5 pro tips for succeeding at Steam Next Fest

For indie developers, Steam Next Fest is an opportunity to break through. Your demo can only be in Next Fest once, you need to make the most of it. But with hundreds of demos going live, how do you ensure yours gets seen?

We talked to industry vets and developers who’ve successfully navigated Next Fest to gather tips on how to stand out. Whether it’s building a wishlist strategy or engaging your community, these 5 actionable insights will help you get the most out of the event and maybe even go viral.

1. Your demo isn’t your launch moment, it’s your final form

When we asked Chris Zukowski what makes or breaks a game at Steam Next Fest, he didn’t hesitate. Next Fest is not a testing ground. It’s not where you figure things out.

Chris has worked with hundreds of indie developers to help them understand how Steam works, not just technically, but psychologically. He’s seen what happens when a developer treats Next Fest like a soft launch. The results, he says, are almost always the same: disappointment, silence, and missed opportunity.

“You should not be debuting your demo during Next Fest,” Chris says. “Next Fest is the grand… it’s the quinceañera. It’s the grand debut of the final stage of yourself. You should have released your demo long before.”

The metaphor isn’t just for flair. For many games, Steam Next Fest is the largest single influx of attention they’ll ever receive before launch, but only for a moment. The first day is when the algorithm takes notice. If players click, play, and wishlist in large numbers, the system rewards you. If something breaks or players bounce, you vanish from visibility almost instantly.

“You want your demo bulletproof. You’ve wanted it vetted by streamers before. You’ve wanted it in other festivals,” he says. “Because if on that first day everybody fires it up and there’s some bug… you’re done.”

That moment, that day one surge, is everything. It’s why so much of Chris’s advice centers on preparation well before the Fest even begins. A game that’s already circulating among press, being tested by streamers, and collecting wishlists will enter the arena with momentum, and that momentum translates directly into performance.

“If you’re coming into Next Fest hot with more wishlists, you will do better,” he says. “That’s why you want to get that demo out early and build some momentum before the fest begins.”

The takeaway is simple: Steam Next Fest rewards games that treat it like a launch day, not a learning experience. If you want to win the spotlight, you have to show up already glowing.

2. Boost wishlists beforehand

Steam Next Fest is a powerful lever for building momentum before launch. But that momentum has to start long before. According to Karah Sutton, Chief Publishing Officer at PikPok, smart planning around your demo, community-building, and especially wishlists is what turns a good festival showing into a great launch.

“The number one thing that adds wishlists to your game is Steam Featuring,” she says. “Now, for us... We discovered that a lot of in-person events, PAX East, BitSummit, these are all events that include featuring on the Steam storefront. And so by participating in those events, we were surfaced more on Steam directly.”

This insight underscores a crucial point: visibility on Steam can be engineered—but only if you understand how its ecosystem works. Steam rewards engagement and activity. It can't be overstated how important nailing that demo is early on.

"One of the things that we found was that these successful games all had a demo," she says, "And that became a really important part of our marketing strategy. And it became an important beat for the developers to find alignment on what they were making. It became like a secondary vertical slice, a way to coalesce their vision for the game into a playable moment. And that became something that all of our production was planned around."

Featuring isn’t random; it’s often tied to event participation, demo performance, or external campaigns that drive traffic back to your page.

So, what should you be doing to build that pre-launch momentum?

• Submit to in-person or digital showcases that partner with Steam. These events often include storefront visibility. (Check out Chris Z’s resource on festivals)
• Treat your demo like a milestone, not a marketing afterthought. Align the team around a playable, polished moment that represents your game’s best self.
• Build your wishlist funnel months in advance—on social, on Discord, in newsletters—so that when Next Fest hits, you’re activating an audience, not just hoping for discovery.

Next Fest is a moment to signal to Steam that your game is active, growing, and worth surfacing. If you're not thinking about that heading into the festival, you may be leaving a massive opportunity on the table.

3. Mobilize your audience

In a recent Unity livestream, we sat down with Gareth Damian Martin, the solo developer behind Citizen Sleeper 2, which launched in January 2025 after debuting its demo during October 2024’s Steam Next Fest. Gareth offered candid insights into how the crowded landscape of Next Fest has evolved—and why mobilizing your existing audience is no longer optional if you want your game to stand out.

