The Best Games of Next Fest, October 2025
Cream of the crap. I mean crop! Sorry! Been a long week!
Another Steam demo event has come and gone, and I once again forsook my duties to ‘real’ games to spend every evening sifting through dozens of things I thought looked mildly interesting and hoping to find a handful of rough gems to look forward to. I have my own particular sense of ‘interesting,’ so don’t come into this expecting yet another breathless summary of the 100 most-downloaded demos that you’ve seen a half dozen times already. Buckle up for the weird, the unique, the handful of games that got me to sit up straight in the 20 or so minutes I spared for them all. Here are my picks for games to watch out for in the coming months.
The list will be compiled in order of stated release date, with favor given to specificity, even if the games potentially COULD come out in a different order. Also, each title can be clicked to link to my first impressions in the post I discussed them in.
Maid of Salvation
October 22, 2025
This ARPG could be just the ticket if you’re looking for a bit of that 2000s era Falcom magic… if the enemy diversity and stage design holds up better than the start of the demo let on. I never got around to finishing this demo, and I may not bother – it’s coming out in a few hours, and if it’s cheap enough, I might just bite the bullet and give it a whirl.
Cursemark
Enters EA on Nov 3
The actual action in this didn’t hit me in nearly the sweet spot Maid of Salvation did, but it was passable enough and has a mildly intriguing structure that might make it stand out to someone who’s not as hot on Combat Type Maids. The fact that it’s only entering Early Access next month is what’s going to stop me from jumping in right away – I can’t see myself enjoying doing a game like that over and over as it’s tweaked and expanded for a year or so.
Cook for Me Grandpa!
November 4
First thing, I need to express my appreciation at the developer who promptly responded to my questions and explained some details I was uncertain about when asked. It turns out, for example, I could mix a sauce and then use it, as ‘prepared’ ingredients get added to their own button separate from the ‘whole’ or ‘separate’ ingredients that all have icons. I also got a link to the site where recipes indeed will be uploaded and shared, searchable, albeit on a page that needs translated from Japanese if you happen to not know Japanese. Maybe I’ll enable the data collection on my demo and give it another go, see if I can’t do some meals properly, and dethrone the developer themselves who, when I checked, had all the top scores locked down.
Verho - Curse of Faces
November 10
What is there to say? Another King’s Field clone, another easy pickup from me. Whether I love it, hate it, or am indifferent at the end of the day, I’m sure I’ll have a good time scratching that slow, atmospheric itch.
Constance
November 24, 2025
DON’T DO IT! I’m confident that if Constance had managed to release a bit before Silksong’s dramatic and abrupt announcement, it would be hailed as a worthy substitute for the hungry Hollow Knight anticipants. I’m now grimly resigned to Constance instead being largely ignored, picked up and turned around and gently set aside as a weak pretender to the throne. Which is probably a shame – it is extremely obviously inspired by [or even derived from] Hollow Knight, but it makes what appear to be respectable strides to forge its own lane, and it’s unlikely to find an audience the way Nine Sols or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown did in a year with no word or whisper of Silksong.
Idosra: The Electric Renaissance
November 2025
There aren’t many games on this list I’m as genuinely excited to get my hands on as Idosra. It looks to be, more than anything else, a thoroughly interesting game, one that I’ll have lots to think about, write about, and call back to in the future. It also felt pretty fun to play, in spite of mild control problems. Whenever this drops, whatever I’m up to, I’ll be looking forward to exploring this one thoroughly.
Star Tower
December 2025
Though I’m not really a fan of this genre, I was impressed enough with the style and writing in Star Tower, enough so that, if it’s not more than a few bucks, I’ll happily take it for a spin. If it’s not, hell, it’ll be a few bucks in a year or two, I guarantee it.
LingTian2: Your Destined Prince
Q4 2025
I’m curious enough about the plot of this strange and clunky otome that I really might pick up a translated romance visual novel full of AI backgrounds and awkward character models and play through it. But that means I probably should actually get and play the first game, even though I already know most of what happens in it. At least it won’t break the bank.
The Myth of a Godslayer
Q4 2025
Another game I’m quite excited for, and is scheduled for release relatively soon. I still need to finish this demo, but the combat and dungeon crawling I’ve seen already show a lot of promise. Though it’s doubtful this will really dethrone any existing well-loved examples of the genre, I’m almost more excited by a small, fresh team cutting their teeth on a game based on their inspirations than I am of a more well-realized project.
