Time load up that Steam downloads list because Steam Next Fest is here once again, and there's a whole lot of demos for you to try out. Not only are there plenty of demos but various livestreams will be happening during the event too with developers showing off their games.
Event trailer below:
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Direct Link
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I've gone through and picked out a few that may be worth your time that I thought seemed really interesting, also noting those that have a Native Linux demo but I'm sure most will run just fine with Proton:
- BORE BLASTERS (Native Linux) - underground mining with a helicopter. Yep, that's a thing.
- Homeworld 3 - War Games Demo - The space sci-fi strategy game Homeworld returns!
- Lightyear Frontier - a peaceful open-world farming adventure with upgradable mechs, whatever will they think of to combine next?
- Planetary Life - a quirky looking planet and life sandbox simulation game.
- PRIM (Native Linux) - a creepy-but-cute point’n’click adventure game full of dark humour.
- Maniac (Native Linux) - GTA meets Vampire Survivors for some real chaos.
- Millennia - could this be the next big Civilization-like? It just might be.
- shapez 2 (Native Linux) - a huge factory building sim that's good for beginners. Cut up lots of shapes and just keep expanding.
- Stormgate - a new RTS from former Blizzard developers.
As usual, if I find anything especially good / fun, they may see their own articles to highlight them directly.
Check out the whole event on Steam.
It's live until February 12th at 10AM PT / 8PM UTC.
If you find some great demos, be sure to come back and give over your suggestions in the comments. Sharing is caring as they say.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
Quoting: JarmerI love these Steam Next Fest's! So I tried some demos, and here's how it went:In Homeworld 3, you only need to reduce the distance slider. Try that. I think it's the asteroids that tank the FPS. The game is kinda cool.
- homeworld 3: autodected ultra visual settings, ran at 16fps, made me nauseous. Turned it down to high, got to about 20 fps. Turned it down to medium, finally ran at 70+ fps. But now the asteroid in front of me looks like a smooth rubber ball. Needs some MAJOR optimizations. Also I had to accept a crazy amount of legal agreements with a billion pages I'll never read.
...
- dungeonborne: can safely forget about this forever as well. Never got to even play it. Doesn't launch, and upon reading the discussions, apparently because of the anti-cheat garbage they use. Oh well.
I really wanted to play Dungeonborne after discovering it from a wallpaper and then watching gameplay on Twitch. Man, it looks fun. But yeah, it doesn't launch, and doesn't sound like the type of problem they'd fix during the Fest, so I uninstalled it.
0 Likes
Had time to play a few this time around
Worth checking out:
Bore Blasters: There's already article about this one. But if you're too busy to read it, it's horde survival, except you're piloting a helicopter and you mine deeper and deeper.
Beat the Beats: VR only. Bit like Beat Saber, but with boxing like mechanics. Like Beat Saber, can't play too long as both are physically bit demanding.
Reus 2: Graphically bit more impressive and maybe bit easier to play than original Reus. Basically god game about maximizing bonuses so villages can grow. What's new in this one is multiple planets there are some choices in shaping the humanitys history.
Still fun
Cat Needs: basically moving cats around in order to feed and get them to bed. Bit on easy side, especially once you get used to the puzzle mechanics. Roadmap promises new mechanics, so full game could be fun enough.
Doodle Harmony Ghosts: match silhouettes together. Another pair is black and white, with some details, the second one is just color. If your brain can't handle too much thinking, this could be fun for a while.
Swappy World: Survival game with card swiping mechanics. Has some potential, though I found a bug that will make sure you're overburdened all the time.
Menace from the Deep: Feels bit like Slay the Spire, but mixed with Cthulhu mythos. More complex mechanics, but feels still bit more forgiving as there's things like healing. Froze before I reached the boss. Retried, but looks like I couldn't continue where I left. Some potential here.
Almost fun
Space Drop: Another VR only game. Dodge and shoot asteroid and try collect collectibles while at it. Barely any tutorial. Some potential, but ultimately frustration won.
