Do you remember demo discs? I remember when I was a kid, we had one for the PS1 with a few different demos. I couldn't have told you which games were on it, though I must have played through them dozens of times over and over. There's nothing quite like the utter satisfaction of mindless repetition when you're seven years old. I feel like we moved away from public demos for a long time. Maybe that's not true, but to me, demos felt like they'd gone the way of free, tiny CDs in cereal boxes with some borderline unplayable branded PC game on them. Remember those? Anyway, I love demos. I love that they're back. I had a blast playing 21 of them on my Twitch a few weeks ago. Here's my thoughts for anyone who missed the stream!
Sticky Business
Release: July 17 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
I keep describing Sticky Business to people as 'sticker-based Etsy store simulator', which feels about accurate. You use a variety of pre-made (and adorable) assets to design stickers, print sheets of stickers, and manage orders. There's some element of management here, since you have to make sure you have enough money to print sheets of stickers, but in the demo, I didn't run into any particular challenge on that front. There's some light story through order notes, but from what I've seen, the game seems primarily focused on the mechanical tasks of designing stickers and fufilling orders. And it works! The aesthetics are all what I want them to be, and the full release promises additional features from tons more sticker assets and upgrades like glitter paper to shop customization and extra goodies to pack in with your orders.
If I'm missing anything from Sticky Business, it's some sense of involvement with my customers. If I could add one feature to the game, it would be the ability for your customers to respond to any variations you make on their order. Nothing crazy, but I found myself wishing my returning customers would acknowledge me sending them a couple extra freebie stickers. A shop rating system might also be a nice way to implement something like that! As it stands though, I definitely see myself picking up Sticky Business soon after release.
4.5/5 Sticker Orders
Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To
Release: 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
So, here's the thing. I knew I would like Spirit Swap as soon as I saw the concept. I LOVE match-3 games. Every day of my life I download a new ad-riddled match-3 game on my phone that I delete the next day when the pay-to-win pushing difficulty curve gets too frustrating. All that said, Spirit Swap still managed to surprise me with just how much I liked it.
Spirit Swap is a match-3 with Puyo Puyo leanings. The story mode incorporates head-to-head matches with the various delightful NPCs populating the world, which adds a fun competative element. The lofi soundtrack is exactly what you're expecting and wanting it to be, the art is beautiful, and while the writing in the demo never really stuck out to me, I didn't find any of it disruptive.
Plus, Iskandar. No, really, go Google him. Google 'spirit swap iskandar'. I'll wait.
...
So, like, right?
Spirit Swap has everything. Lofi beats. Satisfying match-3 mechanics. Eye-candy art. A muscle-bound, giant water bottle carrying, nonbinary himbo. Needless to say, I've got my credit card ready to go as soon as it comes out.
5/5 Giant Water Bottles
Goodbye Volcano High
Release: August 29, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Goodbye Volcano High is so conceptually fantastic. A visual novel set in a world where dinosaurs became the evolved species instead of mammals, wherein you play as teenage dinosaur Fang as they try to navigate high school in the face of an oncoming meteoric apocalypse. The demo was a really fantastic representation of concept and execution. The writing was impressive, which is, in my opinion, the most important factor of a visual novel. The gameplay, what little of it there was (we'll get to that), was smooth. I found myself particularly impressed by the writing of teenage characters and how realistic their interactions felt, especially in regards to managing the first bits of this ambitious story. I have extremely high hopes for what promises to be a bittersweet, meloncholic story about how one chooses to live in the face of the reality that life may be cut short very soon. If I have any critique, it's that the main character's VA feels like they might be a bit inexperienced with voice work. The voice direction on a few of the characters felt a little awkward, but I think I noticed it most with Fang because they were talking the most.
My only concern is that I hope Volcano High doesn't drown in its own ambition. Fully animated, fully voice acted, with a choices matter story? That'd be a big ask from any studio but especially an indie one. I'll definitely be picking it up sometime after release, and I really hope they stick the landing! That said, I'll try to manage my expectations.
