steam &#8211; Set Side B

Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”

Steam Next Fest Coverage Part 3

Josh Bycer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000

This is more coverage from Steam Next Fest 2025 October edition. (Previous posts are here: Part 1 and Part 2.)

00:00 Intro
00:16 Aerial Knight’s Dropshot
01:49 Super Pinball Adventure
2:55 This isn’t Just Tower Defense
4:33 FlippUp
6:02 Fatal Claw
7:14 Re-activated
8:25 Tower Lords
9:39 Legends of Dragaea
11:20 Fantasy Idle Dungeon
12:48 Slimeward

Next Fest 2025 Showcase Part 2

Josh Bycer — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Part 2 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest October 2025 edition. EDITOR’S NOTE: is that a certain bobcat we all know in the preview image?

Next Fest 2025 Demo Showcase Part 1

Josh Bycer — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of my (Josh Bycer’s) collection of videos of my favorite demos from Steam Next Fest, October 2025.

Best of Next Fest (Finale)

Josh Bycer — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000

And with this video, my (Josh Bycer’s) coverage of Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition comes to a close.

00:00 Intro
00:16 Operation Octo
01:27 Off
2:35 Tackle for Loss
4:02 Shattered Divinities
5:04 Net.Attack
6:31 Awrak
8:03 Flan’s BN
9:20 Singou Breaka
10:04 Mod Mage Mike
11:19 Danchi Days
13:17 Consume Me
14:57 Meow Tower Doomsguard
15:54 Lia Hacking Destiny
17:14 Starbirds
18:47 Abra-Cooking-Dabra
21:10 Cinderia

Typo, I said Space Birds instead of Starbirds

Best Demos of Next Fest Part 7

Josh Bycer — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is part 7 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest, June 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:19 Neon Inferno
1:44 Vampire’s Best Friend
4:05 Possessor(s)
6:10 Sping
7:25 Primland: The Magnus
9:15 Glaciered
11:13 Heroes Against Time
12:42 Rogue Eclipse
13:41 Jetrunner
14:50 Funi Raccoon Game
15:43 Hirogami
17:10 Gurei
18:51 Away From Home

Best Games From Next Fest Part 6

Josh Bycer — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is part 6 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:25 Soulblaze
2:54 Randomice
5:48 Cleared Hot
7:12 Forgotten Fragments
8:44 Pigface
10:12 Dice Gambit
12:14 Astro Prospector

Best Games of Steam NextFest Part 4

Josh Bycer — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is part 4 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam NextFest, June 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:16 Hellclock
2:38 Everdeep Aurora
4:01 Thysiastery
5:49 Chrono Gear Warden of Time
7:18 Synthetic Hopes

Best of Steam Next Fest Part 3

Josh Bycer — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is part 3 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam Next Fest, June 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:16 Ratatan
3:24 Tormented Souls 2
5:35 Morsels
7:43 Meganaut
9:01 Okko the Exiled
10:44 Samurai Blitz EX

Best Games of Steam Next Fest Part 2

Josh Bycer — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is part 2 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from the June 2025 Steam Next Fest event.

00:00 Intro
00:18 Baby Steps
1:58 Ball X Pit
4:12 Sands of Hope
5:28 Blaze of Storm
6:24 Chico’s Rebound

Steam Next Fest Coverage Part 1

Josh Bycer — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of my (Josh Bycer’s) coverage of Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition.

00:00 Intro
00:21 Mina the Hollower
2:48 Moonlighter 2 The Endless Vault
6:11 Multiplanetary
7:12 Ninja Gaiden Ragebound
9:34 Undermine 2
11:04 Trainatic
12:41 Idle Boss Rush

Chipwits Remake Released

rodneylives — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Some time ago on Game Developer I did an interview with the creator of the classic Mac, Apple II and C64 programming game Chipwits, who were working on a modernized version. Well their efforts have been released to the public now: Chipwits 1.0 is now out on Steam!

You devise programs using a graphic interface to get a robot character through a maze-like grid world to do various things. The original Chipwits was written for the original Mac, in Forth, with ports for different machines of the time. The new game has a nice tutorial as well as new scenarios, in addition to the scenarios that came with the original game.

The thing I like about Chipwits is, it isn’t always about solving specific puzzles. Many of the maps are open-ended. The robots have a limited amount of fuel, which translates into machine cycles to run your programs. Additional fuel can be replenished by objects found in their exploration, as well as objects worth score, but the objects are frequently randomly placed. These scenarios aren’t about tailoring a program to a specific placement objects, but devising a more generalized exploration routine that can adapt to a variety of placements. There are online leaderboards so you can see how your coding skill compares with that of other players.

