Demo Disc #11: The Demon Disc
Greetings, digital nomads!
I have a confession to make. I had planned to write a spooky Hallowe’en themed newsletter this week. But between a particularly intense workweek and, I’ll admit, general tiredness following the Next Fest marathon, I ran out of time to do any demo hunting. In fact, I was just about to send out a mass email apologising in advance for the lack of a newsletter.
But then came a knock at my door.
I went downstairs and opened it, revealing a slim, pallid man leaning against the doorway’s narrow alcove, sheltering from the torrid rain. Clad in a plaid shirt and stonewashed jeans, he sported a neatly trimmed black beard waxed to a point.
He introduced himself as Brian E. Elzebub, itinerant games journalist. He explained he was travelling door-to-door looking for work, and asked if I had any Roblox guides or Helldivers 2 news posts that I might need assistance writing up. I passingly mentioned my struggles with the newsletter, and he smiled an obsidian smile, stating he happened to be a bit of a horror buff, and would gladly write it on my behalf. All he asked for in exchange was to stay for the night and some food for his troubles. Oh, and I had to sign some sort of reference or something for him; he was a little vague on the details.
Anyway, I told him to get stuffed. I beat Raphael in Baldur’s Gate 3, mate, I’m not falling for your Z-tier demonic pact. Before I gave Brian his marching orders, however, I probed him a little about his horror expertise. To prove his credentials, he told me about a few game demos he’d played recently. What follows are Brian’s recommendations, brazenly stolen by me in time-honoured journalistic fashion.
Butcher’s Creek
Developer: David Szymanski Release: Coming soon
Created by DUSK and Iron Lung designer David Szymanski, Butcher’s Creek is the esteemed indie developer’s take on the sorely underrated Condemned: Criminal Origins. You play an urban explorer/depraved pervert searching the Appalachian forest for a snuff film ring (I was going to write “underground snuff film ring”, but given snuff films don’t tend to be mainstream, we can consider that implied). Shockingly, you discover the forest’s sackcloth-masked murder auteurs aren’t thrilled to have you snooping around, leading to a fight for survival that’s less tooth and nail and more tooth and hammer, with you using the latter to knock out the former from your enemy’s gobs.
Butcher’s Creek straddles the short-form simplicity of Iron lung and the full-fat FPS experience of DUSK, clearly designed as a briefer experience, but with a fairly elaborate combat system. Like Condemned, you can yank pipes from the wall and snatch wooden boards to bludgeon your foes with, to which they react in the same reeling, cursing, tooth-spitting manner of Monolith’s crazed vagrants.
While the combat isn’t quite as strong as Monolith’s work, Butcher’s Creek is nonetheless a delectably unpleasant creation. A fun touch is that your character is canonically naked as he skulks through the demo’s subterranean redbrick warrens, which brings a mechanical implication in the form of puddles of broken glass you must avoid treading on. In addition, the video nasties you collect double up as both expendable saves and cumulative health boosters, forcing you to choose between maintaining your progress and a fatter health bar.
Download the Butcher’s Creek demo here.
Is This Game Trying to Kill Me?
Developer: Stately Snail Release: 13 November 2024
If you’re looking for a Hallowe’en game that’s spooky in a way that’s more fun than traumatic, then Brian suggested giving this demo a whirl. Is This Game Trying to Kill Me is a horror-themed escape room with the fun conceit of being two games in one. Your character is trapped inside a log cabin adorned with various oddments and doodads, in the centre of which is an old-timey beige PC running a top-down, 2D adventure game.
The gimmick, much like Daniel Mullins’ masterful Inscryption, is that the cabin and the game on the PC are linked. Tell your 2D character to stick their hand on an iron spike on a plinth, and bloody symbols will appear on the wall to your right, which in turn helps you solve a puzzle inside the adventure game.
Of course, there are ways to get the puzzles wrong, and when you do get them wrong, well, who could say what happens? Maybe the cackling skull man who climbs through the cabin window during the introduction returns to give you a reassuring hug. Maybe the PC turns into a big cake you can ravenously comfort eat. Maybe it’s something else entirely. A good pad swapping demo this, if your PC is set up for pads and, indeed, swapping.
Download the Is This Game Trying to Kill Me? demo here.