4/5 Deadly Meteors
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
Release: August 10, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Stray Gods is the first game from indie developer Summerfall Studios, co-founded by Bioware alum David Gaider, fellow developer Liam Esler, and Elie Young, joining from the music industry. The concept: Young musician Grace is granted magic musical powers from a dying muse. Suddenly faced with Greek gods in the flesh, Grace must learn her way around her newfound powers while she fights to solve the mystery of the Muse's murder and prove her own innocence.
Stray Gods is a fucking powerhouse of a game. The art and character designs are out of this world and the voice actors are voice acting for their LIVES, but the musical mechanic is where this game really stands out. Here's how it works: a lot of the conversations in Stray Gods take the form of songs. When you make dialogue choices, it changes the lyrics of the song as it would a branching conversation in a regular RPG. Every time I explain this mechanic to someone, the reaction is inevitable excitement, because, yeah, obviously. It's an incredible concept, and what's really impressive is that it actually works. The songs maybe aren't as smooth as something written with one linear path would be, but they're still impressive. When you're playing, it just works.
Also, a brief shoutout to Summerfall's demo design. Most of the demos I played during this experiment simply gave me the first half hour or hour of the game, sometimes with features stripped out of them. Stray Gods went a different route, instead giving you the intro and then skipping around to allow you to play bits and pieces of multiple different musical portions. It worked really well! How quickly I pick Stray Gods up will depend what price point it releases at, but no doubt I will be picking it up.
5/5 False Murder Accusations
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Release: 2023
Did I finish the demo? No
In The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, you play the role of a witch who's formed a forbidden pact with a powerful and ancient creature (who, not gonna lie, was kind of sexy) to escape banishment on an asteroid. Visually striking and engagingly written, I had a pretty good time with The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood! My time with the demo mostly consisted of constructing tarot cards.
By the way, you can get really into building tarot cards in this game. I really had to reign it in, since I was livestreaming it, but if I'd had time to play the demo by myself, I have no doubts I would have spent a truly stupid amount of time designing and experimenting with the tarot system. It was a lot of fun! I don't know that I'll pick this game up immediately upon release, but I'm interested enough in the mechanics and how the game plays out that I'll probably do so sometime in the near future.
4/5 Sexy Ancient Dieties
Venba
Release: July 31, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Venba is a short, beautiful narrative puzzle game. In it, you take the role of a young Indian woman recently immigrated to Canada with her husband in the 1980s. In the short demo, you learn that she and her husband are sort of struggling to get by and questioning if they should stay or move back home. When she finds out she's pregnant, they make the desicion to stay and the demo ends.
I really loved this! The narrative felt sweet and intimate, the art was lovely, and the cooking puzzles were really fun! One problem I have with games like this is that I often have trouble following developer logic with puzzles. (I famously think A Little to the Left was made by space aliens because the puzzle solutions are infuriatingly opaque to my brain.) I didn't have that problem with Venba! The puzzle in the demo made sense to me without being overly easy, and I had a good time working it out. I want to pick this up as soon as I can!
5/5 Delicious Meals
Bubblegum Galaxy
Release: TBA
Did I finish the demo? No
In Bubblegum Galaxy, you take the role of an intern at a company that creates worlds. High concept, but with adorable graphics and a fun puzzle mechanic. Well, fun conceptually. I like the idea of the puzzles in Bubblegum Galaxy, but I found the execution extremely frustrating. Often, I found that puzzles created unwinnable scenarios, or I found the clunky controls made it way too easy to misclick and totally fuck yourself. Also, every time I failed the first puzzle or wanted to try for a higher score, I had to sit through the relatively lengthy tutorial portion, which got annoying almost immediately.
I want to like Bubblegum Galaxy, but the clunky controls and frustrating puzzles left me annoyed and unsatisfied. I want to check it out again when it actually releases and see if these issues have been resolved, but I don't think I'll be in any rush to buy it if I don't get confirmation that they have.
2/5 Unwinnable Puzzles
Flutter Away
Release: August 3, 2023
Did I finish the demo? No
Flutter Away felt like a throwback, but I unfortunately don't mean that in a positive way. I like the concept of being a scientist out in the forest studying and cataloguing butterflies, but I found the controls extremely clunky and the gameplay loop fairly boring.