Broken
Dungeonborne: I browsed the discussions and it might work on Steam Deck, but for the rest of us, anticheat will stop the game from starting.
Last edited by Anza on 11 February 2024 at 12:13 am UTC
Worth checking out:
Bore Blasters: There's already article about this one. But if you're too busy to read it, it's horde survival, except you're piloting a helicopter and you mine deeper and deeper.
Beat the Beats: VR only. Bit like Beat Saber, but with boxing like mechanics. Like Beat Saber, can't play too long as both are physically bit demanding.
Reus 2: Graphically bit more impressive and maybe bit easier to play than original Reus. Basically god game about maximizing bonuses so villages can grow. What's new in this one is multiple planets there are some choices in shaping the humanitys history.
Still fun
Cat Needs: basically moving cats around in order to feed and get them to bed. Bit on easy side, especially once you get used to the puzzle mechanics. Roadmap promises new mechanics, so full game could be fun enough.
Doodle Harmony Ghosts: match silhouettes together. Another pair is black and white, with some details, the second one is just color. If your brain can't handle too much thinking, this could be fun for a while.
Swappy World: Survival game with card swiping mechanics. Has some potential, though I found a bug that will make sure you're overburdened all the time.
Menace from the Deep: Feels bit like Slay the Spire, but mixed with Cthulhu mythos. More complex mechanics, but feels still bit more forgiving as there's things like healing. Froze before I reached the boss. Retried, but looks like I couldn't continue where I left. Some potential here.
Almost fun
Space Drop: Another VR only game. Dodge and shoot asteroid and try collect collectibles while at it. Barely any tutorial. Some potential, but ultimately frustration won.
Broken
Dungeonborne: I browsed the discussions and it might work on Steam Deck, but for the rest of us, anticheat will stop the game from starting.
Last edited by Anza on 11 February 2024 at 12:13 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Looks like the Fest is still up for a while. Slowly some of the demos are going to vanish. Shapez 2 is going to be there until 26th, so if you want to try that out, there's still time.
Todays games:
Worth Checking Out
Millenia:
This one is Civilization clone and some of the features are familiar from Civilization 6. There are though some things that makes it bit different. For example eras shape gameplay and first one to unlock the new era can affect which one it will be. Different eras have different requirements, so unlocking specific one is not necessarily easy. Refreshing in a sense that there's not launcher, but as games publisher is Paradox, so can't totally rule that out.
Balatro:
there's already article up about this one. In short it's gambling rogulelite based on poker. Good fun and quite addictive.
Lightyear Frontier:
Satisfactory with mechs and with more farming and less automation. I had fun and based on the store page there's some potential and it's advertised to be on the cozier side. So there might be some Slime Rancher influences too as exploration is a thing. Demo had ancient ruin to explore, and full game seems to have few more additional areas to explore, which were walled off in the demo.
Pacific Drive:
Stalker meets driving with fixing the car and all. There's already article up for it.
Still fun
Homeworld 3: it's a Homeworld game, I didn't play past the tutorial yet. Could be maybe higher maybe based on the actual gameplay.
Almost Fun:
The Carrier And Crows:. It's a survival game alright. You can punch trees, but you do have axe rightaway so you don't have to.
Crafting takes quite lot of resources and there seems to be something weird going on. Water looks like a gel and doesn't flow downriver, crow might hover in air. There's also crow person in a hollow tree. Some of these might actually be bugs. Based on the screenshots there's more weird stuff in the game, but it was too little too late for me.
Farcaster:
VR only. Sci-fi western on the rails shooter. I got trouble starting up the games and it seems that menus don't work all the time as guns don't work as pointers consistently. Also for some reason, second eye was having view too far apart, so I got double vision.
