Steam Hidden Gems: 5 Indie Games to Wishlist Now
Updated August 3, 2026
If you like finding indie games before everyone else does, here are five flying under the radar: The Magus Circle (draw your own spells), About Fishing (calm fishing with a secret), Helix: Descent N Ascent (a hand-drawn puzzle world), The Great Sassanelli (run a WWI circus), and our own cozy apartment sim, Grandma Left Me a Building. Four of them are still ahead of release and open for wishlisting right now, and Helix has since landed, on July 23, 2026.
Checked August 2026. Release dates and demo ratings change, so verify on each store page.
What counts as a hidden gem here?
“Hidden gem” gets stuck on anything, so here is the bar I used. Each game comes from a small or first-time studio with no big marketing push behind it. Each was still ahead of release when it made this list, so a wishlist genuinely helps it and gets you in early. Each has a hook you have not already seen a hundred times. And where there is a demo, its early reception is real and strong, which is the closest thing to proof you get before launch. I have not finished any of these, because nobody has yet, so read the write-ups as reasons to try a demo rather than as reviews.
Steam hidden gems worth wishlisting in 2026
| Game | Genre | Studio | Release window | Demo rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Magus Circle | Action roguelike | By Witchlight | Unannounced | Near 97% positive on the demo |
| About Fishing | Cozy fishing | The Water Museum | 2026 | Roughly 96% positive on the demo |
| Helix: Descent N Ascent | Puzzle explorer | Badass Mongoose | Released July 23, 2026 | 98% positive across 57 reviews as of August 2026 |
| The Great Sassanelli | Illustrated management | Forking Paths Gardening Interactive | Q3 2026 | No demo rating |
| Grandma Left Me a Building | Cozy management | Overbaked | In development, ours | No demo rating, ours |
Release windows and studio names come from each game’s Steam store page as of August 2026. Helix has released, so its cell is the store rating of the full game rather than a demo score, while the two demo percentages are what those demo pages showed when I wrote the entries and are not figures I can re-verify for you. “No demo rating” means no demo score is recorded here, not that no demo exists.
The Magus Circle: cast spells by drawing them
The Magus Circle (By Witchlight, the studio’s first game) hands spellcasting back to you in the most literal way. Instead of pressing a button, you draw the arcane sigil with the cursor, and even a shaky scrawl still fires. Around that sits an action roguelike about surviving an endless Tide with the sigils and upgrades you stack between runs. On its Steam demo page the score has held near 97% positive across a couple hundred reviews, and tens of thousands of players tried it during a Steam festival, which is a lot of noise for a debut nobody had heard of a year ago.
About Fishing: a calm fishing game hiding something
About Fishing comes from The Water Museum, the developer behind the cult oddity Arctic Eggs, and it plays the cozy-fishing genre straight until, quietly, it does not. You cast, you wait, you take in the stillness, and a mystery seeps in around the edges. Its demo is Very Positive at roughly 96% across a few hundred reviews, and it was one of the games people would not stop bringing up after the last Next Fest, which usually means something for a game this small. Steam lists it for 2026.
Helix: Descent N Ascent: a monochrome puzzle world
Helix: Descent N Ascent is the debut from Belgian studio Badass Mongoose, and it is the best-looking thing on this list: a black-and-white world drawn in the tradition of 1980s indie comics and Franco-Belgian bandes dessinees, scored by Jim Guthrie of Sword and Sworcery. There is no combat at all, just exploration and puzzles built around abilities you find and combine. It lands July 23, 2026, following a demo that ran 98% positive, though across a smaller early sample of about sixty reviews. That date has now passed: the full game is out, and its store page reads 98% positive across 57 reviews as of August 2026, which is still a small enough sample to swing.
The Great Sassanelli: run a circus through a war
The Great Sassanelli (Forking Paths Gardening Interactive, published by DigiTales) is an illustrated interactive novel wrapped around a light management sim. You play a young ringmaster leading a travelling circus across a Europe torn up by the First World War, and your choices push the money, the fame, the payroll, and the troupe’s morale in every direction. It is the entry here for anyone who likes their management with a story doing most of the steering. Due in the third quarter of 2026.
Grandma Left Me a Building: our cozy apartment sim
The last one is ours, and it is not out yet. Grandma Left Me a Building is a cozy apartment-management sim where you fix up the run-down building your grandmother left you and fill it with a cast of odd tenants, then keep mismatched neighbors from driving each other up the wall. It is a small studio’s first game, which is the whole theme of this list. It is built to be played with no time pressure, and you can wishlist it on Steam.
How to find your own Steam hidden gems
You do not have to wait for a list like this one. A few habits surface far more than any single roundup can:
- Play demos during Steam Next Fest, which Valve runs three times a year, in February, June, and October, and wishlist anything that clicks. Wishlists are the main way small teams get seen at all.
- Open the “Upcoming” releases, sort by popularity, and then scroll well past the first screen.
- Follow a curator or two whose taste lines up with yours, and look up who made the last small game you loved.
The pattern rarely changes: the gems sit a click or two below whatever Steam shows you first.
Frequently asked questions
Does wishlisting a game actually help the developer?
Yes. Steam emails and push-notifies everyone holding the game on a wishlist when it launches, and again on discounts at or above 20%, which is most of a tiny team’s launch-day reach. Valve’s own documentation adds that no formula turns wishlists into sales.
When is the next Steam Next Fest?
October 19 to 26, 2026. Valve holds the fest three times a year, in February, June, and October, and a game may join only one edition ever, so a demo you liked in June will not reappear in the October line-up.
Is Helix: Descent N Ascent out yet?
Yes. It released July 23, 2026, costs $14.99 on the US Steam store, and reads 98% positive across 57 reviews as of August 2026. That is a small sample by Steam standards, so the score can still move. Check the page before you buy.
More to wishlist
If you want more in this direction, here are the most anticipated cozy games coming in 2026, and if the management ones pulled you in, the best apartment and building management games you can already play. For the fest itself, our Steam Next Fest survival guide covers how to get through a week of demos without burning out.
