With the sheer amount of games released lately, it’s always great to get a chance to try things out before you buy. Steam Next Fest is back again to help you out with that, giving you some quick samples of upcoming games to get excited for. It can be a lot to wade through, so here’s six demos that I’ve run across that are worth checking out before it wraps up on June 16.
HELL IS US
I know a lot of people go to soulslike games for the combat, but my favorite element of the genre is the sense of exploration. To me, there’s nothing like navigating an interesting space and gaining mastery over it as you traverse back and forth. Hell Is Us, from developer Rogue Factor, drops you in a strange and dangerous world with no map or objective markers, trusting the player to be able to figure out what you’re doing and where you need to go. You’re exploring Hadea, a country that’s being torn apart by both civil war and strange creatures from something called The Calamity, on a search for your parents. In the demo, your travels bring you through the ruins of a strange tower, with multiple puzzles to solve as you navigate the area. I spent about an hour exploring the demo, and there were still many secrets and side quests that I did not pursue, making me think that it’s going to be a densely packed game full of loads to discover.
If you do come to soulslikes for the combat, and it’s arguable if this is a soulslike or not, Hell Is Us also features a decent twist on melee-focused, stamina-dependent combat. Interestingly, your stamina is tied to your health, making it harder to sustain attacks when you’re down on HP. To mitigate this, you’re given a small window of time to press a button after successful attacks in order to recover health, giving each fight an interesting rhythm that isn’t just about attacking and parrying. You’re also equipped with a drone that has a distraction skill that will keep an enemy occupied, a useful skill when the numbers start getting overwhelming. The game’s unique look, sort of like a combination of Death Stranding, Annihilation, and Control, grabbed me when it was initially revealed, and I’m glad that after playing it, there’s some substance to go with the style.
Hell is Us will launch September 4 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Steam.
THE DRIFTER
Point and click adventure horror games seem to be a pretty saturated genre among small indie games, but The Drifter managed to catch my eye with its extremely polished presentation. Its gorgeous pixel art style and evocative synthwave soundtrack immediately draw you in, even before you start controlling anything. You play as the titular drifter, Mick Carter, who is trying to make it home for his mother’s funeral when he witnesses a violent murderer by mysterious high-tech soldiers. This alone is a solid hook, but the one provided at the end of the demo is an even better one that makes me excited to see where the story goes.
Developer Powerhoof has put a lot of focus into modernizing the feel of the point and click adventure game, including crafting a unique controller setup that will make it feel at home on the Steam Deck. Tilting the right joystick will make a little ring around you that highlights the direction of possible interaction points on the screen, making it so you don’t have to pixel hunt for what to do next. In order to make puzzle solving more intuitive, there’s a dropdown menu that provides you with little recaps of all the main things you’re trying to ‘solve,’ giving you little hints at possible steps you’ll need to take. All these little touches made getting into the intriguing story a breeze, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game when it’s released on July 17.
ONEWAY.EXE
Video games are a great medium to experiment with avant garde storytelling, allowing you to walk through spaces that defy logic in ways that you can’t in other mediums. Oneway.exe from Disordered Media pulls this trick off, mixing surreal landscapes and chatroom style interfaces to unsettling effect. The game starts on a fake desktop screen, a gimmick that always works for me, and sets you off exploring an abandoned video game to try to uncover the mystery of its developers.
In the 20 minute demo, I didn’t get much of a sense of the narrative routes the game will take, but the vibes demonstrated were appropriately unsettling. The chatroom portions were great little cryptic bits of conversations that vaguely talk around upsetting events, while the spaces you explore have weird imagery and strange logic. There’s an almost ARG-like feeling to the way you have to put together information to solve the puzzles in the game; sometimes I was lost at one to do, but when it clicked it felt really neat. It’s hard to know what the shape of the whole game will be like from this small sample, but the clever mix of old internet and impossible spaces are a pretty good hook to get me to check out the full release.
