Steam Next Fest, winter 2026. It came at the right time: in between projects, in between games from my backlog, in between sports to watch ever since the Olympics wrapped up.
This go around I mostly focused on games already on my wishlist or at least on my radar, though I did go trawling through the Steam listings to add a few more that caught my eye. Further comments under the cut.
Poly Bricks, a freeform Lego-esque model builder from the developer of Poly Bridge. I like the concept, but at times it felt a little finicky to control and get all the pieces placed just right, and it might get a little tedious to build a large model with hundreds of pieces. Maybe it's just not for me. I'll stick with physical Lego sets for now.
Factory 95, an automation puzzle game about "building" Powerpoint slides. Fun concept, nails the aesthetic, and has some interesting restrictions to work around as the puzzles get more and more complex. Having played similar programming games, my only concerns so far are that the UI has room for improvement (a few more keyboard shortcuts would work wonders) and the later puzzles might get more repetitive rather than more engaging. I'm willing to see how it plays out, though.
More puzzle games I liked: Colorbound is a charming little puzzle-platformer that gets decent mileage out of its core gimmick. Trifoil and Bento Blocks both satisfy that "seek patterns on a grid" part of my brain quite nicely (drawing lines and arranging blocks, respectively). Cloudscrapers too, but from a different angle: a simple strategy game about building a tall tower with ever-cycling patterns and objectives to let you build higher; of the games I sampled this time around, this was one of the highlights.
My favorite of the lot, though, was ShantyTown. It's a builder game à la Cloud Gardens or ISLANDERS, but with an emphasis on stacking buildings together and creating improvised, colorful, densely packed urban spaces. It's a very striking aesthetic that I've always had a fondness for, and this hits a good balance between building spaces that are functional and visually appealing. Definitely looking forward to the full game.
I'm also looking forward to The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish, an eclectic photography game. "What if sea creatures but flying" is another aesthetic I always admire (see also, Sky: Children of the Light), and this game blends it into a rather unique setting: casual witchcraft, old computers and online chatrooms, and giant talking catfish, to name a few. Toss in a low-res visual style, a chill gameplay loop, and a surprisingly bittersweet narrative, and you've got a recipe for something memorable.
I could say the same for Burden Street Station, with maybe a few caveats. As far as abstract point-and-click narratives go, the art is good and setting and characters are compelling. Gameplay-wise I'm still on the fence; I like the core mechanic in concept (accumulating different personas with different dialogue options), but in practice it feels underutilized and doesn't give you much room to experiment. It's got a lot of potential, though, and I hope the full game can live up to it.
Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery seems alright, but the demo was very short and had a pretty basic puzzle, so I don't think I got enough of it to pass judgement. My one complaint was, once again, the interface: controller only or keyboard only, in a game that feels like it was made for a mouse pointer.
One of the few games that left me with more complaints than compliments was Akatori. It has the bones of a competent 2D 'vania and a good mix of pixel art visuals, but the gameplay just didn't land. The movement and combat both felt kinda floaty and inconsistent. A couple of interesting ideas, but it doesn't come together.
I've never actually played any of the Tony Hawk games or Jet Set Radio or their contemporaries, and that puts me at a disadvantage with Denshattack!, which blends that sort of skating and trick-jumping with more on-rails challenges and flashy arcade spectacle. If you have the dexterity for it, the controls are smooth, the level design seems solid, and the premise and presentation of doing sick flips with a literal subway train was enough to sell me on the idea from the day it was announced. Maybe this one's not for me either, but if you are into this sort of game, you'll have an absolute blast.
