Steam Next Fest 2026 June
Our 22 picks from Steam Next Fest June 2026 — the standout free demos across shooters, RPGs, roguelikes and more. Grab them before 22 June.
Steam Next Fest is Valve's free demo event: a week where hundreds of upcoming, unreleased games put playable demos on the Steam store, with developer livestreams and a direct line to the people making them running alongside. The June 2026 edition is live 15–22 June and is the largest yet, north of four thousand demos — which is exactly the problem. Nobody plays four thousand demos.
If you're a PC player trying to work out what's worth an evening — and which demos earn a wishlist slot before the Summer Sale opens on 25 June — this is the short list: twenty-two picks across genres, so there's something here whether you came for a shooter, an RTS, a roguelike or a quiet murder. One caveat up front: most demos are pulled when the fest closes on 22 June, and a few of these become something you pay for within days, so treat the week as a free trial with a deadline. Download what catches your eye now.
Next Fest June 2026 · impressions & facts from each game's Steam page and fest coverage, not hands-on reviews
How Steam Next Fest June 2026 works
Next Fest runs three times a year — February, June and October — and the price of admission for a developer is a playable demo, so everything on show is something you can actually try, not a trailer you watch. It's more than a download dump: livestreams and developer chats run through the week, and the open discussion boards mean you can hand feedback straight to the people building the game while they're still building it.
Every demo here is free with a Steam account — no purchase, no sign-up wall. The catch is the clock: the fest ends at 10am PT on 22 June, and unless a developer chooses to keep a demo up, it comes down when the event closes. Whether your progress carries into the full game varies per title, and a couple of these head straight into paid Early Access right after. Each card below notes where the game stands.
An early look at upcoming games, not a sale
Worth keeping straight: this is a demo festival, not one of Steam's themed sale events. The seasonal sales — Summer, Autumn, Winter — discount games that are already out; Next Fest is the opposite errand, a hands-on look at upcoming games before they launch. The timing is deliberate. This edition lands just before the Summer Sale opens on 25 June, so the week doubles as a free trial run for the wishlist you're about to spend money on.
If you only queue a few
Limited time this week? Start with the ones that reward you for showing up early and don't ask for a wallet. Leave the ones with strings — a paywall days away, known performance gripes, mandatory PvP — until you know you want them.
- Order of the Sinking Star — demo progress carries into the full game, so nothing is wasted
- Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator — 98% on the demo, self-contained, no commitment
- Shroom and Gloom — one of the fest's highest-rated demos, easy to love in one sitting
- Among Us Story: On Guard — free, funny, low stakes
- EMPULSE — the demo becomes a $20 Early Access game on 24 June
- Mistfall Hunter — it's PvPvE, not PvE, and players report stutter even on strong rigs
- Anything launching right after the fest — the demo likely won't return
The headliners
Three with the most eyes on them. A Capcom revival twenty years in the waiting, an Innersloth first, and a puzzle box a decade in the making — none chasing a trend, all worth the download.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword
Capcom's first mainline Onimusha since 2006: third-person swordplay through an Edo-era Kyoto choked by Malice, cutting down underworld Genma with the Oni Gauntlet. Capcom is keen to stress it isn't a soulslike — the point is the clash of blades.
Among Us Story: On Guard
Innersloth's first single-player game: a comedy whodunnit where you play the ship's Guard, hunt the Impostor and clear your own name across three branching endings.
Order of the Sinking Star
Jonathan Blow's (Braid, The Witness) ten-years-in-the-making puzzle adventure: 1,000+ hand-crafted puzzles across four worlds that eventually collide. Demo progress carries over.
Action & combat
Three very different ways to swing, shoot or dash. One's a competitive shooter with a paywall days out; one's a soulslike that actually moves; one wears its Kingdom Hearts love on its sleeve.
EMPULSE
The Splitgate studio's Titanfall-style movement shooter: wallrun, grapple and fight over the two mechs that 3D-print mid-match like a Halo power weapon.
Valor Mortis
A first-person soulslike from the Ghostrunner team, pairing fluid movement with methodical combat. You're a soldier resurrected into Napoleon's army, untangling why — while a plague and its dubious 'cures' rot everyone around you.
Duskfade
A self-styled 'heartslike' and unashamed Kingdom Hearts tribute: a boy and his mechanical cuckoo chase a tower that's locked the world in eternal night, with jump-dash-grapple-glide traversal and combat that wears its inspiration proudly.
RPGs, loot & dungeons
Build a character, grab the loot, go again. A pedigree JRPG, the fest's breakout extraction game, an eight-player ARPG, a dungeon crawler that cooks and an anime open-world adventure.
Edge of Memories
A French-made action JRPG in the Edge of Eternity universe, with a stacked crew — Chrono Trigger's Yasunori Mitsuda on music, Xenoblade's Raita Kazama on designs. Play Eline against the Corrosion, a plague that warps people into monsters; the demo runs the roughly two-hour first chapter.
Mistfall Hunter
The fest's breakout: a third-person dark-fantasy extraction ARPG with deliberate, souls-like combat. Pick one of six classes, loot the mist, extract before a rival ends the run. Note: PvPvE, and stutter reports persist.
