Steam demos might be available all year round, but there’s nothing quite like Steam Next Fest, as hordes of devs and publishers flood Valve’s storefront with snappy tasters. Whether you’re into action-packed RPGs, challenging roguelike games, or simple relaxing games, you always know there’s something waiting for you among the best Steam Next Fest demos
If you feel swamped with options, PCGN is here to help, and I’ve put time into countless demos to bring you the best of the best. So here’s my pick of the top demos available during Steam Next Fest’s February edition.
Here are the best demos in Steam Next Fest February 2025:
Deliver At All Costs
It’s a little bit Fallout. It’s a lot Grand Theft Auto. There’s even some The Sims in there for good measure. Deliver At All Costs is a brilliant, chaotic, quest-based driving game set in the 1950s. As the handsome young Winston Green, you’re broke, your landlord is chasing you for rent, and something mysterious and sinister stopped you from pursuing your engineering dreams.
So you get a job as a delivery driver for a somewhat dodgy company doing somewhat dodgy jobs, all while drifting full-speed around corners, into buildings, and over pedestrians. Deliver At All Costs is an intentionally silly bit of nonstop fun, and it’s undoubtedly one of the standout demos from Next Fest. If you’re biding your time until the GTA 6 release date, Deliver At All Costs is the perfect game to get you through.
War Rats
You know when demos always have that caveat that ‘this is a demo, there may be bugs’ etc? Well, keep that in mind when playing War Rats. I ran into a few issues during my many playthroughs of the 2D side-scrolling shooter, but the fact that it’s still on this list is a testament to how much I enjoyed it despite its rough edges.
War Rats is a brilliantly fun side-scrolling shoot ‘em up – or rat ‘em up – and your goal is to get to the enemy’s base and destroy it. There are tower-defense elements in here, as you also need to stop them from reaching your base, but it’s all about upgrading your weaponry and going on the offensive. Take your time killing enemy rats and picking up valuable loot drops – including Chz, of course – and prepare yourself for an increasingly powerful barrage of opponents. War Rats also features permadeath mechanics, and your level progress is reset at death, so only attempt to tackle War Rats if you like an infuriating (but stupidly enjoyable) challenge.
Doloc Town
We didn’t know we needed side-scrolling, post-apocalyptic Stardew Valley. Turns out we do, and it’s called Doloc Town. To be honest, that’s kind of all you need to know. If that hasn’t sold it to you, I don’t know what will.
Twisted Tower
I love a game that gets a genuine jump scare out of me. The type that gets you and then has you laughing out loud once you’ve recovered. Twisted Tower is one such game, and leads you to the eponymous tower: an eerie, carnivalesque mansion on a deserted island. Twisted Tower is filled with sideshow games and fantastical foes, and you must fight your way to the top to get out alive, all in the name of love.
Within the first few minutes of the atmospheric horror game demo, I’m giggling away at my fragility after a big-headed Huggee Bear mascot skitters across my path with an evil chuckle, causing my soul to leave my body momentarily. I’m immediately hooked.
This isn’t the last of the jump scares in this Bioshock-looking FPS game, but I have to confess that Twisted Tower isn’t exactly challenging. At least not during the levels open to you in the demo. It doesn’t suffer for it though, as the lack of difficulty lets you enjoy your whimsical surroundings that much more. Presumably, the higher up the tower you progress, the harder things get, and I can’t wait to make it up a few more floors.
Fellowship
There are no original ideas. Or so we’re told. It’s unusual to hear something is the first of its kind these days, but it still happens, and Fellowship is the first ever MODA: Multiplayer Online Dungeon Adventure. The brainchild of Chief Rebel, a new studio comprising veterans from Blizzard, DICE, Arrowhead, and more, Fellowship was borne of a desire for a PvE MOBA, with MMO and ARPG elements.
Fellowship’s character selection screen shows off just a few of the characters available at launch. With two tanks, two DPS characters, and two healers, you’re in MOBA territory. Pick your favorite and enter the Stronghold, and you’ll think you’ve switched over to a classic MMO. Other players surround you in this top-down forest setting, some riding their mounts around warming braziers, others chatting, and the rest testing their aim at target practice. You can see your skills at the bottom of the screen, while movement is WASD-based, not click-to-move. This is a good thing, if you ask me, and your camera is then controlled by your mouse, which will come naturally to MOBA players or modern ARPG fans.
Once you’re familiar with your surroundings, it’s time to head to the dungeons. Fellowship Dungeons have a range of enemy packs and bosses to defeat, and you mustn’t draw in more than you can manage. Again returning to those MOBA mechanics, each dungeon has a series of lanes to explore. Instead of destroying an enemy base at the end, though, you must kill enough enemies to satisfy your kill score. Some foes are worth more, others less, and you can even use these figures to plan out the most efficient path. If you’re into MOBAs, MMOs, and dungeon exploration games, give Fellowship a try and read our previous Fellowship preview for more. It’s the perfect gateway game to any of these genres.
