Next Fest - a Steam event that takes place three times a year as a way for developers to show off early builds of their games to audiences in hopes that it will drive wishlists, hype, and feedback before the games’ release later on. Next Fest is also the way a lot of consumers get to try out upcoming games to see what they're going to enjoy the most without the major time and money sink. Only a week long and then shoved off to the side to make room for even more money with the Steam Summer Sale, it can be hard to discover all you want to discover during Next Fest. That’s why I spent my last 2 weeks downloading, playing, and reviewing as many demos as I could possibly get my hands on, which happened to clock in at 50 demos played.
50 demos played and I’ve curated them down to my top 15. These demos are the ones I thought stood out above the sea of other games due to a combination of many different elements. While I did absolutely find more than just 15 demos to love during Next Fest (see, eventually, my honorable mentions & best visual style lists) these are the ones I thought stood out above the rest with a combination of multiple phenomenally executed elements. From 3D action platformer, to side-scrolling point & click, to souls-like, to friend-slop there truly is something in here for everyone. Now, without further ado, let’s get into my top 15:
15. Knockout Battle
Knockout Battle is a chaotic 2D PvP stickman fighter with guns, hammers, staffs, grapples, and bombs that can be picked up and used to kill your friends and win the round. There are also potions around the map that make you faster, bigger, stronger, and so on. Last on the list due to limited map & item variety, but still on the list because it’s a horrifically good time. My stomach was in pieces when I played this with my friends, I was laughing so hard at every single moment. I almost bounced off this one due to weird controls, but once you get the hang of it the gameplay is relatively simple, while still being satisfying and enjoyable to play. I played a lot of stickman games, especially fighting ones, back in the day so this was not only fun but nostalgic. A group of 4 of us played this demo for over an hour and I was in tears the entire time. It’s extremely close to a fantastic party game and it’s currently a fantastic online friends night game.
The biggest issue with the entire game, and the reason it isn’t the best party game right now, is that unfortunately it claims to have controller support while controller simply does not work at the time of writing; so it’s mouse and keyboard only. Not only that, but everyone that had a controller plugged in had to manually disconnect it since it would register both mouse & keyboard and controller as two separate players. Something that, hopefully, the developers will have fixed before the game releases, which is pretty soon.
Check out Knockout Battle on Steam
Release Date: July 31st, 2026
Demo is still LIVE at time of writing
14. Slayblade
Slayblade is a DS inspired title where you build up your 'slayblade' with new parts, fight in local street battles, and level up to compete in the semi-finals city competition. Similar in mechanics to Beyblade, a Japanese spinning top battler, upgrade your spinning blade with new parts you acquire with money you’ve made winning battles to get stronger. Customize your blade to your play style then spin around a small dome and hit the enemy again and again until they stop spinning and you win (or the inverse and you lose).
The controls are not only unique and interesting, but intuitive, with the mouse movement being the main way to interact with the game and world. The slayblade follows your mouse around in battles, spinning around as your mouse twists around with it; it feels so good and it naturally makes you build up more movement and speed, which is imperative for battling. The world map works in a similar way, you drag your mouse around the screen and that moves the camera around the town. The little preview of your slayblade in the bottom right corner even spins with the town map - wonderful detail! I think it’s all elevated.
On top of what I think are great controls, the art is genuinely gorgeous, the music is slick, and all the upgrades look unique, feel useful, and diversify gameplay. There are multiple types of battles you can do to level up for the big semi-finals; an at level battle, an above level battle, and an illegal battle at night that is a random level between certain values (ie 1-5, 5-10, and so on). You can also level up and gain money by mowing the lawn or double your EXP bar by praying at a shrine once a day. The shop has new parts every day so you can customize your slayblade to your exact wishes or you can try your luck for rare and OP parts at the local gacha (in this case, gachapon) machine. All of this lends to a lot of diversity in how you play and I found it a lot more in depth than I originally expected it to be.
My only warning and/or gripe with this title is this: don’t challenge the semi-finals until you’re ready to end your time with the demo. I leveled up a bunch, customized my slayblade until it felt perfect to use based on how I played, and walked up with my full chest to challenge the semi-finals and... the game was over and my save was gone. I would have to restart from level 1 and do it all over again. To be fair, there is some sort of unlock on the title screen that, I assume, will do something once it ranks up. It does look like challenging the semi-finals and ending a run adds to that unlock, because I did one full run and there is one lock filled in on the screen, but I unfortunately just didn’t have the time to keep playing to see what that rank up did. I do wish that I could have at least challenged whoever was waiting for me at the semi-finals before the demo ended, but it is just a demo so I’m happy to just know this was fun and play on release. With that said, be warned that there is a caveat to challenging the semi-finals ‘boss’.