When I say it felt like a throwback, what I mean is that it felt like I was playing a mediocre Wii game. A mediocre Wii game directed at a fairly young kid at that. From the awkward controls to the simplistic gameplay loop and the rather blocky graphics, it took me right back to that feeling in a way that might have been impressive if I thought it was intentional. You might like Flutter Away if you don't mind the controls and are really into butterflies, but it didn't click for me.
Also, not gonna lie, I felt slightly weird that our character was a researcher setting up shop in the middle of a rainforest and making it a point to disrupt the environment. I know tossing logs around and shit is just a way to block areas off for progression, but I didn't really feel like I was leaving only footprints or whatever.
1/5 Ethical Violations?
Moonstone Island
Release: Q3 2023
Did I finish the demo? No
A pixel-art, creature-collecting, exploration farming life sim apeing design aesthetics from the likes of Pokemon and Stardew Valley, what I can say about Moonstone Island is that it's a game for somebody. Let me be upfront: I will not be playing Moonstone Island. I found it to be drowning in its own mechanics. I was overwhelmed by the gameplay and underwhelmed by the writing. I wanted Moonstone Island to be bringing something unique to the table, but it really felt like a mishmash of concepts from other games. None of those concepts were especially poorly implemented but neither were they implemented really well, and it felt like the game was struggling to find a specific identity.
That said, if you're someone who loves all the things Moonstone Island is bringing to the table, you might really like it! I thought it was pretty enough to look at, and I didn't hate my time with it, I just found that none of the mechanics were giving enough to draw me in for the long haul. I won't be buying it, but I definitely encourage you to check it out if what I've described seems interesting.
2/5 Offband Pokemon
Soulitaire
Release: TBA
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Okay, full disclosure: I wasn't expecting to really like this. I like solitaire well enough. I have a free app on my phone I sometimes accidentally play obsessively for a couple of weeks before forgetting about it. I'm not very good at it, but I like Spider. What I mean to say is, I wasn't exactly mega-hype about a solitaire based video game. I really only had it on my radar because I have a friend who LOVES soulitaire and I was keeping an eye on it for them.
All that said: this game fucks. It's solitaire! It's tarot! There's a narrative! You get different results based on how good you are at solitaire! I even managed to be pretty okay at solitaire while playing! If you even sort of like solitaire, you should check out Soulitaire. It's definitely a pretty mechanically simple game (not a negative), but it's a load of fun, and I'm excited to get my hands on it and see how the narrative develops.
4.5/5 Foreboding Solitaire Predictions
En Garde!
Release: August 16, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Whereas Flutter Away felt like a sort of sad, unintentional throwback, En Garde! was like the good mirrorverse version of that idea. From the graphics to the writing to the gameplay, En Garde! felt like playing a really good PS2 game. But, y'know, elevated. Playing En Garde! felt like how I remember PS2 action games feeling like, not how they actually feel to go back to. Soften those clunky controls and low-res visuals through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Imagine a PS2 game that looks and feels as good as you remember it. That's En Garde!
In En Garde! you play as an immensely talented young swordswoman and swashbuckler Adalia de Volador. Pitted against the nefarious but incompetant guardsmen of the Duke, you use your environment and perform dazzling sword combos to gracefully best strings of enemies. The movement here felt awesome. It took me a little getting used to, not being someone who usually plays action games, but it was a lot of fun once I got used to it. It's not the sort of game I usually play, and I'm not itching to grab it as soon as it releases. That said, it's sitting on my wishlist and I'll definitely consider it when it goes on sale. If you're someone who likes quick-paced, lighthearted action games with PS2 era flair, I really recommend you look into picking it up a little sooner than I will.
