Steam Next Fest hasn't even started, and its first must-play demo is already here

Steam Next Fest hasn’t even started, and its first must-play demo is already here | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece Roguelike Mewgenics provides the best proof yet that the turn-based tactics genre is the true home of drama and excitement in gaming Roguelike Mewgenics review: The creator of The Binding of Isaac has transcended his own past work with this sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike Life Sim Starsand Island is the first can’t-miss cozy game of 2026 and it’s already taken over 20 hours from me RPG I applaud this gacha game for ditching anime characters for puppets, but it still can’t escape the pitfalls of a post-Genshin Impact world Sim I thought Fishing Shop Simulator was a joke after I saw mechs in ancient Rome, but after two hours with its demo, I’m hooked Horror Burglin’ Gnomes is the next great friend-slop game that everyone with a PC and at least one other friend should check out RPG I’ve already put 10 hours into this upcoming RPG’s demo because it has the best combat I’ve seen outside a FromSoft game Games PC Gamer’s Game of the Year Awards 2025 Sports You’ve had Skate Story, now get ready for Skate Style, a ‘next-gen skateboarding game’ that lets you customise your character’s animations Roguelike This breakfast-based cooking roguelike is already my latest craving Strategy Terra Invicta review Games The best laptop games Sim I’m a Wizard, But I Dig combines my love of Minecraft strip-mining, casting spells, and little blob creatures in one big magical mining sim Handheld Gaming PCs The best Steam Deck games PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Arc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutGame Quizzes Games Strategy Steam Next Fest hasn’t even started, and its first must-play demo is already here News By Wes Fenlon published 18 February 2026 You can play Titanium Court now, and you should be doing that instead of whatever else you’re doing. 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Ten months from now, Titanium Court is going to win some game of the year awards.I’ve played it for all of 90 minutes, but that was enough for me to confidently call this shot—Titanium Court has a magnetism to it that pulled me through the “interesting” to “this has the juice” pipeline at a speed I was not prepared for when I launched it on my Steam Deck at 5 pm on Friday.Titanium Court is a match 3 puzzle game, though it feels reductive to call it one. It’s sneakily a tactics RPG, where you redesign the landscape you’ll soon be fighting on. Matching three field tiles grants you food needed to deploy troops; arranging mountains near your court, which has its own tile on the map, slows enemies from reaching you; smooshing together enemy fortresses makes them blink from existence. This is the High Tide phase, which can be stretched out longer the better you are at comboing multiple cascading matches. Related articles Forbidden Solitaire warns us to uninstall it ‘before it’s too late,’ but I played the demo anyway and now I want more This roguelike take on Geometry Wars is the best game I’ve played this month, and the latest to become a permanent fixture on my Steam Deck Down with the Ship’s demo proves it’s a worthy spiritual successor to the space-faring magic captured by FTL: Faster than Light Then it’s time for Low Tide, where you spend resources on little troops that go out to harvest wheat or wood or smash an enemy fortress. If the whole game was just this, it would already be fun—several times I started to swipe a tile for an obvious match, then paused, realizing if I did I’d be depriving my farmers of easy access to some grain, or removing a river that would stop the troops from an enemy fortress from reaching me.Titanium Court gives you about 10 minutes to get used to this basic strategic interplay before throwing a dozen more ideas at you.Image 1 of 4(Image credit: AP Thomson)(Image credit: AP Thomson)(Image credit: AP Thomson)(Image credit: AP Thomson)How about a shop on the field where you can buy new types of troops, but only if you keep it on the board until Low Tide? Or a hospital th