I don’t think I am going to do a big survey of all the games that were in Steam Next Fest this year. I didn’t see anything too different. People showing their numbers in the HTMAG discord conform to what we saw last year. But I always like to look at the games that made it to the top of the charts.

I know I know say it with me … “survivorship bias!” But there are actually times to look at the winners. Consider Success Case Method (SCM) which is useful in figuring out what works. And I want to know… what works when trying to get to the front page of Steam.

So in today’s blog I am going to take a quick look at some of the Successful Cases from Steam Next Fest so that it might help you when it is your turn.

ALSO Don’t forget I am running a sale on my Master classes as long as Steam Next Fest is running (which ends today) so you better grab it now.

Course Sale (last day)

TLDR what works: 

All the top earning games had some sort of catalyst to get them to the front page. Either the demo launched months ago and grew quickly and was pinned to the front page of Steam (Cairn). Or the game was in a hot genre and “went viral” on Social Media (YAPYAP, Desktop Defender). 

The vast majority of these SNF winners are not their first game and come from established studios who have released multiple games. 

Most of the games are also in hot genres like friend slop or idle. 

BTW I don’t mean friend slop pejoratively. Many developers of that genre call it that. It basically means a fun, quickly developed, co-op multiplayer game with funny mechanics that are easy to grasp and the fun derives from hanging out with friends. 

Cairn 

Steam Next Performance 

  • On day #1 of the festival, the #5 demo on the “Popular Upcoming” chart. 
  • By day #2, appearance in the “Trending Upcoming” chart, and the “Top Demos” chart. 

Details

  • Link: Cairn Steam Page
  • Short Description: Reach a summit never climbed before in this survival-climber from the creators of Furi and Haven. Climb anywhere and plan your route carefully, managing pitons and resources to survive unforgiving Mount Kami. Discover what Aava is willing to sacrifice to achieve the ascent of a lifetime.
  • First demo launch date: December 5, 2024 
  • Age of Steam Coming Soon Page: 1 year 4 months
  • Was this the team’s first game on steam? No! They have released MANY hit games like Haven
  • Was this the last Next Fest before their release? Yes
  • Following before Steam Next Fest: 32,000 followers 

Tactics that worked

  • The Cairn team (The Game Bakers) launched their demos a whole year before their Steam Next Fest appearance. 
  • Their demo launch when really really well. It was part of a PC Gaming showcase, got into 18 festivals and counting, and pinned themselves to new and trending free for 2 months! Read more detailed analysis over at Game Discover Co
  • How did they get 2 months of N&T Free featuring? Launching in December means there were few games releasing demos during the holidays and the Steam winter sale scared off indies who were too. Also during the Winter sale there were 16 slots for demos. 
  • They did a big press release that Cairn was delayed until 2026 and that got them a lot of press.
  • Reached out to about 400 content creators of all sizes. They specifically targeted content creators who in the past played other Steam Next Fest demos. SMART! Some content creators specialize in covering SNF, so you should reach out to them if you are participating in the event. 
  • The team reached out to the content creators 1 week before next fest: As the marketing manager said “Not too late as to be in the bulk of emails, and not too early to be forgotten. We also do our best to keep ongoing relationships with creators, our latest updated features three content creators who love the demo.”
  • The demo also had a major update with new content that the community was excited to play
  • HUGE follower count of 32,000 by the start of Steam Next Fest.
  • They are running some paid ads but on a small budget. 
  • Overall the SNF marketing strategy took them about a month of outreach and planning.  

Note: there was some confusion and some people thought Cairn got into 2 Steam Next Fests. That is incorrect! It could be that spending 2 months in New & Trending free made people so familiar with the game that they assumed it must have been in a festival. But this is their first and only SNF appearance.

Chris Z Thoughts: Cairn is proof that you cannot “over expose” your at indie scale game. The demo has been out for more than a year and generated over 200K downloads well before next fest. It has been in many many festivals, and was pinned on the front page of steam for 1.5 months!

And yet, it still was one of the most played demos of next fest. 

