Feb 23 – Mar 01, 2026 — 78 posts

Steam Next Fest dropped a wave of demos (85▲ megathread to navigate them). SweepCremental — Minesweeper with a skill tree — was the breakout (335▲). And the first appearance of the ex-Cisco datacenter architect's Win98 MMO studio game, hitting 502▲ on its demo announcement (the full launch lands eight weeks later, in the Apr 20–26 entry).

Spotlight launch. That ex-Cisco MMO studio demo — 502▲, the highest demo-launch post in our window. Zero Stress King: Idle Defense demo also bouncing the room (278▲) — would full-launch a month later.

Also out. Horde of Distraction RPG-incremental demo, Mystery Digger mining demo, Burger Flipper Idle web release (mixed reception, 133 comments), The Snake Is the Tower (snake + incremental + tower defense — yes, all three).

Worth your time. Horripilant — horror incremental — flagged as having the genre's best story (153▲). "I'm so over Nodebuster clones" (398▲) is the cleanest articulation of that fatigue.