Ready to try more game demos? Now is your chance once again as Steam Next Fest - October 2022 Edition is live.
As usual, developers will also be doing various livestreams, although some will likely be pre-recorded. You can see the full list of upcoming streaming events during Next Fest at this link. There's a lot! With the event live now, you have until October 10th at 5PM UTC to get playing before everything vanishes (although some devs let their demo stick around).
Here's the event trailer:
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Direct Link
Direct Link
As for some suggestions on what to try? Well, these are top of my list and I think you'll like them:
- Cassette Beasts - Collect awesome monsters to use during turn-based battles in this open-world RPG. Combine any two monster forms using Cassette Beasts’ Fusion System to create unique and powerful new ones!
- Void Scrappers - Blast hordes of alien ships into junk. Collect the scrap to upgrade your ship into an unstoppable force of destruction. Unlock new characters and weapons and upgrade your stats between runs.
- The Garden Path - A slice-of-life sim about the joy of gardening, and the small pleasures that follow. Whether you're fishing, growing, trading or just hanging with new friends, a wonderful and wistful adventure awaits when wandering The Garden Path.
- Sole Saga - Battle with horde of monsters, Build your favorite hero with powerful skills and weapons in Action Roguelike style, Fight your way to the epic boss and become a legend.
If you discover something amazing, do let us know in the comments. There's nowhere near enough time for anyone to go through it all, so a few choice picks are what you get.
This year, Valve has also added badges you can earn by going through your Discovery Queue.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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16 comments
Philadelphus Oct 4, 2022
Ooo, Potionomics* and The Eternal Cylinder** both have demos out before they release in the next few months! Looks like I know what I'm doing with my evenings this week!
* A shop-running sim where you make and sell potions, but the selling is done using an interesting card-based bartering system.
* A…an…uh, you kind of have to see this one for yourself, but you get to play as adorable little creatures called Trebhums which can mutate based on what they eat to get different powers. Oh, and they're outrunning an infinite cylinder squashing their world flat, with Servants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.
* A shop-running sim where you make and sell potions, but the selling is done using an interesting card-based bartering system.
* A…an…uh, you kind of have to see this one for yourself, but you get to play as adorable little creatures called Trebhums which can mutate based on what they eat to get different powers. Oh, and they're outrunning an infinite cylinder squashing their world flat, with Servants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.
4 Likes, Who?
The Eternal CylinderThat looks weird and interesting. Might have to get it.
0 Likes
hardpenguin Oct 4, 2022
This article reminds me how much I rely on GamingOnLinux for game discovery. Thank you for being a reliable curator! ❤️
1 Likes, Who?
hardpenguin Oct 4, 2022
Also, make sure to check:
Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends, fire your Protons!
Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends, fire your Protons!
1 Likes, Who?
The downside of Proton, Wine and family becoming so good is that there are way too many demos I could try now 
Ooo, Potionomics* and The Eternal Cylinder** both have demos out before they release in the next few months!The demo of Potionomics was disappointingly short. It doesn’t show you much more than you would see in a 2- or 3-minute gameplay preview video.
0 Likes
Servants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.I take it you're not talking about Bosch the appliance maker ;)
Nice, will at least have to have a look.
1 Likes, Who?
I see you haven't heard about their rogue R&D department.Servants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.I take it you're not talking about Bosch the appliance maker ;)
3 Likes, Who?
A must is "The Entropy Centre" if you like portal!
2 Likes, Who?
Micromegas Oct 4, 2022
Plasma looked very interesting as I watchted Giantwaffle on Twitch trying out the demo. I don't know whether the demo is playable with Wine/Proton.
"Plasma is an engineering sandbox. Unleash your creativity with fun and intuitive robotics, physics, and visual programming tool."
"Plasma is an engineering sandbox. Unleash your creativity with fun and intuitive robotics, physics, and visual programming tool."
0 Likes
These ones tickled my interest:
A Castle Full of Cats (Native)
Cute hidden object game. Might be a little on the simplistic side for my taste, even for a game in this genre.
Rosewater
From the developers of Lamplight City. It's an (alt) wild western adventure game. Have there been any of those before?
Big thumbs down for not having any aspect ratio correction.
Foolish Mortals (Proton)
Classic adventure game. Art and style I very much associate with Broken Sword, the Voodoo story-line with Gabriel Knight 1 so it ticks all the boxes!
RXC - Rally Cross Challenge (Proton)
Top down rally cross, simucade. Might be interesting to anyone who thought art of rally was lacking in the wheel-to-wheel department.
The driving AI needs more work to be challenging for single player. Quite often all opponents makes the same mistake and get stuck in the same corner leading to a Three Stooges kind of gridlock.
