The Steam Game Festival has begun, and its got loads of content to keep gamers busy, including hundreds of free demos to try out. The festival runs until Tuesday, October 13th and that leaves not nearly enough time to get through all the special activities that Steam has planned for its users.
This Autumn Edition of the Steam Game Festival is showcasing games that will be arriving soon from developers all over the world. Games from every genre can be found, and many indie titles are getting a chance in the spotlight to show their stuff. All the demos available to play are due to be released somewhere in the next six months. The first Steam Game Festival coincided with Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards in December 2019, bringing online gaming trade shows to gamers before the pandemic was even here and these types of events became a necessity. Since then there have been two other Steam Game Festivals, a spring edition in March when the Game Developers Conference should have taken place, and a summer edition in June when E3 was supposed to happen.
Steam’s front store page is splattered with activities. The Steam Game Festival advertises hundreds of free demos that gamers can play until Tuesday. These are all a taste of upcoming games, most of them indie, and many can be found featured on the front page. There are definitely some interesting ones, like Superliminal, which is a first-person puzzle game reminiscent of The Stanley Parable, and Just Die Already, a mayhem sandbox game created by the designers of Goat Simulator. One of the top trending demos is Party Animals, a physics-based brawler, and the term “brawler” is used loosely, where friends can play as some cute critters online and offline. By clicking on “Demos” under the “Browse” tab, the full list of demos available can be seen.
The festival is packed with things to keep gamers busy besides the free demos. There are over forty live streams of games being played to choose from at any given time, and interviews where players can chat with the developers, and where developers can provide commentary on their new games, are scheduled throughout the days of the festival.
This fourth Steam Game Festival is not taking the place of any alternative gaming shows, but it is clear that online game showcases are the way to go now, at least until Covid-19 doesn’t pose a threat anymore. However, even beyond that, this festival is likely to keep going as it is more popular than any live shows usually are. With access to over a thousand demos, the festival is sure to keep gamers busy and coming back for more, because there is something there for everybody.
