The transition into 2026 has begun to settle, with a few major releases like Resident Evil 9 and Pokemon Pokopia gracing our consoles. However, us gamers are always looking to the future of what’s to come, and what better way to have a taste of upcoming indie games than Steam Next Fest!
We did this rodeo in the summer of last year, and (not to toot my own horn) most of what we recommended ended up being certified bangers. So, my lovely editors and I are back to steer you through the 100s of demos on offer towards those that sparkle a bit more.
As usual, we will link trailers and their steam page so you can wishlist and try out the demo yourself—a lot of demos revealed tend to still be available even after the event has ended.
Olivia
Wax Heads
I had to limit myself to ONE shop management narrative game in our recommendations because I want to achieve a nice balanced variety. My standouts were Thrifty Business, published by Spellgarden games (Sticky Business and Ritual of Raven), and Wax Heads, published by new team Patattie Games. The former is a thrift shop where you stock pre-loved items, and the latter is a vinyl record shop with a similar core play style. However, I went with Wax Heads because of its killer punk style, and I found myself gelling with its more challenging and varied gameplay. It’s also made by a whopping 2 people! So I want to give it some love.
Wax Heads is a ‘cozy-punk narrative sim about working in a struggling record shop’. From the get-go, there’s a lot of history that comes with its owner and their time in the spotlight. It quickly seems to get messy, which piqued my interest. You’re a new hire, and it’s your job to help your customers find the record they’re looking for. The gameplay consists of managing the shop on a customer by customer basis, and they’ll give you a prompt to figure out what they’re looking for. At first, they straight up tell you, but where this game presents its challenge is when customers are more abstract on what they want. One customer came in all mysterious and simply asked for the ‘new album’ which could have been several options, but if you look at your social media app on your phone, you’ll see she posted that she is a major Mimi fan. Another fun example is when a customer is buying a record for her sister’s birthday but she only recalls a rain cloud being on it. I swept through the store to find what she was looking for, but none of them had this detail. However, in Wax Heads, records are like ‘puzzle boxes’ where you can flip it to look at the back, inspect the record itself or peruse the information that provides its context. I eventually found the rain cloud as an illustration on the disk itself. The game presented these brain puzzles frequently, which provided a lot of promise in not getting bored in the usual shop management gameplay.
Wax Heads’ demo is short but jam packed with personality, narrative, and fun and interesting gameplay. The game had me recommending records, but also making band posters and interacting with the store’s workers and owner. It’s been brief so far, but the game is already doing an interesting job in commenting on the industry and making me privy to what goes on as someone who isn’t involved in the community. I can’t wait to play more.
You can wish list and play Wax Heads demo here!
Wax Heads releases on 5 May 2026
Phonopolis
I LOVE puzzle games, shocker, but it's hard to find one that feels different and not just your typical whodunit, which a lot of the demos i tried fell into. They’re not necessarily bad experiences, but there’s only so many times I can play them. However, my interest was piqued when I saw Amanita Design arrive on the scene with Phonopolis. I loved their critically acclaimed title Machinarium and their ability to make a point and click adventure’s background and world feel so visceral and alive. Phonopolis is no exception and its extremely brief demo, which can be completed in half an hour, has already ensnared me.
Phonopolis takes its inspiration from the dystopias of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley as it's set in a dystopian future where the population is controlled by the loudspeakers. These speakers pump out orders and propaganda that are so loud that everyone is brainwashed and therefore cannot think for themselves. Our protagonist, Felix, one day stumbles upon headphones that block out the noise and subsequently wakes him up from the regime’s spell. He then gets paper airplaned by a note that tells him to rendezvous at the fourth floor of the women’s quarter. Once you arrive, the puzzling is underfoot.
