Games worth discovering
Looking for a new game? These are the best demos I tried at Steam Next Fest
7K View2023-10-1710 games listed
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This lovely, peaceful exploration game looks like it could be a lost Studio Ghibli movie. I played as an android journeying across the landscape of a lush, terraformed moon. Humanity has died out, and that meant it was up to me to discover the secrets that people had left behind.
The game is breathtakingly beautiful, and the story it weaves is both heartwarming and intriguing, but what really makes it exciting is the traversal. The demo gave me a ton of traversal tools to play around with, and that made getting around so much fun. Whether I was running through the grass, gliding through the air, or playing around with my jetpack, exploring the world was a complete joy.
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In Holstin, an isolated Polish town has been struck by a terrible calamity. You come to the town in search of answers, but you won’t necessarily like what you find. The vibrant pixel-art visuals, creepy sound design, and excellent environmental storytelling make this a truly memorable survival horror game.
The demo was divided into two segments: a combat-free exploration chapter and a section where I fought monsters in a tunnel. The latter segment felt like a pixelated version of Resident Evil 4, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. It’s more eerie than outright scary, but if you’re a fan of horror games, this is definitely a title you’ll want to watch.
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I grew up playing city builders like The Settlers, and Pioneers of Pagonia feels like an updated take on those classic games. Set on a series of islands, the goal is to expand, forge alliances, and bring these scattered locations together. The maps in the game are procedurally generated, but they’re still stunning, and searching for resources was just as much fun as building new structures.
Not only is this game gorgeous, but it’s absolutely massive in scope. Usually, these types of games start players off with nothing, but I began Pioneers of Pagonia with hundreds of workers at my disposal. I felt like I was controlling real settlements, and that was incredibly exciting.
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Robocop: Rogue City is rough around the edges, but behind the buggy gameplay is something truly special. It’s an impressive recreation of the 1987 film Robocop, but it’s also a surprisingly solid RPG. There are all kinds of upgrade tracks to put points into, like Deduction, Psychology, and Engineering, and every single stat change had a noticeable effect on my gameplay.
The gunplay is solid, but where Robocop really excels is in the little details. When I walked down a hallway, I could feel the thump of my footsteps, and I actually felt like I was a heavily armed cyborg. Every radio station played ads for made-up products and services. Even at its clunkiest, Rogue City was extremely immersive, and an immersive Robocop game is worth checking out.
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I tried out quite a few farming games during Steam Next Fest, but the only one that really stuck with me was Everholm. Don’t be fooled by its adorable visuals; it’s cute, sure, but this game is deeper and more peculiar than it initially seems to be. The gameplay is cozy, sure, but it’s set in a town that clearly has some skeletons in its closet, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the story take some dark turns.
In the demo, I played as Lilly, a young girl searching for her missing sister. After walking through a portal, I discovered the island of Everholm, a strange fantasy world where everyone already seemed to know my name. Before I knew it, I had a plot of land and crops to grow, but I also had a mystery to uncover. I had weeds to dig up, but I was digging up secrets too, and that combination was totally intoxicating.
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Strategy games are notoriously complex, but Microcivilization strips the genre down to the bare essentials. The main goal is to expand a settlement and protect it from various disasters, but the gameplay is mostly automated. It’s got more in common with clicker and idle games than your standard 4X strategy game, and that unique take on the genre is highly addictive.
I had a good time playing Microcivilization, but it was even more fun to just let the game run in the background. Every time I returned to the game, I could watch a sped-up replay of what happened while I was gone, which was a blast. Microcivilization is set to release on Steam later this year, but I really hope it comes to mobile devices too. If I had this on my phone, I don’t think I’d be able to stop playing it.
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Some narrative games are referred to as walking simulators, but Jusant is all about climbing. I was tasked with scaling a massive tower, and while the story was the primary focus, Jusant’s climbing mechanics were pretty robust. I had to think about every movement I made, and ascending higher was both nerve wracking and exciting.
The tower I was scaling wasn’t just some boring pillar. It was constantly changing, and that meant I had to switch up my strategies as I moved. Sometimes, the climbing was pretty realistic, and other times, it felt like something out of a fantasy story. No matter how I was moving, going up was a lot of fun.
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I’ve always been a sucker for a good detective game, and this title presented me with a truly fascinating mystery. Set in a twisted Victorian city, The Midnight Crimes is a game about being haunted by the past and grappling with the secrets of the present. I took control of Benjamin Leighton, a tortured detective on a quest to find a missing child.
I was really impressed by how polished The Midnight Crimes felt. There’s a full day-and-night cycle, excellent voice acting, and a ton of investigative tools to play with. Some of the NPCs I encountered weren’t very friendly, so I quickly found myself sneaking around in search of clues. The detective work was satisfying, the visuals were spectacular, and the story and characters were extremely compelling. I can’t wait to get to the bottom of this mystery when the full game comes out.
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This strange, immersive cybercrimes simulator feels like the internet-poisoned cousin of Papers, Please. I played as the moderator of a marketplace on the dark web, and it was my job to filter through new user applications. Every day, I had to compare each application against banned IPs, usernames, and other restrictions as I decided who to let in and who I should shut out of the illegal goods market.
Rejecting a forum application might not sound like a big deal, but some of the applicants were actually murderers, and they were more than happy to threaten my life if I turned them down. Thankfully, this gig was a paying one, and I could spend my hard-earned cash on new security software and pills to manage my anxiety. This was a really entertaining little simulation game, and it made cross-checking IP addresses much more fun than it should be.
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Fans of roguelike deck-builders won’t want to miss Earthless, a sci-game that blends Slay the Spire with FTL. Set on a starship, my job was to explore new star systems and keep my ship—and humanity—alive. I quickly learned that space could be treacherous, and I had to use cards to fight my way through tactical, grid-based battles. When I wasn’t busy fighting, I could explore salvage yards or pick up rogue transmissions that could potentially guide me to new crew members.
Earthless is an exceptional deck-builder, but my cards weren’t the only thing that mattered, and that’s what really made each run so exciting. My crew members had opinions about every choice I made, and those relationships had a notable effect on battles. My ship was equipped with a predictive AI module, and the information it gave me made it easier to play cards at the right time. My ship didn’t survive every run, but my mistakes always felt instructive, and that made this roguelike all the more addictive.
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