Next Fest, without the AI
The demos people are actually playing, most played first.
7,008 games in Steam Next Fest until 26 October. 2,506 are hidden because their developers declared AI.
Some developers don't declare it, so a few may slip through. Player counts are checked every few hours.
797 demos without AI, tagged Atmospheric, most played first.
Emberville
Cygnus Cross
Awaken with no memories inside the Vitromotus, a vast underground world created as a magical dungeon where death no longer lasts. Explore its depths, battle dangerous creatures, rescue survivors, and rebuild the ruined town of Emberville while uncovering the truth behind this prison.
Early AccessActionRPGPixel GraphicsAction RPG▶ Peak: 1,165 playersMore like this →Stronghold 4
Firefly Studios
Wood needed! Return to the green roots of Stronghold in this narrative prequel to the original 'castle sim'. Immerse yourself in a cinematic campaign, hone your siegecraft with new mechanics in skirmish mode and customise your castles with a wide selection of castle pieces and cosmetics.
Early AccessSimulationStrategyCity BuilderColony Sim▶ Peak: 889 playersMore like this →DREADMOOR
Dream Dock
DREADMOOR is a dark first-person fishing adventure game set in a submerged world, rotting from a past catastrophe. Fish in murky waters, upgrade your boat, craft survival gear, and fight monstrous creatures that lurk under the water and on the land.
AdventureExplorationSimulationLovecraftianFirst-Person▶ Peak: 621 playersMore like this →Ignite the Depths
SK Studios
Ignite the Depths is an atmospheric dark-fantasy PvE dungeon crawler set within a sprawling, hand-crafted labyrinth. Descend into the darkness alone or unite with up to 4 players in a co-op adventure. Will you conquer the Abyss?
Online Co-OpDungeon CrawlerDark FantasyActionAction RPG▶ Peak: 513 playersMore like this →Hellforged
Moonpyre
Hellforged is a loot-driven, extraction bullet-heaven game. Fight through demon-infested maps, pre-craft your build, hunt powerful gear, and combine abilities into epic synergies. Every run is a tense heist. Safely extract epic gear mid-battle or risk it all for greater rewards!
Action RPGAction RoguelikeBullet HeavenLootRPG▶ Peak: 326 playersMore like this →Rip It! Card Collector
Cybernetic Walrus
A single-player incremental game where you hunt down 1,809 collectible trading cards. Sell dupes and upgrade your retro-futuristic gear to pull more cards, quicker! Enjoy the satisfaction of ripping packs, filling your binder, and completing the ultimate card collection. It’s time to get cracking!
CasualCollectathonSimulationOrganizingRelaxing▶ Peak: 325 playersMore like this →Reshine
Quite OK Games
Gently restore old objects by cleaning away layers of dust, rust, and time. Reshine is a minimalistic, relaxing experience: use a range of tools to watch years of grime disappear before your eyes. No management, no pressure - just you and the satisfaction of bringing vintage treasures back to life.
CasualIndieCleaningRetroRelaxing▶ Peak: 313 playersMore like this →Never Sort By Color
Bryan Livingston
Somewhere under that mountain of bricks is your floor. Sort the impossible Pile with a magnet glove, sieves, and part-seeking vision. Fill labeled drawers, pull parts, watch MOC builds snap together brick by brick. Cozy, satisfying, and governed by one rule: never sort by color.
RelaxingOrganizingCollectathonPuzzleSingleplayer▶ Peak: 296 playersMore like this →False Echo
Retromagine
False Echo is a narrative cryptography thriller set in the darkest depths of the Stelantic, aboard a secret military submarine. Operate the Obscura machine, decode messages, and decide what gets through in a regime where even the smallest mistake means a huge death toll.
IndieSimulationSubmarinePoint & ClickDystopian▶ Peak: 213 playersMore like this →Guns of Eschaton
Eschatology Entertainment
The world’s first soulslike FPS pulls you into an apocalyptic Western by the legendary Viktor Antonov: a land of dust, blood, and horror. Study your enemies, count your bullets, forge your own style with gunpowder and prayers. Solo or in co-op—go West, gunslinger, go West and die with the country!
WesternActionFPSSouls-likeAlternate History▶ Peak: 183 playersMore like this →Clear the Snow
Garden of Dreams
Play with up to 4 friends and help clear the city of snow. Work together using shovels, snow blowers, and heavy machinery to complete jobs and upgrade your gear. Enjoy cozy winter vibes, and the freedom to play your own way!
