It’s time for yet another Steam Next Fest, the recurring celebration of upcoming PC games on Valve’s digital store. As always, there are dozens of demos, so we’ll highlight the most interesting games you should check out.
Ghostrunner 2 is arguably the most high-profile game in this Steam Next Fest edition. It’s a direct sequel to the successful cyberpunk-themed first-person action game developed by One More Level. Chris Wray checked out a preview build a while ago:
Ghostrunner 2 is Ghostrunner but with more. More to see, more to do, and more ways to kill. Add to this the bike sections, which will hopefully feature enemies – not that I didn’t find it hard enough just swiping at switches – and you have something even faster to look forward to.
Ghostrunner 2 is out in a little over two weeks, so the demo is a near-final build.
Robocop: Rogue City is the upcoming licensed first-person shooter from Teyon (Terminator: Resistance). Due to launch in three weeks, Robocop: Rogue City is powered by Unreal Engine 5 and supports DLSS 3 (Frame Generation) despite no official announcement from NVIDIA. Upon release, the demo had stuttering issues, though the developers have since claimed those have been fixed.
This is the first public demo for Enshrouded, the survival action RPG game in development at Keen Games (Portal Knights). The developers described the game as ‘Zelda meets Valheim’. According to Keen, the demo released for Steam Next Fest allows players to sample building, fighting, befriending the first Legendary artisan, the Blacksmith, exploring, terraforming, tearing down, leveling up, and more. Within the demo area, they will construct, combat, and craft in either co-op (Enshrouded supports up to 16 players) or solo gameplay.
The Steam Next Fest is the first time PC players can get their hands on Sky: Children of the Light, the most recent title produced by Thatgamecompany (Flow, Flower, Journey). In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Sky: Children of the Light is an open world social adventure online game where players connect with each other in an entirely unique way. Originally released in July 2019 for iOS, it launched in 2020 for Android, 2021 for Nintendo Switch, and 2022 for PlayStation 4.
Honorable Mentions
While it would be nearly impossible to list all the noteworthy demos available in the Steam Next Fest, here are ten more gems you shouldn’t miss.
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, a real-time strategy game from Frontier
- Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a remake of the second game in Square Enix’s RPG franchise
- The Talos Principle 2, sequel to Croteam’s critically acclaimed puzzle game
- The Last Faith, a blend of Soulslike and Metroidvania
- Europa, a gorgeous ‘meditative action/adventure game’ by indie dev Helder Pinto
- The Thaumaturge, a story-driven RPG by Fool’s Theory (Seven: The Days Long Gone, the upcoming The Witcher remake)
- Another Crab’s Treasure, a Soulslike 3D platformer from Aggro Crab
- Dungeons 4, the latest installment in the dungeon building franchise with RTS elements
- Pioneers of Pagonia, a cute city builder game by Envision Entertainment
- Robocraft 2, sequel to the popular free-to-play vehicular combat game