When a game has THE MAGIC, everyone wants to play it, everyone wants to feature it in their festivals. And yet, there are still people who haven’t heard of it or played it. 

They were also able to reconnect with content creators who played the demo when it first launched. 

You cannot over-expose your game. People do not “get tired” of your game. Do not hold back. Market market market.

YAPYAP 

Steam Next Performance 

  • Day #1: the 3rd “top demos”, and the 4th “Trending upcoming” games. 
  • Final Days: By the end of Next Fest they are #2 on the most played demo.

Details

  • Link: YAPYAP
  • Shore description: Online co-op horror game where up to 6 wizard minions go into an archmage’s tower. Use an assortment of spells to vandalize, break and steal – but beware the horrifying magical creatures that roam the halls.
  • First demo launch date: Friday October 10, 2025 (just 3 days before SNF) “cuz that’s when we got the demo done” so says the game’s developer.
  • Age of Steam Coming Soon Page: 3 months
  • Was this the team’s first game on steam? No, they had a hit BAPBAP that released in August of 2025
  • Was this the last Next Fest before their release? Yes (short dev and release cycle)
  • Following before Steam Next Fest: 200K+ wishlists

Tactics

  • The team worked with Medal.tv to promote the game on their service. The team gave out 1,000 free keys to top “clippers.” The team said they are unsure how well this worked but they did get a lot of clips.
  • Tiktok worked well for them – watch their first game announce Tik (it earned them 1.5 MILLION views.)
  • Most of their impressions came from TikToker’s who are “showcase content creators” making content off our trailer. 
  • Worked with content creators who played their previous game BAPBAP. But the team did not do a major content creator push.
  • August 25th Trailer launched (1 month before SNF). The trailer earned 434K views This was the major inflection point that greatly increased wish lists. Look at this follower chart post Trailer:

Chris Z Thoughts: Friend slop is so hot right now and YAPYAP hits the vibes, and needs of fans of this genre. The visuals (very floppy, very cute, and very creepy) and concept also make this perfect for content creators and TikTok. 

Combine all this with the teams established base visibility from BAPBAP that they could use to cross promote into YAPYAP made this a perfect short-timeline launch. 

Friend slop games have a viral potential where you can release them with short development times, and marketing periods. This rapid release strategy will not work for all genres. I think these games grow especially quickly because of word of mouth (friends saying, “check this out, we should play this when it comes out). Also content creators who play it with other content creatorsbring massive combined audiences. 

Friend slop games were the true winners of this Steam Next Fest and the genre has really grown to be white hot in 2025.

Desktop Defender

Steam Next Performance

  • 20,000 wishlists earned during Steam Next Fest
  • Top Demo Chart by Day 3 of the festival

Details

  • Steam link: Desktop Defender
  • Short description: An idle auto-battler that sits in the corner of your screen while you do other things.
  • Genre: Idle Incremental (with a desktop sub genre)
  • First demo launch date: 2 hours before the start of Steam Next Fest.
  • Age of Steam Coming Soon Page: ~3 months (July 24th, 2025)
  • Was this the team’s first game on steam? No, the team has released over 9 games across various platforms
  • Was this the last Next Fest before their release? Yes
  • Following before Steam Next Fest: 200. Not 200k! Just 200.

Chris Z Thoughts:

I know, this game did everything I told you not to do: Demo launching just before Steam Next Fest, 0 wishlists before. They even have a pixelart capsule with all caps text! They beat the odds and they deserve to be commended. This is also an amazing execution because this game has a rapid development time and their release is coming VERY SOON. It’s also really fun.

But this exception to the rule does not mean everyone should go into Steam Next fest with 0 wishlists and launch their demo seconds before the start. Remember not to fall for survivorship bias: if Desktop Defender had instead gone live with their demo in the weeks leading up to Steam Next Fest, they could have been on the front page on Day 1 and day 2. This game has THE MAGIC and more exposure would lead to bigger multipliers.

Specifically if you look at the CCU chart for the game you can watch it clawing its way up the charts. The game didn’t make it onto the “Top Demo” chart until Wednesday when it hit 900 CCU (an interesting data point!) Idle games are slow burners because people start them up and then let them run “while they do other things.” Imagine if this demo launched 1 week before, it would start SNF at 1,374 CCU and started on Top Demos.

