15 gratis Steam Next Fest-demos du bör ladda ner före 2 mars 2026

Steam Next Fest February 2026 is live now and runs until March 2, offering thousands of free demos across PC gaming's biggest independent and upcoming releases. Among the hundreds available, 15 stand out for their range — from a noir Lovecraftian detective game to a cozy van-life simulator, a 1990s Japanese convenience store sim, and the long-awaited next project from the studio behind Disco Elysium.

All 15 demos are free to download through the Steam Next Fest page before the event closes on March 2.

Way of the Hunter 2

Developed by Nine Rocks Games, Way of the Hunter 2 is a hunting and exploration simulator set in the Canadian wilderness. Players study realistic landscapes and track animal behavior as they hunt, without the lore-heavy story or human combat that defines most action titles. Fans of Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly those who spent time in its hunting mechanics, will find the experience familiar. The open environments and realistic animal systems share enough DNA with Rockstar's title to make the comparison useful, even if the genres differ. No release date has been confirmed, but the demo is available now through the Steam Next Fest page and disappears on March 2.

Obsidian Moon

Obsidian Moon is a noir horror detective game drawing from Lovecraftian fiction and ancient Minoan mythology. Set in the smoke-filled streets of a 1930s city, players analyze evidence, connect clues, and work through genre-bending deduction mechanics to uncover a sinister plot. The game positions itself as an atypical detective experience by giving players agency over how the case is solved, with the investigation leading to a final, consequential choice. The combination of mythological source material and classic noir setting makes it one of the more distinct genre blends in the current Next Fest lineup.

Fishbowl

Fishbowl describes itself as a narrative game about dreams, grief, and hope, built around a month-long slice-of-life story. Players follow Alo, a twenty-one-year-old who has just taken her first job and moved to the city following her grandmother's death. She is now living alone, and every decision players make shapes how she navigates the weeks ahead. The art style draws comparison to Stardew Valley, but the narrative ambition reaches further, moving between grounded daily life and surreal sequences. The game measures time carefully — players spend every waking moment with Alo across a single month, and the structure gives individual decisions more weight than most games in the genre allow.

inKONBINI

inKONBINI puts players behind the counter of a small-town convenience store in 1990s Japan. The mechanics cover resource management, shelf stocking, and store upgrades, but the game builds its identity around the customers rather than the systems. Branching conversations and the advice players offer shape the lives of the people who walk through the door, making human connection the core loop rather than a side feature. It positions itself as a supermarket simulation unlike others by centering its design on the relationships that form over time in a neighborhood store. The 1990s Japan setting, rendered in a specific period rather than a generalized past, adds texture to the premise.

Beastro

Beastro sets a cooking simulation inside a fantasy adventure, staging both in the village of Palo Pori. Players take the role of Panko, who must run a local eatery while investigating the disappearance of his teacher. Darkness threatening the lands beyond the village creates pressure that exists alongside the restaurant's daily demands, and the game splits its attention between managing ingredients and patrons and following the larger narrative thread. The combination of simulation mechanics with an overarching mystery gives the genre a different shape than most cooking games attempt.

Hozy

Hozy tasks players with restoring a forgotten neighborhood by working through individual rooms in abandoned homes. The mechanics involve cleaning, painting, and organizing, with players applying their own decorating decisions to each space. The game draws clear comparison to House Flipper in its restoration loop and to Unpacking in its meditative, object-focused puzzle structure. The scope extends beyond a single property — the goal is to bring back an entire neighborhood rather than flip individual units — which gives the project a cumulative quality that single-property games lack.

Dread Fields

Dread Fields opens on a farm where a player character has relocated to leave city life behind. The daily routine covers milking cows, chopping wood, fishing, feeding animals, and mowing grass. That routine breaks down as the former owner's secrets surface from beneath the ground, pulling the game into slow-burn rural horror. The setting draws specifically from Eastern European farm life, leaning into the isolation and physical monotony of that environment as atmospheric material. The story branches into multiple endings depending on the choices players make, which gives the horror a personal rather than predetermined shape.