Dimraeth
A top-down open-world ARPG with up to eight in seamless co-op. Roll a sprite from a range of races, wake up freshly immortal after a ritual goes wrong, then hack, slash and build through a strange land to learn what broke.
Deep Dish Dungeon
From Behold Studios and Raw Fury: a first-person survival dungeon crawler with Metroidvania exploration and cooking-based crafting — the recipes you unlock actually change your stats. Solo or up to three in co-op.
DragonSword: Awakening
An anime-styled open-world action RPG in Unreal Engine 5: roam the Continent of Orbis, recruit companions and chain spectacular status-ailment tag-team attacks on a quest to stop a dragon stirring after sixty years.
Roguelikes & deckbuilders
Three built for repeat runs: two of the fest's best-rated roguelikes, plus a survival deckbuilder where you tame the monsters instead of only fighting them.
Shroom and Gloom
A first-person roguelike “double-deckbuilder” — one deck to explore hand-drawn fungal tunnels, one to fight. Skewer, roast and eat the mushrooms to heal.
Ascenders: Beyond the Peak
Vertical survival: lead a roped-together team of alpinists up cursed, Lovecraft-tinged mountains. One misstep can drag the whole rope down, and cutting a climber loose costs you resources and morale.
Decklings
A survival deck-building card game with a monster-taming hook: tame magical Decklings, march them into battle, then explore wild biomes, gather, craft and build a base on the road to becoming Deckling Champion.
Strategy, sim & building
For the planners. A cinematic RTS, a vertical pirate city-builder, the fest's top-rated artillery sim, a chill off-road drive, a make-your-own-world sandbox and a colony sim that's also a dungeon crawl.
ZeroSpace
A cinematic sci-fi RTS with a Mass Effect-style branching campaign, a persistent online Galactic War, and competitive skirmish tuned with StarCraft pros. Three factions plus mercenaries; the demo serves a campaign slice and a Galactic War mini-season.
Corsair Cove
From the Tropico 6 team and Hooded Horse: a pirate city-builder where flat ground is scarce, so you build up cliffs and across chasms with bridges and zip-lines, then sail out to raid and fight the Crown.
Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator
A dieselpunk heavy-artillery sim in alternate-history 1920s Spain. Take the coordinates, gunlay an 800mm cannon, brace for the recoil — then drink your coffee through the reload. Two-person passion project, 98% on the demo.
Over the Hill
From the Art of Rally team: a stylised, minimalist off-roader built for wandering, not racing. Drive iconic '60s-'80s vehicles across real-world-inspired biomes solo or with three friends, chasing portals and meteorites. Photo mode included.
Fantasy World Manager
A sandbox for building a whole living fantasy world: populate it with heroes, creatures, factions, cultures and religions, then fill the overworld, interiors and dungeons with quests, wars and choices of your own making.
Dungeon Settlers
A brutal three-way blend of colony management, tactical RPG and dungeon crawling: build and run a settlement, then send a small guild through a portal on procedurally generated expeditions for resources — keep your adventurers fed, sane and alive, because the party wipes come fast.
Mystery & horror
Slower burns. One solves murders from behind a bar; one turns a small town into a survival-horror maze.
Last Night Last Call
A hand-drawn bartending murder mystery — standalone sequel to Best Served Cold. An ex-detective turned barkeep in post-war Bukovie cracks five cases by charming 22 regulars, one cocktail at a time.
Silver Pines
A survival-horror Metroidvania in small-town America: play PI Red Walker, chasing a vanished musician into a nightmare he didn't sign up for. The town is the map — better tools open locked doors, with limited inventory and fight-or-flee tension.
FAQ
How often does Steam Next Fest happen?
Three times a year — in February, June and October. Each edition runs for one week, and a game can only appear with a playable demo, so the line-up is always things you can try rather than trailers alone.
When does Steam Next Fest June 2026 end?
It closes at 10am PT (5pm UTC) on Monday, 22 June 2026. Most demos are removed when the event ends, so download anything you want to keep before then.
Are the demos free?
Yes. Every Next Fest demo is free to download and play with a Steam account — no fee, subscription or purchase required.
Do the demos disappear after the fest?
Most do. Developers can choose to keep a demo live, but the majority expire when the fest closes on 22 June. The window is exactly one week and doesn't extend, so play early rather than late.
Which of these launch right after Next Fest?
EMPULSE goes into Early Access on 24 June at $19.99. Mistfall Hunter launches around 29–30 July, and Iron Nest's 1.0 is planned for late July or early August. Shroom and Gloom and Ascenders: Beyond the Peak are heading to Early Access later in 2026, while Order of the Sinking Star, Among Us Story and Last Night Last Call have no firm date yet.
Does demo progress carry into the full game?
It varies. Order of the Sinking Star carries your demo progress into the full release, and Mistfall Hunter carries cosmetic rewards earned during the beta. Most others reset — check each game's own page if it matters to you.
Is this a Crit Pick verdict?
No. These are impressions and facts gathered from each game's Steam page and from Next Fest coverage, not hands-on reviews — which is why they carry a dashed status stamp, not the gold seal. The seal is reserved for games we've played.
A week, not a library
Twenty-two is a starting line, not a ceiling — the fest has thousands more, and the fun of it is wandering off this list once one of these catches you. But the clock is the whole point: queue what you want before 22 June, because most of it won't be here on the 23rd.
