The June 2026 edition of Steam Next Fest is now over! Participating in Next Fest is like searching through a giant pile of sludge, but I like getting my hands dirty. And now I’d like to share some of the cool games I tried over the past week.
Bunderkin: The Ocular Eclipse
This is a 3D platformer with a focus on stealth. You play as a young, mischievous dragon caught in a time loop as a major festival takes place in town. You supposedly take advantage of the loops to sneak better.
The art style and character animation is fantastic, and I can’t emphasize that enough. The characters are super expressive in their faces and gestures. As a game with 3D graphics, Bunderkin does an excellent impression of 2D cartoons! This is certainly no coincidence because the developer, Studio Zubio, is actually an animation studio that specializes in character animation. From what I can gather from their website, this game recycles assets they’re producing for a Bunderkin independent animated series.
In this game screenshot, a cop blocks the main character’s way while smugly wagging a finger.
Object Impermanence
This is a first-person puzzle game. You crash-land on a broken world, where some things only exist while you’re looking at them.
I think what really sells a first-person puzzle game is a flashy central game mechanic, like portals in Portal and photos in Viewfinder. Object Impermanence has a mildly freaky mechanic: some things only exist if you look at them.
It’s like if “Creepy Watson” was an entire puzzle game.
The demo mainly features puzzles where you have to roll or place balls into sockets to activate buttons. That means if some obstacle blocks your view, the ball stops existing, so you have to make sure to maintain a sightline to the ball.
This game is secretly a strafing and crosshair placement exercise, since being in control of when these objects exist or not is so important. I’m having to sidestep in circles while carefully making sure I can still see some important puzzle element. I’d imagine the full game could have more finicky bits like this. A few puzzles near the end of the demo even require you to stop looking at something to make it disappear.
ZWAARD
In a post-apocalypse 1989 where nanomachines have run rampant, you pick up a high-tech sword in a subway station. This is a top-down adventure with lots of combat and aggressively juicy pixel art.
ZWAARD has that kind of pixel art that’s decidedly not retro at all, including mixing in low-resolution 3D graphics. Many of the things you might expect from top-down sword-swinging adventures are here, including an expansive overworld to explore.
The distinguishing feature of ZWAARD is the item system. Your sword is made of several different parts, and you can mix and match them to change the stats and behaviour of the sword. You can go from a relatively quick but weak sword to a sluggish but hard-hitting Dark Souls-style cleaver.
I’m not joking about the juice. Just about everything in this game comes with a little bit of screen shake and a satisfying sound effect. And maybe a bit of hitpause as well.
Stunt Boost
This is a speedrunning-focused first-person platformer where you ride a tiny toy skateboard around courses constructed from toys and household objects. Of course, you’re trying to finish with as little time on the clock as possible. This is what you might have imagined if you’ve ever played with these little skateboards. It’s the biggest, craziest skate park, and it all fits in a bedroom!
The controls (at least in the demo) seem to be greatly simplified compared to other first-person speed platformers like Neon White. You click to start the level with a bit of speed, then you only use your mouse to steer, so no FPS-style WASD controls. The demo does later introduce the ability to increase the strength of gravity so you can build more speed while rolling downhill.
Stunt Boost also has a surprise feature that I was very happy to see. It has perhaps the most reasonable, user-friendly mouse sensitivity setting I’ve ever encountered! A lot of games just give you a slider with a mysterious number, then you have to repeatedly pause and unpause the game to adjust the sensitivity while you try moving your mouse. In Stunt Boost, the mouse sensitivity setting takes you to a special room where you’re free to look around, and you scroll up and down to tweak the sensitivity until you like it. This is so convenient. Now I want every game with mouselook to have this!
Hyperstacks
I’ve had this on my wishlist since like 2021, and there’s finally a public demo. It’s a VR action-puzzle playground with a little bit of everything. There’s a big focus on community-made levels with its in-game level editor.
The demo presents a curated selection of levels, showcasing a mix of platforming, climbing, combat, and puzzles. You also get to meet the main cast, each of which representing one of these areas.
Hyperstacks has an early modern VR (circa 2017) feel to it, but in a good way. The visuals are cartoony and the tone is playful, and it’s an excuse to do cool things in VR. It’s like if the early VR titles like Space Pirate Trainer or Beat Saber had decided to just explode in scope and do everything people hoped VR could be.
I have to admit that there were two things about Hyperstacks that got me interested in it above everything else. The first is that I really liked the music in the trailers. It’s this really energetic and bouncy type of electronic music, which strongly reminds me of Waterflame. I wouldn’t be surprised if there really is some music by Waterflame in the game.
“Race around the world” by Waterflame, as an example
The second is that all the characters, including the playable character, are cute robots. I like cute robots, especially ones with screen faces.
Also, you can pet the robo-cat!
MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 3 hours ago
I knew I would like Object impermanence as soon as is saw it’s title. I’ll definitely check this out.
Also the skateboard game looks really fun. Great choice to include some minor gifs or screenshots of the games. This makes reading these posts so much more fun. Thank you for the effort