The latest edition of Steam Next Fest is now live and brings with it a bunch of demos for upcoming PC VR games.
Steam festivals are designed to highlight what’s coming to the platform in the near future with a range of playable demos. VR has always been a part of the event’s offerings and this iteration is no different. Here’s a few of the headline titles you can play up until June 20.
Steam Next Fest 2022: Best New VR Demos
New VR Shooters And Action Games On Steam Next Fest
There’s a handful of promising action games on display this week. They include the physics-driven Battle Talent, which offers melee-based combat similar to Blade & Sorcery. Arcadia’s anticipated co-op zombie survival game, Requisition VR, also gets a demo. This one lets you make weapons out of household items and then slice through undead hordes together. Then there’s Stalker-like Paradox of Hope. Could this perhaps dethrone Into The Radius in this niche genre? I also have no idea what Mayhem on a Rainbow actually is, but maybe that’s why it gets a mention.
New VR Racing Games On Steam Next Fest
There’s a surprising number of new racing games to sample this time around, and some of them look pretty good. On the sports side of things, you definitely need to give Kayak VR: Mirage a look. It’s visually stunning and the convincing controls remind you what great VR is all about. Down Fast also looks very promising; it’s a downhill mountain biking game unlike anything we’ve yet seen in VR. The Flashout series is also coming back with VR support, which looks like it’ll make you sick in seconds.
Other VR Highlights On Steam Next Fest
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the playable demo for the increasingly exciting VR JRPG, RuinsMagus, which we’ve played on Quest 2 and become very fond of. Just Upstream, meanwhile looks like a mix of Firewatch and, uh, Frogger? It’s a story-driven VR platformer with a dreamy forest setting in which you swing through areas using your tongue. Quite the elevator pitch. Adorable Lemmings-like puzzler Tin Hearts also has a new demo. It’s technically a shooter but, given the arcade focus, we’re also putting a shout out to the slickly-produced BlockStar VR right here. Oh and, it’s not in VR, but the flatscreen version of The Last Worker is available to play and is also coming to Quest 2, so it’s a good chance for an early look.
Those are our picks for the best VR demos for Steam Next Fest! What are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments below!