Summer Game Fest Brings Over 30 Indie Demos To Xbox For Free

Keigh3 week might be over, but Summer Game Fest is just getting started. In collaboration with ID@Xbox, the event is bringing over 30 demos for upcoming indie games to the Xbox platform starting June 21. They’ll all be free but only available for one week, after which they will disappear into the ether just like the showcase hype from which they came.

This is the third year in a row Microsoft has run the digital celebration, and the aim is to let people at home experience the types of hands-on sessions that might have been reserved for E3 attendees in years past. Ushered in by the pandemic, it’s now become a staple of places like Valve as well, which is currently running the latest iteration of Steam Next Fest, because, well, trying unreleased games for free from the comfort of your own couch, gamer chair, or bed, rules.

The full slate of demos hasn’t been revealed yet, but the list currently includes the following:

• Batora: Lost Haven – a twin stick action RPG where you solve puzzles and battle enemies across multiple planets in a sci-fi fantasy universe.
• Broken Pieces – a point and click psychological thriller where you uncover time-related mysteries in a village along the French coast.
• Severed Steel – a neon-lit bullet-time first-person shooter that’s like John Wick meets Superhot.
• Tinykin – a puzzle platformer that seems to borrow elements of Pikmin and combine them with a unique hand-crafted art-style.

Because some of the games are still in development, either for their first release or their console port, Microsoft cautions that the demos might play a little different from demos for games that are already out. They’ll be accessible right from the Xbox dashboard for both Xbox One and Series X/S players through June 27. It’s not clear yet if you’ll be able to stream any of them to your phone via Xbox Cloud Gaming, but that would be a neat extra perk. That service is coming directly to new Samsung Smart TVs starting June 30.