Demo Disc #10: Can I offer you an egg in this dying time?
Greetings, digital nomads!
Apologies for the slight tardiness of this week’s newsletter. Between a family visit and a review project that took longer than planned, my schedule has been upended on multiple fronts. But I’m here, only mildly breathless and bedraggled, my top secret dossier of demos safely stored in my briefcase.
Today’s demos are a bit of an odd assortment, including a couple of Next Fest leftovers, a trial or two with imminent launches, and a very specific throwback to the one glinting gem from the dark age of a certain sci-fi megafranchise. These somewhat eclectic choices stem partly from the demostream running a little dry after last week’s Next Fest deluge, and partly because I want to save a couple of things I tried for next week’s newsletter.
On that subject, expect the next Demo Disc to be a more thematically consistent affair than usual. And provided next week goes more smoothly than this one, it will also arrive a day early. I imagine that’ll be enough to clue you in on what might lurk ahead.
Eve of Destruction
Developer: Lost Satellite Studio Release: Tba
Eve of Destruction almost lost me with its waffling introduction, a pet peeve that has been overly prodded by many of the demos I’ve tried. But I decided to stick around to see what lay beyond the tedious lore dump, and it turned out to be an enjoyably strange and beautifully animated platformer.
You assume the role of Eve, a gremlin-like creature wearing what looks like a poncho, whose impish appearance apparently belies a great hidden power. A power which, according to the game’s, you can use for good or ill in its setting of the Spirit Realm.
This morality system doesn’t come to the fore much in the demo, but what does is Eve of Destruction’s excellent art direction and nimble, challenging platforming. I particularly like the disconcertingly anatomical enemies, including floating starfish who essentially attack you by farting, to wormy bipedal creatures who can extend their cylindrical bodies in quite an alarming fashion. The keyboard controls are horrendous, so play with a pad if you can.
Download the Eve of Destruction demo here.
Deathgrip
Developer: Reclaim Interactive Release: 2024
Deathgrip boldly takes to the stage with the question “What if you combined Wipeout with Star Wars Episode One: Racer?”. To this a member of the audience heckles “Aren’t those games pretty similar anyway?” causing Deathgrip to tug at its collar as it stammers a response.
This is an unashamedly straightforward sci-fi racer in which you pilot a pair of massive jet engines strapped to a saddle around an entirely unsuitable environment for such a vehicle, careening through canyons and gulleys at suicidal speeds. And just in case this wasn’t dangerous enough, all these “hovercrafts” (as they’re known in-game) are equipped with guns, missiles and deployable traps.
Simple Deathgrip may be, but it’s also undeniably fun, successfully conveying the sense that you’re always only just in control of your vehicle. It also borrows Episode One: Racer’s smartest gimmick that pushing your afterburner for too long risks carries the risk of violent explosion. And yes, you can tilt the hovercraft on its side to slot through terrifyingly tiny gaps.
The demo lets you race around four tracks in both versus and time-trial modes, offering three different vehicles to pick from. I’m not sure how much longevity the full game would have, but the demo’s a perfectly enjoyable arcade blast.
Download the Deathgrip demo here.
To Kill a God
Developer: Glitch Factory Release: Tba
To Kill a God is basically skill tree: the game, a roguelike built from quickfire combat rounds that each let you progress one step along the strands of an enormous web of abilities.
The demo lets you play as one of what will be four available classes, namely a horned archer lady called Chassan. At the outset, you select one of four starting skills, such as the ability to shoot a hail of lightning arrows, and a nifty aoe attack called “dragon’s roar”. In each round, you square off against increasing hordes of enemies, after which you get to choose a new piece of equipment and a new passive skill (alongside whatever bonus the node itself unlocks).
To Kill a God could only be simpler if it did the fighting for you, and this was an option for developer Glitch Factory since there’s a whole genre of games that do that now. The fact it doesn’t is perhaps why I found myself oddly fond of it. Said combat’s pretty snazzy too, which always helps.
Download the To Kill a God demo here.
Mindlock: The Apartment
Developer: Roof Cut Media Release: November 2024
Mindlock’s sad sack of a protagonist has my favourite walking animation of any video game character from this year. The slouch, the dangling arms, the sense that every step forward is an effort as colossal as it is futile. I empathise with his Sisyphean shuffle worryingly hard.
This is a point and click adventure (hooray!) about a depressed man called Colin readying himself for another miserable day at work. After getting dressed and planning how to enjoy his morning coffee without the boss telling him off, he’s just about ready to leave his apartment when the front door disappears and things start to get weird.
Mindlock pays due homage to the structure and tone of traditional adventure games, but in a way that feels modern and fresh. The puzzles are streamlined enough so they’re rarely frustrating, while the visible tragedy of Colin’s life lends a gravity to his sarcastic humour that prevents it from feeling stale. I also like how it intersperses the jokes with splashes of horror, a combination the David Firth-like animation lends itself to well.
The demo is a touch shorter than I would like, and there was one annoying puzzle that refused to let me use Colin’s phone as a torch despite the fact this is the fourth most important function of any modern smartphone (the other three being email, camera, and carousel of trauma). Beyond that, though Mindlock offers a pleasing balance of levity and scares.
Download the Mindlock: the Apartment demo here.
DEMO OF THE WEEK: Sulfur
Developer: Perfect Random Release: 28 October 2024
Sulfur is a roguelike first-person shooter in which you play a vengeful priest tracking down the witch who set fire to his church through a subterranean hellworld, using a magical amulet to create a timeloop so he can keep repeating the same day until he achieves his goal. If that pitch isn’t sick enough for you, it also lets you carve up baby goblins with a ninja sword.
Play involves descending through a cave network prowled by gobbos armed with spears and bows, fighting them with a semi-randomised selection of weapons that you collect as you go. If you die, you’ll lose most of what you’ve gathered. But you can use your amulet to return to base early, spending your loot and upgrading your gear while avoiding the inconvenience of the grave.
All familiar stuff, but what makes Sulfur interesting is how it combines a deceptively breezy visual style with utterly gnarly combat. Your goblin foes are disarmingly gleeful as they hop and skip toward you, grinning and giggling like mischievous schoolchildren before lunging viciously at you with their spears (like mischievous boarding schoolchildren). Their froglike, nappy-wearing offspring are adorable too, right up to the point where they try to chew through your ankles.
The natural response to this, of course, is to blast them with your chosen firearm, or to tap the ‘F’ key to slice them with your wakizashi. Either way, all Sulfur’s weapons feel decidedly lethal, and when goblins die, they collapse cartoonishly in vivid red pools of blood, their bones often visible where your bullets or blade pierced their two-dimensional bodies.
It’s at once amusing and shocking, pulling off the juxtaposition of seemingly kid-friendly animation and violence far better than a lot of “adult” cartoons. There are other enjoyable flourishes, such as the surprisingly involved cooking mechanic, where you cook tasty omelettes from cave mushrooms and eggs dropped by your dying enemies. The writing is sharper than you might expect too, particularly the coolly evocative lines of your (apparently sentient) amulet, which summarises the basic premise in some expertly delivered exposition.
It's all very slick and exciting. I’m not typically a fan of shooters that deploy a lot of random generation, as it’s a genre that requires precision craft in its weapon handling and level design. But if the demo is anything to go by, Sulfur might just be the exception to this rule. The full game releases on Monday next week, so if you're interested in trying Sulfur, you might want to grab the demo pronto.