https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest

June edition is live and my religion prompts me to download as many demos as my ssd can welcome and play them throughout the week. I usually hover around a good hundred, and that's still a very small percentage of all demos available. I like to sort and evaluate them on a piece of paper (pic below from february).

Anyway here are some takeaways so far (still downloading):

• this edition, I'm noticing builds that are heavier than they should (based on what the game looks like), some indie games are approaching 2Gb of download, when I was used to the 500Mb - 1Gb range
• as always the most wishlisted demos aren't the best, upcoming AA games are all looks no essence for up to 30Gb, I usually play them first to get rid of them and make space for more interesting indie games
• Jusant and Cairn had their impact on the industry, there's a bunch of climbing games (mixed with the Only Up / Getting Over It formula) trying to ride the trend
• Noticing a lot of JRPGs inspired games as well, can't correlate with the success of Expedition 33 but my guess is that there's a big audience for those
• You still have a ton of survival crafting / chill farming games, but less than previous editions (I think it was October 2025 that was riddled with those)
• I'll edit this post with more insights as I go through the demos

In this spoiler, the full list of demos I downloaded so far (will update throughout the week), I usually download the ones I already wishlisted (_{15 to 20), then go through the trending ones (}10), and finally just doomscroll looking at interesting stuff:

Full list of downloaded demos

A	B	C
Over the hill	Screenbound	Penguin Colony
AGX GP	Shoretiles	The Mound
Deepdish Dungeon	Trees Hate You	Toem 2
Ascenders	Order of the Sinking Star	Songs of Glimmerwick
Onishuma	Iron Nest	Moonlight Peaks
Wheelmates	Casualties Unknown	Tanuki Pon’s Summer
Country of Fortune	Cozy Grove 2	Monk Took Book
We Were Here Tomorrow	Valor Mortis	Enginefall
W40K Boltgun 2	Shroom & Gloom	Demon Bluff
Chained Beasts	Duskfade	Empulse
Invokyr	Desktop Explorer	Project Doors
Object Impermanence	Leafy Corner	Hull Rupture
Death at Fleming Manor	Design & Conjure	Dungeon Settler
Deer & Boy	Fantasy World Simulator	Arcane Eats
Zwaard	Friendly Steps	Sprawl Zero
Bombanana	Truck-kun […]	Cozy Cleaner
Woodo	They are here	Retrospace
Sensory Overload	Sir we have an orc problem	Prelude Dark Pain
Stonewards	Kuzan City of Worlves	Last Pirates
Brazilian Drug Dealer […]	Escape Academy 2	Hollow Home
Cosmic Fear	Security 51	Normal Gold Game
Good Heavens	BPM Bitcrushed	Slayblade
Otterly Lost	Virtue and a Sledgehammer	Double Dealers
Colorbound	Brekekekekex	Cat Me If You Can
Sludgineers	Sunset Summit	Ambroise Niflette
Xeno Feels	Wall World Strategy	Trine 6
Cozy Marbles	Sniper Dan	Spies & Soldiers
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