The first puzzle comes in the form of prodding buttons that change the shape of the building or cause things to happen. To get to the top, you’ll need to distract those who are lingering on each floor and trigger sequences of events that move them or get items to progress. It's simple to grasp, but the joy comes in figuring out the combination of what you need to do. For example, you can slide floors across to align them with billowing black smoke to smoke out a room or trigger water to flood a floor. Watching the little cartoon characters run about confused by all the mischief I was getting up to was a delight, and shuffling everything around gave me great satisfaction. The personality of the game also shines through in how its inhabitants engage with the changes in their surroundings; they’re cartoony and silly in the best way. There are a couple more puzzles after this one that I won't spoil that were just as fun, interactive, and unique. I love it when a game’s puzzle solution gives me a silly little grin.
As said before, Phonopolis’ demo is tiny, but that’s probably because the game will have a relatively short run time. But I’m already excited for what other inventive puzzles the team will present to me. The world may be a dystopian trope we have seen thousands of times before, but its charm and character will keep me reeled in.
You can wish list and play Phonopolis’ demo here!
Phonopolis releases in 2026
Esoteric Ebb
This is (maybe) cheating as Esoteric Ebb was released on March 3rd, justafter Steam Next Fest concluded, but this game was probably my favourite out of everything I played, so I just have to talk about it—review coming soon hopefully!
D&D and Disco Elysium are two of my absolute favourite things with the former being introduced to me through Baldur’s Gate 3 and the latter being in my top 5 games of all time. However, they are both games/genres that are difficult to get right. Disco and BG3 both felt like lightning in a bottle, and I wasn't sure if they could ever be recreated. I did play Zero Parades for Steam Next Fest—ZA/UM’s latest venture—and there is a lot of promise there, but there was something about Esoteric Ebb that resonated with me; maybe because it's the blend of two of my favourite things?
The game treads the same of a protagonist waking up and having absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. Prior to this, you’ll spend time in menus and answering questions that will begin to shape your play through. You have your usual D&D skill attribution where you can make yourself proficient in certain skills. I always go for charisma and dexterity, especially the former as chatting to characters and getting the goss is the best. Once you wake up, it's time to figure out where we are and what’s going on. Esoteric Ebb bombards you with a lot of different sprawling quest lines, like finding out who fished you out of the river, and an ongoing squabble between a group of dwarves and an orc. It can be very overwhelming at first, but the game has a nice feature where it will highlight key words that you can then click on to get context and information—like the many religions of the region. You get access to one day in the demo, but it's jam packed with mystery as, like Disco, time only moves forward when you choose dialogue options.
The story seems to be shaping up to be a mystery with you as an investigator sent by the government. In this role, you’ll question everyone, get involved in side quests that reveal more about the world’s politics, and solve the mystery of who blew up the tea shop. The premise is intriguing enough, but it's the D&D flair that grabs me the most. You’ll speak to all kinds of races, from dwarves to goblins, and they’ll have their own factions with religions and identity. The dialogue is also already shaping up to be just as silly and cunning as its inspiration, as the skills you’re not as proficient in spurt some nonsense when you fail passive checks. My strength is a 7 and all it does is grumble and make me out to be a massive wimp. Your main decisions will be controlled by dice rolls as well, but you’ll be able to check how likely it is you’ll succeed or fail one. It’s all ground that's been tread before, but Esoteric Ebb seems to be a fun time.
You can play Esoteric Ebb’s demo here!
And if it strikes your fancy, you can go ahead and buy it right now! Joy!
Joe
Wild Blue Skies
As an elder millennial, I remember when Star Fox made its way to the Super Nintendo. It was one of the first notable games to utilize 3-D polygonal graphics. Combine that with an endearing anthropomorphic cast and some slick maneuvers, and you had the birth of an icon. While it sadly feels like the franchise has been left to languish, folks like me remember Star Fox at its peak and long for a return to form. Enter Wild Blue Skies, a rail-shooting arcade space shooter with its own anthropomorphic cast that is clearly a love letter to fans like me.
Thanks to Steam Next Fest, I recently got some hands-on time with the demo for Wild Blue Skies, and I'm excited. This feels like everything I've wanted from Nintendo since Star Fox 64. The demo only gave me access to one level, but with that and the trappings surrounding it, I'm already more than sold.
