Written by: ItsMeTrickster
A few times a year, Steam holds this event called Next Fest where you can try out demos of awesome upcoming games for a week. From June 15th to the 21st, I had the pleasure of trying out these demos during the fest and I picked out 8 outstanding ones I think you’ll enjoy (a lot of them are rougelites cause I like rougelites, so heads up!) And even though it’s after the event, some demos will still be available to play and try out. Let’s get started!
Best Steam Next Fest demos for roguelite fans
#1 – Flipping is Hard
As a phone that flips (but isn’t a flip phone), Flipping is Hard is a climbing game where you can only rotate in order to progress. At first glance it looks like one of those ragebait “only up” games, but its visuals, controls, and dialogue are actually fun to experience! Even though it’s only a demo, there’s already players speedrunning this game with an in-game leaderboard to see the best times. The best part, you can play with friends and climb together! When I was playing this, I didn’t know it had multiplayer at all, so I unfortunately did not get to experience that side of the game, but from the trailer on its Steam page, it looks like a blast.
What makes it even cooler is the backstory behind it. The game is developed by Elegant Horse Studios, a Lithuanian-based company composed of three friends who have been making games together for years. You play as Flippy, a sturdy old-school flip phone, and the full game is planned to feature 10 different childhood areas, NPC challenges with quirky characters and weird lore, and even classic mobile mini-games you can unlock and play inside the game itself. It’s that last detail that gets me, a game inside a game inside a game. The demo alone has been pulling 95% positive reviews on Steam, which tells you this one already has a very dedicated fanbase forming around it.
#2 – Slayblade
SLAYBLADE, SLAYBLADE, LET IT RIP!! For you 90s and early 2000s peeps, Slayblade is a battle-top rougelite game where you customize your battle-top, compete in fast paced battles, and raise enough money to enter into the big leagues. Since this is a demo as of writing this, you can’t actually compete in the big leagues, it ends before you enter. But the battles themselves are fun, fast paced battle-top action. Keep an eye on your RPM, if that hits 0 before your opponent is down, you stop spinning and you lose the match (and your bet money!). So build up your perfect battle-top build and getting rippin’!
What really sells this one is how deep the customization goes. The game features over 60 interchangeable parts to collect, and each piece carries its own modifier that can radically change how your battles play out. Beyond the regular stadium fights, there are also illegal nighttime battles with wild stage modifiers, because apparently even Slayblade has an underground scene. The whole thing is wrapped in a vibrant Y2K aesthetic that feels very Toonami-era cartoon, and it’s giving all the right nostalgia hits for anyone who grew up trading Beyblades on the playground.
#3 – Greedy Spin: Reel Roguelike
I can’t stress this enough, this game is definitely the Balatro of slot games. From the passive items changing up the game, to achieving insanely big numbers, Greedy Spin is a roguelite slot game built around a rotating prize wheel. You can have a build where you get multipliers no matter what the wheel lands on. Or you can have a build where that hinges on you having a lot of money. Or you can just fill the whole wheel with nothing but watermelons. A lot of weird strategies can work! Funny little thing about this game, you actually have to pay in-game money to actually play (and to change the settings!). You can eventually get an upgrade to remove some of the fees, but it shows even the game is greedy!
It’s worth noting that despite the slot machine theme, this is absolutely not a gambling simulator and involves zero real-world currency or microtransactions, it’s a pure strategy game. What makes it stand out from other Balatro-likes is the sheer number of interactions you can stack. The game features over 150 plugins with distinct effects, which you can combine with special tools like viruses and upgrade patches to send your multipliers and chips into ridiculous territory. The builds you can cook up are genuinely wild, and discovering a new broken combo feels incredible every single time.
#4 – Arcane Eats
This one is a real treat! Arcane Eats is a deckbuilder roguelite similar to Slay the Spire, but with a food-based twist! As a chef, you use cards to cook ingredients on your 3 stoves, building delicious dishes for your customers. But you have to hurry serving them or else they’ll get impatient and start criticizing you. When they do, your mental health takes a toll, so it’s like an enemy attacking your health. You can hire cooks for extra help and buy more cards and artifacts. You can even enchant your stove tops for extra useful effects! It’s a very unique game, I highly recommend this demo if you can still try it out.
