10 Coolest Demos From Steam Next Fest February 2025

2025 saw the return of Steam Next Fest, extending until the last days of February. Regardless of your tardiness, you’ll find an abundant collection of top-tier demos from promising new games, all worthy of attention.

I can identify with the game developers who felt disappointed when their self-developed game, which was submitted to Next Fest, ended up being overshadowed by AI-made games and controversial titles, losing its place in the line of recommendations.

Instead of merely mentioning them, this list will be overflowing with exceptional game titles that stand out uniquely compared to anything else I’ve experienced, ranging from emerging stars to established powerhouses. However, I’ll be spotlighting the lesser-known games that offer something innovative rather than the massive (yet excellent) ones.

Of course, being human means I can’t experience every game at Next Fest. If you believe there’s a demo that truly shines and deserves a spot on my list of exceptional demos from this event, don’t hesitate to share your reasons why it should be included!

11. Honorable Mentions

These games narrowly missed being in the top ten, yet each presents an original concept that is remarkably inventive within their respective genres. Alternatively, they offer enjoyable, satisfying gaming experiences.

Batter Up – On the plate with a cool style, this game has an interesting twist on both bullet heaven and tower defense, where you swing your bat to make a ball bounce around everywhere. While it feels overwhelming way too quickly, the chaotic gameplay is worth a go.
Metro Gravity – This is a very neat game that’s a 3D Metroidvania where you can walk on all the walls like its Mario Galaxy and control gravity to solve puzzles, though it’s unfortunately extremely unpolished at the moment. Regardless, it’s still a great concept.
VoidFace – If you’ve played Enter the Gungeon and enjoy the bullet hell bosses spewing attacks at you while you move around and fight back, VoidFace is entirely focused on that concept. It has a spell-casting system that adds self-inflicting QTEs, which I find rather engaging.
Bounce Gun – A quite simplistic but endlessly engaging bullet hell where you need to dodge and weave through a massive amount of attacks, with each round giving you a new upgrade that comes with a downgrade. This makes it as chaotic as you can handle, which is excellent.
Space Sprouts – This game is rather intriguing, being more story-based than most things on this list, and a gameplay loop reminiscent of Outer Wilds, sticking you in a time-loop and tasking you with gathering information about your past on a spaceship to retell it later in life.
POEM EX MACHINA – For clarity’s sake, I have never played Jet Set Radio, and POEM EX MACHINA is unabashedly inspired by that game, adding on gunplay and sick action combat, on top of a pretty slick style and banging music. You’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of that series.
Guns Undarkness – This turn-based RPG was made by Shoji Meguro, who you might recognize as the composer of Persona 5, and that experience shows in the incredible soundtrack. It’s a rather tactical game that focuses on gunplay and hiding behind corners.
Ruffy and the Riverside – This silly, charming 3D platformer takes a ton of inspiration from the classic collect-a-thon titles, so if you grew up grabbing stars or gems, you’ll likely find something great here. Even if the main material-swapping mechanic doesn’t feel too special.
Squeakross: Home Squeak Home – If you know me, you know I adore Picross, and combining the nonograms with a house decorating game is a genius idea that makes each puzzle all the more rewarding. Though that’s all there is to it, I love it.
Isle of Reveries – This game is just Link’s Awakening, but Link’s Awakening is awesome, and so is Isle of Reveries. It brings a similar spin with new dungeons and puzzles that are just as satisfying to figure out, making for an excellent experience for any 2D Zelda fan.

10. Collapsed Horizon

Planetary Destruction Imminent

The experience in Collapsed Horizon resembles a sophisticated tech demonstration over a fully-fledged video game, but it’s an impressive tech demo nonetheless. Initially, it moves at a snail’s pace and challenges you with frustrating mining tasks, leaving you feeling clumsy. However, as you gradually improve by extracting ores, upgrading, and eventually mastering the art of planetary destruction.

Every improvement seems genuinely substantial, evoking the same sense of excitement I experienced during Spore’s space phase – a chance to shape and demolish an ecosystem as desired, employing a colossal death ray laser to vaporize mountains and transform them into valleys.

The updates are all genuinely impactful, reminding me of the thrill I felt in Spore’s space stage – the opportunity to customize and demolish an ecosystem as I pleased, using a powerful death ray laser to blast mountains apart and sculpt new valleys.

Mining each ore comes with a fittingly robust sound, and the seamless demolition of the polygonal landscape bears a striking resemblance to No Man’s Sky, yet with significantly reduced effort needed to obliterate vast procedurally generated planets.

I really appreciate it and find it extremely enjoyable, but I don’t consider it a game because its progression is minimal, and the fun primarily comes from felling forests to amass money to upgrade a massive laser and then jetpacking off into nothingness. In simpler terms, I enjoy playing it, but it doesn’t have typical game elements like advancement or storyline.

