10 Games From The June 2025 Steam Next Fest You Should Check Out – Part One
It feels like I’ve only just recovered the faculties of my mind from the first 2025 Steam Next Fest. In a blaze of Monster-fuelled glory, we covered 31 titles in total. It was quite the feat – so naturally we’ve decided we need to top that. Kidding… mostly. As long as the incredible indie developers keep pumping out gems, we’ll continue to dig them out and shout about how much they shine.
To start you off for the Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition, we’ve curated a list of ten impeccable choices. Fellow Finger Gunners Toby and Rossko have thrown their lot in with some picks, too. Now you have three gaming tastes to critique, so much potential we offer you, dear reader. From rhythmic beat-em-ups to wild simulators and pixel-art rogue-likes, we’ve run the Next Fest gauntlet for your reading pleasure. As usual, there are links to each of the games, so you can go and experience the wonderful world of upcoming indies for yourself.
Dead as Disco by Brain Jar Games
Disco Stu and Batman: Arkham Asylum combat met on the dancefloor and miraculously, from their flowing tango of fists comes Dead as Disco. If you’ve seen the clips on social media and thought this looked too good to be true, just know it is, in fact, as sick as promised. I played both the campaign level and three of the songs in the infinite disco and as I evaded and countered with a flurry of punches to Maniac by Michael Sembello on a neon techno dancefloor, I knew I was hooked.
Rhythm gameplay, crunching combat and style galore collide in this wonderful flurry of strikes and lights. Oh, and you’ll be able to import your own songs to break bones and ripple heads to. It only took me 20 minutes with the demo to lose my mind to my music, don’t let the disco down, go check it out for yourself. I guess I’ll just play Final Countdown on repeat until it releases. Groovy.
Dead as Disco will be jiving onto Steam at some point in the future, though no release date as of yet. It’s being developed and published by Brain Jar Games.
Death Howl by The Outer Zone
Part deck-builder, part rogue-like, part pixel-art and part turn-based combat, Death Howl is a beautifully grim world to behold. Travel to the spirit realm on a quest to save your son, only to find this forest is housing more than its fair share of wildlife nasties. The demo provides a sizeable chunk of what to expect from the full game, including the influence of the Souls genre (a-la regenerating world enemies), crafting for new cards and managing Totems for buffs.
More than anything else though, what impressed me was the dark and forlorn universe Death Howl projects. It’s isolationist and grim thanks to the heavy visuals and moody use of colours. However, that’s completely in the game’s favour, as it makes the moments of levity talking to a spectral moose you saved all the more powerful. I didn’t know what to expect from Death Howl, but this is a shaman ritual that’s worth undertaking.
Death Howl is currently coming soon, where it will be creeping onto Steam. It’s being developed by The Outer Zone and published by 11 Bit Studios
Everdeep Aurora by Nautilus Games
Written by Toby Andersen.
Want your Next Fest demos to look like long-lost original Game Boy titles? Well, then maybe you should check out Everdeep Aurora. This one is a quaint little metroidvania with oodles of charm and cuteness galore, but in a sort of Sabrina’s cat kind of way. Think of a combination of Metroid and SteamWorld Dig, as your little cat has a drill for finding secrets. The demo isn’t that long, at only around 20- 30 minutes, but in that time it makes a lasting impression thanks to more than just the visuals – there’s some really fun writing, sound effects, music and puzzles too. There looks to be a hell of a lot more story in the full release, with Shell the cat facing a post-apocalyptic underground called the Everdeep with her trusty drill. Check out Everdeep Aurora if your tastes run decades into the retro.
Wild West General Store Simulator by SunDust
Written by Ross Keniston.
That we live in a time where the ‘simulator’ game can now be literally anything you want it to be, you’re now able to try your hand at a limitless number of jobs via the medium of video games, is testament to probably how bored we all were during Covid. The idea of getting out in a train or a bus and simply tearing it around a town or a county felt like a pipe dream, and these games realised such adventures, how menial they sound on the surface.
Josh mentioned it on the podcast the other week, but 2025 for me has been the year of the simulators. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, but the idea of running my old wild west supermarket appealed to me for whatever reason, and after dabbling into the might of the Train Sim World series and Spray Paint Simulator, I wanted to see if I could survive the wild wild west with nothing but some shelves and a checkout till.
And ergo, a time was had. As you can see from the video above, the visuals are lovely. Nailing that golden aesthetic of a typical ‘wild west’ town and feeling about as authentic as it would feel getting dropped into Red Dead Redemption 2 as an NPC whilst Arthur buys a new hat or something really added to the immersion of running a supermarket and selling exclusively to cowboys.
You don’t have an awful lot of money to start off with, as per these kinds of games, and it seemed like an awful lot of time passed until I felt particularly settled with my income that I was able to afford additional items to sale and shelves to display my wares without breaking the bank, I feel like if you’re not playing these games on a wire you’re not playing them well enough. Either that or I’m just rubbish. I don’t know, my Two Point Museum progress suggests the latter.
Either way, in the endless ocean of demos available during Steam Next Fest, this one stood out as something a little different, and there has been an awful lot of care and attention added here to give you a real simulated experience of running a shop in the wild west. Have you ever even thought about what that would be like? Well, you have now. Give the demo a blast, partner. You’ll be glad you did.
MIO: Memories In Orbit by Dous Dixièmes
Written by Toby Andersen.
MIO: Memories In Orbit is the kind of beautiful metroidvania platformer you might get if you crossed Gris with Celeste – it’s full of stark hand-drawn beauty, and aerial acrobatic platforming, all while exploring the lost future interiors of the Vessel and its strange mechanical inhabitants. You play as Mio, a quiet android, who must uncover the secrets of this overgrown spaceship before it’s too late.
