Steam Next Fest has wrapped up–for now–and out of the thousands of game demos that were available to try, Bungie’s Marathon rose to the top of the list. According to Steam, it gathered the data and listed the games below by the number of unique players during Next Fest. While that metric does technically work, it does raise an eyebrow around the definition of a demo during Next Fest.
Bungie had labeled this preview of Marathon as a “Server Slam” test that was open to everyone for several days and was primarily designed to stress-test the game’s online functionality while providing feedback to the studio. Does that count as a demo, let alone a Next Fest demo? That’s debatable, given the origins of Next Fest, which sprang to life in 2019 as part of a week-long Steam Game Festival that was held in conjunction with The Game Awards.
The event originally promised a selection of time-limited game demos for upcoming games, with it eventually transforming into Steam Next Fest a few years later. The first Next Fest of the year has been criticized for being flooded with far too many demos, with users on the Steam Forums calling out developers for diluting the event with AI slop that drowns out legitimate efforts from other studios and publishers. To make things even more complicated, many of the Next Fest demos went live several days before the event kicked off–in an effort to gain some visibility–while other studios submitted older demos for Next Fest that had been active for several months already.
If you could cut through the noise, there were still some gems present. Denshattack and Vampire Crawlers continue to look like sleeper hits, while other games like Zero Parades, Voidling Bound, and 1348 Ex Voto also received a fair number of downloads. You can see the full list below.
Looking ahead, Steam has several more themed sales lined up for March and April. Tower Defense fest kicks off on March 9, the Steam Spring Sale will start on March 19, and the Steam House & Home Fest will cater to anyone looking to engage in some interior decorating.
Steam Next Fest Top 50 Most-Played Demos
- Marathon
- Burglin’ Gnomes
- Windrose
- Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors
- Far Far West
- Outbound
- Wanderburg
- John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando
- Fate Trigger
- Hozy
- Everything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite
- Sledding Game
- Arkheron
- Romestead
- We Gotta Go
- Guardians of the Wild Sky
- Don’t Panic! It is Just Turbulence
- Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike
- Replaced
- Darkhaven
- Shift At Midnight
- SpaceCraft
- Tap Tap Loot
- Gambonanza
- Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection
- Vacation Cafe Simulator
- How Many Dudes?
- Frog Sqwad
- Witchspire
- Pragmata
- Data Center
- Zero Parades: For Dead Spies
- Pass the Fear
- Armatus
- Another Hero’s Adventure
- Last Flag
- 妹居物语
- SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed
- BidKing
- Voidling Bound
- Dig, Dig, Die
- The Eternal Life of Goldman
- Denshattack!
- Ashes of the Singularity II
- Atmosfar
- 1348 Ex Voto
- Way of the Hunter 2
- Crystalfall
- Chained Wheels
- Lootbound
