Steam NextFest has never been bigger and with 2,571 games featured, careful curation has never been more important. Because there is such a wealth of games, we need a metric for what to include. For the purpose of this article it goes something like: Would the full release warrant coverage on this site?

This means we leave out a lot of good stuff, like games with simple mechanical inventions, bite-sized hooks, and more casually focused player engagement. Many more games were tested but our selection represents the best of the best. Games that should be added to your wishlist but also ideally purchased at release.

It takes valuable time + resources to create demos for games, so we’d like to encourage developers to keep their demos up for as long as it benefits them, and our readers to play, wishlist, and support any of these games that pique their interests.

Book of Abominations & Monster Crown: Sin Eater

Not just one, but two Pokémon style games for your consideration. First, Book of Abominations is an Eldritch-horror inspired monster catcher game with fantastical creatures drawn from Lovecraftian stories. The demo is way too short to make heads or tails of its potential, but what’s there shows unique potential. Second is Monster Crown: Sin Eater, the sequel to the notoriously buggy (even in its current state) original Monster Crown (2011). The demo is in good shape and already has that bit of compulsion you feel starting any Pokémon game. What sets it apart are the monster breeding and fusing systems which offer a lot of dynamic potential for RPG team-building and branching dialogue trees. Cause for hope is, the original was developed by one person and full of barely held together spaghetti code (the result of Kickstarter feature creep), and the sequel is developed by a small team. If they can land the plane this time, the potential is high.

Dead as Disco

Sometimes we need to be reminded: Videogames can be infinitely cool. Dead as Disco is exactly that. It’s cool as hell. As Charlie Disco, a deceased drummer, you’ve come back from the dead to seek vengeance on your old bandmates, and just about anyone else who deserves a pummelin’ in beat with some thumping music. Using your disco sticks and fists of fury, fast-flying beat ‘em up action corresponds in time with the music (you can upload your own songs!) and truly, when you’ve got it, you’ve got it, and sometimes that’s just down to game-feel. And Dead as Disco feels extraordinary, as a harrowing rhythm brawler with style for days, the action is gorgeously illustrated in this electric and eclectic comic style that exudes confidence and charm. Brain Jar Games are onto something. There’s a slice of a story in the demo but also a score based Infinite Disco, where you just play out the run of a song and fight for the best score. Are you rushing or dragging? Play “Caravan,” and find out.

The Drifter

Long in production, this six year old demo still creates a deeply compelling introduction to a pulpy and conspiratorial story about a man on the run. “Hunted and haunted,” a mysterious drifter awakens just before he dies. And then he must unravel all the clues and make sense of his life. A great interface, whether played by controller or mouse and keyboard, really sells the concept. The Drifter looks lovely and is well-written, also, just a well-produced slice of Adventure game heaven all around. The first chapter is deeply compelling and if the game matches that, given the very long dev cycle dating as far back as 2017, it will have all been worth the wait.

Easy Delivery Company

A delivery game where the store page promises there are “definitely no secrets,” Easy Delivery Simulator may not have secrets (bullshit) but it is full of surprises. The second game this year where you drive a Kei truck round town doing odd jobs (you should absolutely play Promise Mascot Agency), Easy Delivery Company fits squarely between… Animal Crossing (2002) and Deadly Premonition (2010). This confluence of weird design decisions makes for something more singular when combined. There’s such a strange expression of identity in Easy Delivery Company, as you drive your flighty little truck up and down a snow and fog-choked mountain, doing little side quests along the way for bizarre animal characters. The way it throws back to the past and unique reference points makes Easy Delivery Company stand out amongst the recent fleet of Stranding-like delivery games.

House of Necrosis

Hard as hell to find an image that properly sells the appeal. It’s not a looker. That’s on purpose. Because House of Necrosis is doing a specific thing. It’s doing three specific things in fact: it’s combining PlayStation-era Resident Evil and Final Fantasy game concepts with a turn-based rougelike. Played from an isometric perspective, you move around dungeons all tank-like fighting survival horror creatures. When you move, they move. You’ll also be collecting RPG-like items, upgrading your character and gear, and trying to conserve your items. This genre-blending rougelike separates itself through nostalgic menus and slow-opening doors but the proof is in playing it, the combination just works in a satisfying way.

Kaizen: A Factory Story

Zach Barth of Zachtronics launches a brand new game company and their first title lives up to the studio’s terrific reputation for making cerebral engineering-minded puzzle games. This time, you’re an American coming to Japan for their first job, when you’re put in charge of a factory production line. Blending further narrative design with Barth’s unique verve for programmer-centric game design, Kaizen is a special prospect, a truly standalone experience on this list, totally new and unique to itself. The outlook on this is extremely positive, it’s as close to a sure thing as we’re getting here. Listen to our interview with Zach Barth about the history of Zachtronics before exploring his terrific next adventure.

