Six One Indie has quickly become one of my favorite showcases of independent gaming. I started watching their showcases back in 2025 and was instantly taken by not only the beautiful production, but the sincerity of Mike and Kyle, the hosts, and the team that helped make this showcase possible.
As a streamer, I tend to watch a lot of showcases. Showcases are fun, they generate hype, and they’re a great way for me as an indie curator to find more amazing games to put on my wishlist, play, and recommend to others. After a while your eyes start to glaze over at all the cringey scripts, celebrity guest hosts, and cinematic-only trailers (or worse yet, title card trailers). So when Six One Indie fell into my lap out of seemingly nowhere and I saw a distinct lack of many things I found to be consistently eye-roll inducing at basically every video game showcase I could possibly get my hands on, my eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning, coming down to see presents I couldn’t have even dreamed of. Loving hosts, a sincere script, beautifully curated games. Oh thank you Santa!
Then, when I saw that Six One was branching out into their own Demo Days (à la Steam Next Fest), I knew I had to jump on the opportunity to participate. Steam’s last Next Fest in June was, frankly, a disaster. Server connection problems, lack of wishlist discoverability, and the cherry on top of it all, AI slop everywhere the eye could see (with absolutely no way to filter it out). It was so bad in fact that Nick, our resident programmer and secondary writer on the website, created a Steam Viewer so I could filter out AI and find demos at a reasonable pace. What I’m getting at here is that, regardless of Six One doing this in response to Steam or not, I quite like seeing someone stepping on Valve’s toes. There isn’t anything else quite like Next Fest, or at least there wasn’t before Six One came into the scene, and that sucks because really, truly Steam does not do enough for the developers that are participating in the event, in my honest opinion.
Meanwhile, Six One not only has a Steam landing page with every demo taking part in the event (with a very distinct lack of AI present), but they also have a showcase video featuring several demos taking part in the event and their trailers. While the video is a bit short, featuring only 11 demos, I do think this is a great start to actually providing some discoverability to the developers taking part in the event. Similar to Next Fest, Six One Demo Days is a week-long event where upcoming games with demos are highlighted so excited gamers, like myself, can download and play them ahead of the game's full release. I’ve personally downloaded several demos, played a few, and plan to play more throughout the rest of the week (expect an article about my favorites coming soon).
With a much more manageable number of demos to sift through, Demo Days features around 150 demos to try out and add to your wishlist. Compared to Steam’s June Next Fest numbers of more than 4,000 demos, I can tell you Six One Demo Days has been much more enjoyable to participate in as a consumer. I’m hoping they can continue to grow and make these Demo Days better and better. As this is the first one they’re doing, it’s only up from here.
Check out all the demos for Demo Days HERE
Check out Six One Indie’s YouTube channel HERE