Steam Next Fest scheduled for 1st to 7th October

Valve's Steam has scheduled its latest multi-day celebration of upcoming games. The event, appropriately dubbed Steam Next Fest (previously known as 'The Steam Game Festival'), kicks off a week on Friday (1st October) and runs for a whole week.

As we hurtle towards the holiday season it is a good time for developers to hawk their wares and for PC games this is a useful platform to get noticed, especially if they aren't an AAA publisher with big bucks for marketing. Developers registered last month to get in line for attention via the Steam Next Fest week and must have games visible on Steam under the 'Coming Soon' category.

So, what should you expect from Steam during the week? For quiet types who just want to browse and test out new games, there will be hundreds of game demos and previews made available for over the event period. If you fancy a bit more interactivity in your 'coming soon' games shopping, you can watch livestreams, or even use the platform to chat with developers about their games.

As well as being good for gamers, the event helps smaller devs get noticed, and hopefully, naturally quality will rise to the top. Additionally, conscientious developers get useful feedback from those testing out pre-release games and can perhaps tweak games to improve them, and start to build a fan-base for the game and other future projects.

The games you test out during Next Fest are expected to be released not too far intro the future, or that would build dissatisfaction. Featured games are all scheduled for a release between 7th Oct 2021 and 1st May 2022 – however, it isn't impossible that deadlines will slip.

Some games I've noticed that will be featured and are probably worth a peak include; The Last Campfire (Hello Games), Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy (Ludomotion), Starship Troopers: Terran Command (The Artistocrats), and Airhead (Octato Games).