One More Best Demos of Next Fest Showcase

The final, and bonus episode, of my (Josh Bycer) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest February 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:26 Cantaloupe Chronicle
01:54 Kaya’s Prophecy
4:25 Opus Cortex
5:28 Touhou: the Unreachable Oneiroborder
6:50 Blasted Dice
8:45 Katanaut
10:44 Artis Impact
11:52 Fumehead
14:21 Starless Abyss

Best Next Fest Demos Part 8

The latest part of my (Josh Bycer’s) coverage of Next Fest 2025 February edition. (Editor’s note: I’ve been working through a backlog of these review posts; this one was made three months ago!)

00:00 Intro
00:15 Vilde
1:08 Mountain Boy
1:55 Grand Shooter
3:14 Ghost Hand
4:18 Mecha Knights Legends
5:35 Kejora
7:03 Tilemancer Dungeon

Best of February Next Fest Part 7

This is part 7 of my (Josh Bycer‘s) look at Steam Next Fest February 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:18 Leftovers KO
1:28 Once Upon a Puppet
3:19 Demon Dust
5:02 Nice Day for Fishing
6:23 Skin Deep
7:54 Electro Bop Boxing League
9:30 Is this Seat Taken?
10:50 Water Maid
12:03 Upstream
13:16 The Alpinist
14:51 Spellbrew Express
16:10 Red Rocket Defencism
17:15 Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3
18:48 Hypogea

Best Next Fest Demos Part 6

This is part 6 of my (Josh Bycer‘s) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest February 2025.

00:00 Intro
00:13 Liliac 0
01:07 Aethermancer
3:02 Doloc Town
4:35 Dungeon Warfare 3
5:47 Knightica
7:13 Star Fire
8:41 The Electrifying Incident
10:08 Faun Town
12:17 Tower Wizard

Best Next Fest Demos Part 5

This is part 5 of my (Josh Bycer’s) indie showcase of the best Next Fest demos from February 2025.

00:00 Intro
00:16 DeadWire
2:00 Gnomes
3:33 Nitro Gen Omega
4:57 Beyond the Ice Palace 2
6:35 Blightstone
8:02 Geargrit
9:50 Scarlet: City of Devils

The Best #steamnextfest Indie Game Demos (Part 4)

This is part 4 of our demo coverage of February 2025 Steam next fest.

0:00 Intro
00:14 Mashina
1:06 Roots Devour
2:57 Rift Riff
4:22 Kill the Music
5:29 Wild Growth
6:33 Conquest Dark
7:55 Machine Mind
9:01 Bad Cheese
9:52 Centum
11:03 Nordhold
12:17 Cauldron

Best Next Fest Demos Part 3

This is the third part of our February 2025 coverage of Steam Next Fest.

0:00 Intro
00:16 Flocking Hell
1:58 Total Chaos
4:00 Isle of Reveries
5:08 Reignbreaker
6:46 ZPF
7:34 City of Rampage
9:08 Paperklay
10:52 Haste: Broken Worlds
12:02 Coin Push RPG
13:23 Rogue Light Deck Builder

Next Fest Feb 2025 Showcase Part 2

Part 2 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from the Steam Next Fest event.

0:00 Intro
00:18 Gentoo Rescue
1:37 Nitro Express
2:43 Mother Machine
4:01 The King is Watching
5:53 Repose
7:53 Demon Tides
10:02 Chromagun 2: Dye Hard
11:27 Sliding Hero
12:39 9 Kings
14:06 Twilight Monk
15:24 Squeakross: Home Squeak Home
16:22 Last Report
17:25 Deck of Haunts

A Youtuber Scraped Info From The Entire Steam Catalog

It’s been up for five days now but is at over 300,000 views, the owner of the Youtube account Newbie Indie Game Dev performed a six-day scrape of the Steam catalog back in October, and not only made a video of interesting observations, but even opened a Github project where you can download CSV files of their data. I predict that certain people will find this information very useful, or interesting, or valuable. Maybe you’re one of them?

The video (11 minutes):

Best Demos of Steam Next Fest (Oct 2024)

This is the first part of our mega showcase from Next Fest October 2024 edition.

0:00 Intro
00:28 Mohrta
2:51 Aokaki
4:31 Second Essence
6:28 Tearscape
8:20 Cyclopean
9:29 Splintered
11:43 Kilaflow
13:47 Tenebris Somnia
15:54 The Book of Buja
17:07 Widget Inc
18:42 Journey to Incrementalia

Sega to Delist Classic Games From Online Storefronts

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

(I decided to get some use out of the old news roundup post template for this item.)

News comes from Ars Technica‘s Kevin Purdy, and was announced on Sega’s website, a large number of items will be removed from Steam and all the major console storefronts with the end of the year, although as Ars points out, the Playstation and Switch storefronts are only seeing the Sega Classics Collection removed. Steam is seeing the most removals. Items on the Nintendo Switch online compilation will not be affected. Nothing removed will disappear from your library of online purchases (unlike what happened with Oxenfree on itch.io when it was picked up by Netflix), so if you want to play these items, in this form, later, buy them now, and you’ll “always” be able to download them again later. (Always deserves scare quotes because nothing online is forever, but you’ll be able to play them some while later at least.)

Why are they being removed? Purdy speculates that, like how Sonic the Hedgehog titles were removed in advance of the release of Sonic Origins, there’s probably some new collection of Sega classics in the works that these items will be a part of, or maybe they plan on bundling a bunch of them with a Yakuza game or something.

Sega’s website lists them all, but the great majority of them are Genesis titles, along with Nights Into Dreams for Saturn, and Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5 Part 2, and the Dreamcast Collection, originally for Dreamcast of course. I personally recommend Crazy Taxi, of course.

UFO 50!

This one isn’t really obscure I think, but it’s amazing, and if I can do my part to help spread the word I’m happy to do so. UFO 50 ($25 on Steam, with other platforms on the way) is a collection of 50 8-bit styled games from Mossmouth, the creator and publisher of Spelunky, although they’re made by all kinds of people.

When you hear “50 games,” you might come to think of it as, 50 little games, but that’s not the case. UFO 50 contains 50 full games, including one in the JRPG genre that could take many hours to finish. It seeks to emulate the experience of putting a pirate multicart into a game console, except none of these games are pirated. It’s a super-abundant collection of fun, and what’s more, the word is that there’s not a single dud in the group, there really is something here for everyone.

Like with Baldur’s Gate III, there’s so much here that it feels like they might be stretching out what’s expected from a relatively small amount of money. My suggestion is, get it, but don’t feel like everyone has to give you 50 full-sized games for $25 in the future. It’s a one-off, wonderful for what it is, but an anomaly.

With 50 games included, it can be difficult to tell where to start! If you let itt sit on the game selection screen, it’ll play demos of the games, which might give some direction to your exploration. By default, the games are listed according to release date in the collection’s fictional chronology, so generally they’ll get more complex later on in the list. Xanagear reviewed every game in UFO 50, in 50 minutes natch:

I haven’t had the chance to get into any of this yet, but a particular game I want to point to is Valbrace, which is a first-person dungeon exploration game, with Crossed Swords-like action combat!

The promised JRPG is Grimstone, which has a western theme, and one of your potential characters (you pick your party at the start) is a dog!

UFO 50 deserves a lot more words than I can give it right now. There may be more to come on it later….

UFO 50 (Steam, $25)