9. Glum

A Shoe-In

Glum follows a simple concept: it’s an exploration game focused on combat, where every move revolves around kicking. Whether it’s pressing a button, jumping off walls, defeating opponents, or propelling objects in any direction, everything boils down to a kick. The absurdity of this singular mechanic is quite amusing.

I really enjoy the humor in the writing because it enhances the absurdity of the situation – exploring dungeons, breaking down doors left and right, and encountering enemies just as you’d expect.

For a while, I’m unsure how long this sequence might continue without tiring out, yet the game manages to maintain my interest by consistently offering new upgrades. This ranges from propelling your boot like a missile to employing it to capture enemies. Each novelty seems increasingly absurd.

Surely, Glum is an unquestionably appealing and amusing game, with a unique feature that allows players to hurl objects skyward for powerful kicks, enabling them to strike distant objectives before returning to deliver a comical kick to a character in the chest, who then bounces off every wall in a humorous fashion.

8. Dice ‘n Goblins

Crawling Out

In Dice ‘n Goblins, the art style is remarkably distinctive, featuring characters, adversaries, and interactive elements sketched in a way that resembles colored pencils as you traverse the 3D, cel-shaded dungeon-exploring levels. These environments evoke memories of vintage games with an RPG flair.

In simpler terms, you have the option to engage any foe you encounter in a combat reminiscent of Paper Mario, utilizing distinctive dice-based mechanics. Initially, these mechanics might seem random, but they offer multiple opportunities to amplify your attack power and influence the outcome of the conflict.

Just like Slay the Spire, the game offers an experience where the numbers are randomized, but you can consistently construct strategies for defense or devise complex, powerful attacks to defeat opponents. This flexibility in building your strategy gives each decision significant weight, making the gameplay incredibly engaging and enjoyable.

This game’s dungeon exploration seems rather typical with some rough edges, but the extraordinary blend of styles in a captivating art design sets it apart. With adorable characters and a straightforward narrative, it’s incredibly accessible, far less intimidating than most traditional dungeon crawlers.

7. Haste: Broken Worlds

Broken Barriers

If you’re someone who enjoys moving at supersonic speeds, Haste: Broken Worlds is likely to give you an exhilarating burst of pleasure. It quickly immerses you in a stage, urging you to sprint, dodge obstacles, and finesse your trajectory for the ideal landing each time.

Experiencing immense pleasure as you master speed, nail landings, and accelerate further by utilizing your skills, every level, randomly generated, presents a distinct challenge that brings a sense of accomplishment and delight upon overcoming it. Furthermore, the roguelike map design and item system seamlessly binds all elements together.

Each purchased item in the game enhances your skills and offers benefits such as increased health upon successful landings or converting poor evaluations to better ones. These items subtly alter your approach, compelling you to reassess your tactics while avoiding perilous situations.

It embodies the relentless, keep-moving spirit typical of endless runner games, yet offers a sense of depth and freedom that surpasses any previous game in this genre. Each mechanic contributes to the exhilaration you feel as you dash through open spaces and navigate obstacles, rather than colliding with walls.

6. GenoKids

Stylish Substance

If you enjoy fast-paced action games characterized by impressive attacks, graded styles, transformations, and top-notch animations, GenoKids might capture your interest significantly, as it offers a more flexible interpretation of the genre with strong inspirations from Kingdom Hearts 2 and Devil May Cry.

The dialogue often features overly dramatic anime-style voice acting, enhanced by an appealing cel-shaded visual style, and amplified even more by extravagant animation effects that prompt me to invent long lists of powers and forms.

The fight offers an optimal blend of complex yet graspable mechanics, where you swiftly maneuver among adversaries, striking them with your fundamental attack or projectile, and subsequently maintaining the trigger for a moment to unleash impressive special abilities that require build-up time before activation.

In this game, each character has exclusive special attacks, and they both acquire an enhanced state where their moves become a thrilling display of power, swiftly depleting enemy health bars. However, this empowered form is temporary, and once it ends, you may find yourself alternately attacked by two opponents.

5. Swing Swamp

Eight Handfuls of Tasks

In the game titled “Swing Swamp,” you control a spider that is being transported by another spider. Your goal is to regain your silk-spinning ability, and after doing so, embark on an exciting journey where, surprisingly, acquiring a gun becomes part of the adventure.

Why not get a gun, you might wonder? Well, in this peculiar world, it seems that’s just how things are!

As a devoted gaming enthusiast, I can’t help but express my excitement over this adrenaline-pumping fusion of 3D platforming and shooter genres. The gameplay is nothing short of chaotic, constantly throwing me into precarious scenarios where I must strategically adjust my trajectory, swiftly aim and fire at any approaching foe, all while dodging a relentless barrage of mold spores!

