Dive into the future of gaming with Steam Next Fest 2025, where over 2,300 free demos await your discovery-ranging from intense mech battles in Mecha BREAK to cozy, emotional storytelling in Wanderstop. This week-long digital festival offers a rare chance to explore the most anticipated upcoming PC games, chat live with developers, and find your next favorite title before it even launches. But hurry-these demos vanish after March 3, so gear up to play, wishlist, and immerse yourself in gaming’s freshest experiences now.
We’re gobbling up these demos at AELGAMES, playing as much as we can and gathering our favorites to share with you.
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Feb 25
Toussaint Egan, Oli Welsh and 1 more
The 15 must-play demos of Steam Next Fest
The 15 must-play demos of Steam Next Fest showcase a diverse array of exciting upcoming games across various genres, from fast-paced run ’n gun platformers like ChainStaff to narrative-driven murder mysteries such as Best Served Cold. Highlights include innovative titles like Asgard’s Fall with its unique Norse-themed skill system, cozy visual novels like Type-Noise: Shonen Shojo, and high-speed roguelike platformers such as Haste: Broken Worlds. This curated selection offers something for every type of gamer, featuring both indie gems and highly anticipated releases that provide a compelling glimpse into the future of gaming.
Steam Next Fest – the triannual online event dedicated to spotlighting demos from new games – is back this month for another weeklong celebration of recent and upcoming titles. With only a week’s worth of time, there’s only so many hours one has to play through Next Fest’s best, let alone sift through everything else! Not to worry; we’ve already done the hardest part for you.
AELGAMES’s staff has come together to create a list of some of our favorite demos we’ve played so far. From whimsical walking simulators to quirky puzzle games and more, we’ve amassed an eclectic melange of the most creative and original new titles to choose from so you can play to your heart’s content.
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Feb 28
Zoë Hannah
In this post-apocalyptic farming sim, you must grow crops to survive
In this post-apocalyptic farming sim, you take on the vital role of growing crops to support a struggling community in a world that has collapsed. Set in Doloc Town, a settlement made up of neighbors living in trailers and shipping containers, your farming efforts are crucial to the town’s survival. While some residents cook, fish, or build infrastructure, your drone-assisted farming provides the primary food supply, making your crops essential for the community’s endurance. The game offers an intuitive farming experience combined with a compelling narrative of resilience and cooperation in a harsh, dystopian environment.
It’s not all about living up to grandpa’s legacy in this farming simulator. In fact, grandpa’s probably long gone, because in this post-apocalyptic farming sim, your neighbors are the folks who live in the trailers and shipping containers near your tent. This is Doloc Town, a community that’s grown out of necessity during life after the end of the world. Here, your crops are your contribution to the town’s survival – some residents cook, some catch fish, some build new infrastructure. You farm crops and become the town’s source of food, delivered by your drone, of course.
The free demo for Doloc Town, developed by RedSaw Games Studio, is available to play through Steam Next Fest from Feb. 24 to March 3. In the demo, you learn the mechanics of the farming sim with a refreshing sense of trust in the player’s knowledge of the genre – the gameplay is self-explanatory and typical, but the setting and story make it a fresh addition to the genre. There’s a cast of neighbors to meet, all of whom hint at the town’s troubled past surviving a falling society and standing up to an authoritarian regime of some sort. I haven’t quite figured out the plot, but that’s not a bad thing; I just want to play more Doloc Town.
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Feb 28
Oli Welsh
What’s more fun than crawling dungeons? Designing them first
What could be more satisfying than delving into dungeons? Designing them yourself first. In the game Into the Restless Ruins, players build their dungeon one card-room at a time during the day, carefully planning paths and strategic placements before exploring the layout by night. This unique deckbuilding roguelike balances the randomness of card draws with thoughtful construction, where each room can offer buffs, challenges, or vital resources. Navigating the dungeon under the pressure of a dwindling torchlight adds urgency, making the design choices crucial for survival and success. This blend of creativity and exploration offers a fresh twist on the dungeon-crawling experience.
Into the Restless Ruins is a roguelike deckbuilder in which. no, wait, come back!
I get it, it can be hard to overcome your cynicism when faced with the conjunction of “roguelike” and “deckbuilder”, the two most pervasive buzzwords in indie gaming – especially in the wake of such perfect expressions of the form as Slay the Spire and Balatro. And it’s true that Into the Restless Ruins, which is currently available to play as a Steam Next Fest demo, isn’t trying too hard to differentiate itself with its pixel art and its dungeon-crawling premise. But it has one new idea, and it’s a really good one.