Chipwits usually goes for $15, but for launch is currently 10% off on Steam. (Disclaimer: I interviewed the Chipwits people for Game Developer previously, and did a little beta testing, but I bought my own copy of the game for these screenshots. They deserve the money!)

One More Best Demos of Next Fest Showcase

Josh Bycer — Tue, 20 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Fri, 16 May 2025 02:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Tue, 13 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Fri, 09 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Tue, 06 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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)

Josh Bycer — Fri, 02 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

Josh Bycer — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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

rodneylives — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

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)

Josh Bycer — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

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

rodneylives — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

“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!

rodneylives — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:00:00 +0000

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)

4D Golf Releases on Steam

rodneylives — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:00:00 +0000

4D Golf, from CodeParade, responsible for the similarly mind-bending Hyperbolica, is amazing because it doesn’t cheat. It provides a genuine 4D-world in which to play the game of golf in. Not in the sense that time is a fourth dimension; time passes in this four-dimensional world too. It basically asks, what if our normal world were four-dimensional. And had a mini-putt course in it. So, here is the release trailer on Youtube:

The trailer has an especially intriguing aspect to it because it promises a big feature that hasn’t been revealed publicly yet outside the release of the game. To find out what it is one will just have to buy and play the game to find out… or read the comments, where a couple of people have spoiled it. It’s possibly best that they did though, because it suggests that 4D Golf is even more amazing than it seems at first.

4D Golf (Steam, $20)

Game Finds: Cosmic Collapse

rodneylives — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000

We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.

A fair amount has been said about Suika Game, an inexpensive and addictive Switch game that has players dropping fruit into a physics-enabled bin. Two fruit of the same type that touch immediately merge into a larger fruit, and the goal is to join them together like this until you create a mighty Watermelon. You can keep going at that point, although with one of those majestic spheres in the bin it won’t be much longer before one or more fruits extends up out of the bin, which brings the game to an end.

The history of this unexpected Flappy Bird-like phenomenon is laid out in an article in the Japan Times. Until recently the game was exclusive to the Japanese eShop, although that needn’t actually a barrier. People from any territory can create eShop accounts for any other, and play all their purchases on the same Switch, but now I notice that Suika Game is even on the U.S. shop. And of course, as often happens when a simple and elegant game blows up out of nowhere, a horde of imitators has arisen, which a quick Googling will reveal. I count six free web versions just on a quick perusal of the search results.

But what might actually be better than Suika Game is the Pico-8 recreation of it, Cosmic Collapse.

Cosmic Collapse is more expensive than Suika Game, but that just means it’s $5 instead of $3. Instead of happy fruit, you merge together planets. They go up in size from Pluto (an honorary planet), through Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter and then Sol herself. If you’re wondering, all planets are presented without rings. If joining two suns causes anything to happen I don’t know. (In the comments on the itch.io project, the developer says that there are objects beyond the Sun.)

Cosmic Collapse could be played just like the original, but it adds some extra features. Scoring is modified by a simple combo system: successive planets merged due to one drop have their points multiplied, encouraging the planning of sequences. And, at certain score awards, you’re granted a missile that can be used to destroy any one object in the bin. Used judiciously, it can allow your game lengths, and scores, to greatly increase. My highest so far is nearly 15,000.

The biggest advantages it has over Suika Game is in the polish and the physics. The many web clones tend to play like they were hacked together in an afternoon, but even the original is clearly a low-effort production, right down to its generic, non-looping music. The celestial orbs in Cosmic Collapse bounce around in a lively manner after merging in ways that take some practice to master, and even the smaller planets have their uses. The tiniest of space rocks, dropped at the right spot, can be just what you need to knock two other planets apart from each other, or separate one from the wall of the bin. You see? Pluto’s good for something after all!

Both Suika Game and Cosmic Collapse suffer from a certain unfairness. You don’t get to control the order in which fruit or planets get dropped into the bin. It’s been observed that even a lot of skill and practice can only get you so far if the orb-selection dice don’t roll favorably for you. The best advice I can offer, in the early game, is to try to sort the circles in size from one side of the bin to the other, which at least will make it easier to find a good place to drop things. Also in Cosmic Collapse, keeping the surface of the bin as low as you can helps a lot, since the propulsive force of the spheres, especially the smallest ones, is increased the further it falls, and that can be a marvelous prod to shaking up a static bin.

