Best of Next Fest, February 2026
Tiring of elf prattle?
Another Next Fest has come and gone, and if you’re looking for the rarest demos, the deepest cuts, look no further – I made it all the way to the bottom of the list, or at least until the page wouldn’t scroll anymore, and I’m proud to say that not a single thing I downloaded made it into the top 30 most-played demos of the event.
I’ve pulled out a selection of demos I think were really worthwhile, and which I’m looking forward to playing a full version of, many of which I’ve played some more since writing up my initial impressions. Each title will link to the post I mentioned them in first, and they’re in simple order of first appearance, rather than any sort of ranking this time, mostly because going through and thinking about the vagaries of stated release dates and release windows is too much effort.
Blades of Fire
The more I played this demo, the more convinced I was that MercuryStream are on to something special – this game is 2010 personified, full of weird ideas hammered together, and then honed to a razor’s edge. The impact of combat, the bulky character design, the phoned-in voice acting, it’s all evocative of a bygone age, like a forgotten cult classic unearthed and brushed off decades after its time. Hopefully the full game continues to deliver at this level.
The Eternal Life of Goldman
This game still has work to do in enamoring me to its platforming, and in making me care about the bottom-level narrative, but I’m already sold that it’ll be worth a playthrough on sheer spectacle alone. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game with this much effort in its presentation, and to such impressive effect. I just hope there’s enough substance behind the flashy facade.
The Magus Circle
This is a genre that needs a healthy dose of innovation, and Magus feels like it’s delivering at least an experimental round of that. Getting deep into the waves, glancing nervously at my spells timing out, trying to scrawl out the proper glyphs while weaving through waves, I felt a glimpse of the way forward for Survivors-likes. It took me several attempts to beat the first boss, and my eventual success didn’t come down to grinding meta-progression or picking combinations that arbitrarily synergize the way it would in nearly any other example of the genre, but in getting better at drawing the shapes and playing competently. And the upgrade that gave my glyphs a fear effect, that helped too.
Shifting Sands
On a deeper replay, I found even more to enjoy about this isometric extraction looter – traveling merchants with powerful gear to sell, encounters with friendly scavs out in the wastes, sneaking into a more dangerous outer ring region to nab some loot and flee. Playing with mouse and keyboard made the inventory Tetris more fluid than on controller, and while I think the game still needs some control refinement in general, I think it’s got the gameplay basics dialed in pretty well already.
MOTHERSHIP
I’m putting this on here as a selfish hedge – if this developer manages to spend a decade making this remotely worthwhile, seeing their vision through while improving… every part of this experience, and I’m still around, I want to be able to point to this article to prove that I had incredible, piercing insight. And if nothing happens and this game evaporates and nobody thinks of it ever again, nobody will remember this inclusion anyway. The house always wins.
PROTON VR
This is essentially a fangame for one of my favorite VR titles, but it might wind up being even bigger and better on top of taking the best bits from COMPOUND. I have extremely high hopes for this, and it’d take some real work this time to actually disappoint me, especially now that my VR headset is back in my hands.
BOOST VECTOR EX
For a genre [or rather, subgenre of racing] that I don’t engage much with, this kept me coming back, with enough variety and style to win me over. I doubt I’ll ever be particularly good at BVEX, but I’ve had plenty of fun being mid with flair to pick this up.
Starvester
Continuing to ponder this particular orb may prove corrosive to my soul and sanity, but I’m going to do it anyway. In many of the same ways I feel like The Magus Circle takes the tired Survivors-like genre in fresh new directions, so the same is for Starvester and the Clicker clique. I’m genuinely interested what else this game can pull out to spice things up, and how soon I’m going to get to live out my fantasy of parasitically draining entire star systems.
Valerie
For all of the beautiful, polished, and highly stylized platformers that have been part of this event, I think this is the one I’m most excited to actually play. Hopefully I get a chance soon, and the rest of the game is as smooth and fun to explore as the little bit of the demo I played was.
Croak
Speaking of great platformers I can’t wait to play more of. I went back and got myself enough gold medals to unlock the last stage of this demo, and I had a pretty good time doing it. The speedrun requirements are strict enough I think I’ll have real trouble getting full golds, but if the quality and variety remains high, I’ll have no complaints about getting enough to at least unlock every level.
Blood Facsimile
I spent a bit more time in this after my first impression and found a bit more promise to this weird little game – levels actually link together in interesting ways, there’s more weapon variety than I expected, and there’s a sort of Metroidvania mobility upgrade system too… or at least I found a double jump. Now I just need to find a grappling hook or a missile pack and we’ll really be doing it.
Tiling Town
I must have booted this up at least three times before figuring out how to proceed past the 90 degree bend stage, and then I started knocking out sections one after the other, bam, bam, bam, uh… oh. Maybe over… no… huh. Okay, I’m stuck again, and I’ll probably be stuck until I glare at every single puzzle long enough to make a breakthrough. And like I said initially, if you like this style of puzzle game, this seems competently made and satisfying enough to scratch that itch.
Ardenfall
If an Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint on maybe the worst Elder Scrolls game didn’t quite do it for you, you might have more interest in Ardenfall. I went back through and pursued a few alternate resolutions of the demo’s little introductory quest, including clocking the first NPC you meet accidentally while clicking through dialogue. Hey, any game where you can punch an elf is pretty good.
Esoteric Ebb
And if a variety of amusing choices is what makes or breaks an RPG for you, Esoteric Ebb promises some esoteric options indeed. Of all the games on this list, I’m probably most excited for this one, which is good, since it’s coming out in a matter of hours rather than weeks or months.
Time to become a true menace to society – a willful purveyor of dwarf propaganda.
Haunted Lands
Another game that impressed more deeply on a revisit than at initial outing, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Haunted Lands once I swapped over to the retro-gaming Mage hanging out in my base of operations and took her through her own class-specific tutorial. Each of the four characters available have their own mechanics, equipable gear, and attacks, and hers are probably my favorite so far – can you tell I’m a Peach main in Super Mario 2?
Another week in the mines, another duty done, another round of promising previews proselytized. I hope this has been as illuminating for you as it has been for me, and I hope at least some of these games are as good as I think they might be.
Thank you for your service