4/5 Quippy One-Liners
The Last Alchemist
Release: Coming Soon
Did I finish the demo? No
The Last Alchemist is a fantasy crafting sim where you play as a lone alchemist trying to discover a cure to his mysterious disease. It's a bit more lighthearted than it sounds, though the story definitely seems like it'll veer into serious territory. I think The Last Alchemist has a lot going for it! The little mushroom folk who populate your base are utterly adorable. The aesthetics in general are fairly pretty. I like the main character. It controls pretty well. I think where the game really stands out is in its crafting. The alchemist mechanics are far more in-depth than I was expecting them to be, and they implement a really interesting chemistry aspect that goes far beyond just throwing the correct number of ingredients mindlessly into a pot together. It's also worth mentioning that running through all these games, this was the first one I remember having notable representation of physical disability. The Alchemist wears a leg brace and uses a walking stick to compensate. One of my friends on stream pointed out how interesting it was to see this taken into consideration with the animation of the Alchemist's gait. It wasn't just a standard run cycle with a walking stick in his hand and a brace on his leg. Rather, it was a really unique looking run cycle that seemed designed around his disability. It wasn't a huge thing, but it was really nice to see his disability considered beyond pure aesthetics and incorporated smoothly!
Now, all those positives, I have to say that I probably won't be playing The Last Alchemist. Nothing on the game itself, but it's not really the sort of game I tend to play and nothing here pulled me in despite that. I can see myself watching another streamer or Youtuber play it, though, and if this kind of crafting sim game is your thing, I definitely recommend you check it out.
4/5 Alchemical Explosions
Jumplight Odyssey
Release: Coming Soon
Did I finish the demo? No
Okay, remember how I said Moonstone Island drowns in its own mechanics? Jumplight Odyssey drowned itself and me in its mechanics.
A roguelite colony sim in space, Jumplight Odyssey doesn't hold back. As soon as you start, you've got dozens upon dozens of citizens, a huge spaceship to manage, off-ship explorations to complete, supplies to manage -- it's a lot. I'm not covering all of it. These things are covered lightly and quickly as the tutorial progresses. I was lightheaded with confusion within ten minutes.
Typically, you might expect colony management sims to start with a couple colonists and one or two buildings. Jumplight Odyssey, by virtue of the fact you start on one, complete ship, has a lot going on pretty much immediately. My thought is that Jumplight Odyssey might have bee less overwhelming if we'd started maybe on a damaged ship with limited crew and resources that needed to be built back up. As it stands though, I can only recommend this for the experienced colony sim fan who already gets all these mechanics and wants to be jumped into the deep end immediately. I don't think I'll be buying it.
Very cool 70s sci-fi anime aesthetic, though!
2.5/5 Space Princess Captains
Baladins
Release: 2024
Did I finish the demo? Yes
I didn't really have an idea of what Baladins was going to be before I opened it, and yet it was exactly what I wanted it to be.
Baladins is a an adorable CYOA co-op RPG. It has the vibe of a lighthearted D&D session, right down to the little papercraft aesthetics. The writing was charming and funny, and the mechanics were simple and satisfying. I played Baladins all on my own, controlling all four of the possible player characters. This was pretty fun, but I think Baladins' real potential is going to be as a little party game. The short sessions and simple gameplay mean I can see myself playing this with a few friends or even with my family, as I think my non-gamer mom wouldn't have any trouble picking it up.
Baladins isn't something I see myself pouring dozens of hours into, but I definitely see myself grabbing it soon after release to pick up every now and again when I'm looking for something cute to play with a small group. It's exactly what it needed to be.
5/5 Papercraft Player Tokens
VIDEOVERSE
Release: August 7, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
VIDEOVERSE has some really charming ideas and aesthetics. I get what VIDEOVERSE is trying to do, and I think it more or less does some of what it wants to do successfully. The feeling of browsing through forums, posting online, and making friends across the world - that was all there. The vibe was right, and it was fun enough to play.
That said, I think the demo fails as a game demo. Though it did a decent enough job of showing off the basic gameplay and the visual novel elements, VIDEOVERSE failed to draw me far enough into its story to entice me to buy the full game. It wasn't a bad story, but when the market is completely saturated with unique visual novels, VIDEOVERSE failed to show me why I should care about its specific story. Even if we're only talking about other demos from this experiment, there's no universe where I can see myself playing VIDEOVERSE instead of Goodbye Volcano High or TOUCHSTARVED (which we'll talk about in just a bit.) I don't know if VIDEOVERSE is a game I'd like, but I do know the demo failed to make me want to find out. If you're really hungry for some early fan forum nostalgia, consider looking into Videoverse. Or take Alex's suggestion and just play Hypnospace Outlaw. Either way.
