The June Steam Next Fest has concluded, offering a peek at hundreds of upcoming games. It was a stellar lineup of co-op, simulation, colony management, survival, shooters, and many more game genres for everyone to find something they enjoy. But for me, there were some standout titles that rose above the rest and deserve some of your time if you didn’t get the chance to play them before.

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Brigador Killers

Stellar Jockeys’ Brigador was an amazing top-down shooter, built out of pure concentrated destructive fun, where you play mercenaries piloting mechs, taking down a world government and facing hundreds of enemies. It was difficult, but flexible enough that with enough skill, you could make the dystopian world a money maker to unlock even crazier mechs and harder challenges.

Brigador Killers brings a fun twist to the game, as now you operate as an insurgency force, bent on killing the mercenaries, the “Brigadors” who destroyed the world in the first game. Instead of getting a mech to tear through buildings, you have to operate on foot, collecting weapons and vehicles to help you on your journey of taking back what they took from you. While you can play the active development builds on Itch, the Steam demo takes you through the basics of learning the many ways to kill. It also allows you to play the main insurgency mode, where you can collect weapons, vehicles, and generally experience the satisfying life of an insurgent gearing up.

It’s still early in development, but Brigador Killers is a chaotic, fun game that satisfies an itch in my brain for explosive shootouts and other general use of explosives. It’s definitely a game more people need to experience, and it is easily one of the most fun demos that came out of Steam’s Next Fest.

Brigador Killers Trailer

FISH

FISH may look strange, because it is. Its visual style is a collage of random images made into enemies and backgrounds, with an identity taken from pieces of online memes and jokes, but it’s done with such intentionality and a mastery over itself that it never becomes tiring to look at and instead adds to its own surreal humor. While playing, hearing the audio from the Killer Fish of San Diego video made me chuckle every time I played it.

Besides what it looks like, it is also a very solid side-scrolling shooter. The weapons feel really good to use, especially the sword and shotgun, but with a lineup of 6 weapons and 3 powerups, there is a variety of playstyles you wouldn’t expect from a game about a fish going around and killing things. Its fast-paced playstyle and unrelenting enemies help keep up a momentum of violent fun that you don’t always see in these side-scrollers.

It looks ridiculous and is, but it’s a quick demo with a few fun bosses and weapons to try out, and it definitely deserves a play. If you’re into games that make people ask, “What the hell are you playing?” you’ll feel right at home with FISH.

FISH Trailer

Casualties: Unknown

If you know about the 3 types of fun on the fun scale, Casualties: Unknown lands squarely in type 2. As a warning, this game is a brutal survival game with depictions of harm, psychological horror, and self-harm. As an artificial species, you “work” for a company sent to delve deeper into a planet to retrieve lost cargo. With a simple premise, this game reveals itself with its intense survival gameplay. You, of course, have to eat, drink, keep warm, and avoid breaking your legs, but as you attempt to go down, you’ll realize survival is also keeping yourself sane. Stepping on a landmine and having to endure removing shrapnel with tweezers you made from scraps of wood, while your character contemplates suicide, since this job is basically a death sentence, made me feel queasy, especially as they whimper from the pain.

But how is this fun? Well, that’s the beauty of type 2 fun! This game hurts. Progressing even a little bit is a triumph, and even though I got impaled by a trap and slowly bled out while trying to make bandages, that little bit of progress was like a rush of endorphins as I looked back on that playthrough. In the struggle for both progress and survival, it hurts in the moment, but afterwards, you feel invigorated to try again. That is the type 2 fun that this game gives you. Knowledge is rewarded by living, experience is a power to make it a little bit further, and it’s fulfilling in a way a lot of games aren’t.

This game isn’t for everyone, especially since, in the moment, it can be very depressing. But for people who like games of desperate survival, Casualties: Unknown provides an experience that will make you beg for more, while wanting to never experience pain again.

Casualties: Unknown Trailer

RetroSpace

In a much lighter tone, RetroSpace is exactly the kind of groovy space futurist imsim that I needed. Immersive sims feel like a rare genre, even though there are thousands of imsims, the best ones feel rare and few. RetroSpace looks like a great entry into the genre.

Stuck in a sentient black hole, you have to become an action hero or a sneak to survive aboard your colony ship. Jumping through time while evil robots and mutants roam the halls, RetroSpace is a playground, giving you the freedom to play how you want. It sounds a little generic, but what cemented this game as a great immersive experience to me was taking the water from the bathroom faucets to reload my water bottle so I could spray puddles on the ground to electrocute some mutants chasing me. With mutations you can use to help you along your journey, such as my favorite, which creates a clone of myself, RetroSpace is simple, immersive fun!

I’m still playing through the demo, as it’s one of the longer demos I played during the Next Fest, but it’s the story of this disco-punk dystopian world, the sentient black hole, and the AI helping you that drew me in further. This is a game more people should check out. Even if it doesn’t grip them as much as it did me, I think it offers a really solid imsim and a really solid story that I am excited to see in full when the game releases.

RetroSpace Trailer

About Fishing

This is already my most anticipated game of 2026, as this narrative supernatural mystery game is also a fishing game. It is a gorgeous game; the artists behind About Fishing put their all into creating a world that is serene and haunting, which allows you to take in the small details, including the ones you have to look at to learn more about the mystery of the dead girls who got your player character’s dad arrested.

With fishing physics where you can control a fish to dive deeper into the waters, wrap your line around objects to pull them, and other general fishing gameplay such as catching and cutting fish, About Fishing is simply unique. It’s hard to fully explain in words, since just the way you use your mouse is kind of like a Wii remote to cast your line and control fish is already unique enough without the developer, The Water Museum, adding a unique way of creating narrative and dialogue between characters.

About Fishing is something everyone should try. When this game releases, it will be amazing to fully realize the story and the gameplay. This demo already has so much, and it will make you excited to see the full game when it releases later this year.

About Fishing Trailer

A Few More Games To Look At

While these were my 5 best demos I played for the Next Fest, there were plenty of other games that I also really enjoyed.

The Merchant’s Eden was a great little tower defense/city management game that I could easily dump tens of hours into if it wasn’t just a demo. Its addictiveness was nearly on par with Cookie Clicker.

Dungeon Settlers was a really interesting mashup of a dungeon crawler, colony sim, and strategy game that’s also hard as hell to get good at.

Washington Prime was an excellent and beautiful retro boomer shooter that I wish I could get more of, especially since the level design hits that perfect middle ground of a fun-house layout and difficult enemy placement.

Iron Nest was one of the most played demos, and for good reason, as its ability to immerse you into being an artillery gunner trapped in a bunker to calculate your shots correctly was intense and incredibly fun.

Deep Dish Dungeon feels like a dream to play since it feels like exactly what I would want from a dungeon-crawling co-op game.

There were many more just like these games, and I hope you’re able to explore them all. If I could, I would’ve made this list just by going over all the demos since it seems there is a legendary lineup of fun, amazing games coming out.

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