For starters, you've got a team of four animalian pilots in the Blue Bombers. The team is led by Bowie Stray, who appears to be a German Shepherd. Supporting him are Thorne the horned toad, Chuck the bull, and Roe, a doe (a female deer). Each has voice lines and in-mission moments like its iconic predecessor.
There's a mission board that looks like it'll likely be reminiscent of the Star Fox mission-select galaxy, allowing you to play different missions in a progressive order of your choosing (or via completion of hidden objectives, if I were to guess).
Gameplay itself feels nearly identical to the Nintendo 64 counterpart it's paying homage to. You'll fly around, boosting, shooting, and firing charge-shots and bombs. You can even double-tap a bumper to, ahem, do a barrel roll! The stage I played had a slew of enemies that flew in at various times, some designated as obvious targets in a group. You can collect secrets along the way, too.
The end of the demo's mission put you head-to-head with a four-armed oceanic robot piloted by a cybernetic hammerhead shark who fights in service to the evil Grimclaw. Destroying his machine gets you some banter before, in classic fashion, Bowie orders the team to check in. Enter more clever character-centric affirmations before the score screen rolled and the demo ended.
Wild Blue Skies looks like it's going to be the kind of game that will appeal to Gen X'ers, Millenials, and genre newcomers alike. The mechanics are easy to pick up, and the game looks like it's going to be bright and colorful, with plenty of replay value and fun-factor in its favor.
Anthony
Vampire Crawlers
I didn’t expect to spend 90 minutes with this demo, but it was enough time to suggest Vampire Crawlers will be on the podium of the best indie games this year.
This alternate version of Vampire Survivors is a deckbuilding dungeon crawler featuring your favorite namestay enemies and characters from the award-winning hit. You’re dropped into a dungeon and you’ll step square-by-square to find power-ups and confront enemies. Your fights are not fought through auto-battles, however; they are won by selecting cards based on the same weapons found in Survivors.
Each card comes with a mana cost, so the strategy comes from selecting the correct cards. The strategy is further intensified when it’s time to add cards to your deck. You can add cards that buff your deck such as through increasing your draw or adding armor, or you can add damage cards that also include gem slots where you can permanently buff a card by hammering in a gem.
Vampire Crawlers is incredibly addicting because the fights move so quickly and it’s easy to understand. But I did find it fairly easy, with the difficulty taking a while to actually challenge my decks. The difficulty curve feels much more gracious compared to Vampire Survivors. Perhaps that will change by release. Or perhaps not. I had fun destroying enemies with my overpowered deck.
Vampire Crawlers doesn’t have a launch date yet, but you can check out the demo here (still available as of writing). I can’t wait to play more of this.
Titanium Court
No one knows how to describe this Match-3 narrative story. It’s equally strategic, amusing, and it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen in a game.
You are a crowd participant in what looks like an improv show, telling a story that evolves as you play the game. There is no voice acting, only heavily pixelated images and tons of text—there is a lot of reading. This narrative adventure is mostly played through its Match-3 section, where your goal is to protect the castle you are inhabiting with others.
Surrounding your castle on the board are trees, mountains, and lakes. But there are also enemy fortresses, stores, and artillery. When you match three of anything, it disappears allowing for new elements to drop from above. The point is to surround your fortress with elements that will defend against your foes, and allow your units to gather resources. And so, Titanium Court acts as a resource management strategy game, too.
It’s so delightfully obtuse that describing it cannot paint the picture. You must play it. Your progress in the demo transfers to the full game as well, so you won’t have to repeat any of the beginning tutorial missions—the game amusingly points out that could be a problem, though.
There is no release date for Titanium Court yet, but I’d highly encourage you to wishlist it.
And that’s it for this round of Steam Next Fest! As always, we are spoilt for choice in demos and kicks the year off to an exciting start for the indie scene. Like I said before, even if the fest is over, most demos are still available so there’s a lot more fun to be had here.
We wish all the games and their teams the best and hopefully we will see them on the road ahead!
