Snail’s imprint debuts Stoneguard, Above The Snow at Steam Next Fest

Wandering Wizard, the indie publishing imprint of Snail, Inc., put two very different demos on the Steam Next Fest stage, Stoneguard and Above The Snow, during the festival running February 23 to March 2, 2026. Snail’s press materials and a Wandering Wizard write-up invited players to sample both builds as part of the event lineup.

The announcement appeared with a GlobeNewswire dateline of CULVER CITY, Calif., Feb. 24, 2026 and was distributed to media via Public Technologies on Feb. 23, 2026 at 21:41 UTC. Snail positioned Steam Next Fest as a visibility tool, noting the event “provides a high-visibility platform for emerging titles to generate player engagement, wishlist growth, and pre-launch momentum within the global PC gaming market.”

Stoneguard arrives as a medieval survival strategy hybrid from ThornSpire Games, a husband-and-wife studio based in England for whom this is a first game. Monty Robles’ Wandering Wizard piece describes Stoneguard’s loop precisely: players build and manage a fortified settlement by day, craft walls, towers and defenses, recruit survivors and manage resources, then defend a “lifestone” against relentless nightly waves of monstrous invaders. Monty Robles wrote, “Coming to Steam Early Access March 19th, Stoneguard combines the open-ended sandbox gameplay of a survival sim with the tactics of a strategy game where players must defend their precious lifestone from an onslaught of invaders.” The studio’s personal color, four cats named Ponyo, Popeye, Pickle and Petal, and cited inspirations such as Mount and Blade and Age of Empires were included in the Wandering Wizard coverage. Monty Robles also referenced available assets: Trailer and Press Kit.

Above The Snow took the opposite tone, billed both as a “tycoon strategy and city-building title” in Markets Businessinsider summaries and as a “cozy, story-rich shelter management sim set in the 1960s Alps” in GlobeNewswire’s Chinese-language pickup and Monty Robles’ copy. Above The Snow will debut its first public demo at Steam Next Fest, showcasing core economic systems and narrative-driven progression. The title brings awards pedigree: winner of Best PC City-Building Game at the NYX Game Awards Season 2 in 2025 and nominations for Best Narrative Indie Game at Taipei Game Show 2026 and Best Polish Indie Game at Poznań Game Arena 2025. Publishers have also arranged cross-industry partnerships with Cortazu, Fjordfiesta and Heywood, and sources say select pieces from those partners’ collections will be showcased at events and integrated directly into gameplay.

The Wandering Wizard showcase sits inside a wider Snail slate. Markets Businessinsider’s Rhea-AI summary highlighted portfolio performance data, noting Bellwright’s “Maiden Voyage” update and Steam Winter Sale drove an average 18.5 percent increase in daily units sold during promotional periods. Marketscreener and Markets Businessinsider snapshots show Snail, Inc. trading as SNAL with a recent price around 0.6510 USD and short-term movement reflected in a 5-day change of +1.72 percent and a year-to-date decline of 26.77 percent.

For press and investor follow-up, GlobeNewswire included investor contacts John Yi and Steven Shinmachi at Gateway Group, Inc., phone 949-574-3860, email SNAL@gateway-grp.com. With Stoneguard targeting Steam Early Access on March 19, 2026 and both demos live at Steam Next Fest Feb. 23–Mar. 2, Wandering Wizard is using the festival push to build wishlist momentum for two very different indie efforts.