Xbox's Winterfest event starts today with 33 demos of indie games

Microsoft's latest ID@Xbox Game Demo Winterfest event is now underway, this time featuring a total of 33 playable demos for indie titles old and new.

This year's event kicks off today, 5th December, on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, and runs right through to the end of the year on 31st December.

Microsoft has highlighted a number of indie games newly announced for Xbox and getting the demo treatment during Winterfest - including pirate adventure Captain Bones, turn-based rogue-lite dungeon crawler The Land Beneath Us, post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG Vagrus: The Riven Realms, and the self-explanatory Dinosaur Fossil Hunter - over on its Xbox Wire blog.

The full list of demos, however, is as follows:

• 502's Arcade (502 Studios)
• Backbeat (Ichigoichie) – Available Now
• Captain Bones (World of Poly)
• Champion Shift (SRG Studios)
• Chessarama (Minimol Games) – Pre-order Now
• Deceive Inc. (Sweet Bandits Studios), available now
• Dinosaur Fossil Hunter (Pyramid Games S.A.)
• Donut Dodo (pixel.games)
• Go Mecha Ball (Whale Peak Games)
• Hidden Through Time 2 (Rogueside)
• Howl (Mi’pu’mi Games), pre-order now
• Kiborg (Sobaka Studio)
• King Arthur: Knight’s Tale (NeocoreGames), pre-order now
• Kingdoms and Castles (BlitWorks Games), available now
• Long Gone Days (Serenity Forge), available now
• New Star GP (New Star Games)
• Oppidum (EP Games)
• Parcel Corps (Secret Mode)
• Pinball FX (Zen Studios); available now
• Pinball M (Zen Studios), available now
• PlateUp! (It’s Happening)
• Puzzledorf (Stuart’s Pixel Games)
• Roguematch: The Extraplanar Invasion (Starstruck Games)
• Shoulders of Giants (Moving Pieces Interactive), available now
• Sker Ritual (Wales Interactive)
• Slave Zero X (Poppy Works), pre-order now
• Slopecrashers (byteparrot)
• Space Boat (Recombobulator Games)
• SquadBlast (Ultrahorse)
• Strings Theory (BeautifulBee)
• The Holy Gosh Darn (Perfectly Paranormal)
• The Land Beneath Us (FairPlay Studios)
• Vagrus – The Riven Realms (Lost Pilgrims Studio)

Microsoft warns the above Winterfest demos provide an "early look at gameplay and may not represent the full game at their release... as developers continue to update and refine their title ahead of launch". Still, if anything in the list above takes your fancy, you'll probably want to get a move on - the Winterfest clock is ticking.