Steam Game Festival (June 16-22)

The Steam Game Festival launches today – and runs until June 22. It celebrates upcoming games – that is, there will be demos and game developers will have Q&As about their games. But most of all, there will be demos! I didn’t even notice the announcement until the developers of Starmancer pinged everybody in their Discord channel to tell all of us about their demo. This one is surely a demo I am going to try. Starmancer is a building/simulation game where you’re going to build your own starbase. Since it’s a rather open kind of game, they will allow you to play the game for 60 minutes. After that, you can start a new game and play that one for 60 minutes again. This is only bad if you’re like me – I start a game, then go afk do something else, read blog posts, watch a Twitch stream etc. and then, after 20 minutes, remember that I actually started a game.

Another recommendation I can give you right away is Chinatown Detective Agency. I already did play the demo when the game was on Kickstarter and wrote about it here. It’s going to be a point & click detective game where you’ll be playing as a private investigator. The game is set in a futuristic Singapore. I backed the game during its Kickstarter campaign and I can’t wait for it to release. But well, the Steam page says “Early 2021”. That’s still a while.

A third one that I’m curious about is Hammerting. It’s a game with dwarves. Nothing else needs to be said. But just in case you want to know more: It’s another building game. I’ve seen comparisons with Craft the World and I guess there’s definitely a resemblance. The demo may show us if the game can live up to that comparison – or if it’s not like Craft the World, show us its own strengths.

These are just two demos I want to play – and a third one I already know. I am pretty certain the amount of games on my wishlist will increase even more in the next couple of days.

Please note: Right now, not all demos are available yet and I have seen players report that the Steam pages timed out for them. I assume too many people want to get their hands on the demos at the same time and Steam is trying to stagger their release.