After warmup, difficulty raises drastically. Might be more fun if I get better at dodging bullets. Though still best arcade VR shooter so far, but the bar is quite low. Actually Superhot might scratch the shooter itch bit better, though it's quite hard as well.
Todays games:
Worth Checking Out
Millenia:
This one is Civilization clone and some of the features are familiar from Civilization 6. There are though some things that makes it bit different. For example eras shape gameplay and first one to unlock the new era can affect which one it will be. Different eras have different requirements, so unlocking specific one is not necessarily easy. Refreshing in a sense that there's not launcher, but as games publisher is Paradox, so can't totally rule that out.
Balatro:
there's already article up about this one. In short it's gambling rogulelite based on poker. Good fun and quite addictive.
Lightyear Frontier:
Satisfactory with mechs and with more farming and less automation. I had fun and based on the store page there's some potential and it's advertised to be on the cozier side. So there might be some Slime Rancher influences too as exploration is a thing. Demo had ancient ruin to explore, and full game seems to have few more additional areas to explore, which were walled off in the demo.
Pacific Drive:
Stalker meets driving with fixing the car and all. There's already article up for it.
Still fun
Homeworld 3: it's a Homeworld game, I didn't play past the tutorial yet. Could be maybe higher maybe based on the actual gameplay.
Almost Fun:
The Carrier And Crows:. It's a survival game alright. You can punch trees, but you do have axe rightaway so you don't have to.
Crafting takes quite lot of resources and there seems to be something weird going on. Water looks like a gel and doesn't flow downriver, crow might hover in air. There's also crow person in a hollow tree. Some of these might actually be bugs. Based on the screenshots there's more weird stuff in the game, but it was too little too late for me.
Farcaster:
VR only. Sci-fi western on the rails shooter. I got trouble starting up the games and it seems that menus don't work all the time as guns don't work as pointers consistently. Also for some reason, second eye was having view too far apart, so I got double vision.
After warmup, difficulty raises drastically. Might be more fun if I get better at dodging bullets. Though still best arcade VR shooter so far, but the bar is quite low. Actually Superhot might scratch the shooter itch bit better, though it's quite hard as well.
1 Likes, Who?
Some of the demos have already vanished, though ones I mention here still have the demos available. There's few games worth mentioning. I do have few more unplayed demos, but let's see if any of them are worth mentioning.
Worth Checking Out
Rotwood
Rotwood is reminds me bit of Cult of the Lambs "dungeons", though based on the experience on the latter, Rotwood is the more fun version it. I guess that benefit of coming later and being bit more genre pure game that can concentrate on making one gameplay loop fun. Plenty of roguelite featurures like upgrades and different weapons. Combat requires bit of skill, but learning curve feels like manageable. Though I still might hit ceiling in the full game, but hard to know as the game hasn't been released yet.
I managed to try out different weapon types and they do affect the gameplay by having different moves and combos.
Ultros
Metroidvania with interesting art style and world building is wonderfully strange. Also, you get to eat your enemies organs (which is tied to update mechanic).
Almost Fun
Death Relives
Horror game getting inspiration from Aztec mythology. Some puzzles and hiding from the monster. Only thing that managed to scare me were the jumpscares. Probably could learn trick or two from the Amnesia games. I didn't play long enough to see what the odd looking gun does, though that might have been the main reason why I downloaded the demo. Not totally sure if there's strong enough reasons for me to launch the game again.
Breachway
Space travel, space battles and a card game. Those are the main ingredients of Breachway. Lot of interesting mechanics, but ultimately bit boring. I guess that's the only thing wrong with it.
Level Up Your Body
I mentioned Beat the Beats earlier. Like it, this one is VR only game based on boxing moves. Main difference is that this one is bit of a mess. It copies few things from Beat Saber, but they don't seem to do anything at all. Ultimately fixable things, but this might be the only time I play the game ever.