Again, this isn’t to diminish the amazing achievement of Desktop Defender. I just don’t want you to read too much into this strategy and say “See they had 200 wishlists at the start, and didn’t launch their demo until 1 min before. LOL nothing matters.” This is a high risk, high reward victory for and experienced dev team!

Also consider that this is a great missing middle game with rapid release. They released this game quickly and should be doing this high risk strategy to get more games out quickly. Just understand WHY you are taking different marketing strategies.

LORT

Genre: Co-op action roguelite

Steam Next Performance 

  • Earned about 17,000 wishlists 
  • Day #1 Steam Next Fest Popular Upcoming, AND Top Demo Charts and remained on them throughout out next fest. 
  • By Day #6 LORT climbed up to the Trending Upcoming charts too.

Details

  • Buff link: Lort
  • Short description: LORT is a 1–8 player co-op action roguelite. Team up with your friends to battle, loot, and stack ridiculous power-ups across a cursed fantasy world. Fight toward escape, revive your homies, and get absolutely chadded as you evolve from goblin tickler to god slapper.
  • First demo launch date: October 1st, 2025 (soon before Steam Next Fest)
  • Playtest? Yes, with about 500 players before demo launch.
  • Age of Steam Coming Soon Page: May 25, 2025 
  • Was this the team’s first game on steam? Yes
  • Was this the last Next Fest before their release? TBD
  • Following before Steam Next Fest: 68,000 wishlists

Tactics that worked

  • The team did the initial demo launch and content creator outreach 2 weeks leading up to Nextfest. 
  • They pushed the “email wishlisters” button immediately at the demo launch (2 weeks before SNF) but the team is “now wondering if it would have been better served to do it on Day 1 of Next Fest.”
  • The team used jestr.gg to help with content creator outreach and they said it helped a lot. They got over 2 million views and 57 videos out of their campaign. They would recommend it. 
  • The stair stepping of campaigns to get more and more visibility. Before the release of the demo they had 45,000 wishlists. They gained 23,000 wishlists between launching the demo on Oct 1 and day before nextfest on oct 12.
  • After the demo release on Oct 12th they had 68,000 wishlists.
  • Then they will end Steam Next Fest with about 85,000 wishlists. 
  • They did not run paid ads for Steam Next Fest. The team said that they spent a bunch on ads when they announced the game but were disappointed by the return so skipped it for Steam Next Fest. 
  • They didn’t have any viral social media posts but did try on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube Shorts.

Chris Z Thoughts: 

This Next Fest campaign is interesting because the team did a 2-week demo marketing push. Although the developer worried about starting 2 weeks early, I don’t think you can expect the same 23,000 wishlist growth if you delayed it. There is more competition (note Cairn was doing their push the last week). There is no perfect timing, you gotta get them when you can.

LORT is an interesting test of the co-op genre in the rise of friend slop. In talking with the developer the game is definitely deeper than the recent trend in quick-hit, silly, co-op games. LORT is more similar to Risk of Rain gameplay wise but has a very humorous presentation with what I like to call “Buff Link.” This could be causing some confusion. But, the top of the charts placement still indicates co-op games are so hot.

Summary:

What does it take to “win” Steam Next Fest?

I have data from over 200 games that participated in a previous Next Fest and several other profiles of previous festivals.

There are basically 3 results. 

Tier 1) It’s your first game, you make a genre that just doesn’t click with Steam, you do no marketing, and/or mis-time which SNF and do your first one, and you get sub 1000 wishlists. 

This you can prevent. It is about making sure you learn how Steam works, the types of games the players like, and how the algorithm works. It also requires you to learn how to make good games.

Tier 2) You do everything in the core Steam marketing playbook: proper staging of Playtest, Demo, Steam Next Fest. You make a game in the “good genres.” You gather as many wishlists as you can, do the last one before launch.

But there is just something that doesn’t “click with the audience.” It doesn’t have that “Spark” that “Magic.” 