Out of Hands
Developer: Game River Release: Q1 2025
Comfortably the weirdest game featured this week, Out of Hands is a psychological horror in which your character wakes up to discover they are made entirely *drumroll* out of hands. What follows is a journey deep into your inner consciousness, via the psychiatrically proven method of card battles and deckbuilding.
The visual style of Out of Hands is unlike any game I’ve seen before, with the cards all presented using collage-based animated photographs of what I presume to be the developer’s own appendages. During battles against enemies that include various incarnations of the developer’s head, you use your left hand and your right hand to draw “weapons” from a deck on the right side of the screen, which are all everyday objects. They include pens for stabbing individual enemies, mugs for whacking multiple enemies at once, and rubbers for throwing at backline enemies as if you’re the naughty kid at school.
It's profoundly odd, but undeniably compelling. Not only is its card battling smartly designed and its digit-al aesthetic genuinely unsettling, Out of Hands also keeps getting weirder. For example, your character has Disco Elysium-style conversations with various aspects of his consciousness, while there’s a secondary layer to the game that is entirely stop-motion animated.
Frankly, Out of Hands has the air of a cabin fever-induced lockdown project that got entirely, er, beyond control. Whether or not that is the case, the world is certainly more interesting for its existence.
Download the Out of Hands demo here.
Sorry We’re Closed
Developer: a la mode games Release: 14 November 2024
A fluorescent psychosexual survival horror about clairvoyance, demons and sandwiches, Sorry We’re Closed would be the strangest game on this list were it not for the presence of Out of Hands. You play as college student Michelle recovering from a recent breakup, when she’s drawn into a demonic realm by a romantically minded fiend who, like most of Lucifer’s minions, has trouble with the word ‘no’.
Besides its loud aesthetic, Sorry We’re Closed presents as a traditional survival horror, fixed camera angles, fixed save points, punch-type text, the works. Yet beneath this retro structure are some distinctly modern ideas. Early in the game, Michelle opens her third eye, which allows her to peer through the demon realm’s misleading veneer. When activated, this ability reveals hidden objects and opens up pathways that are otherwise inaccessible. When you enter combat (which is first-person, in a neat perspective-switch) your third eye also reveals enemy weakspots. But it only works in a limited radius, meaning weakspots only appear when enemies are up close. Clever.
There’s a ton to recommend about Sorry We’re Closed. The stylish mix of grungy Silent Hill-like environments and vividly coloured characters. The sharply written, wickedly cool inhabitants of both your college dorm and the demon realm. The sequence where you feed mouldy sandwiches to a ghost lady in a toilet cubicle. It makes a winningly bizarre first impression.
Download the Sorry We’re Closed demo here.
DEMO OF THE WEEK: DoubleWe
Developer: NightByte Games Release: Coming soon
Between its cardboard cutout NPCs and drab cyberpunk cityscapes, DoubleWe doesn’t look like much to get excited about. Yet lurking behind its unassuming aesthetic is an utterly killer premise. Somewhere among DoubleWe’s civilian rivers is an exact clone of you, and you must identify and eliminate it before it gets to you first.
Each level of the demo spawns you in brownish city block with several dozen papercraft NPCs. Your only starting equipment is a mirror, using which you quickly memorise your gender, hairstyle, outfit and so forth, thus enabling you to identify your clone. You must then find a weapon, such as a knife, a pistol, or a bomb, which are stashed in randomly placed briefcases across the block. Thus suitably armed, your final task is to spot your clone in the crowd and murder them.
What results is a giddy paranoia generator that resembles a (much simplified) blend of Hitman and Alien: Isolation, where you frantically search the roiling crowd for that monster that’s also your target. Like the games DoubleWe draws from, this produces wonderful emergent moments. Sometimes you’ll think you spotted your clone from the back, but the character turns to reveal themselves to be someone else. Other times, you’ll spy them just as they round a corner, but by the time you’ve turned it they’ll have slipped away. Arguably the best moments are when you spot your clone before you’ve acquired a weapon, and must try to sneak past it or, if it spots you, hastily flee the area before it can shank you with a knife.
It's an idea with enormous potential, such that it shines right through DoubleWe’s rudimentary presentation. The demo also hints at how a full game might iterate on the idea, introducing new wrinkles like police who you need to be careful handling weapons around. Regardless, as a self-contained experience, DoubleWe’s demo is a formidable tension engine.