Moonsigil Atlas
2025
This deckbuilder really has more in common with the likes of FTL and Void War than its genre peers… no, hear me out. The physical spinning and slotting of glyphs into a discrete play field forces you to make judgments and sacrifices, compromise and complex planning. The fact that I have anything nice to say whatsoever about an example of the genre I’m most swiftly dismissive of is impressive enough, but the fact that I have more to say beyond begrudging praise should convince you there’s potential for riches if this one pans out. I’m rooting for it, and though it has big shoes to fill and an awkward niche to sell players on, if it finds its audience and its footing it really could go the distance.
Brno Transit
Q1 2026
Bitterly disappointed this shit-smeared spectacular won’t be making it out before the end of the year, but once it does, I’m jumping aboard at the first station. HROT was one of my favorite games the year it came out, and though Brno might be a little less ambitious and fulfilling, it promises to have enough humor and character to be worth waiting for.
Klostyn
Q2 2026
I went back and finished the demo for this FPS and, while it’s gonna need a lot more meat on the bone to be a complete package, it had enough going on to keep me interested. It’s the right balance of silly and self-serious for a good retro homage, and the combat and gunplay felt right. I’m not sure whether I’m in the camp of wanting the dev to just run all the voiceovers through AI or try to record them himself… actually, that’s not even a question. Dump the AI, start learning to do voices, guy.
Disciples: Domination
2026
I thought this quote from the developers thanking people for participating in the Next Fest feedback was amusing:
In addition to the points mentioned above, we have seen the discussions around the path Disciples: Domination, and the trilogy it is part of, is taking. We acknowledge the rich history of the Disciples franchise, but please note that our Disciples: Domination is the continuation of a new beginning that started with Disciples: Liberation, aiming to revive the universe and bring it to a new and bigger audience.
For a game that is openly carrying on the legacy of a corpse defilement of a fondly remembered series, I actually quite liked what I played of Domination… enough to wonder if I secretly missed out when Kalypso rebooted the IP into a more King’s Bounty-esque direction with Liberation. Maybe if I get the urge I’ll pick up that first foray and give it a go. Or maybe I’ll wait until the third game in their already planned trilogy, which will certainly be the best, right? Third time’s a charm. Maybe they’re just lucky King’s Bounty 2 sucked as bad as Disciples 3.
Exo Rally Championship
TBA
Far and away the game that impressed me the most, and that I most want to play, and of course it’s the only one without even a tease at a release date. I went out of my way to score time on a real computer to play more of this demo, and it was even better than I expected. There were some whole mechanics I hadn’t picked up on in my time poking at it on a machine that struggled to reach 30 FPS. One great idea is that, before each course, you have the opportunity to send out a quad-copter drone to scout the terrain, drawing your own path overlays, scouting the terrain and hazards, and dropping pins on difficult spots.
Between some courses, your rover gets retrieved by a dropship to be moved to the next area, and during transit, you get the opportunity to perform some maintenance. Replacing damaged parts, changing out worn tires, [if you still have enough on hand] tightening up your engine, or even just blowing out the sand and grit gumming up your filters and thrusters all take a certain amount of time, depending on the thoroughness you want them done with, and if you really need to make a lot of repairs, you can even go over your allotted time and just eat a few minutes of your course time to hit the ground in good shape. But other courses are done back to back, and if you take a nasty spill on the first, or if one of the tracks just looks awful, you might even opt to skip it, take a hit in the overall rankings, and hope to make it up elsewhere.
At a playable framerate, the little details and moment-to-moment decision-making work great, like when I wound up flipping myself in between two rocks and had to figure out how to use my thrusters to unwedge myself, or when I was coming up on the end of a course where I’d plotted out a nice safe route around a rock-strewn hill, and seeing that my last split was in the red, decided to ignore my own plans, gun it up the hill, and trust that I could pick my way through the minefield of obstacles and occasional micrometeor impact complicating the direct route. It worked, and I saved enough time to reach fourth in the total rankings… before flipping my rover and losing multiple tires in the next run. That’s how rally goes.
