The Game Festival Will Provide Access to System Shock, Haven Demos During The Game Awards

The Game Awards 2019 are taking place tomorrow but creator and host Geoff Keighley has announced a rather interesting offer for those at home. It’s called The Game Festival and will go live later today on Steam at 10 AM PT. The idea is to provide several demos for players to try out at home.

As noted in a recent Medium post, Keighley said, “Six years ago I bet everything I had to create The Game Awards as a way to celebrate our passion for gaming. Now feels like the right time to take the next step with The Game Festival, a completely digital approach to the consumer event space.

“Let’s face it: Not everyone can attend a physical trade show or consumer event. The Game Festival is designed from the ground-up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”

Some of the game demos are System Shock, which is a remake of the classic FPS/RPG by Nightdive Studios; Chucklefish’s RPG adventure Eastward; Spiritfarer from Sundered developer Thunder Lotus; Haven from The Game Bakers of Furi fame; and even Carrion from Phobia. Overall that’s pretty solid. The list of confirmed demos for games is as follows:

• System Shock (Nightdive Studios)
• Eastward (Pixpil/Chucklefish)
• Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus)
• Moving Out (SMG Studio/Devm Games/Team17)
• Röki (Polygon Treehouse/United Label)
• Chicory (Greg Lobanov)
• Wooden Nickel (Brain&Brain)
• Haven (The Game Bakers)
• Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
• Acid Knife (Powerhoof)
• The Drifter (Powerhoof)
• CARRION (Phobia/Devolver)
• SkateBIRD (Glass Bottom Games)

The Game Festival will be available from 10 AM PT today till 10 AM PT on December 14th. Better carve out some time because once the event ends, the demos will be gone. Even those that have been downloaded and/or installed will become unplayable. There are also plans to bring The Game Festival to consoles in 2020 but for now, it’s a Steam affair.

As for The Game Awards, they start today at 7 PM PT and will offer up 15 new world premiers. These include Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima and NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint.