Demo Disc #17: The ghost of Salad Fingers
Happy new year, digital nomads!
I hope you all enjoyed an excellent holiday break. I spent mine getting acquainted with that little-known indie gem Balatro, racking up monstrous Mults by combining Hologram with Blueprint before fattening my deck up like a Christmas goose. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, that's probably a good thing, as it means you haven't been hypnotised by Jimbo and his 150 clown-faced cronies.
2025 eh? We're well into the future now. I won't dwell on the many concerns this particular year brings with, as I'm sure you don't need reminding of them. Besides, there’s plenty to look forward to as well, not least in the world of video games. We're getting a new Nintendo Switch is this year, no doubt with some as-yet unannounced accoutrements (my money's on Mario Kart 9 at launch, and a new 3D Mario by Christmas). There’s also a whole new Monster Hunter which looks set to be massive, a new Doom which rattles right at the top of my personal most wanted, and if you’re very good and eat all your vegetables and go to bed with no fussing, there might even be a new Grand Theft Auto under the next Christmas tree you put up.
None of this is to mention the vast, virtual charcuterie board of video game demos to pick at, though for a while it seemed we’d be starting with the olives. I’d hoped a couple of weeks off would give the demo stocks adequate time to replenish. But the cupboard was practically bare when I opened it on Monday. Consequently, a couple of the demos featured from this week are from deeper in the demo mines. But a strong entry for Demo of the Week landed at the very last minute.
COP BASTARD
Developer: targim Release: tba
I was on the fence about whether to include COP BASTARD in this week’s newsletter. On the one hand, the demo is in a shape I would describe as rough and not especially ready. On the other hand, it’s called COP BASTARD, a name that truly earns its all-caps.
This is an unapologetic love letter to John Woo’s Hard Boiled specifically, scribed with such deranged affection that Hard Boiled is likely peering through the window blinds to check if the sender is hanging around outside the house. You play a pistol-toting illegitimate lawman trapped in an apartment building filled with criminal goons, and the demo very simply has you fight your way out.
COP BASTARD remains some distance from being a great FPS. The shooting is basic, your polygonal enemies appear to have been modelled with a mallet, and the voice acting is abominable (although you could argue this is true to its inspirations, given the state of Hard Boiled’s original English dub). What it does get right, however, is the astonishing bursts of particles that accompany any John Woo action scene. Like Max Payne, Strangehold, and while not in quite the same vein, Astro Bot, there's a simple yet undeniable joy to be had in making bits and pieces fly everywhere. So even though COP BASTARD is simplistic and unrefined, I cannot deny that shooting fire extinguishers to make rooms explode in a cloud of stuff warmed my heart.
Download the COP BASTARD demo here.
Deck of Haunts
Developer: Mantis Release: Q1 2025
Deck of Haunts ghosts into the newsletter with an intriguing synthesis of ideas. Blending management simulation with deck-building, Deck of Haunts puts you in charge of a haunted house that has a love-hate relationship with humans, insofar as it hates their existences and loves how they taste.
A game of Deck of Haunts is split into days, with each day witnessing a group of pesky encroach upon your abode to attack your house’s heart (Deck of Haunts takes the phrase 'home is where the heart is', rather literally.) To combat these trespassing fleshbags, you can play cards to trigger spooky abilities that will drive them insane or kill them outright.
There are several interesting ideas at play here. If you eliminate all the humans in a round, not only do you get to add more cards to your deck, you also get to expand the house, adding new rooms and making the building more complex for humans to navigate. This is important as humans move one step closer to your heart at the end of each turn, so the more mazelike you can make the structure, the better. In addition, alongside playing abilities that drain sanity and health, you can also play cards that randomly teleport humans around the house, or raise “tension” which makes abilities deal more damage.