CasualSimulationFirst-PersonRealisticAtmospheric▶ Peak: 163 playersMore like this →Trailblazers: Into the March
Strangers
Embark on a thrilling adventure in this roguelite colony-sim strategy game. Command your Landship in tactical battles, care for a crew composed of all sorts of characters, shape your home, manage resources, and lead expeditions into the March. Discover what lies at its heart... and in yours.
RoguelikeReplay ValueSci-fiStrategyColony Sim▶ Peak: 117 playersMore like this →Coal Duty
Corecrew Games
Coal Duty is a 1-5 player co-op extraction horror-comedy. Meet the state coal quota in procedurally generated mines, spend your tickets, plan your escape. Some miners have reportedly escaped. The state does not confirm this.
Early AccessOnline Co-OpCo-opHorrorSurvival Horror▶ Peak: 108 playersMore like this →Alien Archeologist
TheClassifiedX
Alien Archeologist is a chill incremental digging game. Use a variety of upgradeable tools to mine ore, blast through earth, and clean strange artifacts as you journey yet deeper toward the mystery hiding at the planet's core.
AdventureMiningCleaningCasualIncremental▶ Peak: 101 playersMore like this →Lenin Street Geek Shop
perelesoq
Become a shopkeeper in the first geek store in a snowy 2000s town: sell CDs, snacks, and fan merch, influence your customers' lives, get involved in shady business, and grow your small store.
Shop KeeperAtmosphericChoose Your Own AdventureTradingLife Sim▶ Peak: 97 playersMore like this →STARHOME
DIGIFOX
Lead the last survivors of your civilization through a hostile galaxy aboard a fleet that has become your new home. Manage every inch of space, balance living quarters, production, defenses, and weapons, and search for refuge before an overwhelming threat finds you.
SingleplayerCity BuilderBase BuildingAction RTSSpace▶ Peak: 95 playersMore like this →Benny's Backrooms
GameName
A co-op horror where you and your friends (if applicable) explore a seemingly infinite expanse of eerie creature-infested liminal spaces, armed only with a glorified vacuum and specialized equipment to help you locate and extract a rare substance in the name of science.
Early AccessOnline Co-OpHorrorFunnyMultiplayer▶ Peak: 79 playersMore like this →Outbreak Z
Frozen Logic Studios
Three survivors, one outbreak, and a whole dead city of gear to find. A party-based auto battler RPG: your squad fights every wave on its own while you kit them out, level all three, and push them through 30 areas across three worlds.
Party-Based RPGRPGAuto BattlerZombiesLoot▶ Peak: 77 playersMore like this →Tin Coffins
Hexmonger
You are Talon-22, a combat clone printed this shift, and twenty-one of you didn't come home. A cel-shaded mech roguelite shooter: short, lethal squad battles through procedurally generated war-torn cities, against enemy squads that flank, suppress and hold the line. Die, and the next you deploys.
MechsRogueliteThird-Person ShooterSingleplayerAction▶ Peak: 76 playersMore like this →Anomaly Inspector Simulator
Mind Сreations
Papers, Please in an SCP-inspired setting. You're an agent of a secret anomaly control bureau. Examine dangerous artifacts, conduct experiments and decide their fate. Keep the world from descending into chaos.
SimulationSingleplayerChoices MatterFirst-PersonRealistic▶ Peak: 72 playersMore like this →There Are No Ghosts at the Grand
Friday Sundae
Inherit a crumbling English hotel and restore it by day - while battling ghosts by night. With a sardonic cat, a talking power tool, and a twisting supernatural plot, this is a musical mystery unlike any other. Will you be able to hold it together while everything around you falls apart?
SimulationFirst-PersonStory RichAdventureSingleplayer▶ Peak: 60 playersMore like this →Elta: Defy All Gods
Afterburner Studios
Brawl your way out of corrupted worlds alongside your dragon-god companion in an adrenaline-fueled action-platformer blending free-form melee combat, fluid platforming and sci-fi exploration. Become the champion of your fallen god, Elta.
SingleplayerExplorationBeat 'em upThird PersonSci-fi▶ Peak: 57 playersMore like this →Clean Start
Serious Sim
Clean and organize other people’s homes while uncovering emotional stories through the objects you find. Discover each room’s unique history, dig up secrets, and feel the satisfaction of tidying up the space in this wholesome, casual puzzle game about new beginnings in a foreign country.