With hundreds of titles going live simultaneously, the event has evolved from a place where a strong game could quietly rise to the top into something more akin to a visibility arms race. Discoverability is no longer just about quality; it’s about momentum (take a shot every time we say momentum).

“It’s incredibly intimidating. NextFest has just filled out so much year on year with the number of demos,” they shared. “I think it is really challenging, and it’s really hard to cut through. You’ve got to think about how you’re gonna marshal your audience that you already have to back up your demo and push it into other people’s visibility.”

That means the lead-up to Next Fest isn’t just about prepping your build, it’s about prepping your audience. If you’ve built a mailing list, a Discord, a following on social, this is when it all needs to activate. The first 24–48 hours of the event are critical. Steam’s algorithm surfaces demos based on early engagement, so every click, download, and play session counts.

“You need…people downloading the demo to push it up the leaderboards. It is almost like a competition," he says. "I’m not usually super competitive with other indie devs, I don’t like to think about it like this, but because of the way Next Fest works, it’s all about what’s the top 10 demos of Next Fest. If you want to get something out of Next Fest, you’ve gotta go into it with that mentality of ‘we’re gonna drive the demo through external audience.’”

Developers can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that a high-quality demo will speak for itself. And while a great demo is essential, so is visibility. The market is crowded, and expectations need to shift from “build it and they will come” to “build it, rally your audience, and drive the wave yourself.”

“[Next Fest] is so busy now that it’s challenging," they said. "You have to be careful not to expect that you can just drop a demo into Next Fest and, on quality, it will come to the top.”

The takeaway? Visibility is a system you need to engage, not a bonus that shows up once you're in Next Fest. If you want your game to break through during Next Fest, you need to show up with a plan and bring your players with you.

4. Gather feedback that shapes your launch

Steam Next Fest isn’t just a visibility event—it’s a rare opportunity to put your game in players’ hands at scale, and watch what sticks. During February 2025's Next Fest, we brought three developers on to showcase their demos and talk about their experience, and how it helps them with launching. According to Strange Scaffold's Xalavier Nelson Jr., getting your demo out early helps create a meaningful first impression:

“I think that just in general any opportunity that players can get to have their hands on a game to have the context for when they first experience or hear about a game be a distinct moment of excitement—I think that's so important. Especially in this time,” he says. “And Steam Next Fest is the No. 1 event that people use for that.”

But visibility is just the beginning. A well-timed demo also unlocks a feedback loop you can feed directly into development. Nicholas from Chroncole, debuting his first full game He Is Coming, shared how feedback from a demo release almost a year prior shaped the Next Fest version:

“We have done a lot of tuning since we released the demo in April," they said. "A lot of people have played it and left feedback, and we iterated on that feedback a lot.”

That process isn’t unique to new developers. For the team behind Monster Train 2, the Next Fest demo is a core part of how they refine systems and balance the game before release.

“Yeah, it's great to be able to get some feedback from players,” said Shiny Shoe’s Mark Cooke. “I think overall we're like a super feedback-driven studio, so we want to get like a lot of player feedback, and a demo is a great way to get that and a great way for us to help improve the game as we head into launch.”

If your demo sparks excitement and conversation, you’re not just marketing your game, you’re building a better one.

5. Don't sleep on localization

After Haste popped off during Steam Next Fest, Landfall sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to reflect on the game’s viral momentum and surprise success. The full launch has since netted over 5,000 reviews on Steam—and counting.

One small but smart move the team highlighted? Localizing the demo early. As Landfall explained,

"Because it is a game with a narrative, it becomes way more important to have it localised," says Hanna Fogelberg, Landfall's head of community. "We got some traction in China, for example."

It’s a reminder that small touches like localization can go a long way in helping a demo reach a global audience during a high-traffic moment like Next Fest. Overall, she echoes the same sentiment many have learned from Next Fest: your demo is your launch.

"I think it's important to have a proper marketing approach to the release of your demo, kind of like a mini launch," she says. "So when [players] see it they're like "Oh, that game, I saw that on whatever platform' that makes them want to play it."

Read the full interview over on GamesIndustry.biz.

Steam Next Fest can be a turning point, but only if you show up with a strategy. For more insights on launching, funding, and surviving as an indie dev, check out the Indie Survival Guide.