Mina the Hollower

Yacht Club Games seem to have it all figured out. After Shovel Knight (2014) and its wealth of good DLC, the studio are back with Mina the Hollower, an exceptionally refined blend of some of the best videogames. If the mechanics of Castlevania could be idealistically transposed onto the top-down adventures of Zelda, you’d get something like Mina the Hollower. Great design is when everything coheres and makes sense holistically and that’s exactly how this game feels. It’s just right in every way.

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound

Enter the flow state: Ninja Gaiden Ragebound revitalizes the best aspects of the original Ninja Gaiden games, tying them to the movement of the 3D games. By branching across both traditions, The Game Kitchen brings the 2D Action acumen from their Blasphemous series and properly realizes Team Ninja’s property. The demo plays out over a couple stages which emphasize well-conceived combat patterns. A new charged attack dynamic means that enemies can be sequenced, while movement mechanics, like sliding through and jumping onto enemies, enhances the stylish movement through the world that all the Ninja Gaiden games are known for. A hard mode perfectly showcases what the game can be at its best, a pattern-memorizing, free-flowing blast of hyped up retro action. Ragebound is badass and fluid in all the right ways. Based on the terrific strength of the demo, Ragebound promises to be one of the year’s most essential games.

Rainchaser

Some witches have stolen a powerful magical artifact and reticent pilot Alice is being sent to retrieve it, piloting a rickety old ship that harnesses the power of the SUN. Rainchaser is a darkly aesthetic shmup with some very solid mechanics. The vibe is darker than most shmups, as the genre tends to be very bright to help discern large amounts of visual information very quickly. But in Rainchaser the opaqueness of the ship, setting, and enemies makes for very readable bullet arrangements. The demo introduces a wide spread shot, a back shot, and swords, which gives a few situational options. The game is off to a strong start and with a little more visual legibility, promises to be a pretty good compact shmup.

Ratatan

How can you measure pure delight? Ratata Arts have done it again, in the sequel to their excellent PlayStation Portable rhythm strategy series, Patapon, with a wonderfully vibrant spiritual successor in Ratatan. The new game feels unwieldy at first, your little guys now need to be controlled in time with a metronome, and the game is now awash in color and pulled back. But the runs also feel different and like the game can hold for more potential. As it’s expanded in the full release, there is little more to expect than one of the most joyous and clever gaming experiences of the year.

Speed Demons 2

A perennial favorite on Apple Arcade for iOS, Speed Demons (2019) adapted the Burnout series formula for touchscreens and now Radiangames have adjusted the fast and retro styled racer for computers and consoles. This comes with a perspective shift. Before, the game was top-down and you’d move left-to-right. Now, even more uniquely, the racing happens from the side (or top-down) and you’re moving up and down. This means it works fluidly for controllers, keyboards and mouse, and other inputs, but also creates a specific horizontal racing vibe which ratchets up the action with more modes, playing with pursuit derby style racing. Made a rule when we started to just play a game once, not to limit our time, but just have one experience with each. Kept breaking that rule for Speed Demons 2 and just want to keep going. It’s simple and an easy sell but that means it fully lives up to its pitch. The quick races make for a highly repeatable game where you want to keep improving your times. No doubt it’ll be stacked with modes and options at release. If you’re into Burnout (2001) but also R.C. Pro-Am (1988) and Death Rally (1996), you can’t really go wrong.

Windswept

Hey, do you like Donkey Kong Country (1994)?

World Hockey ‘88

When it comes to hockey videogames, simplicity is key. Like Nintendo’s Ice Hockey (1988), the action in World Hockey ‘88 comes down to player sizes. You’ve got a fast-skating center, speedy wingers, and a comically oafish Mario-like defender. Movement controls most of the team, including the goaltender and scoring is super easy with the silly oversized nets. There’s not much depth here but the focused arcade play is the point — the design model is especially appealing for multiplayer. When a fight breaks out, it’s a literal dust up as dust fills the screen like a cartoon — a more visual representation of this button-mashing segment would seem more engaging. The demo just includes four teams: USA and Canada from North America and Finland and Sweden from Northern Europe. This is perfectly fine, because player attributes are positional and not determined by characters or any basis on real players. It’s a delightful little game already but playing with the CPU may prove limited, as by the fourth match, the score disparity was ridiculous. Good news is, there was enough here to make playing four matches feel worthwhile.

ZPF

16 whole bits of nostalgia. ZPF was originally released on the Sega Genesis / MegaDrive… a few months ago. Now the homebrew retro shmup makes its way to PC and it’s perfectly fine but for fellow fans of the iconic Thunder Force IV (1992), it for sure warrants a look. ZPF has some of the same tricks up its sleeve: advanced (for the target hardware) parallax scrolling and grinding synth metal making unique use of Sega’s sound chip. As a shmup, it’s very basic and hard to read the action against the too colorful backgrounds but as a nostalgia piece… ZPF sure brings us back. The 3 ship types and upgrade paths add some extra layers of investment. A “small” game but seemingly a decently good one all the same.