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Feb 27
Oli Welsh
Mindwave builds thrillingly on a Nintendo masterpiece
Mindwave builds thrillingly on a Nintendo masterpiece by capturing the high-intensity, rapid-fire microgame style that made WarioWare iconic, while injecting its own unique flair with a striking comic strip art style and a darker, more detailed narrative. Players step into the shoes of Pandora, navigating a futuristic city and competing in psychic microgames within the MindScape tower, blending frenetic gameplay with branching conversations that add unexpected depth. This fresh take not only honors the spirit of Nintendo’s classic but elevates it with a distinctive 2000s-inspired aesthetic and a compelling story-driven approach, making Mindwave a standout at the 2025 Steam Next Fest.
I’ve said it before: Nintendo’s WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! for Game Boy Advance is one of the all-time greats. The 2003 minigame compilation is an absurdist deconstruction of gaming itself, and an irreverent, scattershot creation that stands as perhaps the most punk-rock thing Nintendo has ever done. But while the masterpiece prefigured everything from the 2000s casual gaming boom to the coming mobile gaming revolution, it’s seldom been imitated, except by its own (still going) series of sequels. Until now.
Mindwave, a (very successfully) Kickstarter-funded game by HoloHammer, is an explicit tribute to the first WarioWare, from its overall anarchic presentation down to the coarsely digitized sound of the “yeah!” sample that greets a successfully completed microgame. It’s also doing its own thing.
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Feb 25
Tyler Colp
The most bizarre digging game on Steam is full of love and trash
Among the many intriguing demos at Steam Next Fest 2025, one stands out as the most bizarre digging game, blending quirky gameplay with a heartfelt theme of love amidst heaps of trash. This game invites players to dig through layers of refuse, uncovering stories and surprises that combine humor and warmth, making it a uniquely charming experience in the festival’s diverse lineup. Its offbeat concept and emotional undertones make it a must-try for those looking for something truly different and memorable.
Sorry, A Game About Digging A Hole, I’ve found a game that’s even weirder. It’s called Mashina. It’s also a game about digging, except you’re a little robot made out of trash, in a world also made out of trash, and it’s all kind of beautiful.
The first thing you may notice is how strange Mashina’s aesthetic is compared to . pretty much anything else on Steam. Everything is made out of real world objects, like wires and crumpled paper, and it’s all animated in stop-motion. Judero, the developer’s previous game, has a similar aesthetic, but it leans harder on the claymation side of things.
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Feb 24
Zoë Hannah
This desktop cat game is the best part of my Monday
The Bongo Cat demo, featured in the 2025 Steam Next Fest, has quickly become the highlight of my Monday. This charming desktop game lets an adorable animated cat sit on your screen, tapping its paws in sync with your typing and mouse clicks, turning mundane tasks into a delightful experience. The simple yet engaging reward system, where you collect hats for your cat every half hour, adds a fun layer of progression. Despite being a demo, it feels polished and complete, with promises of even more customization and features in the full release expected in March 2025. Its cute design and relaxing gameplay make it a perfect companion for easing into the week.
It hardly matters that the version of Bongo Cat I downloaded before work this morning is a demo. It feels like the full game, because the game is simple: let this cat sit on your desktop while you type and click around, and earn points for every letter you input.
There’s incentive beyond the cat’s inherent cuteness, which is only maximized by its tip-tapping paws that move with each keystroke – every 30 minutes, you’ll earn a hat. So far, I have a tiny cowboy hat, a beer stein, a ball cap, a party hat, and a background of falling flowers. Should I ever earn 10 hats of one quality rank, I can exchange them for a new, higher quality hat.
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Feb 21
Oli Welsh
Here’s a great puzzle game about one of life’s little anxieties
Here’s a great puzzle game that captures one of life’s little anxieties by having you arrange cheerful little shape people in seating layouts, challenging you to find the perfect spot and manage the subtle social tension of choosing where to sit. The gameplay involves picking up these characters and experimenting with different seating arrangements, turning a common everyday worry into an engaging and thoughtful puzzle experience.
When you ride the bus, do you prefer a window seat, or do you like to stand? At the movies, are you a “middle of the middle” purist, like me? Do you position yourself aisle-side for a quick exit, or down the front for maximum immersion? A few days ago I got a great seat for a French heist movie (it was Rififi, Letterboxd-heads), but then a tall guy sat in front of me and I had to keep craning my neck or leaning to the side to read the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. So annoying!
Where you sit matters. Let’s be honest, we all have our preferences, and we all care about them deeply – perhaps too deeply. Throw enough persnickety humans together and seating becomes a social minefield. Have you ever tried to make a seating plan for a wedding? It’s a nightmare.
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Feb 21
Oli Welsh
You are Shotgun Cop Man, and you shoot your guns to jump
In “You are Shotgun Cop Man,” players experience a unique twist on platforming action where shooting your guns is not just for combat but also your primary means of jumping. This innovative mechanic adds a fresh layer of strategy and excitement as you navigate through challenging levels, combining precise shooting with agile movement to overcome obstacles and enemies alike.
Jumping and shooting have been two of the primary actions in video games since the medium’s inception, and yet they’ve rarely been smooshed together – certainly not with the hilarious, maddening verve of Shotgun Cop Man. The only other example that springs to mind right now is rocket jumping in Quake, and that started life as an exploit, it wasn’t an intended part of the game design.
