6 free indie game demos you should play during the Steam Next Fest
Some of the best Steam Next Fest demos are for Creatures of Ava, Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, Gourdlets, One BTN Bosses, and more.
6 outstanding game demos you need to try during Steam Next Fest
Steam Next Fest is back again and it's bringing some excellent demos for upcoming games. Here are a handful of games you can't miss.
Asymmetric VR Game ‘DAVIGO’ Among Most-Played Steam Next Fest Demos
Steam Next Fest, Valve’s indie showcase featuring free demos for upcoming PC games, had the most demo downloads in Next Fest history last month, and among the top titles was the asymmetric VR game Davigo.
Valve announced the 50 most-played demos that made it big on June’s edition of Next Fest, something the company said accounted for 11.4 million demos played across the board.
And Davigo seems to have resonated with Next Fest visitors in June, becoming the only VR game to make the list. Valve ordered its list by unique player count, and Davigo managed to rank 25th among all games (re: not just VR titles).
Featuring its own brand of David vs. Goliath-inspired combat gameplay, Davigo lets VR players take on the role of a massive giant who must defeat one or more PC players armed with rockets.
With development started in 2019 by Davigo Studio, the asymmetric VR game has since graduated to its third Alpha, which is made exclusively available to Patreon supporters of the project.
Notably, the Next Fest demo featured cross-compatibility with the game’s Alpha 3.3, which no doubt helped populate servers. Not only that, but PC players have historically been able to play against VR players for free.
The game, which supports both PC VR headsets and Quest natively, doesn’t have a launch date yet, with the game on Steam marked as “coming soon.”
Our Top 5 VR Demos from Steam Next Fest This Week
Valve is back at it with Steam Next Fest, the indie showcase that features free demos for upcoming PC games. We picked out some of the most promising demos among the two dozen VR games showcased this week.
Steam has made it marginally less simple to find VR titles this year. In years prior, VR games had their own tab, however you’ll need to apply a ‘VR’ filter to the search box this time around.
Steam Next Fest is already live, taking place June 19th – 26th. Check out our top five favorite games in no particular order below to see what you might want to try first. In any case, you can find all of the participating games with free demos on the Steam Next Fest page.
Hellsweeper VR
Mixed Realms, the studio behind Sairento VR, has cooked up a seriously slick first-person action-combat game called Hellsweeper VR. It’s coming to all major headsets in late September, so this might be your first chance to wield the game’s weapons and elemental magic (or die trying). The roguelike action feels a lot like Light Brigade and DOOM had a melee and magic-wielding hellspawn. Download it here.
DAVIGO
This David vs. Goliath-inspired combat game promises some asymmetrical battle of VR vs. PC gameplay. Created by Davigo Studio, the demo offers up a limited version of the game’s latest alpha build, including two maps and the classic ‘Brawl’ game mode. As a VR player, you can smash. As a PC player, run and gun. It’s fun. ‘Nuff said. Download it here.
STACK
From the makers of STRIDE and AGAINST, Joy Way is set to release another high-flying, single-worded game written in all caps: STACK. The multiplayer VR demo includes both Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes for up to 5v5 players. Control discs in mid-flight, bounce them off corners for creative kills, and bust around the arena at high speeds. Download it here.
Retropolis 2: Never Say Goodbye
Retropolis is back, bringing another shot of neo-robo-noir narrative to VR, replete with extendo-arms and intrigue a plenty. If you haven’t played the original Retropolis, no fret. While number two leaves off where the first left off, the brief demo won’t spoil anything. The game is now in Early Access on Quest and Rift, which includes the first episode, Steam users can now jump into a short demo. Download it here.
Tea For God
Full disclosure: the Tea for God demo isn’t new, or running just during Steam Next Fest either, but it’s still too cool to pass up. This VR adventure uses impossible spaces with procedural generation to allow players infinite room-scale movement. It’s a lot more than that though; its entity-filled dreamlike environment also has arcade shooter and roguelite shooter-explorer elements too. Download it here.
You can check out all of the demos over at the Steam Next Fest VR page. There you’ll find Q&A sessions with devs and all of the demos on offer. Next Fest runs until June 26th, so make sure to stop on by to play all of the demos above.
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Steam Next Fest 2022: Best New VR Demos To Try Out
The latest edition of Steam Next Fest is now live and brings with it a bunch of demos for upcoming PC VR games.
Steam festivals are designed to highlight what’s coming to the platform in the near future with a range of playable demos. VR has always been a part of the event’s offerings and this iteration is no different. Here’s a few of the headline titles you can play up until June 20.
Steam Next Fest 2022: Best New VR Demos
New VR Shooters And Action Games On Steam Next Fest
There’s a handful of promising action games on display this week. They include the physics-driven Battle Talent, which offers melee-based combat similar to Blade & Sorcery. Arcadia’s anticipated co-op zombie survival game, Requisition VR, also gets a demo. This one lets you make weapons out of household items and then slice through undead hordes together. Then there’s Stalker-like Paradox of Hope. Could this perhaps dethrone Into The Radius in this niche genre? I also have no idea what Mayhem on a Rainbow actually is, but maybe that’s why it gets a mention.
