Need something new to play, but short on cash? Well, The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition is here (following a brief delay) to keep you entertained and help fill in for cancelled summer events like PAX and EGX. Produced in partnership with The Game Awards head honcho Geoff Keighley, The Steam Game Festival offers free demos from a variety of indie and mid-sized publishers. This latest Summer Edition looks like one of the best yet, with demos for a variety of promising titles including Destroy All Humans!, Ghostrunner, Everspace 2, The Survivalists, Spiritfarer, and more!
I’ve selected a few demos I think you ought to try out (click on titles to visit their Steam pages), but do check out the full list of demos available here. Note: Demos for a couple of the games below may not have gone live yet as Steam is having some technical issues, but they will be up soon.
30XX - Jump, shoot, and slash your way through 30XX, the roguelike action platformer you can play with a friend! Explore lush, ever-changing worlds that mix precise platforming with fevered combat. Destroy fearsome Guardians. Master unique Powers. Rediscover the thousand years we've lost.Backbone - Backbone is a noir roleplaying detective adventure. You are raccoon private eye Howard Lotor, a second-class citizen of dystopian Vancouver, BC inhabited by animals. Interrogate a diverse cast of characters, collect evidence, and choose which leads to follow.Builders of Egypt - Builders of Egypt is a city-building economic strategy taking place in the Nile Valley. Immerse yourself in a world full of pyramids, where you will become a part of the ancient world. Create history, be history!Cris Tales - Play the debut demo now! Cris Tales is a gorgeous, indie love letter to classic JRPGs with a new perspective. Peer into the past, act in the present, and watch as your choices dynamically change the future -- all on one screen as you play!Destroy All Humans! - The cult-classic returns! Terrorize the people of 1950s Earth in the role of the evil alien Crypto-137. Harvest DNA and bring down the US government in the remake of the legendary alien invasion action adventure. Annihilate puny humans using an assortment of alien weaponry and psychic abilities. Reduce their cities to rubble with your flying Saucer! One giant step on mankind!Everspace 2 – Everspace 2 is a fast-paced single-player space shooter with deep exploration, tons of loot and classic RPG elements. Experience a thrilling story set in a vivid, handcrafted open-world full of secrets and perils on your journey to become human after all.Ghostrunner - Ascend humanity’s last remaining shelter, a great tower-city. The tower is torn by violence, poverty and chaos. Conquer your enemies, discover the secrets of the superstructure and your own origin and obtain the power to challenge The Keymaster.Grounded - The world is a vast, beautiful and dangerous place – especially when you have been shrunk to the size of an ant. Can you thrive alongside the hordes of giant insects, fighting to survive the perils of the backyard?Iron Harvest - A classic real-time strategy game with an epic single player campaign, multiplayer & coop, set in the alternate reality of 1920+.Spiritfarer - Spiritfarer is a cozy management game about dying. As ferrymaster to the deceased, build a boat to explore the world, care for your spirit friends, and guide them across mystical seas to finally release them into the afterlife. What will you leave behind?The Riftbreaker - The Riftbreaker is a base-building, survival game with Action-RPG elements. You are an elite scientist/commando inside an advanced Mecha-Suit capable of dimensional rift travel. Hack & slash countless enemies. Build up your base, collect samples and research new inventions to survive.The Survivalists - A living world full of surprises, secrets and danger awaits in The Survivalists, a survival sandbox set in The Escapists universe. Explore, build, craft and even train monkeys with up to three friends in a desperate bid to survive. Have you got what it takes to be a Survivalist?The Wild at Heart - A mysterious hidden realm. Two precocious kids fleeing hardship. Magical creatures and an oddball order of guardians who have lost their way. A stygian evil imprisoned. Welcome to the Deep Woods.The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition is also hosting various livestreams and Q&As, so check those out if you have a chance.
The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition runs from June 16 to June 22. Which demos are you planning to try out?