Rush Rally 3 (Proton)
Pretty cool to find a indie dev (and single developer) driving sim. Reminds me a bit of the early Colin McRae titles.
Claims to be "simulation-style" but even on extreme difficulty it's much too forgiving. Still quite fun.
A Castle Full of Cats (Native)
Cute hidden object game. Might be a little on the simplistic side for my taste, even for a game in this genre.
Rosewater
From the developers of Lamplight City. It's an (alt) wild western adventure game. Have there been any of those before?
Big thumbs down for not having any aspect ratio correction.
Foolish Mortals (Proton)
Classic adventure game. Art and style I very much associate with Broken Sword, the Voodoo story-line with Gabriel Knight 1 so it ticks all the boxes!
RXC - Rally Cross Challenge (Proton)
Top down rally cross, simucade. Might be interesting to anyone who thought art of rally was lacking in the wheel-to-wheel department.
The driving AI needs more work to be challenging for single player. Quite often all opponents makes the same mistake and get stuck in the same corner leading to a Three Stooges kind of gridlock.
Rush Rally 3 (Proton)
Pretty cool to find a indie dev (and single developer) driving sim. Reminds me a bit of the early Colin McRae titles.
Claims to be "simulation-style" but even on extreme difficulty it's much too forgiving. Still quite fun.
3 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Oct 4, 2022
It came out on the Epic store last year and I watched a playthrough then, so that's an option if you want to know a bit more about it before deciding.The Eternal CylinderThat looks weird and interesting. Might have to get it.
The demo of Potionomics was disappointingly short. It doesn’t show you much more than you would see in a 2- or 3-minute gameplay preview video.It definitely felt short, though Steam says I spent 33 minutes playing it. That said, it did a good job of introducing the main mechanics and some of the characters and left me wanting more (which I guess is better than outstaying its welcome). I found the card-based haggling mechanic interesting, especially after getting into Slay the Spire a few months ago. Though I hope they get the optimization down a little better, while the animation is great and the artwork is nice it doesn't feel like it should need the frequent 3–4 second load screens it has between areas, and it seemed to hitch a bit early on, presumably while compiling shaders.
For a second there I was really worried I'd misspelled Hieronymus Bosch's name from memory.Servants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.I take it you're not talking about Bosch the appliance maker ;)
Nice, will at least have to have a look.
But yeah, some of the cylinder's servants would be right at home in the "Hell" panel of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (direct link not working, but you can see on his Wikipedia page linked above).
1 Likes, Who?
Have been too busy and missed the start of the event. At least there's still few days left.
Here's few that I have played during the previous events and are worth mentioning.
Zoria Age of Shattering. There's recent article about this one. Previous demo was fun and hopefully the new demo is even better.
Garden Path. Pretty chill exploration and gardening game. There has been multiple articles about it.
Slender Threads. Horror point & click with dark humor. Has been featured previously on GamingOnLinux.
Again most popular games are Windows only, so have to warm up Proton at some point. Usual games are doing things right when they are popular, especially as lot of the games in the event don't have huge marketing budget to skew things.
Here's few that I have played during the previous events and are worth mentioning.
Zoria Age of Shattering. There's recent article about this one. Previous demo was fun and hopefully the new demo is even better.
Garden Path. Pretty chill exploration and gardening game. There has been multiple articles about it.
Slender Threads. Horror point & click with dark humor. Has been featured previously on GamingOnLinux.
Again most popular games are Windows only, so have to warm up Proton at some point. Usual games are doing things right when they are popular, especially as lot of the games in the event don't have huge marketing budget to skew things.
2 Likes, Who?
Foolish Mortals (Proton)
Classic adventure game. Art and style I very much associate with Broken Sword, the Voodoo story-line with Gabriel Knight 1 so it ticks all the boxes!
If you want some point and click voodoo treat, take a look at Voodoo Detective. The graphical style was not really to my taste, but it were enjoyble five hours...
1 Likes, Who?
Games I just tried:
A Castle Full of Cats: Charming little hidden object game, but a bit on the easy side. Probably aimed at a younger age group than I'm in. Could use more interactive elements, and the style of character dialogue boxes clashes badly with the style of everything else.
Protocorgi: Cute SHMUP featuring a cybernetic corgi. All the stuff you'd expect, missiles and weird enemies. Controls very smoothly. A bit hard on the eyes though, but that's normal for SHMUPs for me.
The Palace on the Hill: Point and click life sim, set in what seems to be India I think, about a young painter whose family farm is failing and he takes on odd jobs including at a tea house. On paper it sounds great, but the mechanics don't grab me at all. Controls feel awkward too, with the character not moving in a really smooth fashion.
Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum Demo: Low-graphics hacking/espionage game where you're a robot deep in debt after being damaged, and required to work it off. Doesn't seem too in-depth, but hard to tell since I only played the tutorial. Does have a certain charm though.
Quadrata Demo: Minimalist sliding box puzzle, where you're moving the box on two different grids at the same time. You get a very limited number of moves to hit one target on each grid. Gets tricky very fast, but controls well and seems like a good challenge for those into puzzlers.
Verses of Enchantment: Deckbuilder with Romantic era artwork and a poetry-based system where the cards you play are used to generate Romantic poetry, and the types of keywords can affect the effects of cards you play. It works very well, although the battles can be kind of long, and I'm not quite sure what the overarching goal is.
Diluvian Winds: 2D town builder with mechanics similar to Spiritfarer, with cartoon animals building a place to survive a world in ecological catastrophe. Takes a little bit to get the idea of it down, but the turn-based gameplay allows you to take some time making decisions. My big complaints are that you don't really get any lore about how the place got this way, not being able to undo a misclicked command and thus can waste precious time and get fewer resources, and it opens fullscreen on the wrong monitor and there seems to be no way to change that (running on Unity). Generally good though.
Pretty certain all except Diluvian Winds are native Linux. And that one is listed as supporting Linux for the full game, so we'll see about that.
A Castle Full of Cats: Charming little hidden object game, but a bit on the easy side. Probably aimed at a younger age group than I'm in. Could use more interactive elements, and the style of character dialogue boxes clashes badly with the style of everything else.
Protocorgi: Cute SHMUP featuring a cybernetic corgi. All the stuff you'd expect, missiles and weird enemies. Controls very smoothly. A bit hard on the eyes though, but that's normal for SHMUPs for me.
The Palace on the Hill: Point and click life sim, set in what seems to be India I think, about a young painter whose family farm is failing and he takes on odd jobs including at a tea house. On paper it sounds great, but the mechanics don't grab me at all. Controls feel awkward too, with the character not moving in a really smooth fashion.
Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum Demo: Low-graphics hacking/espionage game where you're a robot deep in debt after being damaged, and required to work it off. Doesn't seem too in-depth, but hard to tell since I only played the tutorial. Does have a certain charm though.
Quadrata Demo: Minimalist sliding box puzzle, where you're moving the box on two different grids at the same time. You get a very limited number of moves to hit one target on each grid. Gets tricky very fast, but controls well and seems like a good challenge for those into puzzlers.
Verses of Enchantment: Deckbuilder with Romantic era artwork and a poetry-based system where the cards you play are used to generate Romantic poetry, and the types of keywords can affect the effects of cards you play. It works very well, although the battles can be kind of long, and I'm not quite sure what the overarching goal is.
Diluvian Winds: 2D town builder with mechanics similar to Spiritfarer, with cartoon animals building a place to survive a world in ecological catastrophe. Takes a little bit to get the idea of it down, but the turn-based gameplay allows you to take some time making decisions. My big complaints are that you don't really get any lore about how the place got this way, not being able to undo a misclicked command and thus can waste precious time and get fewer resources, and it opens fullscreen on the wrong monitor and there seems to be no way to change that (running on Unity). Generally good though.
Pretty certain all except Diluvian Winds are native Linux. And that one is listed as supporting Linux for the full game, so we'll see about that.
2 Likes, Who?
Games I just tried:
A Castle Full of Cats: Charming little hidden object game, but a bit on the easy side. Probably aimed at a younger age group than I'm in. Could use more interactive elements, and the style of character dialogue boxes clashes badly with the style of everything else.
A Building Full of Cats and this one are sure on the simplistic side. That's quite good for the casual players, for me they are nice snacks. Though if you are looking for hidden object games with bit more things to interact with, Enigmatis trilogy transforms almost to point and click adventure towards the end.
I had time for only one in addition to Castle Full of Cats today. I tried out Doodle God Universe. It's kind of sanbox like game about combining things together, with at least one minigame. Maybe bit too simplistic, could work better as a minigame to builder game or something.
1 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Oct 7, 2022
After saying how short the Potionomics demo was, I would be remiss not to mention that I've already spent 2.5 hours in the demo for The Eternal Cylinder and I still haven't reached the end (though I suspect I'm getting close). I've played entire games in less time than that! 
Edit: finally finished the demo after 3.9 hours. Granted I'm not playing as fast as possible and it could certainly be done a bit quicker, but still!
Last edited by Philadelphus on 7 October 2022 at 8:44 am UTC
Edit: finally finished the demo after 3.9 hours. Granted I'm not playing as fast as possible and it could certainly be done a bit quicker, but still!
Last edited by Philadelphus on 7 October 2022 at 8:44 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
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