Steam’s next big hit is another survival game, but with ARPG combat

Steam Next Fest is one of the best ways for game developers to expand the potential audience of their games before they even hit the market. The highlight of the festival is of course the many free demos, and at the last edition (October) there were over 900 of them.

According to a new report, one game in particular captured the hearts and minds of Steam users more than any other: Wrapped up.

This name probably doesn’t sound familiar to you, and it certainly didn’t to me. However, according to Game Discover Co’s newsletter, Enshrouded was the biggest hit of Steam Next Fest. The way this is calculated is based on the number of followers a game receives after releasing its demo as part of the festival.

In this case, Enshrouded attracted 14,300 new followers, which is almost twice as many as the next Closet game. According to the data, Enshrouded already had a large following before the festival.

Enshrouded also attracted the highest number of concurrent players of any demo, with 5,347 players. The game’s demo is actually still available and can be downloaded from the Steam store page.

So what is it? Well, Enshrouded is a co-op survival game. It combines the survival elements of many, many popular games with action RPG combat. Anything involving group survival, as we’ve seen recently with all the positive buzz surrounding Bellwright, is sure to be a hit on Steam.

However, Enshrouded is different in that it focuses more on action combat. You still get the typical rock-and-stick gameplay with gathering ingredients, crafting, building settlements, etc., but the main focus seems to be what happens when you leave your camp to hunt monsters .

Enshrouded has some similarities to Valheim, which also featured more interesting combat than a typical survival game. The game doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will arrive first via Steam Early Access – as is the case with most of these games.