Check out Slayblade on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
13. Oops Unit
Oops Unit is a multiplayer puzzle game where you and up to 5 friends (so 6 people total) are tasked with defusing all the bombs that spawn on each level. Journey around the level to find the bombs, unlock terminals to decode puzzles that allow you to remove the bomb’s core, and then take the core to a defusal station to properly dispose of it. But be careful, there are stage hazards like enemies, laser traps, shock floors, and more. Plus, if you mess up a puzzle, it’s lights out for you and everyone in the room. Make it through 6 levels to complete the demo and win.
Similar to a lot of games in the “friend-slop” genre, Oops Unit is extremely silly and chaotic while demanding a level of genuine, serious cooperation between you and your friends. While I’m not always the biggest fan of 'friend-slop-likes', or whatever we have all collectively decided to call them, I do think this one had diverse enough gameplay to appeal to many different types of gamers and utilize an entire group of friends without making it ever feel like one person was doing everything. For example, there are a multitude of puzzles that can spawn when trying to defuse the bombs, from logic puzzles to math problems to memory puzzles and so on. Each person in the group at least once said “Nah I’m not doing that one” to a puzzle, which made someone else have to step up that could do it. I think this was a brilliant way to incentivize different types of players to actually engage with the game instead of allowing one type of player to dominate the room. I also enjoyed the tools you could buy, which ranged from devices that were cheap enough to buy multiple of for the entire team to use separately (like a flashlight), to items that were expensive and only bought once and given to a specialist (like the trap diffuser).
While we did run into a few minor bugs and I would like to see more of the items become even more useful as the game develops, when I was in the game I was doing nothing but having a fantastic time. My friends and I were laughing so hard our guts were splitting and, even when we lost, it was easy enough to get back into the game and start over so it never felt like the end of the world, nor did it make us get angry at one another because someone messed up a multi-hour long run.
Check out Oops Unit on Steam
Release Date: 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
12. Wilderings: The Lost Spring
Wilderings: The Lost Spring is a 3rd person action roguelite creature collector. The world has been polluted and corrupted beyond recognition. The grass is dangerous, the creatures aggressive, and the body count is high. With your powers, dive off your airship to the corrupted land below, fight off enemies, and restore the land by activating ‘springs’. Each spring will have a creature for you to save or an upgrade for the creature you already have. Once saved, the creature will join your party and help you fight with their special abilities. Similar to other roguelites, with every objective cleared, earn some sort of upgrade that will carry you through the run, but lose those once the run is over. Keeping creatures and currency, head back to your airship, grow new plants, upgrade your powers and creatures, and then start all over again; diving down to clear the corrupted land (and eventually fight your sister).
I quite enjoyed this one; despite some flaws I still have with it, I think the overall formula is really well executed. Every time I unlocked a new creature I was super excited to see what they could do in battle. Every time I got an upgrade for a creature I was using it felt extremely useful and like it truly changed the trajectory of the run. Sometimes upgrades in these games feel very miniscule, like they don’t do much to change how you play, but the creature and even the personal upgrades felt like they really affected how your run would go and I very much appreciated that.
I also found the general gameplay loop very satisfying and fun. You dive off the ship, which by the way is a gorgeous animation where you literally fall all the way from your ship to the ground, onto this grey, corrupted land. As you unlock springs the land around you heals and it’s a beautiful visual indicator of where you’ve been and where you still need to go. It was also really satisfying to see the land heal after your actions, which is another big reason I found this game so fun and wanted to keep at it; I was desperate to see the entire land healed due to my actions. Using the creatures was great and they really helped turn the tide of a battle with a group of enemies. Working with your creatures in real time battle never felt laggy or unresponsive like in some more modern creature collectors, it’s snappy and has an auto-target ability (executed with a button press) or a time-slow so you can target enemies yourself (executed with a button hold).
While I did have a lot of fun with this, and I’m very excited for it to release soon so I can put a lot of time into it, I also have a few issues with it. Currently the sound design is pretty lacking, especially when it comes to character interactions like talking. Characters currently have no speech sound design at all; there’s no voice acting, be that full speech or ‘voice grunting’ similar to things like Banjo-Kazooie, nor is there any audio design to designate who is speaking and when. This is negatively compounded by the lack of text-box control, meaning you can’t progress text at your own speed and are at the behest of the developers and their reading speed. It ends up making conversations confusing, easy to miss, and easy to misinterpret - and that’s really bad in this game because a lot of the dialogue is seemingly pretty important.