MINA THE HOLLOWER
While I really loved the aesthetic of Shovel Knight, I’m not very good at 2D platformers, so I just admired it from afar. When Yacht Club Games announced their follow up Mina the Hollower, an action-adventure presented from an original Zelda-like perspective, I knew immediately that was going to be more my speed. After announcing their Halloween 2025 release date at Summer Game Fest, they dropped a demo for everyone to try, confirming my suspicions: this game is right up my alley. You play as the titular character as your ship is destroyed by a kraken, leaving you to fight and explore your way through a cursed island. It’s all presented in a gorgeous 8-bit inspired pixel art style, with a great soundtrack to enhance the mood.
At the start of the demo, you’re given the choice of three weapons, and I chose the whip, which gave the game a bit of a Castlevania vibe. As I whipped my way through strange monsters, the intricacies of the combat slowly became apparent. You’ve got a jump, your standard attack, and a sidearm, which needs to be collected and uses ammo. This all felt really tight, but once I was introduced to the burrowing mechanic, the game really opened up. Mina is a mouse, so if you hold down the jump button as you land you burrow into the ground for a brief moment, launching you out with a little boost when you emerge. There’s no dodge button in this game, but I quickly figured out how to use this burrow to get some moments of invulnerability to quickly move myself to safety. Not only was this helpful in combat, but the burrowing was also used to solve navigation puzzles in a really satisfying manner. This allowed Yacht Club to do some cleverly layered level design, full of shortcuts and secrets. I’m already impressed with what’s in the demo, and from all the cool other things I spotted in the trailer, it’s clear this has the potential to be just as big of a hit as Shovel Knight.
DEAD FINGER DICE: A BILLIONAIRE KILLING GAME
Dark weird gambling games seemed to have a bit of a moment recently with games like Buckshot Roulette and Flathead, and that was amplified even more with the surprise success of the roguelike poker-based Balatro. It’s no surprise that we see that trend continued with Dead Finger Dice: A Billionaire Killing Game. You’ve been kidnapped by demon billionaires and forced to play a sinister game of poker dice against them aboard a mysterious mega-yacht. You’ve got three rolls of five dice to make the best hand, and before each roll you place bets against your opponent. What are you betting? Your fingers of course.
In the demo, it’s a really simple game, but the Steam page promises options for being able to craft your own dice that will help you turn the odds in your favor. I hope that system ends up shaping up to be something cool, because Balatro proved just how much fun you can have playing around with a simple game in unique ways. While I didn’t get a sense of the mechanical intricacies that they’re promising, what the demo did show off is an exceptional style and tone for Dead Finger Dice. The strange demons are all rendered in a grungy 1-bit, lo-fi aesthetic, and it seems like there’s some sort of mystery that might unfold within the small room you’re staying in between rounds. I’m not sure how full of an experience this will end up being, but the vibes are definitely strong enough for me to give the full game a shot.
TORMENTED SOULS 2
Despite my affinity for fixed-camera retro survival horror games, I didn’t really get into the first Tormented Souls. Several friends of mine told me I would like it, but I missed its initial launch and just never found the time for it. Having just tried out the demo for the sequel, which is slated for sometime later this year, I feel like I’ll be picking this up day one. The new game features the returning Caroline Walker as she’s bringing her sister Anna to a mysterious clinic run by some equally mysterious nuns, a classic trope that fits with the grindhouse vibe the game strives for.
Nothing that Tormented Souls 2 does really reinvents the wheel for the genre, but it’s a good example of doing the tropes right. The beautiful location is lovingly shown through well-placed camera angles that are a good combination of fixed and dynamic, and there’s an emphasis on darkness both visually and mechanically. You’re not able to travel into dark areas, but a small lighter can help you explore them. The catch is that you can’t have the lighter out while you’re holding a weapon, forcing you to find small patches of light before you can take on any of the horrifying enemies in the game. The level you’re exploring is cleverly gated by fun little puzzles that have a very tactile feel to them, nailing my favorite aspect of the genre. This demo felt so promising that I might have to go back to see if I can finish the first one before the new game comes out.
Tormented Souls 2 launches “late 2025” on Steam, GOG.com, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series.
Have you found any great demos for this month’s Steam Next Fest? Leave a comment with your suggestions!
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