CleaningOrganizingRelaxingCozyCasual▶ Peak: 51 playersMore like this →DEADLINE: Afterlife Processing
SOUNDIL
The dead wait in line. You run the press. Read each soul, judge it, seal it and get paid for it. Tired of doing it yourself? The catalog has machines that'll do the work for you. Management recommends it. Management appreciates your cooperation.
IndieSimulationIncrementalDarkAtmospheric▶ Peak: 48 playersMore like this →Sirens
Silent Lamb Studio
Become a deadly Siren and hunt down the most dangerous sea creatures that have ever swim in the depths of the oceans! Experience a fascinating journey through the world as seen from the perspective of Sirens at various stages of their evolution.
Early AccessHidden ObjectHuntingAction-Adventure3D▶ Peak: 48 playersMore like this →Cash & Stash: A Vaultkeeper Story
Castaways Games
After a failed robbery attempt, the bank has been torn apart and left in complete chaos. Now, as the Vaultkeeper, you must sort through more than 16,000 scattered items, return everything to its proper place, and uncover the stories behind the bank’s clients and their valuables.
CollectathonFirst-PersonRelaxingCozyCasual▶ Peak: 46 playersMore like this →Frontline Logistics: Isarian Warfare
Immersive Pixels Studio
A pausable real time tactical and resource management sim driven by dynamic battlefield events. War isn't just about combat; It’s about the daily lives of your soldiers. Keep logistics running, scavenge every usable resource, and do what you can to ease the harsh reality of life on the frontlines.
Real-Time with Pause4XColony SimBase BuildingSandbox▶ Peak: 46 playersMore like this →The Regreening
Positive Impact Games
The Regreening is a cozy simulation game about restoring nature in a soilpunk fairytale. Grow plants to create living ecosystems, become friends with ancient spirits, make your own upcycling hub, and hug ALL the animals! Can you transform this deserted world into a joyful home again?
SimulationFarming SimCozyNatureAnimals▶ Peak: 43 playersMore like this →Terrible Lizards
WDR Studios LLC
Terrible Lizards is a horror parkour game set against the backdrop of an old Route 66 attraction… with something dark and sinister lurking below. To escape, you’ll need to move fast, navigate challenging terrain, and uncover what Dalton’s Dinos is really hiding. You’d better start running.
HorrorDinosaursPlatformerAtmosphericExploration▶ Peak: 40 playersMore like this →Theos: Cities Of Myth
Triskell Interactive
A modern take on classic city-builders, Theos: Cities of Myth lets you develop a thriving metropolis dedicated to one of 7 Greek Deities. Raise an imposing sanctuary, meet your citizens’ needs, and found a city worthy of the Gods.
StrategySimulationCity BuilderGrand Strategy2D▶ Peak: 33 playersMore like this →Hide Your Cash
Funcity
Hide your cash in the toilet tank, under the mattress, behind the fridge. Then break into your friends' houses and find theirs while they block the door, shove you aside and try to look innocent. A 1–4 player physics party game, online with friends or solo against a bot.
Psychological HorrorHorrorExplorationFirst-PersonPuzzle▶ Peak: 31 playersMore like this →Selkie's Salvage&Co.
uglycoal
Selkie’s Salvage&Co. is a first-person physics based incremental fishing game. Your task is to clean up the flooded planet! Fish up scrap, grind all of it down and collect trinkets of the past. Expand your salvaging operation and go beyond!
IncrementalPhysicsSandbox3DAtmospheric▶ Peak: 31 playersMore like this →Escape from Doomstown
Y.G.H.X.Studios
A post-apocalyptic survival game where you lead a squad of survivors into a zombie-infested town. Scavenge for supplies, take down dangerous foes, and get out before the horde closes in. Build your base, recruit survivors, strengthen your squad, and fight your way out of this doomed city!
SurvivalStrategyAtmosphericSingleplayerCrafting▶ Peak: 27 playersMore like this →Beat For Speed
CyanCoast
Transform any song into a playable rhythm ride. Turn your favorite music into dynamic tracks with our custom rhythm engine, developed through hundreds of our handcrafted levels. Customize your experience with the built-in Level Editor and discover endless community content on Steam Workshop.
MusicRhythmMusic-Based Procedural GenerationLevel EditorIndie▶ Peak: 25 playersMore like this →Paraxima
Litio Games
3-player asymmetric co-op horror. Identify the Entity that reacts to how you behave. Investigate in the field as an Agent, or coordinate from the Safe Room as the Operator. Close the breach before everything becomes The Static.
Psychological HorrorOnline Co-OpAtmosphericInvestigationFirst-Person▶ Peak: 25 playersMore like this →



