This recent Steam Next Fest has had more demos to play than any before, good thing this time they added some filters. Some games are complete and long enough that they deserve their own article.

From the 30+ games I played only 2 did not work on Linux, one deliberately threw me a message they do not support Wine, Proton or Steam Deck when I tried to open it. And the other crashed when starting a new game.

I played the sequences The Rise of the Golden Idol, Unrailed 2 Back on Track, Streets of Rogue 2 and Commandos: Origins. They have some mechanical improvements over the original, and add much more to the franchises.

I also found some fascinating new games, all worked well on Linux and the demos are still available.

Sultan’s Game

Steam Page: Sultan’s Game

The Sultan forces you to play a cruel card/tile game (It looks like fancy dominoes to me): you will pick a tile, then you need to do whatever the tile tells you to do in 7 days or you will be killed. The tasks are never easy, you need to manage your resources, deal with time-based events, choose between multiple paths to proceed, while trying to keep your head and those dear to you alive.

Feels like a turn-based cultist simulator, but I was way more engaged in the story and questioning my decisions while playing. The downside was the texts were a bit small.

Keep Driving

Steam Page: Keep Driving

It is an RPG where you travel around Oregon Trail Style, with random encounters, turn-based driving “combat”, “dungeon crawl” hiking, friendships on the road, and inventory management. It was hard, but it felt cozy at the same time thanks to the soundtrack, gameplay and art style.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate

Steam Page: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate

Roguelike action slash ’em up, like many others. But the combat was very satisfactory and felt more balanced for a roguelike. There is also a clear story and motivation for what is going on*.

It was weird how many roguelikes I tried that were just some mechanics tied in together with no clear goals and reason to keep on playing. Balanced means that you do not need to farm&die grind to progress, it comes naturally as you learn about the game.

Spilled

Steam Page: Spilled

Cozy game where you clean oil spills and plastics from the water, and rescue animals with a solar-powered boat.

Loco Motive

Steam Page: Loco Motive

Murder Mystery point & click. The demo did not have interesting puzzles, but the story and voice acting was enough to keep me playing.

Radio Commander: Pacific Campaign

Steam Page: Radio Commander: Pacific Campaign

This game was different from anything I have played before*, you give command to your squad through a radio, and get their feedback the same way. You have a map you draw to can keep track of what is going, as drawing on it has no effect on the battle. I think without the visual feedback we have in RTS it made the game more tense to me, but I ended up enjoying it more and caring for the squads given the interactions we had.

• Later I noticed I had Radio Commander already, and it is the same idea, but I haven’t played it and don’t remember when I got it.

Empire of the Ants

Steam Page: Empire of the Ants

Photorealistic ant RTS. You are an ant explorer, finding new nests and places to forage. Using workers and fighters to expand your colony so you can survive the flood. At some point, I think I recruited some beetles, not sure, but I spent some time on entomology websites afterwards to confirm some of the information, and found some interesting articles, like this one on ant warfare.

Windblown

Steam Page: Windblown

Another action roguelike that the combat mechanics felt satisfactory, and it felt balanced. Also, it was fun playing as a guinea pig.

Void Sols

Steam Page: Void Sols

In this minimalist top-down souls-like, you play as a triangle fighting other shapes in maze like maps. Nice implementation of the combat mechanics.

Strange Seed

Steam Page: Strange Seed

I can remember the last time I had so much fun with an unfinished/glitched game.

You are a blob that goes around fighting and eating things, and eventually, you get to add animal parts to yourself. Then you use those new parts to solve 3D platform puzzles or combat and eat more animals.

You can also combine those animals parts, sadly it is just stats. It would be cool if it would be aesthetic as well.

Randomice

Steam Page: Randomice

Metroid-like no combat platform puzzle where you play as a rat trying to escape from a procedurally generated house chasing for next skills, so you can reach places to unlock new skills. It does sound Sisyphean, and it is. It was enjoyable to have the interactions with other rats for the first time and learn a bit of what is going on. I also had fun trying to beat my previous time after the first repetition - the game has speed run potential.

Tools and non-Next Fest demos

While endeavouring to prepare for this Next Fest (Oct 2024) I was probing other demos on Steam beforehand, I found some good and fascinating tools, like Pixel Composer, Pixelorama, Tilesetter and a very polished turn-based tactical game called Dice Gambit. Because the tools are already released (and I have never seen a tool in the Next Fest) and the game did not appear as Next Fest game despite being released early in 2025 (maybe because it is a “First Act” rather than a demo, or perhaps we will see it in February’s Next Fest), I put them in their own section here.

Pixel Composer

Steam Page: Pixel Composer

If you are familiar with node composing tools, you will feel at home with this open-source pixel art generator. If you are not, there are plenty of tutorials from the author, and he posts a video guide with any new release of the tool.

You can use to generate sprites for your game, or create beautiful pixel art compositions and animations.

I got hooked on the tool when I saw many of the image processing techniques I used for image processing as nodes. So it became an invaluable tool for quick prototyping before I write any code.

If you are looking for a more “traditional” pixel art tool Pixelorama is open source and might be what you need - they did not have a demo, but it is worth mentioning.

Tilesetter

Steam Page: Tilesetter

Tilesetter is a very robust tile generator and map editor, and you can export direct to game engines like Godot, Defold and many others.

If you are looking for an open-source tool, look no further than LDtk by deepnight, who worked on Dead Cells and many other games, also shares many of his knowledge on his website.

Dice Gambit

Steam Page: Dice Gambit

In this turn-based tactics RPG, you will build and guide your family of “inquisitors” through politics while fighting monsters to save the city.

I was very impressed by the quality of this unfinished game that will be released only next year. The gameplay mechanics are solid, and the game is enhanced by the unique art style, great music and engaging story telling.

At first, I was reticent because of the dice roll mechanic at the beginning of each round, each dice determines your possible actions. I am not a big fan of heaving RNG on tactical games, imagine if you only roll movement dice when you need attack rolls or defence. But there was no need for my worries, the game is less RNG than XCOM, and also has plenty of other mechanics to overcome those hurdles, like dice re-rolls for example.

My favourite mechanic was the ability to tailor my game from the start. It showed me the difficulty levels, and I could tweak it to my needs and interests. Adding more options for dice rolls, balancing out with stronger enemies and halving my life at each turn in exchange for life stealing attacks set my game session on a sweet spot for my play style.