In the last few years, Steam Next Fest has become a staple for the digital distribution platform, a period where hundreds of upcoming games receive temporary demos that showcase an impressive range of projects. In particular, it always offers a bounty of interesting indie efforts you may not have heard of and is a great opportunity to get a taste of a wide sampling of what’s out there. Right now, the February 2024 Next Fest is in full swing and is running until February 12th. The only problem is that there are often so many games that choosing which ones to check out during this limited window can be a tad overwhelming. Thankfully, we’ve sifted through the pack and have come up with a list of five must-play demos you don’t want to miss.
Mouthwashing
Release Date: Q1 2024
Mouthwashing’s vibes are positively putrid, and I mean that as high praise. Stranded in a ship at the ends of space, this narrative horror game catalogs a doomed cargo run with a pitch-black, sardonic sense of humor. It deeply resembles the trailblazing Thirty Flights of Loving in its presentation, or more specifically, Paratopic, as it constantly jumps back and forth in time to weave a string of nightmare logic. Amid its barrage of jump cuts, its most disorienting turns, such as a disturbing birthday celebration, pop out all the more because it also sets aside time for relatively grounded conversations with your crew that convey what landed them in this seemingly hopeless situation. These scenes are a nice palate cleanser, even if these people have the kind of team chemistry you would expect from those slowly dying inside a rotting hull. Following in the footsteps of developer Wrong Organ’s last title, How Fish Is Made, their latest has a grainy, lo-fi aesthetic that pairs well with foreboding treks through dark walkways adorned with company propaganda. The grunginess of this setting contrasts hilariously with posters of a stupid corporate mascot plastered everywhere, a good shorthand for what this one is going for: Alien, but if the corporation was transporting something deeply mundane and the greatest threat to these crewmates wasn’t an extraterrestrial, but each other. Mouthwashing seems equally grotesque and absurd, and I couldn’t be more interested to see where it goes.
Pepper Grinder
Release Date: 2024
Defined by its tight controls and novel concept, Pepper Grinder is a retro platformer that lives up to its premise. After a lightning-fast introduction where our protagonist, Pepper, is marooned on an island, she reclaims her super-powered drill Grinder and begins digging. The controls are straightforward: you can jump, and you can drill. When you hold the trigger down, your drill will propel you into soft soil, and if you hit the jump button while exiting a surface, you’ll fly out like a missile. The core loop revolves around swiftly maneuvering through drillable terrain as you pierce enemies and collect hidden coins in brief, five-ish minute levels. This is one lives and dies by how well it plays, and thankfully, it nails its feel. Thanks to responsive movement, navigating is sharp, and it’s particularly satisfying to snake through silty topsoil, chaining dashes from one drillable mass to the next as you propel yourself at a breakneck pace. Between variations in movement speed, audio design, and controller rumble intensity, there is a palpable sense of feedback from the different surfaces you dig into, which helps make it satisfying to speed through this colorful backdrop. Like many platformers, Pepper Grinder’s ultimate success will largely depend on whether its level design keeps delivering and if it can continue to build on its straightforward mechanics, but the strength of its core mechanics has left me wanting more.
Ultros
Release Date: 2/13/2024
Ok, listen, I know there are a lot of Metroid homages out there these days. They’ve become one of the marque formats for indies, alongside other standbys like roguelikes (more on this later), survival games, life sims, and a handful of other recurring sub-genres. But despite the familiarity of its design, Ultros still makes a strong impact thanks to acid rock visuals that pair well with its far-flung sci-fi setting. This game is very much working in the vein of something like Scavenger’s Reign in that you’re thrown into an alien ecosystem that you can’t possibly understand, a place where esoteric religions and drug-fueled imagery create an otherworldly ambiance. for interacting with this space, there are some interesting mechanics here, such as how killing fauna grants food that can be consumed to grant different types of experience points, which can be redeemed for a cadre of substantive abilities. The battles themselves borrow from elements of platform fighters and stylish action games, encouraging you to mix up your moves to get a “perfect kill,” which grants meat that will bump up your XP points even more. While this style of game is arguably overly familiar at this point, Ultros’ presentation and unique systems make it stand out from the crowd.
Balatro
Release Date: 2/20/2024
As someone who would rather play virtually any board game than a hand of poker, I was pleasantly surprised by Balatro, a roguelike deckbuilder that transforms this card game into something else entirely. Some elements are what you’d expect; you begin with a standard 52-card deck and score by putting together traditional poker hands like pairs, flushes, and straights. However, where things get interesting is that over the course of a run, you can augment your deck by replacing certain cards with others, upgrading them, collecting passive upgrades that amplify your score, and more. Instead of playing against opponents like in Texas Hold Em’, your goal is to build hands that score enough chips by the end of five rounds. Like any successful deckbuilding game, decision-making matters in both assembling your deck and playing it. Instead of just going by traditional poker hand strength, points are calculated by multiplying the base amount of chips your hand is worth (chip count corresponds to the card rank, i.e., 9, 10, J, Q, etc.), with the particular multiplier associated with that hand (for instance, a two pair has a x2 multiplier while a three of a kind has a x3 multiplier). Where things get busted is that you can upgrade the multipliers associated with specific hands or cards, and passive abilities add to your multiplier, which can eventually dramatically boost the number of chips you earn. You can gear your deck around certain hands, suits, or passive abilities to increase the odds of hitting big. Outside of the deckbuilding, you’re given a wide array of options and information that makes it feel tactically deep. The game counts cards to let you know the odds, has the option to discard and redraw, allows you to change the order that passive abilities activate, and has consumable items. Good deckbuilders feel fair and like they offer meaningful decisions while constructing and playing your deck. Balatro does all that while also letting you blast apart the rules of poker.
Kind Words 2
Release Date: TBA
The internet can be a downright unpleasant place to be, and thanks to decaying social media platforms, it seems only to be getting worse. Thankfully, the 2019 release Kind Words ran counter to this trend. It acted as a means to anonymously reach out to strangers, a pen pal program that used in-game moderation tools to facilitate a rare bastion of positivity and support on the web. The upcoming Kind Words 2 looks to continue this trend and builds on the last game by fleshing out a digital town square where you can exchange recommendations, chat with strangers on the street, and send supportive letters. Considering how frequently anonymous communication goes sideways, it’s genuinely impressive that this demo and its predecessor have managed to curate such a supportive community. Beyond its curation tools, the presentation is likely a factor for this, as its gentle lo-fi soundtrack and comforting pastels create a relaxing space where being caring towards your online neighbors seems like a matter of course. It can be hard out there, but it’s reassuring to know there’s a place that makes it easy to share what’s bothering you and help others in return.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves videogames, film, and creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.