The Best Games From Steam Next Fest 2025

ign.com:

Steam Next Fest is the all-digital event where you can play literally hundreds of demos on Steam for free, so you can find your next favorite game. But with so many demos to play and the event lasting only a week – it ends 3 March at 10am PT – it can be daunting to know where to start.

IGN's team has been downloading and trying out the best and most interesting demos, which we've compiled below. It's not a comprehensive list of everything to check out, more a starter list of demos you should definitely go to first and, if you want more, well, there’s hundreds of others to choose from.

I still play the Monster Train daily challenges on my phone to this day, and I’d just finished one when the announcement of Monster Train 2 and the demo popped up. So I was pre-grabbed on the roguelike, deck-building fantasy game series. But so far I like what I’m seeing of the sequel. It’s not a radical reinvention of the idea, but it’s layering on some new stuff like equipment and room cards where you have to upgrade on the fly moore, and building resources like Dragon’s Hoard and Valor are different enough from the original that it’s refreshing - Dan Stapleton

If you like Fire Emblem, you’ll like Dark Deity 2. As somebody who enjoyed the first game despite its rough edges, the second game is shaping up to be a significant improvement with even more room for player creativity. The standout feature is build flexibility, as each unit has four mid-tier classes and an additional four high-level classes. My personal favorite unit is the hunter who is given the choice of an orangutan, toad, lion, or hyena to fight with them. The story has you playing as the children of the first game's protagonist. I really enjoyed the sibling dynamic, along with Alden, a returning character acting as the chill uncle. The demo also showed off some early choices with branching paths which is promising for a more memorable and replayable adventure. - Eric Zalewski

In Out of Sight you play as Sophie, a blind girl