New VR Racing Games On Steam Next Fest
There’s a surprising number of new racing games to sample this time around, and some of them look pretty good. On the sports side of things, you definitely need to give Kayak VR: Mirage a look. It’s visually stunning and the convincing controls remind you what great VR is all about. Down Fast also looks very promising; it’s a downhill mountain biking game unlike anything we’ve yet seen in VR. The Flashout series is also coming back with VR support, which looks like it’ll make you sick in seconds.
Other VR Highlights On Steam Next Fest
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the playable demo for the increasingly exciting VR JRPG, RuinsMagus, which we’ve played on Quest 2 and become very fond of. Just Upstream, meanwhile looks like a mix of Firewatch and, uh, Frogger? It’s a story-driven VR platformer with a dreamy forest setting in which you swing through areas using your tongue. Quite the elevator pitch. Adorable Lemmings-like puzzler Tin Hearts also has a new demo. It’s technically a shooter but, given the arcade focus, we’re also putting a shout out to the slickly-produced BlockStar VR right here. Oh and, it’s not in VR, but the flatscreen version of The Last Worker is available to play and is also coming to Quest 2, so it’s a good chance for an early look.
Those are our picks for the best VR demos for Steam Next Fest! What are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments below!
Steam Next Fest: No Lower Decks on Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures
Elden Ring might be out tomorrow but who cares when you got all these virtual reality (VR) videogames on Steam Next Fest to play! Next to catch gmw3’s eye was Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures by Stardust Collective, a title mixing roomscale sci-fi management with some space-based combat.
Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures takes place entirely inside a very snug cockpit that’s very light on luxuries – there’s not even a seat for those long intergalactic journeys – but heavy on buttons, switches and levers. Excellent then for some immersive VR gameplay, where you have to main your little ship to keep yourself alive by managing power levels to systems including life support and flight control.
The demo treats you to the first level and one crucial component of Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures, a strange green alien with unquantifiable power – no not Mooncake. This little guy quite literally powers your ship, although doing so seems to kill the poor little guy so you have to eject the corpse into space. So there are some dark undertones to what initially seemed like a fairly colourful adventure.
The demo doesn’t give you much time to play with all the bells and whistles the cockpit has to offer but there are certainly plenty of them. You can 3D print your little green pal Ziggy, swap batteries between stations and then blast off to your next destination. The cockpit is very compact but not claustrophobic, with everything nicely within reach, with the studio claiming you only need a 2m x 1.5m area.
After feeling like a kid in a candy store thanks to all those buttons it was time to try the space combat. Depending on your flying preference, I found it useful popping into the settings to tweak the invert options as you can swap them all for pitch, yaw and roll. With HOTAS-like controls you’ve got to make it through an asteroid field, shooting any that get too close followed by a few enemy ships that want Ziggy for themselves.
All the mechanics were easy to grasp with the combat section being the trickiest purely because you have to stand up – it is roomscale after all – so spinning around could get a bit jarring for less experienced players.
Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures looks awesome and offers another great example of VR gameplay during the Steam Next Fest, well worth a download. For more updates keep reading gmw3.
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Steam Next Fest: Jungle Survival in Green Hell VR
The Steam Next Fest is underway until next Monday 28th February, giving you plenty of time to delve into some of the awesome virtual reality (VR) videogames coming to PC VR headsets. One that gmw3 has certainly been looking forward to is Incuvo’s Green Hell VR, the immersive port of Creepy Jar’s popular survival adventure.
With Incuvo having already ported the likes of Blair Witch onto VR headsets there has been a lot of interest regarding Green Hell VR. It’s a far bigger beast than the horror title, an open-world experience set in the Amazonian rainforest, a huge, inhospitable jungle where most of its inhabitants are trying to kill/eat you.
The demo introduces you to the first 30-40 minutes of the campaign depending on how quickly you decide to follow the prompts, teaching you the basics of inventory management, healing, crafting a fire and such. If you’re already well acquainted with the original Green Hell the main difference you’ll notice are the controls, healing requires actually wrapping a leaf around your arm whilst lighting a fire requires finding flint to create a spark with your machete.
Those that are already well acquainted with VR controls should find the mechanics instantly familiar. Incuvo has stuck with VR norms that are intuitive, picking a useful item up can be put instantly in your backpack over your shoulder. Your notepad is on your chest for easy access, selecting items to craft or giving you information about items you’ve discovered.
The ability to physically interact with everything highlights how much Invuco has rebuilt for VR players, with minimal button presses – although there is the occasional one like pressing the button on the walkie talkie.
While the demo doesn’t feature any dangerous animals or locals to fight what I really wanted to get from the teaser was a true sense of being in a dense jungle. Where plants just seem to grow on top of one another and where one miss-step could lead to me becoming lost in this amazing world. So of course the first thing I did was look for the closest unidentified mushroom and eat it, you know, just to see what happens! As it turned out the first random shroom I found was edible so no harsh effect there (which was kinda disappointing).
Ultimately, I now really want to spend more time in Green Hell VR and see if I could actually survive a virtual Amazon. Incuvo plans on releasing this immersive adventure for PC VR and Meta Quest platforms this spring, so there isn’t too long to wait.