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Want to get a peek at some upcoming games? The Steam Game Festival - Summer Edition is live now with lots to have a look at for the interested Linux fan.

Currently Steam developers appear to be having issues rolling out demos to store pages, we will update this with a Linux list as and when we see them appear. You should be able to install any from the Steam event page itself or just use SteamDB and search for the demo there as they give you an install link. We will not be listing all demos, just some to get you started!

Verified working Linux demos newly live (or updated) for the event:

art of rally ASYLUM
Backbone CARRION
Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands DRAG
Drink More Glurp Elteria Adventures
Flea Madness Fragment's Moonrise
Hadean Tactics Haulin' Oats
HyperCore LAZR - A Clothformer
Midnight Protocol

Monster Crown

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp OFF GRID : Stealth Hacking
Patrick's Parabox Perilous Warp
Port Valley
On NVIDIA use "-force-glcore42 -force-clamped" as a launch option to get around graphics issues in Unity.
Ray's The Dead
Sail Forth Slender Threads
Soldat 2 Tallowmere 2: Curse of the Kittens
Tenderfoot Tactics The Last Cube
The Long Gate The Zone: Stalker Stories
Unbound: Worlds Apart
Run it manually, they're missing the Linux demo launch config on Steam.
Vagrus - The Riven Realms

We've already come across multiple entirely broken demos, so we will be feeding info back to developers. We'll be taking a look and perhaps doing a few videos and thoughts articles over the next few days, if they manage to catch our interest. We've already taken a look at ASYLUM and done a preview previously too.

A lot of developers will also be doing their own livestreams and Q&A sessions, which will be live on their Steam store page so be sure to take a good look at the times of each you're interested in.

Since most big gaming events were cancelled, online events like this are the next best thing. It would be great if this type of event continues each year because the bigger in-person events are usually quite restrictive due to location and prices - these open them up to many more people and potential buyers.

Take a look over on the dedicated Steam event page. It's live until June 22. As for the Steam Summer Sale, there's been rumours of it starting on June 25 only a few days later. If you discover something you love, do tell us in the comments!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Demo, Event, Steam
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32 comments
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cbones Jun 16, 2020
I wish Valve would allow us to filter by supported platform. It would make browsing this really large list so much more manageable.
Eike Jun 16, 2020
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+ Slender Threads
WorMzy Jun 16, 2020
Starmancer appears to have a Linux demo, but it doesn't have sound and won't progress past a screen that says "#Header" after I input my name, so maybe that's a bit borked on Linux right now.


Last edited by WorMzy on 16 June 2020 at 8:57 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Jun 16, 2020
Dev of Sail Forth fixed the issue. Have reported issues to multiple others, including Starmancer.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 16 June 2020 at 8:57 pm UTC
WorMzy Jun 16, 2020
Sail Forth looks pretty, but you can't re-map "Turn left", it becomes unbound. I spent many minutes sailing in circles trying to end up pointing the correct way.

Dev responded and pointed out the "Restore defaults" button which at least lets you reset to the default button. I had already worked around the problem in my own way and had some fun blowing up pirate ships and stealing treasure. :)


Last edited by WorMzy on 16 June 2020 at 10:11 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Jun 16, 2020
Added multiple more, verified first-hand.
fagnerln Jun 16, 2020
A bit of polemic here:

I downloaded art of rally demo, I was very disappointed, it's ugly, empty, bugged with invisible blocks and objects disappearing when I approach (it's the first time that I see a pop-out bug), not believing that they released a demo like this.

But for curiosity, I played it again with Proton, a lot better, the invisible objects are trees, stones and some minor things, I didn't noticed any bug, and the game turned in a really interesting one. I remember that I had problems with the native version of Absolute Drift (from the same dev), it simply not recognize my gamepad, which is fixed on Proton.

Maybe would be better if games is distributed as a "whitelisted proton game" than a native bugged version. It's a lot less effort from the dev as just need to test a bit or ask someone to test it.
Liam Dawe Jun 16, 2020
Maybe would be better if games is distributed as a "whitelisted proton game" than a native bugged version. It's a lot less effort from the dev as just need to test a bit or ask someone to test it.
Nah, that doesn't really help anything in the long run. Just give up and test a bit with Proton? That's not the kind of support we want. In this case, art of rally is just bugged on AMD it appears. These are demos remember too, for games not finished and released. Not fully finished games.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 16 June 2020 at 9:51 pm UTC
MSE Jun 16, 2020
Cave Confectioner is developed natively on Linux, so it should work. Full disclosure: I'm the developer.

