Steam Next Fest February 2026: Part 3

When checking through the list of games there were a lot of horror games, visual novels, shop simulators, anime games, side scrollers, card battlers, Co op ‘friend slop’ type games, and chill games. It was also the first time I have heard the phrase ‘multiplayer social deduction game’ and there were a lot of social deduction games. There were also a large amount of games with unique art styles that really didn’t appeal to me. In general, there were just a huge amount of games to choose from, the list just didn’t end.

I collated a selection of games that I thought were worth a try. This is Part Three of the games I tried.

SpaceCraft: The Universe is yours. SpaceCraft is an online space exploration and building game. Explore a vast galaxy of solar systems and planets, mine and craft resources, design and build ships, automate planetary bases and interplanetary logistics, trade and cooperate.

The game has promise, but it was clear this is still quite early in the development as there are still rough edges that need smoothing out. There were hitches when entering a new zone or a planet’s atmosphere. The NPC models are all basically the same and there is still a stiffness to much of the game that polish will eradicate. 

The basics of the game are a little No Mans Sky mixed with the galactic corporation indentured servant games like Hardspace Shipbreaker. You ‘win’ the opportunity to pay off your life debt by captaining a starship to mine resources while at the same time adding to said debt. You mine different resources and then process them at the space station (for a small fee of course). Here you can create upgrades for your ship and install them (more storage, better mining lasers and a hyperdrive). The gameplay loop was fun but there are things they can do to smooth out the mechanics and remove many of the grindy elements of the game. An example of this is when you smelt resources. The time it takes to smelt them is too long and would benefit from immediately completing. The amount of smelting and creating of items you will do in the game will add a huge amount of time but none of it will be additive but rather to add time to a game that I don’t feel will need it. I think it will be a good game if they give it a little polish and smooth the rough edges down. 

Cargo Hunters: Cargo Hunters is the singleplayer extraction shooter where you control a humanoid robot scavenging the remains of humanity on an abandoned, dystopian Earth.

I have always wanted a PVE extraction game. The demo has a selection of weapons and other equipment that I don’t imagine you will have access to at the beginning of the game but rather gives you the experience you will have along the way. The shooting feels good and the effects you get when you shoot other robots and you are shot yourself are really good. The aesthetics of the game are reminiscent of other post apocalyptic games. The enemies are interesting and although I never fought one there are bigger stronger enemies in the demo. There are melee and gun enemies and I saw one with a huge amount of armour and a gatling gun. There is only one map I think, but I never completed it as I was a little rushed.This could be a lot of fun. 

Aethus: Explore a vast underground world to mine, refine and craft hundreds of items, then build up your modular surface Outpost to farm hydroponic crops, prospect for gems and automate your resource-gathering in this sci-fi survival-crafter where the story always provides a reason to dig deeper.

You play as Maive who has been working for a corporation on a mining colony but uses her savings to buy her grandfather’s mining prospect site. You and your trusty drone embark on an adventure to see what it was your grandfather wanted you to find. 

This crafting, space exploration game is quite interesting. Being third person adds something to it and the movement is smooth but does suffer from stiffness from time to time. The character gets stuck on rocks or stairs sometimes and it is one of those cases where you have to do a wide arc to get to where you are going. The inventory system and UI is serviceable but really needs an overhaul. I like the clinical clean look to it but an actual inventory screen would be better. The craft from chest is a great QoL that every game should have as standard. A button to add all similar items to the chests would be beneficial. There are a few things that could be tightened up and a group of solid testers who play these kinds of games, or seeing what other games of this type do would be beneficial. I might see what this is like in time when it releases as to whether I play it or not. 

Wanderburg: Drive your Castle on Wheels into battle in this minimalist medieval roguelike of roaming fortresses! Devour entire villages, build your modular arsenal of siege weapons and arcane machinery as you grow with every stronghold you crush.

It is a fresh take on the survivors genre where you are a mobile castle with various defenses and weapons. You select your weapons at the beginning of the run and as you swallow up people, fields, forests and so on, you get to upgrade and add new items to the castle (such as a ram, or more canons or a mine layer). This is a well made game. The castle drives along well and the turning is responsive. There were a few items I could not get used to but I think that is just me. I never clicked with a survivors game. I tried Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Survivors but the repetitive runs that are the central aspect of the game just got boring and, surprise surprise, repetitive. If you got on with those games and you are looking for another, one that is very well made and tight, then this is one to try out. 

Deified: Forge your strategy around powerful relics in this turn-based tactical roguelite. Choose your slots, manage their constraints, and face formidable bosses.

This is a roguelike tactics game. You move through the world selecting areas to explore. Some areas give you new relics and others are battles or healing. The combat is grid based with a certain number of blocks you can move. Weapons fit into slots that increase with level ups. 

The art style is once again really nice and reminds me of the new rogue Prince of Persia or Sable. The colour pallet is on the red spectrum from yellow through to bright red of his clothing with oranges in between. It is effective and gives it a unique theme. As with all roguelikes this games success will depend on variety, how interesting the relics and powers become and synergy. 

Denshattack: Flip, trick and grind your train in a fast-paced, off-the-rails ride through a colourful Japanese dystopia. Outmatch rival gangs, wreck a shady megacorp, and take back the tracks with nothing but skill, speed, and style.

The basic premise is you are a train driver who finds out about this train racing and trick competition and being the eager beaver she is, wants to take part. The art style is kind of cyberpunk meets Tank Girl anime. The colours are bright and vibrant and the animations are on point. There are very aggressive comic book style pops and flares but it never felt like they were getting in the way or were distracting but rather they added to the overall excitement of the speeding train. 