Not so in Shotgun Cop Man. Shooting to jump is the concept this entire game revolves around, and it’s exploited with great ruthlessness and wit by DeadToast across the levels available to play in the game’s demo. The demo is available now and will be featured in next week’s Steam Next Fest, which runs from Feb. 24 to March 3.
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Feb 19
Nicole Carpenter
This post took too long to write because I’m distracted by my digital rabbits
This post took longer than expected because I kept getting distracted by my digital rabbits hopping around on my screen. Their charming antics made it hard to focus, but it also reminded me why I enjoy these quirky, interactive experiences so much-just like the unique demos featured in the 2025 Steam Next Fest.
I downloaded an idle game, Tiny Pasture, onto my work computer this morning. Like Rusty’s Retirement before it, Tiny Pasture lives at the bottom of my desktop screen, overlaid on the windows I’ve got open. In this case, five bunnies are running back and forth on AELGAMES’s CMS while I attempt to write this post. Created by developer CaveLiquid, Tiny Pasture was released on Monday and has surpassed 10,000 concurrent players on Steam – clearly, there are a few thousand of us who are enamored by our new little, digital pets.
Tiny Pasture is more pet care and management than the farming simulation found in Rusty’s Retirement; in the several hours I’ve had the game open on my computer, I’ve slowly amassed a stable of five rabbits, all of which periodically drop coins. Coins are how you expand your pasture, be it with new animals, decorations, or helpful facilities – I got a beehive that automatically collects coins. I’ve also got to feed my rabbits carrots or cabbage, ensuring they’re kept healthy and well fed. Clicking on them occasionally for pets keeps ’em happy – and collects coins, an added bonus. As you might expect, the rabbits poop, so I click on their droppings to clean it up.
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Most Popular
The 2025 Steam Next Fest showcased a diverse array of highly popular demos that captivated players across various genres. Leading the pack was Mecha Break, a mech-action PvP game featuring intense battles and extensive customization, which attracted over 317,000 players. Other standout demos included Among Us 3D, offering a fresh first-person twist on the classic multiplayer imposter game, and RoadCraft, a unique construction management sim focused on disaster site restoration. The Gothic remake demo also impressed with its polished RPG experience, while Fellowship delivered engaging multiplayer dungeon runs. This eclectic mix of action, RPG, simulation, and multiplayer titles highlights the broad appeal of the festival’s most-played demos, all of which remain available to try on Steam.
- Final Destination: Bloodlines directors say IMAX viewers will get a version no one else will ever see
- The Pokémon Fossil Museum is coming to the US, you’re gonna want to get tickets
- Minecraft finally adds saddles as a crafting item, and it’s only been 15 years
- Disco Emperor Palpatine is here
- Nintendo’s redesign of Diddy Kong is so much better
Which Steam Next Fest demos in 2025 are generating the most buzz so far
The 2025 Steam Next Fest demos generating the most buzz so far include:
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Mecha Break, a mech-action PvP game with intense robot battles, despite mixed feedback on its monetization and leveling system.
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Among Us 3D, a first-person 3D reimagining of the classic multiplayer imposter game, which has drawn significant player interest.
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RoadCraft, where players manage disaster restoration sites using construction machinery, gaining popularity for its unique premise.
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Gothic Remake, a standalone prologue demo that has impressed fans of the RPG series with its faithful action and world-building.
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Fellowship, a multiplayer online dungeon adventure featuring scaling dungeon runs, praised for its engaging gameplay and positive reception.
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Other notable demos attracting attention include Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, Dune: Awakening, PUBG: Blindspot, and indie hits like Wanderstop and Do No Harm.
Additionally, indie titles such as Promise Mascot Agency, a multi-genre game blending simulation, card RPG, and visual novel elements, have sparked curiosity for their originality. Roguelite card battlers like Castle V Castle and quirky puzzle games such as Hazard Pay have also been highlighted by players for their engaging mechanics and fresh takes.
Overall, the festival showcases a mix of AAA and indie games with RPGs, action, and simulation genres leading the hype, while some horror titles and unique narrative-driven games round out the most-played and talked-about demos.
Which demos are most popular among players in the February 2025 Steam Next Fest
The most popular demos among players during the February 2025 Steam Next Fest were led by Mecha BREAK, which attracted over 317,000 players with its high-octane mech combat. Other highly played demos included Fellowship (16,721 players), a multiplayer online dungeon adventure; RoadCraft (12,599 players), a physics-based construction simulation; and the Gothic 1 Remake demo (10,222 players), which revisits the cult classic RPG. Additional notable popular demos were The First Berserker: Khazan, Bongo Cat, and Solarpunk. The event showcased a diverse range of genres, with RPGs, action, simulation, and casual games all well represented among the top demos.
