17 Games From Summer Showcases + Steam Next Fest June 2026

It’s that time of year again! The Summer Games Showcase and Steam Next Fest were recently upon us. This is slightly delayed because, well, I got one tiny week of vacation between classes, and I’m still trying to survive my last year and a half of undergrad! Almost there! Besides, this gives you a bunch of new demos to check out during this year’s Steam Summer Sale—and what is better than the sacred tradition of eternally expanding your Steam wishlist?

This year I only managed to stream three demos: Growing My Manhole, Ship Miners, and Wind Runners. Will update this with links to VODs once I manage to upload them to YouTube! I played and enjoyed about 17 demos overall. As per usual, this list reflects my tastes and interests and preference towards more relaxed gameplay (mostly, there are some exceptions) because I have tension related chronic pain issues, prefer narrative-focused games, etc. If you have similar interests, I hope you find these interesting!

Here are the games:

Am I Nima (HO! Games)

I say I’m a baby about horror games every year, and every year one or two psychological thrillers or mindfucky horror games make it on my list. Am I Nima is such a strange and fucked up experience of a demo. You combine words gained by clicking on objects and drag them into Nima’s brain to see what she says. The narrative probably involves some strange deepsea cosmic monster/nightmare-being masquerading as a small child named Nima that her mom created??? Maybe??? Maybe not??? I’m so fascinated and can’t wait to find out the full story someday.

Arcane Eats (WonderbellyGames)

This is a neat card game/deckbuilder where you serve your cards on stovetops. When they’re cooked, they fill a certain number of hunger and if you zero out a patron’s hunger, they pay and leave and you succeed! It’s a neat added flavor (eyyy) to card game mechanics. I did feel the difficulty ramped up too fast, personally, but that is true for many deckbuilders and sometimes it’s by design. Maybe I simply couldn’t handle the heat.

Book Nook (Malapata Studio)

This cute little game is all about making dioramas of bookstores and, well, book nooks! Seeing as how I yearn for little book dioramas in life but have no space for them on my shelves in this tiny apartment, this game scratched that particular itch—plus it had the satisfaction of things clicking together. My only desire was for clearer controls and help or hints when I got stuck, as that got pretty frustrating when the complexity of the dioramas increased.

Burn-9 (14 Hours Production)

This game is very much “what if you were the mission operator helping out an agent in a spy movie?” in vibe, with some Metal Gear Solid aesthetic inspiration, and I was hooked. Try to keep your agent, Dodo, alive after crashing near a secret base in Antarctica. I adored this demo and was genuinely upset when it ended because I wanted to keep playing that badly. My choices felt like they were influencing outcomes, but the tension came from me not exactly knowing how. It also scratches a tactics turn-based itch for me as well, gameplay-wise. Of all the demos I played, this one definitely hooked me the most narratively and made the biggest impression.

Deer & Boy (Lifeline Games)

Guide a baby deer with glowing horns and enough smarts to listen and obey your commands out of danger. Why are you in danger? Not sure! But I was tense the whole time. The deer’s responsiveness was never the problem, only my reaction time and comprehension of what I had to do. I jumped to my doom several times—which makes sense given it’s labeled as a “cinematic platformer” and, as established in past Steam Next Fest write-ups (see: 2024 and 2025), I struggle with platformers. But this one was memorable, the music and “human guiding an animal through peril” concept reminded me of Endling or Herdling. And because of my slight delay in releasing this list, Deer & Boy is already out and fully available so go forth and enjoy!

D-topia (Marumittu Games)

Everything in D-topia is nice and perfect and people are happy, happy, happy! I’m sure that’s fine, I’m sure there’s no dystopian underbelly to this utopia at all. Play as No. 46, who has been selected to be a Facilitator—which means solving chill puzzles that aren’t too challenging, at least in the demo. No. 46 can also see behind the curtain, as it were, and peer beneath the veneer to fix things. Can't wait to see where that story leads.

Froggy Brews (Komodo Range Studio)

Listen, I like cute frog games and also games that have aesthetically pleasing drinks. Return to a village in search of a beloved friend and listen to your patrons' stories. The animation style is adorable, the vibes relaxing. The teas all look extremely delicious and picturesque, too! My biggest complaint was the lack of controls and information about which ingredients do what, which made it deeply confusing at times.

Growing My Manhole (SylverDev)

You are a manhole trying to become a Large Hole™ to swallow up as many things as possible. I think that covers it, we can call it a day. Have hole, get hole bigger. This delightful incremental game was a hit with my chat on stream. Of course, it helps that holes are part of my brand, and that we are a (w)holesome bunch. But if you like a more laidback game where number go up and your hole gets bigger? This game is so good.

