Steam Next Fest June 2026

It’s been another iteration of There Are Too Many God Damn Demos, but this time I’ve actually played all of the one’s I’ve downloaded.

Here are my thoughts about the 39 demos I’ve played.

The Good

Corsair Cove

I’ve had my eye on this, pirate city builder is an underexplored theme in my opinion. The building is enjoyable and results in unique looking places, thanks to the vertical building. Graphics are pretty, water and jungle is just full of tiny details and well rendered, though I’ve had some rough pop-in. Special mention to the intro song, they could have easily gone with a generic pirate shanty, but this more melancholic song is so so good.

Sir, We Have An Orc Problem

This looks and feels like a shitpost when you first open it, but then suddenly a few hours have passed and you have to force yourself to turn the game off. The graphics are utilitarian, but the gameplay is surprisingly engaging. While looking like a generic tower defense, there are some critical differences. The orcs do not follow fixed paths and almost behave like a liquid at points. Your towers need to be given predefined targeting positions, with quite a bit of inaccuracy. The tech tree and currency system looks and feels more like an incremental game than your usual tower defense. Overall, a addicting surprise.

Brigador Killers

Easy review, it feels just like the first Brigador, just more. Music, sound design, visual design, graphics, it all still works wonderfully. This game has some more depth though, with on-foot combat, inventory and apparently base management. Story seems bananas as usual as well.

Bombanana

Laughed our asses off. You play three monkeys trying to defuse a bomb. One is blind and is the one to touch the bomb, one is mute and has to convey the defusal instructions to the blind monkey, one is deaf and is the in-between monkey. Hilarity ensues. I am a bit worries about replayability, but with enough bomb modules or maybe some modifiers, this could be an excellent game.

Speak

It’s just Diplomacy, the board game, but styled as a mafia gang war. I love Diplomacy, so this was great for me, and I will totally play this if we ever again get enough people.

Desk Space

An idle game where you’re in control of a space company, buying miners, traders and the likes. Not a lot of unique things in here, but does what it intends to well. Banger synthwave soundtrack!

ReStory: Chill Electronic Repairs

You run a small electronics restoration workshop in early 20th century Japan. Wonderful hand painted art style, very chill vibe. Seems pretty freeform, not a lot of pressure or difficult jobs in the bit that I played. Definitely scratches that “Restoration YouTube video you can play” itch. There’s a spare parts box, which made me unreasonably happy.

Offbeat

Now this is a unique one! You get gifted what looks like an old 4-track recorder, that somehow also does MIDI. You connect shitty children’s toys that make sound to it, and then you make music. All without requiring ANY music knowledge, although you can unlock it some more if you do know your notes and scales. You get people asking for jingles or music, with specific instruments or lengths, you get money, you buy more strange things to attach to your recorder. Made for me, good vibes!

Moonlight Peaks

It’s a Vampire Stardew Valley, but in the twee way. Seems very competent and well put together, the style is just not really for me.

ZeroSpace

I absolutely love the unit and world design. Heavy industrial with a sprinkle of Roman Empire. Gameplay lies somewhere between Starcraft and Command & Conquer. Story is not great, not terrible in what I played so far.

Mistfall Hunter

Looks wonderful, but the menus run like shit on my computer. Odd. There’s a Google Forms ass looking birthday verification before the game starts. Also odd. After that though it’s like a Elden Ring Extraction … Brawler? Yeah, that works. Funny crow companion for the first mission!

over the hill

Low-poly Snowrunner, which works wonderfully in Coop. Very free form, very chill time. Light effects at night are surprisingly nice looking.

Iron Nest

One of the two “Huge Artillery Piece Simulator” games in the works, been keeping track of this one for a while. Gameplay in the demo was relatively simple, but has a lot of places to go. Story was very on the nose, which is fine for me in a game so focused on intricate mechanics. They could throw some curveballs in there though.

The Message from Deep Space

You need to translate for alien first contact. So far the puzzles have been simple math problems or pattern recognition. It’s fun though, excited to see where they go with it. The “naming unknown symbols yourself” mechanic is pretty cool, good additional layer to think about.

The Bad (Undercooked)

Deep Dish Dungeon

Food-focused dungeon crawler. Great vibe, nothing gameplay

Oh Ship!

Another spaceship crew simulator, lacking in features and mechanics. Why is the in-game voice so god damn crunchy?

Salvation Denied

You build a tower with friends and big machinery. Kinda fun, but in a “Everything is fun with friends” way.