In addition to the general lack of audio design in some places, I found the corrupted land and enemies’ visual design to be a little too homogenized. For example, there’s a type of tall grass in the corrupted lands that will instantly start draining large chunks of your health the second you step into it. Oftentimes I would walk into the grass because I simply forgot it was dangerous and take huge hits to my health. Normally you can walk through the corrupted lands, but these tall grass sections are off limits and they fill large sections of the map to act as barriers to progression. I don’t mind this in concept, but everything in the corrupted lands is grey. Everything. It’s all variations of grey, yes, with some whites and slightly different deep purples, but it’s not enough to create visual diversity; which I think is necessary for the player to properly navigate the lands safely and pick out enemies before they get hit. I understand that sometimes things blend in as camouflage so the player is taken by surprise, but I think everything being the same color not only adds to player confusion but makes for a less visually appealing experience for players.
Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but the map is extremely large - it’s more like a sandbox than a linear roguelite with specific rooms to travel between. This is why the visual contrast between the corruption and the healed land is so important, so you can navigate the lands visually and see where it is you still need to go. With that said, in the demo version of the game, the map is limited. I have to bring this up as a small flaw because it simply puts a timer on your screen for you to turn around before teleporting you back inside the active map barrier. There is no map design to keep you within the active barrier even though, as I just talked about, they have designed corrupted grass that hurts you and could be used for that exact purpose. It not only feels, unfortunately, lazy but it harms the experience due to general confusion on where to go next. The map in your UI is also locked in the demo so you can’t use that to help or guide you in the meantime. This is one of the major reasons this otherwise standout game is so low on my list here. While I think the demo was extremely fun, I do think there are some frustrations unique to the demo that may make someone wait to play until the full release.
Check out Wilderings: The Lost Spring on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon (to Early Access)
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
11. Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe
Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe is a retro inspired 2D platformer where you play as a fire breathing dragon. Blast through semi-destructible environments, kill enemies, and collect items for points or more time in single player or local co-op. Fight against the time and your 3 lives to get the high score so you can flaunt it in the in-game leaderboard, complete with 3 letter nicknames.
I had an absolute blast with this one; so much so that I recommended it to another buddy of mine and he played it for hours on end. While the gameplay is simple, it’s also addicting and satisfying. The music is fun, the colors are readable, and the gameplay is classic. Think if Bubble Bobble was about a little dragon that could spit fire instead of bubbles; it’s just like that.
Extremely nostalgic and done extremely well. While I don’t have much to say about this demo, it’s really just because there isn’t much to discuss. Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe (or DDFFD) is a solid demo with a simple premise done right. This is an easy demo to recommend, with hours of fun to be had before even purchasing the full release. It’s also a really unique experience, playing something that feels so retro but as a new release in 2026. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s a game that has made me really happy and I truly can’t wait to play it again.
Check out Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe on Steam
Release date: July 17th, 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
10. Courier Beware
Courier Beware is a pixel horror life sim all about surviving the day-to-day in a town with ghosts and murderers galore. Play alongside the main character, Leena, help her deliver food on her bike and complete occult jobs to earn money so she can pay rent and keep a roof over both of your heads. But be careful, this area is filled to the brim with haunted happenings and Lenna is still just a person that can bleed and die. Balance Lenna's different skills before sending her out on investigations so she can hit the skill checks and progress safely. With each new skill check completed, find out more about each mystery; just make sure you do it in time. Not only do the weeks passing affect when you next need to pay rent, they also indicate how long you have to complete certain mysteries before the case goes cold.
I really loved this one a lot more than I thought I would. With a visual style similar to titles like World of Horror, I absolutely went into it with certain expectations or preconceived notions of how I thought the game would pan out. I’m happy to report that I personally liked it a lot more than something like World of Horror. When playing other horror life sims, I find them to often be too willing to kill you and end your run; which can then lead to feeling like the content gets too repetitive too quickly. In Courier Beware, while you are doing some of these life sim checks a lot, I never found myself thinking the content was too repetitive. I, while not easily but without too much heartache, was able to make it through the entire demo without losing my run. I lost some of my lives, which ensured I was still anxious every time the Lenna was in a dangerous situation, but I also knew that if I prepared and increased certain skills I could more than likely deal with a situation without instantly dying. It was a great balance that I don’t feel like I find often enough.
