Steam Next Fest lets you play hundreds demos of upcoming games

The demo festivals that Valve holds many times a year allow PC players to try out a wide range of forthcoming games for free. Steam Next Fest, starting in February 2024, provides access to hundreds of gameplay slices over the course of a week.

Access Valve's "multi-day celebration of upcoming games" on the event's hub page here. The hundreds of experiences accessible can be readily browsed and filtered there, with distinct pages for genres and the Steam tags system to facilitate new discoveries. Logging in to Steam before exploring the page allows Valve's recommendation algorithms to work their magic for users.

Scrolling down, you'll find the most popular games at the event and the most wanted games on the platform, complete with demonstrations. As more people try out demos, the favorites list should fluctuate significantly. Game livestreams from developers, as well as Q&A sessions, are set to continue throughout the event.

At the outset of the event, future games such as RTS Stormgate, mech-based agricultural game Lightyear Frontier, 4X strategy game Millennia, and supernatural driving sim Pacific Drive have already risen to the top rankings.

As with prior events, the majority of demos available are from indie developers displaying their upcoming products, with a few major publishers also participating. Keep in mind that these are pre-release gameplay slices, so there may be some issues to work around.

The inaugural Steam Next Fest of 2024 will end on February 12. Two more Steam Next Fest campaigns are scheduled for this year, with the next demo festival set to begin in June.