Kernel Hearts (Ephemera Games) 

I’ve been super intrigued by Kernel Hearts since I saw the first trailer for it back in, oh, 2025 or so I want to say! Hack and slash your way up a tower and attack and dethrone god (???) as a magical girl. There’s co-op options too, which is pretty fun (though sometimes hilariously buggy). You’re racing against a ticking clock every level. Don’t let the meter hit 100% and make your way up the Tower of Babel and kick some ass. I actually wound up playing two demo versions, one from before Steam Next Fest and one during, which was slightly more polished and less punishing, especially on story mode. I would say definitely check this one out—the music is also immaculate.

Petal Runner (Nano Park Studios)

We’ve established multiple times that I am a Game Boy era millennial, I grew up with that and spent a good chunk of my childhood attached to a Game Boy of some variety. This game has Game Boy-esque graphics, which I really love. You’re a delivery person of, and this is the technical term, adorable little guys, digital buddies that are extremely cute. There are minigames to activate the cells inside these lil guys and I’m going to be so honest, I sucked at them and they were surprisingly difficult timing-wise. But other than that, the game was very chill and nostalgic!

Penguin Colony (ORIGAME DIGITAL)

How the hell do I even explain this game? Witness cosmic horror as a penguin. Move around the world as a penguin—switch from penguin to penguin, even! I was kind of obsessed with how ridiculous it was to waddle around as a penguin while a narrator talked about the eldritch nightmares these humans were discovering. This is what I love about indie games, they’re just so creative and strange and aren’t afraid to let you slide down a snowbank in the Antarctic as a penguin while the humans lose their minds around you while they unearth (or try to prevent) some otherworldly being from waking up.

Piecewise (./bagdames.zip)

I saw this cute little puzzle game during the Access-Ability Showcase and really fell in love with the simplicity of it—and it's made by a singular game dev! The whole point was to make a game that was at their skill level and was fun. I love how it defines challenge: you’re encouraged to give yourself as much time as you feel you need, but too much and you lose score and too little so you don’t complete it and you also lose score. This allows for the player to set their own difficulty time-wise and I like that a lot. Ultimately you’re just matching shape to shape-hole, so it’s no surprise I liked this one I guess.

Ship Miner (Pixel Core Games)

There’s something about a retro pixel style game with a simplistic but neat aesthetic that I love. Ship miner is fairly straightforward: mine, try not to get murdered by anomalies, and mine some more. Number go up! Plus eventually you have to figure out how to stop The Anomaly rather than, uh, dive directly into it and dying like I did several times. It’s fine. I played this one on stream as well and it was a very chill time.

Trading Card Inspector (Daydream Gallery)

Evaluate cards, see if they’re legit or not in this satirical anti-corporate trading card game. The full game has released since I played the demo earlier this month, so you can just enjoy the full thing if you like the demo! I was not great at navigating all the menus, but it was a fun experience and I liked all the color palette options.

Trees Hate You (Tykenn)

I think I played like 15 minutes of this game, cackling at all these trees just randomly shooting this character with a gun or swan diving on top of them because, well, they hate you. Simplistic premise, a bit enraging repetitive gameplay by design. Very hilarious, I had to include it because it made me laugh every time I managed to get slightly further on the first level (I didn’t make it past falling through a hole into what I thought was safety only to find more trees launching at me like missiles).

Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! (Strange Scaffold)

Hilariously irreverent and ridiculous chaotic driving game. Play as Truck-kun as you support Carissa in her endeavors to *checks notes* get isekai’d back into her world so she can become vice president of marketing at her company, and in order to do that you have to kill a bunch of people to isekai them into the fantasy world she’s now stuck in so she can level up and escape. Yeah. Unhinged premise, delightful mayhem. Everyone will probably be fine in the end. Maybe.

Wind Runners (Ludic Studios)

Wind Runners has a fun arcade vibe. It’s sidescrolling, it’s difficult but rewarding when you succeed at dodging all the things coming your way! The animations are slick and fun, and I really enjoyed the cyberpunk-y spaceships and Cowboy Bebop energy to things (especially the soundtrack, which is very jazzy at times and drum n’ bass at others). I’d like some difficulty/accessibility settings, personally, as it started to hurt my wrist and feel too punishing after a bit, but it was a very fun time! I got very into beating the first boss (and never quite could).

If you enjoy this, consider throwing me $1 over on Patreon or Ko-fi—and if you want to comment on this or tell me some game demos I absolutely have to play, you can do so over on the public Patreon post version of this!