While I’m on the Praise Train, let’s go over a few more things I particularly liked about this demo. I love the art style for this game a lot. Not only do I think the pixel art is gorgeous, and I really love the shifts between chibi and detailed art, but there are also 16 different color palettes to choose from (17 total, if you include black and white). Every palette looks beautiful, I tried out multiple during my time with the demo, and I really like having these options for accessibility purposes. I also liked the writing more than I thought I would. Launch a new computer program called Connected Beyond and reach out across worlds to connect with a woman named Leena. You can see from the connection screen that this 'Earth' looks different from ours, which may explain all the paranormal things going on. Leena can see ghosts and you can reach through the veil and unbind them from what keeps them held to this world instead of passing on. Leena has something strange in her bag, but she won’t let you see it. Sometimes a man will disappear and you need to find him. Sometimes a millionaire will hear a woman calling to him from under the floor and you need to dig. All the missions, be it main or side ones, were interesting and I was anxious to solve them before time ran out or someone else became a victim.
With all that said, I did still have a few minor issues. Some of the missions felt a little too difficult to trigger, with me running through skill events over and over again before eventually triggering one of them. I also found that some of the missions ended in an unsatisfying way simply because I wasn’t given much choice as to how it ended. There were certain missions where it felt like I should have been given a few ways to complete it, but every answer other than one was incorrect and I simply needed to go back and select the correct one to complete a mission. Sometimes this was okay, other times it felt like it just lacked diversity. Some missions, once I had them, also felt really hard to trigger the next step of. I know this game is still in development, so I’m not sure if some of these triggers were bugged or if I simply never figured them out, but it did make me miss a few cases I felt like I otherwise would have solved.
Check out Courier Beware on Steam
Release Date: 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
9. Design and Conjure
Design and Conjure is a very cute and well made cozy game where you decorate, unpack, and clean up spaces around town after coming home from witch school post-graduation. Start by unpacking your stuff from school and decorating your room to figure out the controls. Every single item can be scaled smaller or bigger and you can change the color of all items with a full color picker. The backgrounds of each scene are editable, with different colors, scene states (like weather), and scene audio. Every single item is movable, not just the items you're tasked with cleaning or unpacking, which I absolutely loved; it made every level feel highly personal and unique to the player.
The demo was extremely well made too. I didn't encounter any bugs, any issues with placing items, scaling, or editing colors. The loading screens would pop in a bit so perhaps those could be polished up a bit? But honestly I'm just searching for anything that could be improved upon at this point.
I really loved the quests and how they were gently guided while still giving you tons of room to design to your heart's content. The art is lovely and the character writing kept me interested and ready to discover more. Overall I'm beyond pleased and impressed with this one. I wasn't 100% sold when I first saw the trailer but playing and getting my hands on it has convinced me that this is a solid cozy decoration game. I highly recommend it, especially if you've played unpacking games before and wished they were a little more customizable.
Check out Design and Conjure on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
8. BREKEKEKEX
In this world, giant frogs dominate the swamps. If you want to eat and survive, go out and fight for it. BREKEKEKEX follows a young man teaching his little brother about the world while fighting giant frogs so he can take their eyes. For what purpose? I have no idea, but the gameplay is extremely fun and the dialogue is entertaining.
Designed as an arena fighter hack and slash, cutscenes will play to set the battle scene and its reason for happening before dropping you in front of an enemy and saying “Go!” Sweat your ass off as you chip away at a giant frog’s health in ever intensifying one-on-one boss fights. After you win, get treated to another cutscene that combines weird and funny in a very unique way. For example, you will watch an entire scene play out over the course of three boss fights where a group of four giant frogs argue over who owns the swamp your character is fighting said frogs on.
I will say, this is a difficult arena fighter, even among arena fighters. Currently there is no controller support, which to me is kind of essential for an arena fighter. This is the major reason BREKEKEKEX is lower on this list; because the mouse and keyboard controls are pretty difficult to execute and started to make my hand hurt. In terms of accessibility, it's not great right now; but I expect this to be at least slightly mediated with controller support, which the developer has alluded to adding.
With that said, this is an extremely fun game that absolutely drips style. The art direction and color palette are really beautiful in a way I don't know how to describe. The gameplay is satisfying to master, with a high skill ceiling that will keep you coming back to learn and perfect more and more. The enemies and the entire vibe of the game is extremely unique, something that I value above many other qualities. Truly a standout game from the crowd.
Check out BREKEKEKEX on Steam
Release Date: To Be Announced
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
7. Children’s Garden
In Japan, it's said that near the base of the Sai no Kawara riverbank children who have passed away will stack stones for their family as a way to apologize for leaving before they could repay the love they were given. In this story, demons (or oni) will come by to destroy the stacks the children have made, ensuring atonement is never met and they continue to suffer. Meanwhile, a bodhisattva (or an enlightened being) named Jizō is said to protect the children and their stones from the demons, allowing the children to show their family their love before rebirth.