Omen

Twin-stick spaceship extraction shooter with interesting world design, but kinda boring gameplay.

Gargantua

Settlement building on a giant spaceship, just not fun to play currently.

Sublight

Bullet Heaven in space where you attach modules to your capital ship, like TerraTech Legion. Could probably be fun, just very early in development and quite easy.

Hearth and Hamlet

It’s like a Clicker Incremental City Builder, but with very little choices so far. Lovely modern RPG Maker like graphics though.

Cloudbreaker

One of the first and most-used words in this game is Bloil, used completely sincerely. Another Bullet Heaven, this time as an airship. It’s fine.

Project P.I.T.T.

Feed rubber ducks to a pit, make dough, repeat. Surprisingly sinister retro atmosphere. Bit boring. No clue what they’re doing in their loading screens, as they push my CPU to 100% immediately.

Drop Command

Someone’s rebuilt MechWarrior 5 in low poly graphics. There’s supposed to be empire management somewhere in this, but I didn’t reach it until I got bored.

Dust Front

Red Alert like with nothing but skirmishes at this point. Real cool graphic style.

Star Trek Outposts Unknown

Exploration focused Star Trek settlement builder is pretty obvious, no clue why no one’s done it so far. Actually pretty cool, just feels not ready and needs polish.

Keep It Up!

You keep a balloon in the air with your friends. Does what it says on the tin. Balloon physics feel pretty accurate, just not a lot to it at this point.

The Guild - Europa 1410

I actually very much like this, but that’s because it’s just like most of the previous games, with a new coat of paint. Needs something new and different.

Vholume

This will probably be fucking excellent once it’s released, right now it’s basically a (very good!) movement demo. Feels great!

The Bad (I hate it)

MayDay MayDie

You make 3D Among Us, but all your puzzles are boring AND annoying, and moving around feels bad. Waste of time.

Fracture Point

Close to straight up slop. Single player extraction shooter where you storm an megacorporation tower. The sound is crunchy, the controls are float, the graphics are … fine. You and the enemies are bullet sponges (at least compared to the realistic vibe and other extraction shooters), AND they give you piddly little pistols with almost no ammo to start off with, so it’s also a slog to play through. Almost makes me wish for actual AI slop, at least that can be discarded immediately.

The Carcass

This could actually very much be my thing! A command line interface eldritch colony builder?! Sounds great! … If you don’t turn off the horrible CRT filter, it will instantly give you a headache. Once you do, you’ll be slammed in the face with full screen page after page of pixelated text, and I’m sorry, but it’s just too much for me. Start these games of small for fuck’s sake, it’s been the recipe for success for so long for a reason.

The Kingsward

Severely undercooked Diablo, with floaty gameplay and necessitating hit-and-run tactics on even the most basic enemies, because they will kill you. The little writing I saw was like a worse Fable, in both humour and drama.

Sunset Summit

It’s just worse PEAK, but you’re supposed to laugh at everyone playing wrinkly old people. Steam doesn’t mention AI in it, but it’s got a smelly smell.

Enginefall

PvPvE extraction shooter with base building and … It’s just a nothing game honestly. Yay trains I guess.

The Incomprehensible

Casualties: Unknown

What is it with games that are extremely my shit, with deep simulation and complex mechanics, darker styles, and me then discovering that they are very Furry-coded? Like, I don’t mind, it’s just happened like 3 or 4 times in the last few years. Another point of friction was, while I like my cute little furry creatures to be nice and cozy, as well as bodily-unharmed, this game DISAGREES with that notion. holy shit. The pain and accompanying yelps you put your character through, in an oppressively dark and dangerous environment, with the only way of quitting the game being to DETONATE THE BOMB COLLAR OF YOUR CHARACTER, it’s all just a bit … much. Yikes.

Compound Interest

Incomprehensible. You’re supposed to be like the handler / boss of some street gang, but there’s so much text and people and split screens and options … I was just completely overwhelmed

The Last Flight

This one’s a mess. The store page promises something about building a plane and surviving in a beautiful world. The game starts of as a retro computer UI, that boots you into a retro VR UI, which then puts you in a house where you have to build a table and a computer, on which you can use ANOTHER retro computer UI to order beer and stuff on retro websites, use fake IRC chats, and do some CLI hacking. I’ve found the plane after a while, but the tutorial had long ended by then and I had no idea what to do. Someone explain this one to me please.