Steam Next Fest October 2023: Our picks of new games and demos

Steam Next Fest is back again this October, and with it comes a ton of new reveals and demos for thinky fans to get excited about. There are a lot of games to see during the festival, and it can be tricky to navigate through and find the gems.

To help you find your way, we’ve put together a list of some of our personal highlights from the October 2023 Steam Next Fest that we think you might find interesting. The festival runs until 16th October, so you have plenty of time to check out and download any demos that catch your eye.

The Talos Principle 2 is a thought-provoking first-person puzzle experience that greatly expands on the first game’s philosophical themes and stunning environments with increasingly mind-bending challenges.

Paper Trail is a top-down puzzle adventure about leaving home, set in a foldable, paper world.

Think strategically to place tents in the peaceful universe of Tents and Trees, a chill puzzle game set in the great outdoors!

Travel with Revi through the lands devastated by corruption, putting colorful magic generators in place to bring color and life back to the nature.

Mojito the Cat its a 3D Puzzle labyrinth game that will push your space vision to the limit, use the logic to find the shortest path to the exit. Rotate the pieces to reach all coins, get the fish scrape and go to the gate to jump to the next level

Halve the blocks into two equal parts and solve the unique puzzles in a game with a blueprint visual style and meditative music

A sokoban-adjacent puzzle game. Manipulate the 3d-grid based environment to guide the friendly chickens by providing access to food and occasionally setting them on fire. Master the mechanics of the world, starting with simple problems and eventually reaching complicated chicken-powered machines.

Crossroad OS is a single-player adventure where you solve puzzles, meet strange creatures and explore a sacred operating system created as a junction between the human and spirit world.

Hackshot is a deep, twisted puzzle take on artillery games, mixing adventure, puzzle and sandbox. Hackers get hacked and downloading RAM is a thing …

Oberty is minimal puzzle game where you XOR-blend geometric shapes to make a beautiful complex target shape.

Ligo is an exploration Sokoban game, where you solve handcrafted puzzles and mysteries about the world by merging, cutting, pushing small creature together and crushing squids with block.

Animal Planner is a relaxing sliding puzzle game. The game is simple: satisfy the needs of animals by moving them to proper places.

Pop, flip and roll your way through Plungeroo, a relaxing pinball-themed puzzle game! Tinker with colorful pinball cabinets and solve satisfyingly tricky puzzles.

Warbits+ is a charming turn-based strategy game where victory is achieved through tactics and determination.

This game is a response to the current trend of Immersive Sim design, where every ability is perfectly suited to solve a specific problem in the game. In order to counter this “Lock and Key” philosophy, Mosa Lina is aggressively random.

SokoChess Black is a unique chess puzzle game in which you must use your wits to navigate each level, moving, pushing and capturing white pieces until there are none left.

Sandy’s Great Escape is a charming, pixel art puzzle game with nostalgic box pushing mechanics and a forgiving rewind mechanic.