The game doesn’t go viral when shared on TikTok. It gets accepted into a festival now and then, but not 18 festivals like Cairn. Content creators aren’t so excited to play your game that they rush it to the front of their queue. They play it but the wishlist spike isn’t huge and falls back down to base line.

These games typically earn in the 1000-5000 wishlist range during next fest. They are good events to do, and worth the effort, because they usually put the game over the necessary 7000 wishlist threshold to appear on Popular upcoming and MAYBE New & Trending. But, Steam Next Fest isn’t a transformational event that pushes this game on the trajectory to be a blockbuster hit.

The fix here is just keep making games. Keep checking what steam is into, keep building your audience, keep improving your skills. You will notice all the developers in my top list had previous games and not all of the previous games were hits. It just takes time to do really well and learn how to make games.

Tier 3) The MAGIC tier. The game has a MAJOR spark just before Steam Next Fest which catapults it to tens of thousands of wishlists and pushes it to the top of the charts. Based on all my research these games typically have one of these occur before or during Steam Next Fest:

  • A viral social post (typically on TikTok, but potentially reddit or youtube shorts / instagram)
  • A rash of content creators going crazy over the game and playing  it over and over and over
  • A major showcase / festival timed in the days before the Steam Next Fest (see the Double Jump trick)
  • A well coordinated marketing plan that has a demo update + press + content creator re-engagement + new trailer.

To make it to tier 3 there needs to be some major spark that happens leading into Steam Next Fest to really make it on the charts. You must do something outside of Steam that brings an audience and then Valve rewards that exposure with featuring in the top charts.

Games in tier 3 typically get in the 20K – 300K range of wishlists during Steam Next Fest. They “win” Next Fest.

Now how well you perform in Tier 3 is up to the fates, God, a giant space squid, or whatever you like to think of is out there. Many of the developers I interviewed here had some second thoughts. “Maybe I should have paid some more content creators, or maybe we should have launched our demo 2 days earlier, or maybe 2 days later.” I don’t think a developer in tier 3 should over-analyze what happened. You are questioning the space squid. Do not question them our doubt them.

Basically Tier 3 games have THE MAGIC, and that is what you should spend the majority of your brain power focusing on. How do you get a magic game. Don’t over analyze the specific timing. There is no counter-factual. You are in the hands of the divine.

Focus on the game. Make it a good game that people go crazy for. That is what you need to spend your brain power on.

Final thoughts: Should you launch your demo right before Steam Next Fest?

The big question I had for this Next Fest was the exact timing. 

  • Do the first Next Fest after launching your Coming Soon Page?
  • Do the last Next Fest before full launch?
  • Launch the demo months (or years in Cairn’s case) before Steam Next Fest?
  • Launch the demo weeks before (like LORT)?
  • Or launch the demo days before (YAPYAP)
  • Or launch the demo hours before (Desktop Defender)

After all this, I still think the best bet is to launch and debug your demo as early as you can while still delivering a quality product. There are going to be examples of games that come out of nowhere with no prior history (Like Desktop Defender) but that is risky. It is also survivorship bias. We don’t see the games that came out of nowhere with no wishlists, no prior demo testing, and didn’t make it up the charts. For every Desktop Defender, there are hundreds of other developers watching the sunset of Next Fest and looking at their low wishlist counts and thinking “we should have tested this more.”

If the game doesn’t get covered by the right content creators at the right time, if it doesn’t go viral, the whole strategy is gone. If you have more time, there are more chances to get more content creators, there are more chances to go viral on a social platform.

Launching a demo days before Steam Next Fest is like the poker concept of Inside Straight (Gutshot) vs filling an outside straight. 

(image and explanation from Joe Fortune)

Sure there is a chance you will be able to fill an inside straight, but the odds are much more in your favor if you try to fill an “outside” straight where there are twice as many options. 

Coming soon…

My next blog post will be on the rise and success of quick-release, very viral games. The fast development times that are paramount to this strategy means that YES you might have to release your demo days before SNF. That isn’t bad, but if you can, the highest probability is to have more time with your demo public.