Valve has so far brought together a brand-new demo festival event every few months to its Steam platform, offering its massive PC gaming community a games tradeshow-like experience filled with slices of gameplay, mostly from upcoming indies. Today, Valve brought forth the June 2022 Edition of the Steam Next Fest, and hundreds of more demos are now available to try out.
The Next Fest hub page set up for the latest event has the massive number of available choices being broken up into more manageable chunks. Interested players can sort through some of the biggest genres on the top menu, while a much more intricate filtering system is available after scrolling down a little.
Valve's own algorithms are also being put into work here to offer existing customers personalized recommendations. Simply hovering over a game in the hub page will pull up a handy 'Install Demo' button, so it's not even required to go into a store page. Almost continuous livestreams from developers have returned as a feature too, running right alongside the event sharing more about their games.
For the first time, there are Steam Profile rewards up for grabs as part of the festivities. Playing any demo from the festival will grant players a badge to feature on their profiles, and these badges level up depending on how many demos are installed and played during the event's duration.
The event only just went live, but there are already some favorites forming in the hub's popular section, including the rhythm action game Metal: Hellsinger, dungeon crawler Cult of the Lamb, recently revealed Devolver published shooter Anger Foot, returning city builder Terra Nil, management title Sweet Transit, and even Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed.
The Steam Next Fest June 2022 Edition will keep its demo doors wide open until June 20, giving everyone a full week to get their share of tryouts.