Divinum

Divinum is a hack-and-slash action-adventure built around a character named Fjor, whose island is under threat from invaders she cannot yet defeat alone. Players harness her ancestral abilities across multiple runs, each one building strength and unlocking more of the island's history. The combat system rewards mastering combos and constructing unique builds rather than brute repetition, and the exploration component feeds information about the island's past into the progression loop. The roguelite structure — getting stronger each run — is familiar, but the narrative framing around uncovering ancestral history gives the repetition a purpose beyond stat accumulation.

The Witch's Bakery

The Witch's Bakery is a 2D adventure RPG set in Paris, built around the daily life of a witch who also runs a bakery. Players manage the bakery's production and then move through the city, visiting landmarks and distributing food to people they encounter. The game's day-to-night cycle requires balancing magical abilities alongside the bakery's operational demands, making time management a central mechanic. Comparisons to Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service are part of the game's own framing, and the Paris setting — used practically as a neighborhood to explore rather than as backdrop — supports the slice-of-life rhythm the game builds around.

Whisk

Whisk is a two-player puzzle platformer developed by former Valorant developers. Players take the roles of Luna and Foam, working together to get Dreamcat home by launching rescued Dreamcats into interdimensional portals. The mechanics require communication to coordinate jumps, climbs, and throws in real time, with timing and coordination driving both progress and failure. The visual style uses a watercolour aesthetic throughout its worlds. The co-op design is built around the friction of coordination — the game acknowledges that it may generate arguments between players while betting that the cooperative payoff justifies the difficulty.

Farm to Table

Farm to Table simulates the full chain of running a five-star Michelin restaurant, from growing crops and raising livestock to catching fish and producing goods on-site. The restaurant sits on a hill above a Mediterranean-looking island, and the game asks players to manage every stage of production rather than just the dining room. The scope — spanning agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, and food production — is broader than most restaurant simulators, which typically begin at the kitchen rather than the farm. The visual presentation of the island and its surroundings is a deliberate part of the pitch alongside the simulation mechanics.

Swan Song

Swan Song is a puzzle game set inside a music box, where players solve puzzles to guide a small swan to safety. Completing each puzzle allows the player to turn a key and hear a musical composition tied to the solution, connecting the puzzle mechanics directly to the soundtrack. The game frames itself as a tool for slowing down and unwinding, with challenging puzzles delivered through visuals and sound designed to reduce rather than increase stress. The music box premise gives the game a contained, physical logic that separates it from abstract puzzle titles.

Coffee Talk Tokyo

Coffee Talk Tokyo is the latest entry in Chorus Worldwide Games' visual novel series, relocating to Japan and placing players behind the counter of a late-night café. As in previous installments, players make drinks for customers and hear their stories over the course of the game. The narrative involves both human and yōkai characters in a city the game describes as built from paper and steel, where old and new coexist. The series has built its identity around attentive, character-driven storytelling, and Tokyo extends that structure into a new setting rather than altering the core format.

Outbound

Outbound is a cozy base-building game where the base is a camper van driven through a colorful open world. Players build and decorate the vehicle, maintain its systems, and sustain themselves using solar power, wind, and water as they travel. Crops can be grown on board, and the van can be upgraded as the journey progresses. The game supports solo play and co-op, giving the van-dwelling premise a social option alongside the single-player version. I think Outbound stands out among this year's Next Fest lineup precisely because it grounds its fantasy — living on the road — in mechanical systems that require players to actually maintain that life rather than just enjoy the scenery.

Zero Parades

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies comes from ZA/UM, the studio that developed Disco Elysium. The game is an espionage RPG in which players control a brilliant but tormented operative undertaking a final mission. The task involves reassembling a broken spy network, recruiting agents, and unraveling a structure of lies and secrets. ZA/UM has positioned it directly alongside Disco Elysium as a game with comparable psychological depth and world-building. I find it hard to look at the Next Fest lineup and not notice how much the Zero Parades demo carries for players who have been waiting for anything from that studio since Disco Elysium — its presence here changes the weight of the entire event. The demo is available now through Steam Next Fest, which runs until March 2.

Read also, the Epic Games Store is continuing its weekly free games program this week with Return to Ash, a visual novel, and a starter pack for Stalcraft, a free-to-play MMOFPS. Two additional titles are scheduled to become available next week as the store's ongoing giveaway program, running since 2018, adds more entries to its list.