Children's Garden follows this story. You play as an assistant to a child's consciousness uploaded into the Pagoda system, a place between life and death. It's a bit more complicated than how I'm describing it, but you'll get there when you play the game. Go through levels, stack stones to atone for the child, and slowly gain "supply life" (aka the child's living years) to use as a currency when unlocking redacted information about the world, which will occasionally yield upgrades too.
This game is awesome, I have to say. The gameplay may look simplistic at first glance, and it is just a stacking game, but the way everything interacts with one another is so interesting. The stones, especially, get a lot more complicated as you read through more documents, uncover more information, and thus unlock special stones with unique abilities (like sticking, exploding, and so on). The variety in gameplay mixed with the mystery of the story plus the absolutely unbelievably gorgeous UI makes for an unforgettable experience. I wasn't sure I would get into this one but wanted to try it anyway and wow, it hooked me!
It does have some minor optimization issues if you do too much in some puzzles, but it just stutters and fixes itself so it isn't horrible and is something I'm hoping is fixed by the full release. A couple bits of text also go off the UI or are translated slightly funny, but those are minor issues in my honest opinion. Overall this was a wildly surprising demo with a lot of sauce to show off. If the visual design is drawing you in but you're unsure if you would like the gameplay, just trust and try it out; the worst that could happen is you don't like it and you close it. But, honestly? You'll probably love it and get just as addicted as I was.
Check out Children's Garden on Steam
Release Date: 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
6. Desktop Explorer
Desktop Explorer is a fake OS game where you play as the niece of the man that previously owned this computer before being put in hospice care due to a failing memory. Now in your care, explore the many mysteries hidden on this computer to uncover what happened to your family. But be careful, this thing seems to have a mind of its own. Solve puzzles using all the interactions unique to a computer system; like looking at the source code, wrapping the text, putting tabs together to create images, and so on.
This game really takes advantage of the fact that you’re solving a mystery on a computer, which I find extremely interesting. I find a lot of fake OS games don’t seem to truly take advantage of the medium, simply giving you text puzzles and websites to read through to solve things. However, Desktop Explorer goes far above and beyond when it comes to crafting the experience for the player. While not in the demo, there’s even a game inside of this game that you can explore to solve puzzles, get additional clues, and so on.
I think Desktop Explorer is very inventive and unique, even in the sea of current fake OS games coming out. I’ve played a good number of fake OS games and a lot of them not only don’t have such complicated puzzles, but they also usually have a good number of bugs; be it minor visual bugs all the way to massive soft locks due to puzzle triggers. Desktop Explorer is one of the most polished fake OS games I’ve ever played. I’ve played this demo to completion twice at this point and both times I came across zero bugs, be it visual or mechanical. The puzzles also, in my honest opinion, do a pretty good job of not only being challenging but also giving you enough options when figuring them out that it’s kind of hard to get locked down for too long unless you’re just missing something pretty obvious; which I appreciate. I feel like a lot of games don’t worry about the player getting stuck and missing something. Meanwhile I felt like Desktop Explorer designed puzzles with the idea that someone could get stuck at any moment, so there are ways to circumvent that.
I also found the story to be pretty interesting. After your uncle, who you later learn was basically like a father to you, is taken to hospice care due to his failing memory, you're given his computer. Deciding to check it out, one of the first things you find is a note from your uncle telling you how much he loves you and that he left a mystery on here for you to figure out. As you dive deeper and deeper into this “game”, which is structured like a text adventure with multi-media additions to assist in storytelling, you find that it’s about your family. You, your uncle, and his brother (presumably your father) used to go fishing a lot. Was it all sunshine and rainbows, or was there some family drama you didn’t pick up on when you were younger? Carried along by a creepy text adventure, where is the line between fiction and reality?
I really enjoyed my time with Desktop Explorer and I think it’s one of the better and more engaging fake OS games. There’s some pretty good scares and tense moments throughout the demo without feeling obnoxious and the music really sets the tone in every single moment. I’m beyond thrilled to be able to check out this game when it releases later this month and I highly suggest trying out the demo while you still can.
