https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest

June edition is live and my religion prompts me to download as many demos as my ssd can welcome and play them throughout the week. I usually hover around a good hundred, and that's still a very small percentage of all demos available. I like to sort and evaluate them on a piece of paper (pic below from february).

Anyway here are some takeaways so far (still downloading):

• this edition, I'm noticing builds that are heavier than they should (based on what the game looks like), some indie games are approaching 2Gb of download, when I was used to the 500Mb - 1Gb range
• as always the most wishlisted demos aren't the best, upcoming AA games are all looks no essence for up to 30Gb, I usually play them first to get rid of them and make space for more interesting indie games
• Jusant and Cairn had their impact on the industry, there's a bunch of climbing games (mixed with the Only Up / Getting Over It formula) trying to ride the trend
• Noticing a lot of JRPGs inspired games as well, can't correlate with the success of Expedition 33 but my guess is that there's a big audience for those
• You still have a ton of survival crafting / chill farming games, but less than previous editions (I think it was October 2025 that was riddled with those)
• I'll edit this post with more insights as I go through the demos

In this spoiler, the full list of demos I downloaded so far (will update throughout the week), I usually download the ones I already wishlisted (~15 to 20), then go through the trending ones (~10), and finally just doomscroll looking at interesting stuff:

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/games by /u/RobotWantsKitty on 2026-02-23 19:44:32+00:00.

This Next Fest runs until October 20, 10 am Pacific.

Let's share our lists and opinions on the demos. We'll help each other find promising games.

This Next Fest runs until Monday, June 16, 10 am PDT.

I downloaded about 40 demos, will report back once I played all of them !

Steam Next Fest, which is a regular event for showcasing upcoming games, is happening now on steam and will continue until February 12 at 10:00 AM PST (UTC-8).

With hundreds of demos available, even if you're only interested in a fraction of the games it's going to be difficult to try everything before the event ends. With that in mind, I'm hoping people can use this thread to share their thoughts on the titles they've played.

Which games did you enjoy, and which do you think suck? Please share your thoughts!