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Valve’s Steam Next Fest is back with ‘hundreds’ of playable demos and developer streams.

Steam’s Next Fest is officially back this week, bringing users ‘hundreds’ of playable demos, livestreams and sneak peeks at upcoming games. Next Fest began earlier this week and is set to end on October 16, so this is your reminder to download all the demos that catch your eye while you still can.

Here’s everything you need to know about Next Fest:

What is Next Fest?

Next Fest is a regular event held by Valve on Steam to showcase upcoming games of all shapes and sizes, as well as the developers behind them. While the virtual games festival might have started small, it now consists of hundreds of game demos alongside developer livestreams and chats. The idea behind Next Fest is to give players a better way to add games to their Steam wishlists, by giving them some hands-on experience first.

This time, Valve has put up a festival site full of information on Next Fest, splitting up all of its games into different categories and adding a small section for developer livestreams. You can check out the website’s ‘broadcast schedule’ to see developers playing their own games, and even join chat to interact with other viewers. It’s all very Twitch-like, except that these games haven’t come out yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t play them, though.

What games should you check out?

Sometimes, the best part of these game demo events is discovering new titles that never would have been on your radar otherwise. Next Fest’s demos contain quite a few recognisable names you might want to check out, such as The Talos Principle 2, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Sky: Children of Light and more. Even Robocop: Rogue City has a demo available for the event, and it looks pretty authentic to the iconic 80s sci-fi movie it spawned from.

However, there are a few hidden gems here to try out too. One game called Enshrouded sports has interesting similarities to Valheim and Souls games with 16-player co-op and has already become Next Fest’s most wish-listed upcoming game. City builder Pioneers of Pagonia, driving game Japanese Drift Master and souls-like crab game (yes, really) Another Crab’s Treasure also look pretty creative and very much indicative of the diversity Next Fest's demos have to offer.

If you’re having trouble choosing, try watching a few developer livestreams to spot interesting-looking game demos available for the event. Have fun!

Steam Next Fest returns this week with more game demos and streams