After surmounting each significant obstacle, you gain another impressive maneuver for your growing arsenal, and I particularly enjoy the rapid-fire machine gun. It requires some time to load, but once charged, you can unleash a destructive barrage on everything in sight, becoming a formidable force.

It’s quite eccentric, exuding a delightful atmosphere and some really catchy tunes that make it an enjoyable gameplay experience, especially for those who are adept at juggling multiple tasks simultaneously, as it seems like you’re playing multiple games concurrently.

4. Nautical Survival

Watertight Strategy

Navigating Nautical Survival is like being in Vampire Survivors’ bullet-ridden heaven, blended with boating adventures, and sprinkled with a dose of anxiety as you navigate multiple islands to enhance your weaponry and income, all while battling the relentless surge of sea creatures determined to spill your blood in the ocean.

From a basic pump-action gun to a colossal anchor, your array of attack strategies offers quite a variety. It’s immensely gratifying to deliver significant blows with these powerful strikes, especially considering the large groups you draw.

In this game, managing a steerless ship amidst swarms of fish and earning an incremental 0.15 coins per second seems crucial for me.

Following several iterations where the process grows and captures more territory, you’ll encounter a colossal adversary that demands your full attention as you strategize on how to repel this titanic threat while simultaneously dodging intricate bullet trajectories. This challenge is incredibly rewarding when successfully navigated with the boat’s maneuvers.

3. Paper Animal Adventure

Trotting Up And Out

As a gamer, I find Paper Animal Adventure to be an incredibly innovative twist on Action RPGs. It plunges me into unpredictable levels that are uniquely generated each time, and the combat feels like a strategic turn-based battle system, which becomes even more refined as I progress deeper. Being a roguelike, it offers numerous choices throughout my journey, making every playthrough feel fresh and challenging.

The game boasts several distinct personalities, offering additional twists for an exhilarating experience. During gameplay, it often generates exciting levels that are enjoyable to speed through, annihilate enemies, and quickly switch characters to eliminate adversaries more swiftly.

With every character you encounter, approximately a dozen attributes can be improved. However, the specific attribute that gets enhanced is chosen at random each time you reach a campsite. Consequently, you might end up with a tank who attacks slowly, or a high-damage dealer lacking in defense, which adds depth to each character by making them unique.

As a gamer, I’m blown away by the level of dedication to roguelike gameplay, all while crafting a narrative reminiscent of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. It feels like I’m traversing various zones, gathering numerous MacGuffins, and dodging unexpected enemy assaults with each new loop.

2. Advent NEON

An Electric Adventure

Among the many fast-paced, thrilling, and seamless platformer brawler games I’ve encountered, Advent NEON stands out as one of the best. I’ve played it before, but its appearance at this Next Fest has made my experience with it even more enjoyable than before. It effortlessly induces a state of optimal performance when you get into the rhythm of play.

This game offers an incredible sensation, from brutally crushing foes with powerful punches to zooming at supersonic speeds and effortlessly obliterating enemies with your colossal blows. The skillful art of parrying attacks or charging into them for a thrilling slow-motion punch feels flawless.

As a fan, I can’t get enough of this masterpiece! The rhythm and beats are simply outstanding, and once I hit play, I find myself drawn back again and again. What makes it even more appealing is the inclusion of optional level goals that are not only tough but also deepen my understanding of the mechanics. It’s a fantastic journey of learning as I conquer each level!

It strikes a perfect balance by hitting all the essential elements, yet introduces a fresh perspective in comparison to typical Sonic-style games. The fighting sequences, despite making you slow down, are remarkably dynamic and smooth, thanks to its electrifying move set.

1. Aethermancer

Out Of Darkness

Among the demos on this list, this one stands out as the most widely appreciated, and for valid reasons. Offbrand Games have demonstrated their knack for publishing top-notch games with the launch of Rivals of Aether 2, so it’s no surprise that Aethermancer is remarkably impressive, offering a unique blend of roguelite gameplay, creature collection, and RPG elements.

If you’re a fan of Pokémon, then Aethermancer might strike a chord as it incorporates similar battle mechanics but offers a fresh experience with new features like staggering, copying, remaking, and extensive exploration that surpasses the Pokémon series, delving into intricate depths and providing exceptionally satisfying animations.

This game boasts stunning character animations and creative monster concepts that make it truly distinctive. All its features combine to give it an edge, making it a noteworthy choice. I’m particularly fond of the method for capturing creatures, which lets you save and reuse them in later sessions as well.

It seems to me that the roguelike aspects and the creature-collecting mechanics harmoniously enhance the gaming experience, making it enjoyable to play repeatedly, and I must say, this demo has sparked my eagerness for the complete game more than any other.

2025-03-02 21:40