The Deadly Path
In his The Deadly Path preview, our Ken said it best: “Take the card-based strategy of Cultist Simulator and blend it with the fantasy town management of Against the Storm and Dungeon Keeper, infuse it with a light-hearted but nightmarish dark fantasy tone reminiscent of Darkest Dungeon or Cult of the Lamb, and you’ll be some way to understanding promising new roguelike strategy game The Deadly Path.”
This RTS game drags you down into a fantasy underworld of dreadful deities to grovel on your knees for redemption. Apparently, you’ve upset some demons. Using strategy and a deck of tiles, you must aid each of these deadly gods in their uprising in the hope they’ll forgive you and grant you freedom. These tiles are your building blocks for creating a base, which you must then defend from attackers while toiling away to appease the Dread Deities. As you progress, a complex system of tools and tiles becomes available, and dedicating yourself to the cause is your only way to endure in this easy-to-learn but hard-to-master strategy game.
Autonomous Odyssey
I’m a sucker for a classic platformer or Metroidvania. Abe’s Oddysee is one of my all-time favorites, I adore Ori, and last year I raved about the remarkable Sheepy: A Short Adventure. Next on my list is Autonomous Odyssey. This endearing, hand-drawn adventure starts with a stark awakening where a young boy gets attacked by robots at his father’s laboratory. I won’t spoil what happens next, but it’s a sweet and surprisingly emotional intro to this story-driven platform game, resulting in you guiding a robot through a dangerous underworld.
Classic Metroidvania mechanics have you learning new skills as you unlock the map. Collecting cogs allows you to fix forgotten and destroyed mechanisms blocking your path. All the while, oppressed characters neglected by the corporation that made them have turned to violence. In fact, it’s a little reminiscent of Abe’s Oddysee in places. Like the other games mentioned above, Autonomous Odyssey’s narrative perfectly complements the action to keep you working toward an answer to a meaningful question, and I’m certain this demo will have you returning to get it.
Festered
We know you love retro-inspired games and horror as much as we do, and Festered is a PSX-style first-person horror with hints of Alien Isolation and other spooky stealth games. Waking up alone in a deserted, infested research facility, your goal is to get out of there pronto. I won’t spoil what happens in the game’s first few seconds, but let’s just say developer Fazerdoo doesn’t ease you into the situation.
Once you’ve had a chance to catch your breath, you realize you’re in a control room and must figure out how to use the panel on the PC to progress. Want to open a door? You need to enter the command into the system. Want to look something up? Find the right document name and open it via a command. Other puzzles await you as you make your way around the abandoned site, trying to avoid the infected workers creeping around the corridors, and periodically returning to the control room to replenish your O2 levels.
I would almost say you don’t need to play the Festered demo as it runs at around 15 minutes, while the full game itself is set to only take around 45. But if you like puzzles, frights, and ‘90s vibes, then there’s not much here to dislike, and the full game is targeting a Q2 2025 release.
Outworld Station
We couldn’t have a Next Fest list without a space game. While it looks a lot like EVE, Outworld Station is instead a deep-space automation game. As the station commander of a small space outpost, you must work your way up from humble beginnings, gathering materials like gold and titanium and using them to construct new power resources or production machinery. These in turn extract rarer materials and process more resource-intensive crafting recipes. You might find yourself losing hours to this zen game, listening to the sound of engines whirring as you wait for your required output. The one thing I would say, though, is to pay close attention to the tutorial. Processes can be a little fiddly at first, and you might find yourself at a dead end if you miss something.
Wartorn
The first thing that struck me about Wartorn was the option to choose between ARPG or MOBA mouse controls from the jump. To me, this not only shows off the team’s passion for multiple genres but also their desire to make the experience as accessible as possible.
Whatever your vice, Wartorn is well worth a try. In this roguelike adventure, you play as dual protagonists seeking the safety of Beynun, their ancestral fortress. To get there, they must battle their way through a series of dungeons, each containing dangerous foes with elemental powers. Let the sisters die, and your run ends.
To help them survive, you’ll build out your crew, choosing a new controllable squad each time you complete a level. You’re given various options to choose from, so make sure you round out your team with the skills and elements you need for the best chance of survival.
And with that, you’re ready to take on the onslaught of Steam Next Fest demos available right now. Think of working your way through them as a game in itself; I promise it’ll be rewarding. Once you’ve added these to your wishlist, why not check out some of the other upcoming PC games on our radar, or try some full-length free Steam games once you’ve exhausted these demos.