It’s always an exciting time to be a gamer when Summer Games Fest season arrives. After a week of spectacular showcases full of exciting video games I just want to try something new, and thankfully Steam Next Fest is here to provide just that. With hundreds of different demos to try across every genre you can think of, there’s bound to be something to get your juices flowing.
Every time Next Fest comes to town I make it my duty to recommend a selection of demos for all who need a nudge in the right direction, because it’s a good excuse to try lots of demos myself.
This grab bag of demos features games of all shapes and sizes, but with the one common factor of being interesting, innovative, and fun as hell. I set out on my mission to find the future gems of 2025 and beyond, and possibly even the next great indie success story. I can’t wait to play more of all of them when they release in full, and after jumping into these demos you’ll likely feel the same.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra
By combining two of my greatest loves (cards and food) Abra-Cooking-Dabra creates a seriously compelling and rather weird crafting game. By chopping and grating various veggies you’ll be able to create the orders your customers desire, but you do all this by stacking cards on top of each other.
The Next Fest demo features a variety of stages that add increasingly complex elements like sauces, frying, and even farming tomatoes, onions and cucumber mid order, and I really didn’t want it to end. With secret stages and unlockable upgrades, you’ll really get a taste of Abra-Cooking-Dabra if you check out this demo.
Map Map: A Game About Maps
Clearly the best named game on this list, Map Map is a cosy cartography game with a lot of heart. In each stage of this demo you’ll be given a basic map of the coastal outline of an island, and it’s up to you to explore your surroundings and place landmarks on the map.
You’ll be given a star rating based on how close your map marker is to the correct location of a landmark, and it becomes immediately apparent how compelling it is to chase a three star score. This next fest demo features unlockable tools that add a few layers of complexity to the cartography, and a delightful story of child explorers. This game about maps might just find the coordinates to my heart when it releases in full.
Net.Attack()
I love auto attack Vampire Survivors style games, and Net.Attack() might be the most unique one I’ve ever played. Taking place entirely inside a digital world that you’re in the process of hacking, to power up against the enemies you’ll have to do some coding. You do this by linking together components by their nodes, which will ensure they activate for various reasons.
At its most basic you’ll use this to unleash an attack at a regular interval, but there are some seriously clever ways to link your attacks together. On my best run I triggered extra lasers to fire every time I hit an enemy, which sent a chain reaction of devastation through all the baddies and caused a lot of havoc. If you’ve grown bored of Survivors-like games then this demo could be for you.
Pigface
An ultra violent FPS throwback with a hint of the Saw movies about it, Pigface feels like a time capsule to the early noughties in all manner of ways. You play as Exit, a woman who has apparently done unspeakable acts and is now paying the price. It turns out the price is having a chip implanted in your brain and being forced to kill scores of various bad guys, which is at least rather entertaining.
There’s only one proper stage of Pigface in this demo after a tutorial, but it introduces the murder sandbox concept very well. You’ll be dropped into a farmhouse map with various gear you can buy, and are expected to find certain items and as an optional bonus kill all the enemies located there. The gunplay is fairly basic but still really enjoyable, and Pigface hit me with a wave of nostalgia for a period of gaming I didn’t know I cared about.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault
The first Moonlighter game passed me by back in 2018, and although I heard nothing but praise about the cool indie shopkeeper game I was never able to find the time to play it. I won’t be making that mistake with Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, because based on this demo alone it’s going to be amazing.
Blending dungeon crawling with shop management, Moonlighter 2 continues the story of the shopkeeper protagonist of the first game. Stranded in a deprived village, you’ll need to make coin by finding relics in the ruins and selling them to customers. With engaging isometric combat, interesting trading mechanics, and way more depth than I was expecting, Moonlight 2: The Endless Vault is a game that could easily steal all of your free time along with your heart when it releases this year.
