Demo Disc #12: Get some rest there and lay some eggs
Greetings, digital nomads!
Apologies in advance to those of you who prefer your games on the less side of lethal, as this week’s newsletter is a little heavy on spilled claret. While I try to maintain a healthy balance of the four humours in Demo Disc, there was an unavoidable sanguinity in the demos released over the last few days. Hence, please excuse me for adding more red into a week that has already seen far too much of it.
One tiny but important slice of housekeeping before we roll on to the demos. There will be no newsletter next week. That’s because once again I am away for most of it, visiting the States for the first time in many years (what timing!). The good news is this will be the last interruption in the newsletter’s flow until the end of the year, unless I am struck down by an illness or a bus or assassins dispatched by my innumerable foes.
On we go.
Glaciered
Developer: Studio Snowblind Release: Tba
Glaciered may sound like a condition brought on by a stag trip to Iceland, but it is in fact a sort of cross between Ecco the Dolphin and Dark Souls. Fittingly, that’s the exact kind of idea you might come up with while utterly glaciered in Iceland.
Set 65 million years in the future when Earth is covered in a sheet of ice, you play a member of a race of creatures called Tuai, who are the evolutionary descendants of birds. Your Tuai is on a quest to find a bunch of powerful elder Tuai before they’re gobbled up by some malign force I’ve forgotten the name of despite the game’s insistent repetition of it, which doesn’t bode well for the distinctiveness of the plot.
Story gubbins aside, this is a familiar mix of tricky third-person combat and attritional, checkpoint-based progression, with the twist that it all takes place underwater. The aquatic setting facilitates a lovely movement system, with your Tuai spinning and whirling through the water as they propel themselves forward with a powerful dolphin kick. The combat has plenty of flair too considering you’re battering a bunch of fish, although I found it tricky to control.
Mainly, I’m recommending this for the weirdness of the premise and its pretty oceanic world, although the demo only provides a tiny slice of that. It’s also another game that frontloads itself with rather ponderous dialogue. Its wittering did furnish me with the title for this week’s newsletter, though, so I suppose I should be thankful.
Download the Glaciered demo here.
Acts of Blood
Developer: Eskil Team Release: Tba
When I heard about Acts of Blood, I thought it would be a shoe-in for Demo of the Week. This third-person brawler is directly inspired by the two best martial-arts movies of the 21st century, The Raid and its sequel. Set in Indonesia’s capital Bandung, you play a moody pugilist called Hendra who, in standard martial-arts movie fashion, is seeking vengeance for the murder of his family.
The demo starts with you kitting out the absurdly ripped Hendra in unassuming black and grey streetwear, which is weirdly effective at pumping you up for some gnarly back-alley brawls. And the combat certainly has all the right component parts, with you pummelling through your opponent’s guards in rapid-fire attacks, snatching discarded baseball bats and iron pipes to bludgeon enemies with, before putting them on the ground with grisly finishing moves.
However, I don’t think the combat is quite there yet. Currently, it feels more like I’m playing one of the Arkham games with a blood mod, rather than feeling truly evocative of Gareth Evans’ films. It simply isn’t sharp or impactful enough, although admittedly it’s showcasing an early part of the game. What doesn’t help is your enemies are entirely expressionless while you brutally murder them, whereas everyone in the Raid films is constantly gurning and grimacing. The brilliance of those films is not just the choreography of the action, but how they make you feel every expertly delivered blow.
Taken away from that context, though, Acts of Blood is a perfectly fun brawler. The demo lets you play through the first level, and also provides an endless arena mode if you just want to get straight to the action.
Download the Acts of Blood Demo here.
GLUM
Developer: CinderCat Games Release: 2025
I assume GLUM was conceived when its developer played Devolver Digital’s fluorescent precision shooter Anger Foot, then wrote a little note on their ideas pad that simply read “needs more foot”. This goofy first-person punter sees you play the reprobate minion of a fantasy dark overlord, who is forced into the limelight when his master is kidnapped by an even darker overlord.
Now, I should stress that this demo is in pretty rudimentary shape, with a placeholder UI, sparse environments and a general lack of refinement. But I can’t help but admire its pure dedication to foot-based action. Yes, you can boot enemies Dark Messiah style into conveniently placed deathtraps. But you can also pick up objects like planks of wood or axes or chickens and drop-kick them at enemies, tossing the object into the air manually and then hoofing it forward. You even use your killing foot to perform wall-jumps, leaping at the wall and then propelling yourself backward to access higher platforms.
GLUM’s knockabout fun is sufficient that I was happy to put up with its roughshod level design and hit-and-miss humour (although my goblin fella yelling ‘Parkour!’ every time he bounces off a wall did make me laugh). The demos lets you play through the tutorial, then provides you with a large open around to kick about in.
Crown Gambit
Developer: Wild Wits Release: 2025
I don’t think I’ve ever winced while playing a card-battler before, but there’s a particular move you can pull off during one of Crown Gambit’s fights which looks like it’d give you a papercut for the ages. The way the card lifts, tilts, and slices with its corner is arguably nastier than anything Acts of Blood currently conjures.
The pleasing physicality of Crown Gambit’s card combat is what bought me into the demo, but was kept around by its grim, hardnosed storytelling. It sees you control three young paladins travelling through a fantasy kingdom riven by war and political strife. The writing takes the world deeply seriously, allowing what humour it has to bubble up naturally from the situation, while the characters are distinctive in their voices without relying on one-dimensional quirks. The Ink-powered dialogue delivers plenty of meaningful-feeling choices too, letting you choose which characters should respond to specific discussion points, as well as confronting you with decisions that affect how your adventure unfolds.
This is a meaty demo, delving a good couple of hours into its opening act to provide some sense of how its card combat evolves. It isn’t the most radical interpretation of the genre, but its style combined with the sharp storytelling are more than enough to make Crown Gambit worth a go.
Download the Crown Gambit demo here.
DEMO OF THE WEEK: Worship
Developer: Chasing Rats Games Release: Coming Soon
Worship unashamedly takes a leaf from Cult of the Lamb’s brainwashing bible, but I think this game might be slightly better at synthesising its systems with the idea of running a wayward religion. Like Cult of the Lamb, you play the willing thrall of a malevolent deity just desperate to bring about Armageddon. But instead of serving your master through rogue-like runs of twitchy combat, you do it via a Pikmin-style amassing of followers.
The way you collect followers is grimly novel too. When you encounter a group of doughy-white innocents larking about, you stab a knife into your hand and walk around the group, drawing a circle of blood. Then you slam your hands on the ground to enact the conversion rite, transforming those alabaster waifs into jet black minions.
Once under your control, your minions can be commanded to attack enemies in the world and pick up objects. You grow your master’s power by retrieving relics from the world (all of which are carried by your minions, naturally). Your reward for service is additional rites that you cast by drawing different blood-shapes on the ground, which include execution rites and the ability to transform enemy corpses into relics for your master.
Like Cult of the Lamb and Dungeon Keeper before it, Worship is a delightfully devious aberration of the genre it draws from. The design is filled with pleasing flourishes, like how painting blood-symbols drains your health, and the fact that pressing the dodge button also instructs your minions to dodge in the same direction. The demo provides a tutorial and a single, open-ended level to experience, culminating in a boss fight. While the shape-drawing system is generous at recognising your terrible stabs at a circle, I’d nonetheless recommend playing Worship with a pad.