2.5/5 Likes On My Fanart
Laika: Aged Through Blood
Release: Coming Soon
Did I finish the demo? No
So, when I saw Laika during Games Fest, it was a real 'what? oh my god' moment. It looked so weird! And cool! It's a stylish metroidvania (or motorvania, as they call it) where you play as a coyote mom on a motorcycle with a gun riding through a gritty western post-apocolyptic landscape while looking after your young daughter. And despite the gore and grit of it all, the art style wasn't ugly on purpose! (A thing I don't universally hate but find it often poorly done.) In fact, it looked great!
Trouble was, it's not really my genre. I'm not a complete stranger to more action-focused games, but metroidvanias in particular are pretty out of my wheelhouse. I was expecting to love Laika's concepts and style but find nothing for me in the actual gameplay.
Imagine my surprise and delight when the game was SO FUCKING FUN. Don't get me wrong, I found it stupid difficult, but once my fingers started getting used to pulling off all those wild flips and gunplay maneuvers, it was so satisfying and smooth. Even failures felt more like opportunities to do it better a second time instead of real failures. I never felt more than mildly frustrated, even when I failed at certain spots again and again. The movement is so well-implemented, the motorcycle feels so good to ride, and the bullet time makes the gunplay manageable and AWESOME feeling. Laika might be out of my wheelhouse, but no doubt I'll be grabbing it as soon as I can.
5/5 Adorable Baby Coyotes (With Guns)
The Star Named Eos
Release: Coming Soon
Did I finish the demo? Yes
I have never played a game that didn't explicitly market itself as an escape room game that felt more like an escape room. I am not good at escape rooms or puzzles in general, really, as mentioned in the Venba portion. If I'd been playing The Star Named Eos by myself, I think I'd have given up within 10 - 15 minutes. Luckily, I happened to be streaming with a group of friends, and rubbing my one brain cell against theirs did allow us to complete the demo.
It had some interesting puzzles, the graphics were pretty enough, and I thought the general concept of solving puzzles to build scenes that match photographs you're given was an interesting one. The Star Named Eos is not a bad game. It's not a game for me! I won't be playing it! In fact, out of everything I played, I think the Star Named Eos was the one I liked the least without having any actual major complaints about. I think it does well what it wants to do, and I definitely recommend you check it out if you like puzzle games or escape rooms.
4/5 Photos From Mom
Gord
Release: August 17, 2023
Did I finish the demo? No
I had a lot of surprises through this whole experience, but Gord might have been the biggest one. Gord is a colony sim/RTS/survival/management game. I hadn't really looked into it at all before playing the demo, and I'd been assuming it would be a kind of generic gritty fantasy game with some mediocre survival sim elements.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Gord has a really strong identity and aesthetic viewpoint! It was nice to play a really solid colony sim after how overwhelmed and annoyed I felt playing Jumplight Odyssey. In terms of looks, it got a lot of comparisons to Darkest Dungeon from my friends, and I think that feels about right. Gritty and grungey looking, but not in an intentionally ugly way. Not pretty, exactly, but aesthetically strong.
Limiting myself to roughly 30 minute sessions of each demo, I didn't play nearly as much of Gord as I might have liked to. Still, what small portion I did play, I was impressed with how easy it was to pick up the building mechanics and understand what I needed to do to keep my citizens healthy.
I'm particularly interested in how the story's going to play out in the full game. You take the role of a king's agent who's been put of charge of a local tribe. In the tutorial, you find yourself sort of pulled between a nobleman who's accompanied you and the tribe's previous leader. The nobleman clearly wants to wring the situation out for whatever value he can get for the king, whereas the tribe's leader urges you towards a path that will put his people first. I'm curious if Gord will have a branching story or not. The nobleman you're with and the king you work for are clearly meant to be rather villainous, and the game gives you a lot of sympathy for your new citizens. I'm curious if there's going to be seperate paths for a heroic rebel route and a more villainous route, or if it'll be more linear. Either way I'm looking forward to beheading our evil king.
