Generation Exile Demo LIVE for Steam Next Fest

Let's not bury the lede on this very exciting news: you can a play a demo for Generation Exile at this very minute as part of Steam Next Fest!

Generation Exile Demo on Steam

You are aboard humanity’s first and final generation ship, a last-chance expedition now teetering on the rim of collapse. One step at a time you must rebuild society and the ship’s fragile ecosystems — using only what you brought with you — in this turn-based narrative city-builder.

STEAM

Click the link above and there will be a demo in your hands (in this case, your hands are computer) in mere moments.

If you're currently perceiving this on your telephone or somewhere else you cannot immediately start playing a Steam demo, we also debuted a new trailer for Gen Exile's Next Fest demo in the PC Gaming Show this past Sunday:

For those not familiar, Steam Next Fest is a triannual event that showcases demos for unreleased games, with this round running from June 9th through June 16th (Pacific time). It's a really important visibility event for any smaller games - like ours! - trying to let potentially interested players know our game even exists.

There's a lot of black magic ascribed to "the algorithm" when it comes to Steam, but Valve is actually rather transparent with what Steam's recommendation system pays attention to. Primarily, it uses proxies for people enjoying a game they're playing by looking at positive reviews, playtime and wishlists.

So if you've had a chance to play the demo, leaving a review on Steam here is absolutely huge for us. And wishlisting the game itself if you haven't already is also great for us, and for you because then you'll be notified when we release into Early Access!

Next Fest been a tremendous shift for us, going from being quietly squirreled away working on Gen Exile to now being in a place where anyone with hands/computer can play it. Getting to hear feedback from people actually playing - both about the things we'd hoped would connect with folks that actually are and also hearing about things that aren't quite landing - is such a huge asset when it comes knowing where to focus our attentions next. And just getting to interact with folks who are playing what we made has been genuinely wonderful, including one Steam player noting the more... hirsute character creation options we had were - ironically - a bit sparse and our artist Ginda quickly added a set of truly mighty brows what would make even Eugene Levy proud:

Finally, Next Fest is exciting because we get to check out demos for games we've been looking forward to as well as discovering new titles we'd never heard of! Here are a few highlights our team has enjoyed checking out:

• Little Rocket Lab - Charming game that asks, "What if Stardew Valley, except instead of making parsnips, you were making a rocket ship?" from a fellow Canadian developer located in Winnipeg (where Sonderlust's programmer Steve also resides).
• STARIO: Haven Tower - A city-builder except instead of building out, you're building a city up up up a massive tower.
• ISLANDERS: New Shores - A sequel to ISLANDERS, a colourful and chill island builder that affords players tremendous expressivity in building their own worlds.

Is there anything you've encountered in Next Fest that you're really digging? Let us know on any of these channels! Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueSky

We don't send out these missives often, and that likely won't be changing (although if you would like to hear from us more often, please let us know at any of the channels above or via email!) so we wanted to once again give you our heartfelt thanks for being interested in our unusual weirdo of a game. Your interest in spending your time with us given the truly horizonless bounty of games out there means so much to us.

We hope you enjoy the demo and if you have any thoughts or if there are any issues you encounter, please get in touch and we'll get back to you post-haste!

Thank you again for being here with us,

-- Everyone at Sonderlust Studios