Do you ever load up the latest Steam Next Fest and find yourself paralyzed by the literal thousands of demos for upcoming games, so much so that you spend more time browsing everything available rather than actually playing any of them? Don’t worry, me too! To help you overcome analysis paralysis for this October’s version of the event (which runs from October 13 to October 20), we’ve played through some of the best demos available to come up with five you should check out; these games are doing some interesting things, trust me. Let’s get into it.
While you’d be forgiven for immediately lumping Eclipse Breaker in as another “Hades-like”, given its run-based structure, similar upgrade system, and other surface-level similarities, in reality, it borrows just as much from real-time/turn-based games like Parasite Eve. Basically, while you move your character in real-time, dodging and parrying whenever you like, you have to wait for a bar to fill to perform offensive actions. When you attack, cast magic, or use a special skill, this gets added to the action queue—if an enemy is currently attacking, you’ll have to wait until their move is complete before yours plays out.
While this may sound stilted, in practice, it gives battles an entrancing, back-and-forth cadence, adding a much-needed degree of predictability to encounters that would otherwise be completely overwhelming. What really ties it all together, though, is the combination of defensive mechanics and active time elements. A perfectly timed block gives you a parry, which will trigger cool effects based on your upgrades that run. Certain enemies can be blocked but not dodged, while others are better off dodged than blocked. Most of your attacks can be enhanced with a carefully timed button press, accompanied by a satisfying sound and visual cue. It all combines to create a carefully coordinated chaos.
And that’s not even to mention the similarly compelling meta framing of the narrative: you play as an RPG protagonist from a save file that was abandoned 25 years ago. While time stopped for our heroine, it didn’t for the world around her: the bad guy won, her party members are dead, and now she has to contend with the many patch updates made since the player last picked up the game. It’s a cool setup that gets at nostalgia (which feels particularly resonant because of its PSX look) and the passage of time, while also letting this story operate in its own lane.
Goodnight Universe
In Goodnight Universe, you play as a hyper-intelligent, alarmingly self-aware baby. And not just any hyper-intelligent baby, but one with psychic powers. His name is Isaac. It’s a ridiculous premise, but one that the game mines for surprisingly affecting emotional beats, as this freaky little psychic baby is keyed in on the mundane schisms that affect his family; we hear about dad’s complicated feelings regarding the expenses of bringing up a family and see some mother-daughter tensions play out following the passing of a grandfather.
As the next game from the creators of the award-winning Before Your Eyes, this narrative-focused experience has quite a bit in common with its predecessor: namely, the writing seems pretty dang good, and it also uses a camera for gameplay. As for the former point, the story is largely presented via Isaac’s narration, which accomplishes the difficult task of making us sit with the consequences of being a psychic baby without making us think about the hit film Boss Baby too often. Controlling Isaac’s powers is done via a combination of mouse clicks and eyeball movements—i.e., close your eyes to focus on reading someone’s thoughts—giving this story-focused experience just enough interaction to keep us involved. This demo did its job; I would like to know what happens to the psychic baby next.
Forestrike
Hey, have you ever heard of roguelikes? Despite the ubiquity of this style of game (this isn’t the first one on the list, and we’re only three entries in), Forestrike manages to stand out; it’s a martial arts choreography simulator where you obsess over the perfect series of moves to appropriately stunt on a procession of goons. Basically, the main distinguishing characteristic here is that you play as a character who can mentally simulate a battle in his mind before it happens. Here, you can fight these dudes as many times as possible without stakes before playing out the real thing. That’s something you’ll want to do because battles unfold like real-time puzzles where enemies with unique properties come at you in a set order. Some will immediately charge, while others will chuck glassware at your head. Your goal is to chart a way through these battles while taking as little damage as possible, which you’ll do through utilizing moves like a defensive stance that automatically avoids one instance of damage at the cost of a resource, and so on.
Here’s an example: in front of you is an enemy who will always charge once the battle starts, and behind you is a guy who will always block and counterattack the first attack that comes their way. In response, you spend your dodge resource to go into a defensive stance, causing the charging enemy to miss and hit the blocking guy behind, expending his one instance of blocking as he counterattacks the charger. You punch the charging foe as he gets up, and then kick the blocking guy, who now can’t block because he’s expended that resource. Every battle plays out like this with an expanding lineup of enemies that you have to overcome with an increasing list of upgrades earned between each fight, adding extra nuances. While the game’s setup seems to have a weirdly pro-monarchy bent, hopefully the story will subvert that starting point and prove as smart as the rest of the experience.
Skate Story
All glittering glass and phosphorescent reds, Skate Story is unlike any skating game you’ve ever seen, a dreamy trip through the underworld punctuated by a whole lot of pop shuvits. You play as a demon who forges a pact with the Devil to earn their freedom. The condition? They have to shred their way through several layers of hell and swallow the moon. Coming in as if filmed on a VHS from some unknown alternate dimension, this is a woozy, weird, eye-popping experience that gives shredding an air of sacred importance: “The Skateboard vibrated at a divine frequency,” the text reads as you grab your wheels for the first time. To say that the game has a vibe is an understatement, and at least through the first chapter, you journey through shifting portals, deadly downhill slopes, and a philosopher’s skate park fully crystallizes into something striking and unique. And the soundtrack! Blood Cultures’ reverberating tracks are hazy, mysterious, and odd in a way that perfectly encapsulates the game’s overall tone.
I should probably also mention that this is a skating game, too. Beyond the unique visual delivery, the structure of the experience is also interesting so far, with linear downhill skates where you vanquish disapproving eyes (by jumping over flames), segueing into more open-skate park type areas where you’re free to experiment. There’s also a boss fight, and it’s pretty sick: there’s a combo system, lots of tricks you can perform, and a cool timing-based mechanic that feels fresh. We’ve been waiting for this one for a while, but what I played lived up to the hype.
Cairn
For whatever reason, it seems like there’s been an uptick in climbing games as of late: Jusant, White Knuckle, and Peak, just to name a few. If I had to say what makes Cairn different from the rest, it’s how granular it is. You control each limb in sequence, ideally moving like an actual climber by choosing smart handholds. If you’re not careful and end up in a bad stance, individual limbs will tire, causing you to eventually lose your grip and plummet, taking a chunk out of both your health and patience. Thankfully, you can place pitons to give you a hand (although you have a limited amount) and consume food or water to up your stamina (also limited), but you really need to plan out your path in advance, observing cracks and handholds in a given cliff face to choose a sensible route.
Basically, this isn’t Assassin’s Creed-style climbing, where you automatically amble up conveniently spaced handholds, but something marginally closer to a simulation of actual climbing—or at least it seems like it from a distance, I’m not that unhinged guy from Free Solo. Speaking of Free Solo, another interesting element is the subtle indications of what kind of person our protagonist is: she’s driven and obsessed with her goal of being the first to scale this mountain to the point of infringing on her personal relationships. While it seems it will require quite a bit of patience to climb to Cairn’s peak (falling feels bad in that progress-resetting Getting Over It kind of way), its boons might make this trek worth it.
Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.