5/5 Scary Forests
TOUCHSTARVED
Release: TBA
Did I finish the demo? No
This demo fest was a real win for visual novels with titles in all capitals.
TOUCHSTARVED is a dark romance visual novel that promises your choices will lead you to either 'gothic romance' or 'blood-curdling horror'. Though I played only a little of TOUCHSTARVED, I was actually impressed by how much it committed to that idea even within the first half hour. While, yes, the men you can potentially romance in this game are all sexy and are all dressed in cunty little outfits, two important aspects for visual novel love interests, I was honestly more enthralled by the horror aspect. TOUCHSTARVED was BRUTAL.
Gore, guts, dismemberment, disembowling - this game opens with a BANG. There was one particularly disgusting line about a person's body coming apart like 'wet paper'. That one stuck with me. I was impressed by how scary the horror writing was, genuinely. I think visual novels doing horror sometimes tend to either lean into irony, leading to cutesy games with scary monster protagonists, or they try to do horror genuinely but shy away from their games being actually scary. If I'm playing a romantic horror visual novel, I don't want the horror to stem from a toxic relationship with a fuckboy demon, I want terrifying monsters tearing people to shreds as a flavorful background element to a fufilling relationship with a demon.
Also you can play gay, so that's a plus. I will be purchasing TOUCHSTARVED.
5/5 Disembowlments
Lakeburg Legacies
Release: July 20, 2023
Did I finish the demo? Yes
Lots of W's for city management sims. Lakeburg Legacies was a lot of fun! Imagine an extremely cute city management sim that's also a matchmaking sim. Your goal is to set your citizens up in happy and compatible relationships that will keep all your citizens in a good mood and having kids to populate your town. It's a unique but fairly straightforward concept, or so I thought.
What really caught me off guard was the amount of drama in Lakeburg! Despite my best attempts to set everyone up in loving marriages, the people of Lakeburg were DESPERATE to have affairs and get divorced. And I loved it! There was some really great comedy and excitement in seeing my citizens homewrecking and fucking their relationships up. At one point when I was playing off stream, two women, one of my long term married couples with multiple children, had a cheating scandal and got divorced, and when I say I gasped.
I think Lakeburg Legacies does what it wants to do really well, while still managing to have some surprises in store. I'm very excited to see all the features and storylines available in the full release!
5/5 Epic Divorce Women
Houseflipper 2
Release: 2023
Did I finish the demo? No
I am a huge fan of Houseflipper. I have about 74 hours logged in it on Steam. Which might not sound like a lot, but you must keep in mind that the game gives me wicked motion sickness, a thing that I'm willing to put up with because I enjoy renovating those virtual houses that much. With that in mind, I had a perfect vision of what I wanted Houseflipper 2 to be. That is to say: Houseflipper, but better optimized with improved graphics and quality of life changes. That's all I wanted Houseflipper 2 to be, but I was trying to temper my expectations.
What a delight that Houseflipper 2 was exactly what I wanted. It gave me all of the same hot house renovating action but with more aesthetically pleasing graphics and quality of life changes above and beyond what I thought to even consider. Gone are the days of repetitive motion injuries from painting and knocking down walls. Everything is so much faster and simpler in Houseflipper 2, and it felt incredible. Nothing is taken away, however. In fact, your options for renovation are more far-reaching and powerful than ever before. There's really not much to say beyond that, and yet I can't even begin to describe how pleased I was with the direction of Houseflipper 2. I'm eager to grab a copy when it comes out.
5/5 Rolls of Painter's Tape
And that about does it, folks! I had an absolute ball playing all these demos, and I definitely want to do it again next year. How about y'all? Are you excited for any of these? I'd love to hear about it! Drop me a line in the comments below or in the Discord or on Twitch, both of which you can find in my Linktree in the about! I'd especially love to hear if you're excited for any of the ones I didn't enjoy. That's my favorite thing to hear about!
See y'all next time!