I’ll put brief reviews of Steam Next Fest 2025 games here, as you can’t put reviews on Steam until games release. And neither should you since I’m only playing demos, but I’ll put some words about which demos I’ve enjoyed and which games I’m looking to buy in the future.

Torrent Empire

Torrent Empire was fun for the ~30 minutes I played, and I was pretty eager for more. It’s a typing game, typical of hacking games; you need to have a little computer knowledge to play, though there are some GUI elements to save you time. The gameplay loop consists of buying software, cracking it (through a puzzle minigame), uploading it to the server and waiting for your website to grow in between hacking segments where you connect to other servers and steal files. I could see myself playing this for a few hours.

Rentlord

Rentlord is a Balatro-style “roguelite” (is that the right term?) where you earn money by buying property and charging rent, and you buff your income with computer-style ‘plugins’ similar to Jokers. It’s more of a board game than a card game, but with its big numbers it satisfies the capitalist in me and I’m looking forward to the release.

After Inc Revival

After Inc Revival was a little barebones. You can see the Plague Inc influence and I think the game suffers a little for it; it lacks polish. But it’s still promising and I might pick up the first game.

Insider Trading

Similar to Rentlord in that it’s like Balatro, in Insider Trading you trade stocks. I like that this one feels faster paced than Rentlord and it has a little more visual flair.