Check out Desktop Explorer on Steam
Release Date: July 17th, 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
5. Endacopia
Described by the developer as "Pajama Sam meets Petscop", Endacopia is a point and click adventure game with some spooky twists and deviations from the standard gameplay loop. Play as a young boy trying to leave the house. But be careful, not everything is as innocent as you would like them to be and there's a figure looming, keeping you locked inside. While you still point and click to do things, with ways to interact with items like look, talk, and use/touch, there are multiple shifts in perspective that can happen throughout gameplay as well as boss fights that include completely new ways to play the game. For example, one boss fight triggered Punch Out!! style gameplay that was unique to that fight alone. You can also walk around the scene with WASD rather than just pointing and clicking on things and that does become mechanically relevant for at least one of the puzzles during the demo alone. All the puzzles and shifts in gameplay are not only well explained but also perfectly implemented; not once did I run into an issue where I was stuck for too long nor did I see any glitches during any loading or playing. That's not even touching on the emotion system, which I assume will become more mechanically relevant within the full release. Throughout the demo, you're able to click on your character and see how he's feeling, which was a great insight into his personality, especially after particularly intense interactions.
In addition, this demo pulls off an impeccable atmosphere; nostalgic yet extremely unwelcoming and creepy. From the moment you load into the first room you can tell something is off and everywhere you look there are moments of peace and normalcy placed right beside fear and anxiety. The sound design is very well done, being whimsical at times and then flipping the switch on a dime and turning the scene into a nightmare. The audio wasn't just great for the atmosphere, it was also brilliantly placed so you were drawn to specific puzzles and interactions.
On that note, the visual art style is beautiful too. I didn't realize until I hit the end of the demo that I actually follow this artist on all socials yet I somehow didn't realize they were making a game - a shame I almost missed this one somehow! Obviously I love their art, I follow them for a reason, but the way the mix of their different styles was used here is so well done. Moments of color mixed with moments of things lacking color or missing entirely where they clearly should be. Things moving when they shouldn't. 3D in moments when you expect 2D. The way the camera sits during certain scenes or sequences. Everything about the style here is top notch and every moment is intentionally crafted to make the player feel something.
I'm very impressed. I've followed artists that have made games before and they can be very pretty but sometimes miss the mark with gameplay. This game could not be further from that. The gameplay is so well done and thought through - every moment feels good to play. The demo also knows how to be a nice length and not overstay its welcome, so you can get a great taste of the world without spoiling too much. I'm truly stunned by this game and the level of quality I'm seeing from it. I think you could tell from my glowing review, but I highly recommend this one!
Check out Endacopia on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
4. The Meaning of Auri
The Meaning of Auri is a 2D side scrolling puzzle game where you play as an Auri Field Researcher on a mission from their home planet Auriga to research and document things on an alien planet. When you land on the planet and start speaking to locals you realize this language has not been discovered or documented by your people yet. Make conversation, complete tasks, and use context clues to decipher this language and move further into the planet.
Not only does this game have a beautiful art style, it also has completely unique gameplay I’ve only ever seen this one time. Pull up your alien tablet to document each new word you’ve heard, go through chat history, and eventually translate it yourself by typing what you think the word means. Feeling lost? Talk to the inhabitants of this planet to gain more context. Complete simple tasks for the locals that help give you additional context for words that have been spoken in conversations. The entire feeling of the world and gameplay therein is truly wholesome.
That word ‘wholesome’ gets thrown around a lot without, I think, truly understanding what makes something ‘wholesome’ versus simply ‘cute’. This game is not only cute, but every moment you're interacting with someone it feels like you’re going above and beyond to understand someone you can’t even communicate with and I loved that. Language is a huge barrier that can not only restrict people of different cultures from understanding one another, but it even keeps people from the same walks of life on opposite spectrums if we don’t go, at least a little, out of our way to understand what the other person is saying. Paying attention to context clues, body language, and surrounding tasks or items is something everyone can do to understand those around them.
A game about real empathy. A game about wanting to understand those around you, not about hearing what you want to hear. In a world where social media can lead to interactions being increasingly hostile, this game reminds us to pause and work to understand someone else. In a post-covid world where no one wants to even say “Hello” to their neighbors or the people they pass on the streets, this game reminds us that social interaction is healthy for the soul. In a world where words are commonly used just to hurt, this game reminds us that communication was invented for collaboration, not for bickering. The world may not be as wholesome as The Meaning of Auri but maybe experiences like The Meaning of Auri can inspire our world to become kinder and more understanding. A gal can dream.
Check out The Meaning of Auri on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
3. Memoirium
Memoirium is a 3rd person action adventure souls-like, with a variety of weapons, spells, and healing items at your disposal. Clearly inspired by things like Dark Souls 1 and taking a lot of moments directly from said series, Memoirium is also, in the moments that truly matter, evolving ideas and creating new ones I’ve never really considered before, especially in the souls-like genre.
