Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop AppSteam Next Fest (June 2026) is overflowing with demos, but every event has a handful of games that quietly steal the show, the ones you boot up expecting to try for ten minutes and suddenly realize an hour has passed.
These are the underrated standouts, the surprise favorites, the games that feel like they’re on the cusp of something special.
After digging through dozens of demos, these five rose to the top as the hidden gems I’m genuinely excited to see fully released.
This one was the one that had me most excited for the upcoming release.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu throws you straight into a cursed 16th‑century jungle where nothing you see can be trusted, and that’s exactly what makes its Steam Next Fest demo so gripping.
It’s a four‑player co‑op expedition game where you prep on a galleon, row ashore, and push deeper into a reality‑warping wilderness filled with Lovecraft‑inspired horrors that mess with your senses, with hallucinations, distorted sounds, and threats that only some players can perceive.
You’re scavenging treasure, rescuing lost explorers, and trying to keep your sanity intact as the jungle twists around you.
With its madness system, proximity voice chat, and a loop built around risky expeditions that get more dangerous the further you go, it’s shaping up to be one of the standout co‑op horror experiences of the year, especially after its big showing during Steam Next Fest.
Shadow Dungeon feels like someone took the oppressive, candle‑lit dread of Diablo 1 and rebuilt it as a first‑person roguelike where darkness is just as deadly as the creatures hiding in it.
You’re thrown into a maze of stone corridors lit only by flickering torches, scavenging weapons and relics while trying to make sense of a layout that shifts every run.
The combat is scrappy and tense, with quick swings, risky spellcasts, and that constant fear that something is breathing just outside your field of view.
It’s simple on the surface, but the way it leans into near‑total darkness gives it that same “every corner could kill you” energy that made early dungeon crawlers so memorable.
SpiritVale is already turning heads during Steam Next Fest, and with a 97% positive rating on Steam, it’s pretty clear players are vibing with what this demo is doing.
It’s a cozy‑but‑mysterious life‑sim adventure where you rebuild a ruined village, befriend wandering spirits, and slowly uncover the valley's history through exploration, crafting, and gentle puzzle‑solving.
The demo leans into atmosphere, using soft lighting, warm colors, and a soundtrack that makes even simple tasks feel meditative, but there’s enough narrative intrigue to keep you pushing deeper into the woods and ruins.
It’s the kind of game that doesn’t shout for your attention, it just quietly wins you over, which explains why early players are rating it so highly.
BOMBANANA! takes the frantic communication chaos of Keep Talking, and Nobody Explodes, and cranks it up to three‑player mayhem, turning every bomb defusal into a loud, panicked group project.
One player is stuck handling the bomb directly, while the other two scramble through mismatched manuals, diagrams, and nonsense instructions that only make sense when everyone actually talks to each other, which, of course, nobody does calmly.
The demo leans hard into the comedy of miscommunication: shouting colors, mixing up symbols, arguing over which wire is “kind of red,” and watching the timer tick down while your friends swear they’re reading the right page.
It’s fast, silly, and built entirely around the joy of barely holding things together as a team.
Deskrawl: Idle ARPG is what happens when someone turns the margins of a school notebook into a full‑blown action RPG, and the Steam Next Fest demo shows just how weirdly addictive that idea can be.
Your little hand‑drawn hero hacks through waves of sketched‑out monsters, auto‑farming loot and XP while you jump in to trigger abilities, upgrade builds, and push deeper into the page.
It’s got that satisfying “numbers go up” loop of an idle game, but wrapped in fast, snappy combat and a progression system that keeps unlocking new doodled weapons, classes, and modifiers.
The whole thing feels like a mix of Vampire Survivors and a flipbook come to life, and it’s shockingly easy to lose track of time as your scribbled warrior tears through the next wave.