There’s a lot of wonderful metroidvania style to this, but also a little of the souls flavour (only a pinch, don’t worry) in that you collect ‘nacre’ for upgrades, but lose it when you die, and return to these enveloping caretaker robots, before you take another foray out to explore. It’s also a little on the hard side, so fans of Hollow Knight should also take note. This one will catch your eye with its art, and then keep your attention with its gameplay. Check out the three-hour demo, which barely scratches the surface of the full release.
Mars Attracts by Outlier
Ah, the sweet smell of human flesh melting via shock therapy, nothing can beat it. Mars Attracts is what every existential universe life-scourer most dreads. The Martians have discovered us and decided we’d make for entertaining theme park material. Spent 30 minutes with this one – all was going swell with my Roman and American Frontier exhibits, right up until they plotted a mass escape, destroyed half my park, and I had to call a Martian SWAT team in.
It’s Two Point, but intergalactic, what more do you need? Mars Attracts is already shaping up to be an accomplished and feature-complete colony simulator and theme park management game. From the devilishly creative experiments you conduct on the humanoid weaklings for research, to the separate decors for the types of humans you abduct, this could just be your next big Two Point fix.
Mars Attracts will be invading Earth in 2025 on Steam, though just like the great cosmic unknown, there’s no specific date just yet. It’s being developed and published by Outlier.
Neon Abyss 2 by Veewo Games
I must confess, I never played the original Neon Abyss. What a mistake that was, if the sequel’s demo is anything to go by. Clearing all five levels on my first run, I was hugely impressed with the tight movement and gameplay. I jumped so many times sailing through these pixel-art dungeons that I might as well have been chilling on a trampoline. Colourful and breakneck 2D side-scrolling, with a rogue-like formula for good measure, does Neon Abyss 2 a good cocktail make.
Additionally, you can collect little eggs that occasionally hatch into handy floating sidekicks who float around and hit enemies for you. They’re adorable and deadly. By the end of the demo, I had half a dozen hatched ones and double that number cruising above me, cocooned in their shells still. Throw in the wild number of upgrades, weapons and buffs, and Neon Abyss 2 might be primed to be the next big rogue-like experience.
Neon Abyss 2 will be dungeon crawling onto Steam July 17th. It’s being developed and published by Veewo Games, alongside Kepler Ghost.
Outrider Mako by Asamado Games
A gorgeous little almost-roguelite delivery game, Outrider Mako is something like Spirited Away meets Lake. We’ve had our eye on this one for something close to five years now. Little Mako gets whisked away to the spirit world of the yokai into a bathhouse-looking building. There she finds out she’s an indentured servant until she has worked off this strange soul-debt by making deliveries to all the yokai in the land and gathering that Japanese favourite – stamps.
If you’ve ever been on holiday to Japan, you’ll know what I mean – you can get a stamp to prove where you’ve been at virtually every hotspot in the country. The combat is also tough and unforgiving for something that looks so cute. You’ll need to save progress and establish a little network of lifts back to base to shorten your run each time, while gathering the items each of your clients needs. It’s got that just one more run feel to it and bucketloads of charm. Download the Demo on Steam now.
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition by Firefly Studios
I’ve banged the desert drum for Firefly Studios’ Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition once already this year, and you can be damn sure I’ll do so again. With a newly released second demo now available, there are two brand new missions to try out. Once again, they’re pulled from the historical campaign and the brand new Sands of Time trail to demonstrate more of the remastering work and fresh content being added.
Spoiler alert, the Sands of Time mission is really hard. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Stronghold in my time and by King Lionheart himself, I am yet to find success. With the game only a month out from release, this new demo is another welcome opportunity to have a crack at surviving the searing heat and looming armies of Saladin himself. It’s one of the greatest RTS’ (ignore my own massive bias here) of all time, but spruced up.
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition will be marching onto Steam July 15th. It’s being developed and published by Firefly Studios.
YASUKE: A Lost Descendant by Dallience Studios
This one is a little rough around the edges, owing to its very early alpha build. However, this action hack-and-slash hybrid has you, the heir of a legendary African samurai, dashing, triple jumping and rail-grinding all over a techno city to take down your foes. The demo gave me a vertical slice of the movement mechanics and combat, where our protagonist has access to three unique styles and companion abilities.
Despite the jagged edges protruding throughout, there’s a solid Devil May Cry sense of style attached to the whole game. From the flashy sword swings to the full bombarding “dunk” of a finisher, this proof of concept may be more than enough to tempt those keen on fast-paced, kinetic swordplay. Plus, parkour and free movement is just ever so satisfying, no matter how you slice it.
Yasuke: A Lost Descendant will be slicing and dicing onto Steam at some point in the future, though no release date yet. It’s being developed by Dallience Studios.
Steam Next Fest will run from 9th – 16th June
Huzzah! Another blitz of thousands of demos has descended upon us. While these are our first 10 we recommend you have a gander at, I’d implore you to stay tuned. We’re not ones for containing our hype and excitement very well, as you’ve probably already gathered. Steam Next Fest June 2025 has kicked off with a bright selection already, and we’re all buzzing to see what else lies in store over the coming week.
As is customary at this point, I once again want to bang on the ol’ golden drum for the indie devs pouring their heart and soul into these games. Your feedback and interaction with the games and demos prior to release make a massive difference to each and every one of them. A simple wishlist, comment or contribution on social media goes a hell of a long way to making the arduous journey of game development worth it for so many. If you can spare a moment to help out your favourite games and demos, please do.
Otherwise, keep your eyes glued on Finger Guns, as we get stuck into ever-more games and add more wishes to our constantly expanding backlog of games that aren’t even out yet. Thank you for taking the time to read these features. We hope you enjoy the gluttony of great demos hitting our screens.
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