Steam Next Fest - October 2025 is now live with a great many demos

Size 5 games have a demo out for their next adventure game, it's has a huge voice cast of British comedians, looks great
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3639780/Earth_Must_Die/ [External Link]

Just had time to empty my demo backlog a bit and two of them happen to be part of Steam Next Fest

Marvel Cosmic Invasion [External Link]
There's a article a while back, but for those who missed it, it's basically beat'em up from developers of Shredders Revenge. Character are bit different and you get to switch between two of them during the levels. All the basic hitting, grabbing and special moves are there. There's even flying characters, though I didn't get landing in my muscle memory as I always tried pushing downwards direction, but it's apparently A button.

Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road [External Link]
This one had article also a while ago. Basically it's bit similar to Ball X Pit, but without the balls. It has moving city that attacks enemies and you can build with level ups. Levels also have resources you can gather, though it's always compromise between defending the city and gathering resources. Luckily city can be enhanced with resource generation, so you don't always have to risk yourself and the city.

I guess it would be more fun, if Ball X Pit wouldn't exist. Also the music in the demo is bit repetitive.

Just a reminder that the Truckful devs are super enthusiastic about the Deck and are aiming for >60 fps at the highest settings there. I haven't tried the demo to see how close they are to that goal so far, but I will later in the Next Fest.

@CatKiller Pocketpair is also assisting with publishing 🤩

WOOOO! I love a good next fest!!! Always discover some cool new games :)

side note: something is super wrong with the steam desktop app for the next fest home page. At least for me. The top recommendations for me are "parkour time attack anime third person" games. I have absolutely zero interest in that whatsoever, and have exactly 0 games in my library with those tags.

Then moving down, the next recommended category is "minigames games" (terrible recommendation) and the next recommended category after that is "soundtrack games" (terrible recommendation) and then it goes to "all titles".

It's like they swapped my recommendation profile for a total stranger?

side note: something is super wrong with the steam desktop app for the next fest home page. At least for me. The top recommendations for me are "parkour time attack anime third person" games. I have absolutely zero interest in that whatsoever, and have exactly 0 games in my library with those tags.

Then moving down, the next recommended category is "minigames games" (terrible recommendation) and the next recommended category after that is "soundtrack games" (terrible recommendation) and then it goes to "all titles".

It's like they swapped my recommendation profile for a total stranger?

That's odd. I have space sim and openworld survival craft games, which would make sense from No Mans Sky perspective.

Though for me, finding unsuitable game categories is somewhat hard. I probably have at least one game for large number of genres.

yeah super weird - I mostly play rpg's. Probably like 90%+ of the time. There were 0 references or recommendations for rpgs in my next fest home page. LOL steam what happened, have one too many last night and just phoned it in?

I played few demos tonight, but most had issues

Best one first:
Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown [External Link]

I'm not sure if this is actually part of the fest, but as demo is available right now, it doesn't matter that much.

While not perfect, having possibility to diverge a bit from what happens in TV series is fun. And resource management and base building is fun enough too. Space battles seem to be bit too simplistic though in practice. Though it still could be even more fun with voice acting from original cast and with original music.

There was article a while back if you want to find more discussion about it.

Stellar Archipelago [External Link]
Steam though I like openworld survival craft games. And Stellar Archipelago does have little bit of charm with practically building stuff on a small asteroid. But problem is that there the fun ends. It's way too basic, even when the premise is kind of cool.

XenoHaven [External Link]
My Japanese is not good enough to play this. Store page claims having English as option, but couldn't understand the menus enough to find where to enable it. Maybe they could just modify the store page a bit to advertise it as Japanese learning game.

But if actually understand Japanese, you get to enslave monsters and run cafes. Or something.

debris [External Link]
This should be drone building and asteroid mining simulator. It's just bit convoluted with barely any tutorial. If you actually try to play it, the top left corner thing can gather resources if you browse through the options. That actually should make it possible to launch a drone. What happened me though was the the freeplay dialog refused to close. So I gave up.

Trade Anchor [External Link]
Space trading game, what's not to like. Though intro wasn't very promising as it was very laggy. Problem is though that there doesn't seem to be easy way to scroll the screen. There might be ways to work around it, but they're bit too inconsistent.

But basically you fly between star systems and buy resources. Then you try to find systems that wants the resource and is willing to pay higher price. I didn't saw any indications how much profit or loss you are making with the sale, so you need to rely on your memory. Or make notes.