Going into the mechanics of the game too much will, frankly, be too confusing. All you need to know is you wake up in a strange and unknown land, pick items up off the ground or off other enemies to equip yourself for the journey ahead, and use those items to defeat enemies along a linear level until you get to a boss fight. There are doors along the way which act like bonfires, resetting enemies and allowing you to level up and reset your health/status effects. There's additional depth in a lot of these mechanics that, like I said, I won't dive into, but there’s one in particular I do want to highlight.
In particular, the door isn't just a door with no purpose - it takes you to a room. Your room. A blank canvas for you to decorate. Yes, I said decorate. In this combat heavy souls-like game you have a room that you can visit and customize to your heart's content. Place furniture and items, edit the color of the room, what texture the flooring is, and even type memories tied to each specific thing you've placed.
Oh yeah, typing memories is a mechanic too. There's something here about memories tied to objects and what that means to each individual person. What does the mechanic do? Does it ever lead to anything? I'm not sure, but this is specifically what made me put down the demo and wait for the full release, because it’s honestly too cool to spoil.
If you'll excuse a small tangent, let me bring up one of my favorite horror stories ever: The Oldest View.
If you don't know it, it's a short YouTube series by Kane Pixels, (maybe better known as Kane Parsons, director of the Backrooms movie), about someone stumbling upon the underground ruins of a completely desolate but otherwise intact mall. Complete with store fronts, advertising, a mall map, and even some old, forgotten art installations, the main character explores the location only to find it's more alive than it looks. Plot aside, the series was inspired greatly by the idea of lost civilizations; of old buildings and items being discarded and what that looks like and feels like to the item or the building. All of these things have emotions and memories intrinsically tied to them, so once they've been tossed aside, what does that mean? What does that do? Where do those emotions and memories go? Do they decay and fester? Revolt? Die quietly? Fade away? Live forever, below us?
Memoirium made me ask similar questions to ones I was asking when watching The Oldest View. It made me really sit there and question what the developer was thinking and feeling when crafting this world, filled to the brim with items; enemies using items as weapons, items copied and lining every walkway in every new environment, items as rewards from chests to decorate my room with and then type a whole description of what that item means to me, personally. Items. Stuff. Memories. Their meaning to each enemy. Their meaning to me. Their meaning to this world and why it is the way that it is.
I mean, yeah, cool it's a fun game, it has cool weapons and animations, the world is pretty, it has nice sound design and interesting enemies / bosses, blah blah blah - the same things people type about every half competent video game. But man this one made me feel something. It made me really think about what I was seeing and what the developer was feeding me, and I don't see that every day.
I loved this game, clearly. There are a couple moments where I thought things could be better explained, specifically mechanics, and I think tutorials should probably trigger on item pickup rather than item use, but those are major nitpicks that only apply to the tutorial portion of the game. Once you get into the game and really start to get the mechanics / feel for the combat and gameplay, it clicks so good. You start to clue in to the fact that there's more going on than just a desolate dream in a souls-like world, and that's all so much better than I could have possibly realized going into this.
Check out Memoirium on Steam
Release Date: August 12th, 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
2. Life on Neptune
Life on Neptune is a strange first person game where your ship crash lands on an alien planet. Luckily boxes of stuff have survived! Discover and explore the islands of this planet and, on each island, scavenge around for boxes to open. Each box will have either a crafting material or a piece of furniture for you to put in your pocket (or load onto your boat) and take home, depending on how many boxes ‘in a row’ you find. The mechanic here is an i-spy-like puzzle game where, on each island, you stand within a small area and try to find a new box from your location. Once a box is found, double click it to zoom over to its location and open it. The more boxes you find in a row without leaving the small area you’re confined to the higher your likelihood is of getting something more rare.
Once you’ve found every box on the island, load up your boat and either head to another island to do it all again or head back home to unload all your finds and set them up in your humble abode. Craft items, customize and decorate your home, expand it to fit more items and creatures, and check your PC to see if you’re eligible for rescue yet. As you expand your home, you'll meet new aliens that are also stranded on this planet with you. Invite them to live with you and, just maybe, convince the company that there’s enough value here to dictate a rescue operation.
I really can’t explain how much I adored this demo; everything about it is so stylish and cool. The gameplay with the boxes on the islands and zooming to each one in hopes of finding new furniture or a rare crafting material was genuinely very fun. It was actually difficult to find a path where you could find all the boxes without having to move and break your score multiplier, which made it really satisfying when you actually could find them all and get the max bonus.