Not Worth it
Hell Galaxy
What could go wrong, if the premise is sci-fi horror? Sadly tutorial execution can ruin the great premise. Seems to be some kind of space combat game, but tutorial hides the enemies behind icons (known issue) and if you die in the tutorial, you get soft locked behind door that can not be opened.
Though still, based on the store page, maybe there's good game hidden in there somewhere. Hard to know.
Worth Checking Out
Rotwood
Rotwood is reminds me bit of Cult of the Lambs "dungeons", though based on the experience on the latter, Rotwood is the more fun version it. I guess that benefit of coming later and being bit more genre pure game that can concentrate on making one gameplay loop fun. Plenty of roguelite featurures like upgrades and different weapons. Combat requires bit of skill, but learning curve feels like manageable. Though I still might hit ceiling in the full game, but hard to know as the game hasn't been released yet.
I managed to try out different weapon types and they do affect the gameplay by having different moves and combos.
Ultros
Metroidvania with interesting art style and world building is wonderfully strange. Also, you get to eat your enemies organs (which is tied to update mechanic).
Almost Fun
Death Relives
Horror game getting inspiration from Aztec mythology. Some puzzles and hiding from the monster. Only thing that managed to scare me were the jumpscares. Probably could learn trick or two from the Amnesia games. I didn't play long enough to see what the odd looking gun does, though that might have been the main reason why I downloaded the demo. Not totally sure if there's strong enough reasons for me to launch the game again.
Breachway
Space travel, space battles and a card game. Those are the main ingredients of Breachway. Lot of interesting mechanics, but ultimately bit boring. I guess that's the only thing wrong with it.
Level Up Your Body
I mentioned Beat the Beats earlier. Like it, this one is VR only game based on boxing moves. Main difference is that this one is bit of a mess. It copies few things from Beat Saber, but they don't seem to do anything at all. Ultimately fixable things, but this might be the only time I play the game ever.
Not Worth it
Hell Galaxy
What could go wrong, if the premise is sci-fi horror? Sadly tutorial execution can ruin the great premise. Seems to be some kind of space combat game, but tutorial hides the enemies behind icons (known issue) and if you die in the tutorial, you get soft locked behind door that can not be opened.
Though still, based on the store page, maybe there's good game hidden in there somewhere. Hard to know.
0 Likes
AndroidNougat7 Feb 14
I tried 39 games from the Next Fest (February 2024) and all games, which I tested works fine on Linux and also on my Steam Deck.
Some of my favorites:
- Pacific Drive
- Rotwood
- Synergy
- Ultros (just released yesterday)
- Grippy Golf
- Biomorph
- Nevergrave
- Backpack Battles
- #Drive Rally
After I ignored all prior Steam Next Fests in the past, this time I enjoyed that until the last second and it remembered me on my early childhood days, on which I played demo games from DVD-ROMs on the PS2.
I even keep my main PC and my Steam Deck offline to still enjoy the game demos.
Last edited by AndroidNougat7 on 14 February 2024 at 1:18 am UTC
Some of my favorites:
- Pacific Drive
- Rotwood
- Synergy
- Ultros (just released yesterday)
- Grippy Golf
- Biomorph
- Nevergrave
- Backpack Battles
- #Drive Rally
After I ignored all prior Steam Next Fests in the past, this time I enjoyed that until the last second and it remembered me on my early childhood days, on which I played demo games from DVD-ROMs on the PS2.
I even keep my main PC and my Steam Deck offline to still enjoy the game demos.
Last edited by AndroidNougat7 on 14 February 2024 at 1:18 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: AndroidNougat7I tried 39 games from the Next Fest (February 2024) and all games, which I tested works fine on Linux and also on my Steam Deck.
I count that I played 27 demos, though it's 29 if demos that didn't work are counted. Also I have been playing some demos even after the fest has ended. Even installed few more.
I think I have played even more in one of the previous fests, but that one was during my holiday. This time around had to balance work and other stuff at the same time, which left less time for demos. But still added seven games to wishlist, which is plenty.
0 Likes
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