The Game Awards is letting you demo more than a dozen upcoming games for free

The annual Game Awards are introducing 'The Game Festival' - a 48-hour limited-time event that allows gamers all over the world to experience the magic of E3 in their own homes.

What does that mean? It means that The Game Festival (running from Friday, Dec 13, 2020,y at 2 am to Sunday, Dec 15 at 2 am Singapore time) is going to open up several upcoming games' demos for the public to try out.

Watch #TheGameAwards, LIVE right now! https://t.co/vatZ06oIEm

— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) December 13, 2019

Lucky people get to try out upcoming games at huge gaming expos like E3 every year - but this year, everyone can do so from the comfort of their own homes.

The Game Festival will first launch a 'digital pilot programme' on Steam, featuring more than a dozen game demos which are only available to play for a limited 48-hour window before they're removed.

Geoff Keighley, creator and host of The Game Awards said, via Medium:

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.

These are just some of the games releasing limited-time demos for The Game Festival:

• 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 System Shock remake, in particular, should be a popular game for people to try out, alongside games like Carrion and Skatebird which have been getting a lot of buzz online.

The Game Awards will stream in full tomorrow, 13 December 2020 at 9.30 am (Singapore time) on Twitch and Youtube. We'll probably see a ton of trailers and new game reveals, so stay tuned for more coverage!

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.