Indie devs say Steam Next Fest is a massive win for finding early success: "Wishlists go brrrr"

Indie developers are enjoying a surge of early success this week, all thanks to this year's Steam Next Fest, which offers a ton of free demos for upcoming indie games.

I've long said that covering indie games is my favorite part of the job here at GamesRadar+, and so it's been a delightful week shining a light on games that aren't getting nearly enough attention. Personally, this brutally difficult Dark Souls and Princess Mononoke-inspired boss rush horror game and this unimaginably dark narrative-driven space spookfest are my favorite demos so far, but GamesRadar's Hope Bellingham is finding oodles of warmth in decidedly more cozy demos, while Hirun Cryer is chilling out with this Studio Ghibli and Wind Waker-influenced sandbox adventure.

Point is, we're all finding new indie obsessions we might've never come across without Steam Next Fest, and naturally, the studios involved are loving the exposure. In a lovely change of pace, my Twitter feed has been flooded with encouraging posts from indie developers celebrating the attention.

One very measurable metric of early enthusiasm for an indie game is the amount of people wishlisting it on Steam, and in some cases, results are far exceeding developers' "lofty" expectations.

I'm completely blown away by the response to SUMMERHOUSE! Over 4k people wishlisted it yesterday for a total of 50k