Cosmic Collapse (itch.io and Steam, $5)

Next Fest Showcase 12/30/23

Josh Bycer — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 15:00:00 +0000

I heard everyone here likes indie games.

The games in this video:

00:18 Choo Choo Survivor (Steam)
1:49 Reverie (Steam)
3:09 Spell Disk (Steam)
6:10 Cataclismo (Steam)
10:35 Lovux (Steam)
11:53 The Devil Within: Satgat (Steam)
14:47 Magin: The Rat Project Stories (Steam)
16:56 Cusineer (Steam)
20:09 Moonlight Pulse (Steam)
24:16 Cyber Knights: Flashpoint (Steam)
25:59 Final Knight (Steam)

Homestar Runner: Dangeresque in The Roomisode Triungulate

rodneylives — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Every time Homestar Runner releases something new, it’s cause for celebration. They’ve been doing this for 23 years, and that’s not counting the original Mario Paint thing with the characters they made, long ago, that kicked off their merry legacy. Even though the days of them updating weekly and Strong Bad popping off sarcastic answers to emails left, right and center are long gone, every few months another new thing comes out of the Brothers Chaps’ content grinder, and we love that kind of sausage.

Of course making free stuff doesn’t pay the bills, and Adobe Creative Cloud is hella expensive these days, so much of their more recent stüf takes the form of little paid projects, like the Trogdor board game. So it is with this, a quite nifty collection of three point-and-click adventures. One of them came from their website long ago, but it’s now remade in that Unity thingy. it’s joined by two completely new games, and the three of them have better animation and full voice acting now! All are full of the wit and fun that Homestar Runner-branded content^TM has long been known for.

I managed to finish it in a night, but it was a very entertaining night! This thing is packed full of more jokes and character even than the Telltale series they did back in the Wii days. It’s amazing how many obscure interactions have unique voice lines, so be sure to try everything, and using everything on everything else.

Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate, on Steam and itch.io (Windows and Mac, $8)

Trailer: New Homestar Runner Dangeresque Games!

rodneylives — Wed, 31 May 2023 14:00:00 +0000

They’re not out yet, but the Brothers Chaps, creators, maintainers, and sometimes even makers of Homestar Runner stuff, have some remakes of their old Dangeresque Flash games in the works, now with updated (in some cases completed in the first place) content, and full voice acting! Have some strong & bad Strong Bad:

Nothing says awesome earlyweb goodness like Homestar Runner, even though technically he’da say “awesome eallyweb goodness,” because he doesn’t do Rs too well. Here’s the itch.io page, where it’s still listed as only “in development.” Looks like (we’re gonna have to jump) it’s set for Steam as well!

Pizza Tower!

rodneylives — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 15:00:00 +0000

It must seem like we have the indie gaming spaces hooked up into our very veins here, but truthfully it’s very easy for games with even a lot of buzz to slip through our greedy fingers. So it is with Pizza Tower (Steam), an extremely cartoony and entertaining platformer heavily influenced by Wario Land 4 (3h,22m). All kinds of people have been praising it, and saying that it does basically nothing wrong.

Here’s Polygon raving about it:

Take a good look at it. The loose animation is actually perfect, which it should be because the game took five years to make. The pixel art has way too many frames. The music jams so much. All of its jokes are funny. It even parodies Five Nights at Freddy’s throughout one level with jumpscares.

Its hero, the amusingly-named Peppino Spaghetti, isn’t Wario, but has his own vibe. He looks like he might have an aneurysm at any second. But like Wario he’s mostly invincible when he’s not fighting a boss. In normal levels enemies may slow him down, or cause him to lose points, or even give him temporary abilities, but they can’t stop him. He has a wide variety of moves to get him through the game world that you’ll have to completely master by the end.

The biggest point in common with Wario Land 4 is the escape sequences. Each of the game’s levels has a place in it where you have to destroy a pillar, which starts a timer and forces you to go back through the level you just passed with some minor differences. You can fail here if you don’t make it out in time. In order to get the highest rank on a stage, the vaunted “P” rating, you have to escape perfectly, without breaking your combo, and find all the treasures… and also escape twice within the time limit, by going through a 2nd Lap portal at the exit that takes you back to the beginning!

It’s already gotten a lot of people talking about it in terms like Game of the Year, and I’m sure it’ll be a prominent run at SGDQ 2023! Have a trailer:

Pizza Tower (Steam, $19.99)