This was a lot of fun. Kind of a Skate mixed with a fast paced racing game and the Kinect Sports game where you were on a raft and had to move side to side to dodge rapids and rocks. It is frenetic and there are tricks reminiscent of skateboarding games. There are achievements to achieve as you complete each track along with a scoring system. There are collectables as well. The tricks were intuitive and someone who is usually good at skating games will get a kick out of this. Although the train speeds along it wasn’t that difficult to keep up with the tricks and there was a freedom to what you would like. 

Prime Monster: A card-based political roguelike about surviving in a parliament of literal monsters. Fight for votes, break rules, weather scandals and force through absurd laws to keep the top job in this democratic dystopia of truly monstrous proportions.#

Humans have been removed and monsters are in charge. They decide after a while to turn to man’s greatest invention, democracy. They form political parties and for a government. You are the opposition party leader and you need to increase your political clout and your party’s popularity with the population, oppose laws and get yourself elected as Prime Monster. 

You use card based mechanics in parliament to increase unity within your party to ensure they vote your way and cause damage to your opposition and cause their MPs to either vote your way or at least don’t vote against your wishes. In the demo you go through three tutorialised situations from opposing two laws and then the election. Depending on how you did in the previous two situations depends on how you do in the election. I defeated both previous situations (as I am sure you were supposed to) and won a landslide victory and was made Prime Monster. What happens from there is unsure as the demo ends here but it insinuates that things get more difficult from there on. 

This really could be a fun game. It all depends on the variety and depth of the game. The cards have interesting effects but they need to be varied and have more interesting effects as you progress. There also needs to be positive and negative sides to the cards.  I am interested to see how much variety is and how being the Prime Monster is different or how distinct the other parties and representatives are. 

Tombwater: A Souls-Like Western filled with Eldritch Horror. Explore the Wild West town of Tombwater and lay bare the darkness that lies beneath. Survive blood-spilling combat in this gruesome 2D action-RPG that may just drive you to madness.

The demo is set in the wild west and starts on a train with you and two others trying to steal silver from someone in order to pay off debts. The train seems deserted and there is no silver in the safe when you open it. You and your accomplices make a run for it and you are thrown from the train. You are then tutorialised through the basic controls and attacks. The demo then skips forward to further in the game and the enemies are far more tanky and have multiple attacks and attack sequences. They hit a lot harder, are more numerous and take more to kill. This is where I came unstuck as my limited skill in these games came into play. 

I really liked the artstyle of this and although twin-stick shooters are not my thing I thought I would give it a go. The only way I can describe this is stiff. The animations are really good and the environments are beautiful pixel art, but the attacks seemed to have a stuntedness about them. Like I said these are usually not my forte so for people who usually play twin-stick shooters and enjoy them, I would like to know how their experiences of this was. It is very much a skill issue for me though and when I came up against an enemy (who had other enemies around him) had a multi-shot gun attack, I felt that I got stunlocked and he damaged me for all of my health with one sequence of attacks. The game seems to be well formed already though and I would think the story should be interesting with Eldritch horror theme. 

Nutmeg: NUTMEG! is a nostalgic football manager game with a deckbuilding twist, set in the '80s and '90s. Relive the days when the tackles were as hard as the mullets were long and football was about football.

This is a fun little card battler. You set up your team, buy player cards, set training dependant on the staff you have and then play one out of five matches a month while delegating the other four matches to your staff. You can set intensity of play and formation for the non-broadcasted matches (the ones you delegate away). The games you play are played using cards that have different abilities relating to the football positions on the pitch (Green for goalkeeper, blue for defence, yellow for the midfield and red for attack). These cards add to the percentage chance that one of the three options will happen. These are based off of your player and their player. By using different cards you increase your chances of success. The cards use up your players stamina and as your players stamina decreases you can substitute 2 players out during the game.I do feel the RNG in it is a bit Xcom as I repeatedly had 60-70% chances lose out to the lowest percentage more often than not. I often lost unplayed games where I had a 60% chance to win and they only had 20%. I would prefer to have the option to play every game rather than delegate four out of the five games. The players being in a sticker album as in the football sticker books that are available is a nice touch. There are plenty of nods to football adjacent things. The pictures of your various scouts, trainers and other backroom staff are very Jones in the Fast Lane style and I find them a humorous touch. Overall a very good game and I can see myself playing this more especially if they sort their RNG out.

The Ratline: A murdered priest. A secret list. Hunt Nazi fugitives across the globe in this gritty 1971 detective thriller. Analyze evidence, follow leads, and make sharp deductions before the trail goes cold. From the creators of Family, Rivals, Conspiracy, Echo Beach and Riley & Rochelle.

I enjoy these sorts of puzzle games. Different from Blue Prince style games and more in the vein of The Roottress are dead. Decipher information from breadcrumb clues and work towards identifying people from limited information. Unlike the Roottrees game there is no internet but a limited information portal and a rolodex of telephone numbers. The game is very tactile as you need to actually use the phone and drag information you have figured out to the board as well as clicking to add the evidence to the board. As long as the game continues to get more difficult but not suffer from any moon logic it will be a good game. The demo is longer than I thought and I never finished it. 

Darkhaven: Darkhaven is a next-generation ARPG brought to you by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo II. Explore a procedurally generated and fully dynamic open world unlike any other in this solo or multiplayer adventure.

This is Diablo 2 but modernised. There is jumping, dodging, moving around with the ASWD keys, slotted items, multiple loot, 3 weapon sets that you can switch on the fly with V and terrain destruction. The controls feel a little clunky and the attacks are not as precise as more modern ARPGs like Diablo IV or Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile. The UI and menus are serviceable but need cleaning up.

The basic gist is it is the game has potential but needs work. This seems to be the consensus in the Steam reviews of the demo.