One of the thousands of indie games featured in the June 2026 Steam Next Fest, Nocturne is both a narrative adventure RPG and a rhythm game. This is the first game to be published by the very small, primarily solo team of Pracy Studios, having spent almost a decade in development. It will be fully released on September 24, 2026, but has announced an exclusive demo for Steam Next Fest.
In Nocturne, players explore a digital afterlife long after the fall of human civilization. Following a thousand years of quiet, the world breaks its silence and begins to deteriorate. It is currently unclear whether the goal is to stop this chaos, or to simply watch it happen, as the “rich narrative” of Nocturne intends to leave players “questioning what it means to be alive” in a world that is actively falling apart.
The player character is not alone in this afterlife, however. The game hosts a multitude of NPCs with various dialogue options, adding to the narrative. Pracy Studios has chosen to tell the story of Nocturne through chapters, and will have eight of these, plus a prelude.
There are 101 opponents, ten of which are major bosses with new mechanics. These battles take the form of a rhythm game, with six different skill levels to choose from. Each boss has a unique track, recorded live courtesy of the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. Once an opponent is defeated, players are able to access that song to replay in a separate ‘Arcade Mode’.
Nocturne’s Steam Next Fest demo includes the entire first chapter of the game, as well as a new chunk of the second chapter. The gameplay for chapter two features one out of the ten bosses, which means that there will also be a new song added to the game’s ‘Arcade Mode’. All of these songs are updated to play the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra recorded versions instead of the earlier synth iterations. The Steam Next Fest demo also shares updated dialogue, noteflares, and autoplay toggles, along with other small patches.
Players who choose to take part in this demo have the opportunity to earn event exclusive Steam awards and in-game trophies through the arcade. These trophies, as well as the new demo, will disappear once Steam Next Fest ends on June 22, 2026. The demo for Nocturne is currently available to download for free on Steam, and is compatible with Microsoft Windows devices operating on systems ten or above.