My Favourite Demos From Steam Next Fest Summer 2025
12 June 2025
Steam Next Fest has come around again! I love trying out demos for upcoming games, so I wanted to highlight some of my favourites from this Next Fest so that you can try them out too! Next Fest runs until June 16th and sometimes these demos get taken down afterwards, so check them out while you can! Anyway, here are 5 of my favourite demos that I've played from this Next Fest this season (and an honourable mention!):Mina the Hollower
Play the demo here!
Mina the Hollower has been my white whale game for years. I backed it on Kickstarter in 2022 and have been following it’s development since. I adored Shovel Knight, and have been a fan of Yacht Club Games since that first release. Mina the Hollower is a top-down action game inspired by classic Zelda games like Link’s Awakening. Mina’s unique mechanic is her ability to burrow into the ground, moving faster, dodging enemies and collecting buried treasure while doing so. Finally playing the demo, I got to experience just how smooth the burrowing is. It’s super easy to use, just keep holding jump after you land and you’ll burrow into the ground with no resistance. The combat feels fast-paced and satisfying, with the different enemies providing interesting challenges, and that’s just the first area! The Mina demo has completely lived up to my expectation for the game and I can’t wait to receive my backer copy when it releases on Halloween this year!
MotionRec
Play the demo here!
I first played MotionRec as a Pico-8 game on Itch and was absolutely taken aback by its clever mechanic (especially in such a lo-fi game engine). MotionRec is a puzzle platformer where you record your movement and then replay it in a different location to clear gaps, avoid spikes and, in this new demo for the full game, collect hidden music notes. It’s a really clever little mechanic and already the puzzles that are coming out of it in the first levels are super satisfying to complete. The slightly non-linear world design full of hidden collectibles reminds me a lot of Celeste, which is one of my favourite platformers of all time. Overall, this has left a really good first impression on me! Two years ago I left a comment on the Itch page saying I’d love to see a full game, so it was a lovely surprise to see that finally happening!
Cairn
Play the demo here!
I got really into climbing YouTube last year. Or, I should say, I got really into one climbing YouTuber, Mike Boyd. The hobby really fascinated me for it’s combination of mental and physical challenges: planning a route and then climbing it. Still yet to try climbing myself, I’ve found that itch scratched by the demo for climbing game Cairn. This demo was a deeply meditative experience for me. Half-way up a mountain with nothing but your quadrupedal Climbot and the sound of your own breathing, the experience of Cairn is immersive in a way I haven’t felt in ages. I’ve also just started playing Death Stranding, and the tight focus on your subtle movements felt very similar between both games. That isn’t even to mention the art, this game looks beautiful! The team is composed of the makers of Furi, the sound team from Limbo, Inside and Control and art by graphic novelist Mathieu Bablet, who makes gorgeously green sci-fi art. Out of everything I've talked about here, this is the game that I predict will do the best once it fully releases.
Flick Shot Rogues
Play the demo here!
I've gotten quite burnt out with roguelikes recently, so I was really surprised just how much Flick Shot Rogues caught my attention. But this little disc-flicking roguelike is simple and charming in exactly the ways I love. The controls are intuitive and the UI makes it easy to plan your moves without giving you so much information that the game solves itself. The various character abilities make each run feel unique from the very beginning, and the upgrades take advantage of the unique gameplay to make something that really stands out from a lot of other roguelike games! I’m always glad to see more tabletop inspiration in the video game scene, and this feels like a perfect example of that!
Sheepherds!
Play the demo here!
I played Sheepherds, a sheep herding party game, with my partner and we had an absolute blast! You play as 1-4 dogs who must herd sheep into pens so that their wool can be harvested. There are flower patches in each level that dye the sheep in different colours, and you have to get various colours of sheep into the pen to complete each level. The challenge of weaving these sheep between flower patches so that their colours don’t change was chaotic and strategic in a really fun way, the energy reminded me a lot of Overcooked, which is a very good sign!
Honourable Mention: Relooted
Check out the Steam page here!
While Relooted does not have a demo at time of writing, the announcement at Day of the Devs a few days before Next Fest captivated me enough to list it here as an honourable mention. Its an African heist game about taking back artefacts from western museums. That pitch alone was enough to interest me, but the music, character design and gameplay footage all brought me in even further. Each heist takes place across three stages: scope out the museum, prepare to take the artefact, and get out with it before you’re stopped by security. The part that particularly interested me was that middle stage. You have as much time as you want to prepare and set-up your escape, but then you have one chance to actually execute the heist, with all the security attempting to stop you. I’m not certain what happens if you fail the final stage, but that tension of only having one chance to execute the heist has really fascinated me and I’m super excited to try this game out!
So that’s all my favourite demos from Steam at the moment! Next Fest runs until June 16th so make sure to check out these games while you can! I had the idea to do this after the last Next Fest in February, so I’ll try to make it a tradition whenever a big festival comes around. If you have any demos that have caught your eye, let me know on Bluesky or Tumblr!