It's a cool concept. But it does have one major flaw, namely that the experience is far too staid. The humans who investigate your house seem to have voided their personality in anticipation of their impending doom, and as such your tormenting of them feels too much like pulling the legs off a spider. I can't help but think of the forgotten noughties gem Ghost Master, which boasted a similar concept but executed it with that Bullfrog-style quirky humour, and wonder whether Deck of Haunts wouldn't benefit from that kind of framing.
Download the Deck of Haunts demo here.
Tom the Postgirl
Developer: Oopsie Daisies Release: Coming Soon
If you grew up in the noughties and enjoyed the macabre Internet animations of David Firth, Tom the Postgirl will be instantly familiar to you. This peculiar animated snoop ‘em up has a near-identical vibe to Firth's serial shorts like Salad Fingers, but replaces the Internet's favourite rusty spoon aficionado with a Red-riding hood-esque courier who has a penchant for peeping into windows.
The demo guides players through five interactive scenes, each of which involves delivering a package to a building. Before you deliver the parcel, you can peek into both the building and the package to see what's inside. Alternatively, you can just drop off you goods without looking into either.
Needless to say, if you choose the former path, you're going to see some strange, often twisted sights. Like Salad Fingers, Tom the Postgirl’s strength is how it straddles the line between the surreal and the sinister, and how it knows when to lean hard one way or the other for maximum effect. As an interactive experience it does as little as it can get away with, but I nonetheless enjoyed its nostalgia trip to a time when the Internet was cursed in a more innocent fashion.
Download the Tom the Postgirl demo here.
White Knuckle
Developer: Dark Machine Games Release: TBA
White knuckle has much in common with Demo Disc favourite Lorn’s Lure. It’s a climbing game set in a sprawling, rusting, tetanus-abundant substructure, which you need to escape from via the medium of tricky first-person platforming. But there are two key differences that convinced me to recommend White Knuckle alongside Rubeki Games’ indie masterpiece.
First, it’s representation of climbing is more mechanically sophisticated than in Lorn's Lure, which is more of a puzzle-platformer that features climbing axes. You climb by pressing alternate mouse buttons to grip with your left and rights hands, using your own's body's momentum to swing yourself up to higher platforms. This is coupled with a secondary system for creating ad-hoc handholds, such as placing and hammering pitons into the substructure’s concrete, and javelining iron rebars into the walls to create swinging points.
Second, White Knuckle sticks a middle finger up to Lorn Lure’s atmospheric ambiguities, revealing itself to be a full-blown horror game. As you ascend, you’ll encounter strange, fleshy lifeforms that crisscross your climbing path with spiny tendril, and they’re nothing compared to what rises from below. It’s the pop-punk cover of Lorn's Lure's moody sixties classic, gnarlier and trashier, but fun in its own way.
Download the White Knuckle demo here.
Demo of the Week: Locator
Developer: Empty Exhibit Release: TBA
Pinpointing the Demo of the Week slot with surgical precision, Locator is a sci-fi detective game inspired by the location-identifying browser smash Geoguessr. Locator puts you on the trail of extraplanetary archaeologist Abigail Lidari, who has crash landed on an alien world and subsequently gone missing. Using Lidari’s records, photographs, and an overhead map, you must trace her journey across the planet, and the discoveries she made along the way.
It's a brilliant premise, and Locator executes it well. While the game is understandably easier than Geoguessr, as the world it presents significantly smaller than the actual Earth, Locator borrows Obra Dinn’s trick of requiring you to get three solutions right before they lock in. Moreeover, as the story progresses, the clues become less direct. One puzzle involves charting Abigail’s movements through a dark hall filled with strange statues, which you do by cross-referencing the names Abigail has given the statues with their locations on the map.
Even so, the conundrums won't challenge anyone vaguely acquainted with puzzlers. What gives Locator its momentum is the story it unfurls as you play. Abigail’s unabashed enthusiasm for weird space stuff makes her an excellent hang even in note form, while the sci-fi world Empty Exhibit presents genuinely strange, like viewing the island in Myst through Google Maps. A splendid demo to kick off 2025, even if it does have a weaker title than COP BASTARD.