The house decorating and editing, while a little janky at times due to the unique controls, was also much more immersive than I had initially thought it would be. You get to walk around your house in full 3D first person. The house is also 100% customizable and expandable, which means you can add rooms in any direction, doors anywhere, as many windows as you want, and so on.
When aliens come to visit you they’re also completely rendered in 3D and walk around the house and interact with the items and furniture you’ve placed. I had a little alien seal come live with me during my time in the demo and he would consistently roam around the house, use the furniture (like sit on the chair and look out the window), and wave at me. The interaction between me and the aliens was one of my favorite parts of the game. You can even stop them and chat, thinking up new conversation paths and bringing up new topics to discuss between one another.
Then, when you’re all done decorating and resting, go back out on your boat and start the process all over again. Another thing that impressed me about this game was the fact that you can actually control your boat and drive it around in subway surfer-type levels where you crash through islands, make sick jumps, and control which island with which types of furniture you’ll go scavenge at. The game is so stylish at every moment and the gameplay was always surprising me. Unique is the easiest way to describe this game, but it deserves more glazing than that.
Check out Life on Neptune on Steam
Release Date: Coming Soon
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
1. Duskfade
Duskfade is a 3rd person collectathon platformer. Clearly inspired by games like Kingdom Hearts, this is more than a clone or a copy, it feels like the next big thing. I haven't played a game like this since Kingdom Hearts 1 and I think my memory is making KH1 out to be more smooth than it actually was, 'cause the gameplay in Duskfade is buttery! The animations are gorgeous, in gameplay and cutscenes, the voice acting is extremely well done and characterized, and the world building is truly beautiful; from the art style, to the placement of pickups, to the writing of the story. I really am so enamored with this game; I put way more time into it than I probably should have while trying to get through a bunch of demos for Next Fest, but it was beyond addicting.
I will say that it could use some minor rounds of optimization. I did run a decently old rig when playing this demo (a 970) so keep that in mind, but some of the cutscenes (namely the intro one) ran pretty badly and the beginning cutscene even had the audio de-sync. With that said, once I was actually in-game, playing, it ran perfectly the entire time. This was surprising to me because the game had a lot of particle effects, yet it still ran very well during all the combat and platforming.
Which brings me to my rounds of praise and the things that particularly impressed me. The world is immensely detailed. I was surprised how well it ran in-game when the intro cutscene ran so poorly because, honestly, it shouldn't have. Some of these scenes are seriously packed with moving parts, details, reflections, particles - and it all looks absolutely stunning. I was consistently stopping to marvel at both the large and small scale details put into each scene. For example, in one of the starting areas there’s a music box with gears and figures all moving and turning and maybe that doesn’t sound impressive, but it really was so beautiful.
The voice acting is also genuinely perfect, as far as I'm concerned. It hits this whimsical and childish beat while not feeling particularly cringe, pandering, or baby. I was always happy to hear the voice acting, not just because the voices were well done, but also because the story knew how and when to use the voice acting. Getting to chat with Cuckoo, the companion character, about the world was a treat to experience, not something I wanted to avoid. I was reminded of Alice: Madness Returns quite a bit where you’re rewarded for exploring with plot, background information, or character building. Lovely stuff.
On that note, exploration was so well done. I'm a 'nook and cranny' kind of gal myself, so I'm always walking around until my feet touch every single part of the map I can before moving on. I felt very rewarded for being this type of person in Duskfade. Tons of extra pickups, secrets, lore, and so on to find if you're willing to spend the time looking around and appreciating the environments.
And on that note, I also want to commend the map designers for their work on this. Particle effects, moving items, directional sound design, "out of place" color that directs the eye - all of these tools and more were consistently used to draw the player around the map in such a beautiful and intuitive way. It's understated, but fantastic for player feedback and readability and it was a standout here. In an era of yellow paint everywhere, some smart design goes a long way in making me feel happy and immersed.
Finally I have to commend the animators on their work. Every animation executed perfectly and led into the next one very fluidly. The animations were always in service of the gameplay and story telling, never there just to show off or distract. The animations also never felt like they were getting in the way of executing moves; every animation was perfectly timed to match the action it was tied to. Animations always looked really beautiful in cutscenes, properly conveying emotion and setting the scene. I keep saying it for each point, but truly a beautiful job on the animations. A beautiful job in general. Down to the combat, every little bit of the demo was fun, engaging, and had me ready to see more.
Check out Duskfade on Steam
Release Date: August 13th, 2026
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing