelikes, very fun
paperhead, a fun horror boomer shooter with very satisfying gun sounds
ardenfall, and rpg im going to play some more of tomorrow, i only played enough to know i want it, so many demos
cyclopean II the dreamlands, a retro rpg dungeon crawler, was vibing with it, digging in some sand caused damage to mind from perceiving eldritch horrors, did it again, very good
out of everything ive played in this next fest, the standouts im looking forward to most are hark the ghoul, the wide open sky is full of catfish, rig riot, cicadamata, bobo bay, and the starship trooper one, in order of most excited for only for the first 2
Wow, so many awesome games listed! I won’t have time to play them all but thank you so much, I’ll at least look all of these over.
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i just realized i completely forgot to talk about one, last one, jenny the witch, witch with rocket broom that sees use as a hammer, third person shooter, platformer, action, thing, i could not play very much because for me for some reason controller bindings were all blank and using keyboard and mouse wasn’t working for me, but it seems like ill enjoy it a lot if the controller bindings get fixed for me
I wish I saw this while next fest was still happenin, whoops! Didn’t play too many titles that I usually did (I think I was busy) but the three I did play were really awesome!!
This is me recollecting my thoughts from February, so specifics might be a bit fuzzy
Denshattack!
Train Auto-Runner that’s also Tony Hawk Pro-Skater
Probably the most popular of the ones that I did play- at-least it seemed like it had a decent amount of traction across YouTube and Twitter so. I heard about this one from a YouTube recommendation of the trailer- I think from one of those ‘GameTrailers’ or ‘Indie Game Hub’ channels or something, lol. It instantly caught my attention just from how absurd but also stylish it was.
The gameplay was pretty fun- high bar for me, I’m pretty particularly about that. Visuals were clean during gameplay and the art during cutscenes. UI was pretty clean, could be cleaner and presented better but gets the job done. I did think when there was character models that they were a little off- but I think that’s super okay because the star of this game is TRAINS.
The real highlight for me was actually the soundtrack! Lots of names I recognized on there: Tee Lopes (Sonic Mania), 2 Mello (Bomb Rush), Richard Jacques (Sonic R ??)- very impressive stuff. The menu theme by Sean Bialo was insanely vibey, it immediately locked me in when I opened the game.
I think this is definitely worth keepin’ an eye on!
DownSouth
Groovy Genesis-Inspired sort of Metroidvania where choices matter
This one was recommended to me by a friend. They ran a Kickstarter in tandem with Next Fest and they met their goal, good for them! The vibes instantly caught me with this project, the sprite work that really reminded me of stuff from some Genesis titles (Ristar mainly came to mind). The music was insanely vibey, very sample heavy lots of chops, I love that stuff! Actually playing the demo, it did hold up super well- with some minor gripes.
I came in to it imagining it’d be a lot more platform heavy- I guess that came from my association to those Genesis titles- but it’s certainly more of Metroidvania (not to say platforming isn’t a thing in those titles, but not a required to be present).
-Regardless of my lack of looking at the tags- I thought the game feel was a liiiiittle off. The player has an interesting toolkit that just feels really weird. I’m all for novel concepts but I just don’t think it meshes completely.
Despite that though, I did enjoy playing the game itself. I found myself enjoying the music and exploring the world presented at hand, as well as admiring a lot of the visual aspects on a technical level. The games UI and menus are very clean and stylish and dynamic! And- again- the worldbuilding was really nice, the narrative being put in place seemed interesting and the way it was told was engaging to me.
I’m really interested to see where this story goes, and I think this demo could pass as a finished title!
Cavern
Pseudo-roguelite CAVE Crawler with interesting mechanics and cool style
So I found out about this one because I got a dev log from the developer a little bit before the Next Fest on YouTube! DogmaQuest is a really cool developer with some other titles under his belt that I looked thru when I initially found him and they do all look really nice and seem nice to play. His YouTube channel is a bit of a hidden gem in my eyes, averaging only a few thousand per video, but I’ve recently been enjoying smaller YouTube channels. Very authentic and down to earth, none of that content-pilled stuff… well as much as you can to stay afloat. Also fellow Godot title, yahoo!
Box Matrix Bruh #gamedevblog #gamedevelopment - YouTube
Going in, I had the best idea for what to expect since I saw a lot of the dev logs beforehand. But, obviously, playing it for myself for the first time was much more informative.
I thought the game felt pretty good! It was cool to figure out how the systems worked and exploring thru different floors, enemy and item intereactions, very fun! There was a weird way the controls worked when I played that the developer did fix- I believe during Next Fest- thanks to player feedback.
The visual style of this game is really cool! Sort of low-poly, or at-least reminiscent of that sort of style from early 2000s-mid 2010s games. I think Dogma’s style across all of his titles kind of reminds me of some Nintendo DS 3D stuff. The character designs are really nice too, bold silhouettes and shapes, I mess with that heavy. I found the little bits of character dialogue in this demo very charming as well, and the music- I believe also by the devloper- had a very nice vibe.
Really looking forward to this one, I can definitely see myself playin thru this in between working on projects and stuff. And I’m definitely attached to the characters and the storyline of the game as well!
I would like to post about each Next Fest here in the future since I really find them interesting as an aspiring dev who wants to take part one day- and it’s also just fun to talk about, so I’ll try to remember! okay okay bye okay bye thank you for reading have a nice day 
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OH- I forgot about Airframe Ultra, I found that one very very confusing. Visual and style was really cool but the gameplay was very difficult- which I suppose is the point- but for me it was just too much. The tutorial didn’t really tell you the gameplay loop either so you kind of still just have to learn from getting destroyed on some online lobby
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