I've also gotten a kick out of Ex-Zodiac and Perilous Warp. Some demos may need to be launched from the festival page as releasing a demo on the store page is a separate process.
eldaking Jun 16, 2020
Hmm, I was a bit confused because I was just browsing the "Summer of Pride" sale on steam. Having two events at the same time and having both named after the season is not the best idea.
awesam Jun 16, 2020
It is pretty useful to have demos to be able to report bugs before the games are released. Tried some of these and so far seen these problems:

Art of rally - The foggy stages have glitched graphics (AMD RX 5700), otherwise worked fine also with controller
DRAG - You can make the physics of the car go crazy if hitting a fence in the "right" way (likely not Linux specific)
ASYLUM - The audio plays slightly faster than the video during the intro cut-scene, so at the end of it there is just silence.
fagnerln Jun 16, 2020
Maybe would be better if games is distributed as a "whitelisted proton game" than a native bugged version. It's a lot less effort from the dev as just need to test a bit or ask someone to test it.
Nah, that doesn't really help anything in the long run. Just give up and test a bit with Proton? That's not the kind of support we want. In this case, art of rally is just bugged on AMD it appears. These are demos remember too, for games not finished and released. Not fully finished games.


I don't know about what "we" want. But I can list a lot games that I have problems with hardware support and performance problems. These are fully finished games not demo. If I'm not "in love" with the OS, I probably will switch back to windows.

I'm currently playing Yooka Laylee on Proton (which have a native version), I really doubt that they'll put effort to fix a really specific bug on a system that they have no experience? They skipped the support on Yooka Laylee 2.

How many people without experience with similar bugs like the bugs I have, can abandon Linux because of that?

If the developer have professional with expertise on Linux or can wire a porter, it's fantastic, but if isn't the situation, Proton is perfectly fine and preferably.

Proton is a good tool, it can works as flatpak/snap.
TheSLAP Jun 17, 2020
Bots & Belts demo is working great on Ubuntu!
Liam Dawe Jun 17, 2020
Sail Forth looks pretty, but you can't re-map "Turn left", it becomes unbound. I spent many minutes sailing in circles trying to end up pointing the correct way.

Dev responded and pointed out the "Restore defaults" button which at least lets you reset to the default button. I had already worked around the problem in my own way and had some fun blowing up pirate ships and stealing treasure. :)
They told me it should now be solved too.
pmatulka Jun 17, 2020
Yea... this festival is great. I tried to install demo for three games, games that had an Linux icon and in each case I get information: not available for you operating system. Super funny festival.
Liam Dawe Jun 17, 2020
Monster Crown now correctly lists Linux for the demo.

Have also now verified more titles and added them in.
quyse Jun 17, 2020
Just a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Liam Dawe Jun 17, 2020
Just a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for the heads up, yours is one I was hoping to take a look at but got a bit confused on it last night. Looking forward to trying it then!
TheSLAP Jun 17, 2020
Just a heads up, Steam is acting quite weird with respect to platform support. Our game (Insatia) participates in the festival and does have a native Linux demo. But "Download demo" button shows only Windows icon, and the demo cannot be found via search if you narrow it to "SteamOS + Linux".

On the other hand, if you simply search by the game's name, it does show all three platform icons in search results, for both the main game and the demo. And the demo is in fact installable and playable in Steam client on Linux. And of course I've already triple checked that we have Linux enabled everywhere in Steamworks dashboard. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Make sure you have the linux depot added to the demo package within Steamworks (Dashboard -> Click demo app -> "All associated packages, DLC, demos, and tools" -> Under "free to play packages", click demo package -> ensure your linux depot is added!) I hope this helps!
kaiman Jun 17, 2020
Sadly, none of the game demos I'm really interested in have a Linux version. One worked with Proton, though, the other required the Media Foundation stuff in addition. At least now I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to play them at launch.
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