The first big breakout of Steam Next Fest is a Souls-y dungeon crawler that’s coming for Dark and Darker’s crown

As Steam Next Fest gets into full swing, players are flocking to Valve’s platform in droves to try out Dungeonborne, a dark fantasy dungeon crawler that looks set to offer a Dark and Darker-style experience, minus the legal woes. 

Developed by Mithril Interactive, Dungeonborne is a first-person PvPvE adventure that sees you delve into the depths of a perilous medieval castle in search of riches. You can go it alone or team up with others to overcome the treacherous dungeons and formidable foes that stand between you and all that shiny loot. What’s more, you’ll have to make it out alive to claim your rewards, so while venturing deeper will lead more valuable trinkets; it also increases the likelihood that you’ll meet your doom and ultimately come away empty-handed.

A demo for Dungeonborne has just been released as part of Steam Next Fest, and players have already been sampling its intriguing dungeon-crawler extraction combo in their thousands.

At the time of writing, it’s sitting at the top of Steam DB’s most-played demos chart with 12,637 players currently in-game and a concurrent player peak of 17,096, which was reached yesterday. Comparatively, in second place is the Hollow Knight-esque metroidvania Deviator, with an all-time player peak of 12,319, followed by Warcraft and StarCraft devs’ upcoming RTS game Stormgate with 5,146, putting Dungeonborne well ahead of the competition. Dungeonborne also tops SNF’s ‘Trending upcoming’ chart, and is #8 on its wishlist chart.

Steam Next Fest kicked off yesterday and runs until February 12, so you’ve got just under a week to try the Dungeonborne demo out for yourself. And there are plenty more exciting tiles on offer besides, including Never Grave, a new co-op roguelike that’s sure to please Dead Cells fans, Arco, a stunning “simultaneous turn-based” tactics game, and physics-based farming sim Southfield.

Keep up to date with all the year’s biggest and best titles in our guide to new games 2024.