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Takeaways from Steam Next Fest : February '26 from a player perspective

I've been playing demos from the Steam Next Fest religiously since it started (back then it was just called Steam Games Festival I think, it was around 2021).

(seen on the picture attached) I have one sheet of A5 paper per edition, around 60 to 90 demos played every time, and notes written on the back, I keep notes of the demos I play, and highlight those that are interesting enough, those that I wishlisted, those that aren't worth my time, etc. forgive the dirty mousepad lol

I never shared those, except to friends by just copy pasting links, but I thought it would be interesting to share a "top" 5 in multiple made up categories that I pay attention to, there's no specific ranking within this top 5, so it's more like the 5 best X I noticed in no particular order

I'm not done playing my list so this post may be incomplete, and I will update it throughout the weekend

5 Takeaways:

  • This is the best edition yet, with a lot of diversity in genres and gameplay ideas (the worst two editions were in 2025 I believe, which had an overwhelming amount of survival crafting / farming games)
  • AI and asset flips games are still rising, per https://nextfeststats.com/ when it launched, half of the ~3500 submitted games had disclosed generative AI usage, they later updated that number (it's down to 700 now)
  • The most successful demos were those that saw marketing efforts being put in motion 1 to 2 months before the festival, and have their release planned within the next 3 months. The bigger games aren't necessarily the most interesting, I only base this on my pattern recognition, but more often than not, 20+ Gigs games were not that interesting, while "lighter" games had more creativity. I'm extremely biased because I favour indie games rather than AA+ productions.
  • Prevalent genres : still a lot of balatro-likes and survivor-likes. The extraction shooter genre is on the rise too.
  • More and more games are trying to be optimized for the Steam Deck, I saw two or three demos with a dedicated "Steam Deck" graphic options!

My 5 favourite demos:

  • Whisk is incredible, so many movement options contained within the few mechanics available, great speedrun potential, great art
  • The Magus Circle is Vampire Surivors but you draw your spells on the screen like Arx Fatalis, it's super creative in how it completely changes the gameplay, I'm not the audience for this genre, but I will play this one because of how unique it is
  • Denshattack! is completely crazy and feels super good to play, I liked it more than Deadline Delivery in which driving felt off for me
  • Enter The Chronosphere superb twist on Superhot-but-topdown, love the artstyle, love the introduction to the game mechanics, for me this is textbook perfect demo to present an upcoming game
  • ...

5 Disappointments

  • SpaceCraft was released too early imo, the build is incomplete, unstable, the demos doesn't properly show its gameplay appeal, I expected a better marketing cycle from Shiro Games, but I remember Wartales had the same problems
  • People of Note I don't know how to explain it but it fails to be an interesting rhythm game, it works alright as a music themed turn by turn combat game but why not fully lean into the genre?
  • Truckful A demo build existed prior to this festival (without participating in the October '25 edition), but the one available this time is much worse in terms of gameplay available (lots of back and forth), and doesn't introduce the game properly
  • ...
  • ...

Best Steam Capsules (irrelevant of game qualities, you'll notice I'm a sucker for high contrast and great typography):

Best Art Direction:

  • Cicadamata People might fight me on this but I absolutely love the underlying themes and user interface look
  • Esoteric Ebb Really excited about a Disco Elysium-like, sidenote, I'm not sure the DnD system is a good fit for this kind of game, still, the dev handles it creatively
  • Boost Vector EX Beautiful and fluid UI that lifts the rather generic artstyle
  • ...
  • ...

This weekend I'm going to go through games that had little to no visibility to try and find the "underperforming" demos (that people should pay attention to)!

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