Steam Next Fest begins today, February 21, and continues all week, celebrating the release (or promotion) of hundreds of demos of upcoming PC games on Steam.
During Next Fest, upcoming indie games are heavily promoted on the front page of the Steam store. Trying them is as easy as hovering over a cool-looking game and tapping the install demo button.
The most popular games include: Ixion, a realistic space station city builder. The Wandering Village is a farm sim that takes place on the back of a giant creature. Mago is a pixelated 2D platformer that looks heavily inspired by Wonder Boy. Hero’s Hour combines turn-based strategy with chaotic auto-combat battles in a fantasy setting. Demeo is a tabletop-inspired dungeon crawler, with actual virtual tabletop. Occupy Mars: The Game is a sci-fi crafting sim that lets you live our your Martian fantasies. Adapt‘s creature-survival and evolution looks extremely similar to 2008’s Spore, and that sounds great.
Many of these upcoming games will feature livestreams with the developers, and/or streaming personalities. Steam lists the full broadcast schedule right on the main page, which features way more streaming content than anyone could watch. A good problem to have!
Steam Next Fest lasts through February 28. Some of the demos may be limited time only, but many will probably remain up going forward, as was the case with previous Steam fests.