And now for some honorable mentions. I tried a few more games while I had the chance, all things that I really wanted to check out but couldn’t on the Deck.
The Last Caretaker
Enters EA on November 6
A survival crafting game where you play as a robot trying to fuel up a little boat. Really enjoyed this – it reminded me of stuff like Abiotic Factor where you’ve got a lot of semi-realistic elements to balance while gearing yourself up for major progress. Most of the management comes down to hooking up conduits and stretchy pipes – each tube has a maximum length, and you can route them to splitters and extensions to hook solar panels and wind turbines to immovable batteries, or just charge up smaller ones and carry them down.
As a robot, rather than food and water, you just need a little bit of juice, and you can even do stuff like plug yourself into a small battery you’re carrying around. Once you find the ship, you can charge it up, activate features like a recycler that breaks down the scrap you’ve found into raw materials, and eventually repair and fuel up the big diesel generator, making your way into open ocean and the end of the demo.
This could be pretty cool – a kind of merging of Abiotic Factor and Raft, with hopefully some clever building options to compliment the cable management and maintenance concerns. It has some of the dinkiest ‘combat’ I’ve seen in any game of this type, but combat’s rarely the big draw anyway. I’ll be looking to see how its Early Access shapes up over the next few months, and if I see a good on-ramp, I might even join it.
G-Rebels
2025
A few months ago I puttered around a bit in Aircar, a VR… ‘experience’ where you pilot a flying car around a rainy bit of cyberpunk city clearly inspired by Blade Runner. I never wrote it up, not because it was too short and insubstantial of a free VR project [I’ve written up much less] but because I never felt like I had ‘finished’ it. There are collectables to find, and I was only ever to get about half of them before the game would crash and reset all progress, and eventually I just gave up and forgot about it.
G-Rebels is basically Aircar but not in VR [although the devs have said they have future VR support as a strong consideration but not a guarantee] and with a little more to the game than a few hidden collectables. You play as a corporate enforcer, maintaining law and order and company values through lethal force in your Skyblade. [a flying car] You then go on missions very reminiscent of space sims like Freelancer, scanning other flying cars, getting into shootouts with drones, and finally engaging in dogfights with replicants [yes, they just call them replicants] in their own armed flying cars.
It seems to nail the presentation and feel of flying a flying car through Blade Runner town… but the actual combat missions felt a bit unnecessary and unfulfilling. I got to the point where you’re told to use missiles, and wasn’t able to figure out how to actually use the lock-on to fire them correctly, before sighing and leaving it be. There are plenty of things you could try to do to flesh out a Blade Runner cityscape porn experience, and I don’t think dogfights are the most compelling option. I could be wrong, and it could be awesome, but I’ll let someone else find out one way or the other.
Shadow of the Road
TBA
This tactics game is set in the Sengoku era and sees your ronin protagonists caught in the conflict between Shogun and Emperor in a steampunky alternate history where the imperial court gets rifles and electronics and the traditionalist samurai call on magic spirits. It made me think of Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., a 3DS XCOM-lite that hypothesized a Steampunk American Civil War… or something, I barely remember. And that’s part of Shadow of the Road’s problem – it’s too middle of that shadowy road to really stick out. The setting is a little too goofy, but the tone is too grim and frankly dull, and I was struggling to muster up any interest in the characters or events.
The tactics stuff may turn out to be high quality, but none of it struck me as particularly innovative or attractive, and to be honest I don’t really like the genre that much unless there’s some other hook to draw me into it. The freeform exploration between combat missions also seems like it could, possibly, maybe end up being worthwhile, but all I really found before deciding to call it a night were some consumable healing items that would, at best, undo a single hit’s worth of damage. The most interesting part to me was the morality slider system, which is balanced not between Good and Evil but Samurai and Ronin.
I don’t think I’ll be keeping too close an eye on Shadow of the Road. Yes, it has ninjas, and I do like ninjas, but the only time it brought a gleam to my eye was when one of my guys decapitated an invisible man, and I’m 90% certain that cutscene wasn’t supposed to play out like that.
So those are my picks for this… thrice yearly event. I really wasn’t expecting to have the time or energy to even engage with it this time, and I’m thrilled there were so many titles to find that seemed genuinely worthwhile and remarkable. Thanks so much for everyone who’s been following this past week, and let me know if any of these caught your eye.