15 Games To Keep An Eye On During Steam Next Fest

With Cyberpunk 2077's only expansion, Phantom Liberty, now firmly in the rearview, CD Projekt RED is free to look to the future. There's the new The Witcher trilogy, of course, but also the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel codenamed Project Orion.

When Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt laid off 100 workers in the summer, some staff said enough was enough. Sick of the stress and anxiety caused by the spectre of job cuts, the workers set out to form a union. It was a big idea with small beginnings that has the potential to grow beyond the confines of CD Projekt’s Warsaw headquarters to become Poland’s game developer union, offering a home to all with a valid contract in the country.

The most-played Steam Next Fest demos have been revealed, and I'm not surprised to see what's topped the list. 

Playing Sky: Children of the Light’s Steam Next Fest offers something I didn’t know I needed. While the inner RPG enthusiast in me is spoiled with the depth and complexity on show in Baldur’s Gate 3 and ever-destined to return to frequent haunts like Final Fantasy 14 to pillage further through 10 years of content, the Journey creators’ chill MMO reminds me that there’s great joy in little at all. 

Scrolling through Steam Next Fest - Valve’s digital event celebrating upcoming games - can feel quite overwhelming. Mainly because there’s just so many good demos to chow down on, but also because playing through the hundreds of demos can feel like tonal whiplash. In the past few days, I’ve zoomed between euphoric roguelikes, open-world racers, and punishing LEGO-like apocalypses. But thankfully, the demo for Pioneers Of Pagonia offers a chill getaway for us poor, exhausted souls.

It’s the perfect time for horror games. As Halloween and the spooky month descend, from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, Five Nights at Freddy’s and Phasmophobia, the absolute best that the genre has to offer are bound to make a return to your Steam playlist. But alongside all the classics, there are loads of fantastic Steam Next Fest demos available now that give you a window into horror games’ future. The sheer amount of upcoming games can get overwhelming, so at PCGamesN, we’ve gathered a flashlight and a dusty old map, and trawled the haunted caves to find you the absolute best horrors available to try now.

Rabi-Ribi developer CreSpirit is finally returning to the realm of Metroidvanias after seven years spent on a visual novel, a pure bullet hell game, and side-scrolling horror. Not only that, it's well and truly going back its roots with TEVI, a bullet hell Metroidvania that acts as a spiritual successor to Rabi-Ribi. After a brief beta earlier this year, TEVI dropped a meaty demo in this week's Steam Next Fest, and it has won me over in record time. 

We know that cozy MMO Sky: Children of the Light is making its way to PC, but now you can experience a taste of the game for yourself thanks toSteam Next Fest.

Give me an elegant roguelike with an interesting premise and I’ll go missing for days, repeating runs ad infinitum. The upcoming Cobalt Core almost had me under that trance with its interstellar take on Slay The Spire’s deck-building, but the Steam Next Fest demo ended just before I got trapped in its moreish loop.

I've never been big on dating sims, but I'm very much into horror RPGs with gorgeous visuals inspired by '90s anime, and it just so turns out that something truly magical emerges when you combine those two genres with a skillful hand. That's the impression I got after playing the Steam Next Fest Demo for Little Goody Two Shoes, a queer-friendly dating sim that's beautifully married to a full-throated horror game.

I've had my eye on dwarven roguelike Below the Stone for several months, so I was eager to give its Steam Next Fest demo a play. Folks, I'm pleased to report that the Terraria and Deep Rock Galactic vibes I was picking up were dead-on. This is shaping up to be something really special, and handily one of the best Steam Next Fest demos to play this week. 

Steam Next Fest's surprise breakout is Japanese Drift Master, an open-world racing game that takes some serious inspiration from Initial D, and after spending some time with the demo it's easy to see why.