The people behind it are no slouch either. Arcane Eats is developed by Wonderbelly Games, a husband-wife duo featuring Bob Roberts, lead designer of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Andrea Roberts, who worked on Fable III. The demo has been updated since it first launched, and the Next Fest version now lets you play all the way through Week 2, adding new customers like vampires, werewolves, robots, and even gelatinous cubes, plus a new Cooktop Enchantments card type. If that doesn’t sell you on trying it, I don’t know what will.
Top Steam Next Fest deckbuilder and strategy demos
#5 Dice Vaders
You are an alien race and your sole mission is to destroy the solar system with your army. Dice Vaders is a dice-based roguelike deckbuilder game where you have to build an army of alien drones to take out Earth’s defense force. Playing a game with dice in it might seem like it’s completely up to chance, but you can manipulate the rolls with Budges to nudge a dice down or up a value and Chronos to reroll. You then use those dice to have that corresponding row power up and rack up attack points to beat the target defense. If you don’t make it in 4 turns, you’ll have a couple of grace turns to get more points, otherwise it’s game over. Can you command your army to victory and take over Earth??
#6 – Space Scavenger 2
In this space fairing sequel, Space Scavenger 2 is a fast-paced top-down roguelite where you can make your own crazy modular spaceship. As you progress, you’ll have opportunities to build up and deck out your ship with weapons, shields, bombs and more! Make sure you gather resources too as you can use them to get more parts and upgrade them throughout your run. You can also take a friend with you in a co-op run!
This one has been in development since 2022, and the jump in quality from the first Space Scavenger is very real. Ship building is designed to be quick and seamless, you just drag and drop new modules onto your ship while still fighting, so it never kills the game’s momentum. Beyond weapons and shields, the game also introduces a Gadget system, run-long upgrades that really define your playstyle, things like increased projectile range, larger area-of-effect sizes, improved agility, and more. Each run through the Gauntlet is procedurally shaped by your decisions, which keeps things from feeling repetitive even after multiple attempts.
#7 – Pegfinity
Pegfinity is an physics-based incremental Peggle-like game where as you rack up money, you can upgrade and change the pegs to gain combos and synergies to earn even more money for more insane upgrades! As with most incremental games, the beginning is a slow burn as you learn how the game works. Before you know it, you’ll have a bunch of pixel numbers and chaos all over your screen. It’s a great game to get that sweet sweet dopamine hit.
If you’re the kind of person who dumped hours into Peggle back in the day and always wanted it to go completely unhinged, this is your game. Pegfinity features over 150 upgrades to discover, with each one not just making you stronger but actively changing how you play, some of them interact with each other in ways the game probably didn’t intend (and that’s absolutely a feature, not a bug). Players have already described it as having SNKRX vibes with the addictive loop of Peggle and Pachinko games combined. Once the chain reactions start clicking, you’ll look up and realize an hour has disappeared.
#8 – Montabi
Do you like collecting creatures? Do you like card-based rougelikes? Do you like strategic tactical-based combat? This game is all of that and more! Montabi is a creature-collector roguelike deckbuilder game where you befriend Pokemon-like creatures and have them battle in a grid-based battlefield. Each unit has their own deck to use on their turn, including your human character. That’s right, even your character is on the battlefield with the creatures! Talk about really getting into the action. Evolve your creatures, shop for equipment and passives, and destroy your opponents in this very appealing and fun experience!
The game features a 3×3 grid battlefield where players can have three creatures active at a time, each drawing from their own deck and playing cards on their respective turns. The creature variety is genuinely impressive even in demo form, and similar to Pokémon, your creatures evolve every few levels, unlocking more powerful cards that get added to their individual decks. It’s one of those games where theory-crafting your team composition becomes half the fun. Montabi comes from developer Monkibo, published by Akupara Games, with a full release planned for August, so you can still try the demo before jumping into the full thing.
Side note: Technically, Montabi came out before the Next Fest event started, but its demo is still available to try out, so give it a look!
That’s all the games I wanted to showcase for this recent Next Fest event! Hopefully the next Next Fest later this year will be just as awesome. I’ll make sure to showcase them on my streams on Twitch.tv and make another article about them. Until then, hope you guys enjoy the games!
Which of these demos are you most excited to try? Drop a comment and let us know, we’d love to hear what caught your eye!