Demo Disc #5: The Next Fest Thing – Day 1
Greetings, digital nomads!
He’s been! Multiple reported sightings of Jolly Saint Gabe came in over the wire last night, as he arced across the skies on his giant Steam Deck to bring partially-wrapped presents to PC gamers worldwide. Excited onlookers spied him above Reykjavík, Edinburgh, Oslo, Bucharest, and sailing through the constellation Orion.
What delights did he leave beneath our demo tree, I wonder? Did his red-nosed antlion eat the scientist we left out? Hush now, lest we wake mum and dad. Let’s creep downstairs and have a peek.
The Shaman’s Ark
Developer: Amoritz Games Release: 2025
If you like the strange, moody worlds of soulslikes but struggle with the combat, the Shaman’s Ark might be for you. Said Ark is an ancient, derelict sanctuary, shrouded in shadow and overgrown with glowing crystals as it is slowly consumed by a force called the Abyss. All very Fromsoft in its atmosphere, but there’s a crucial twist. The Shaman’s Ark replaces the hyper-twitchy combat typical of the studio’s games with a more formalised rhythm-action system.
Now, there’s a case to be made that Souls games are closet rhythm actioners anyway, but The Shaman’s Ark at once exposes and simplifies this buried trait of the genre. You no longer need to worry about positioning or intuit the timing of your opponent’s moves; the game does all that for you. All you need concern yourself with is when and how to beat your drum, your shaman’s main weapon and exploration tool. When combat commences with one of the Ark’s abyssal denizens, you hit your drum according to the appropriate on-screen prompt to strike enemies, block their attacks, and unleash more distinct abilities.
It's a surreal, hypnotic experience. You trudge through the game’s decaying landscapes, thumping your drum to commence battle with foes, then semi-consciously follow the ritual of combat to a throat-sung soundtrack layered with your own dynamic percussion. The demo lets you explore a reasonable chunk of the Ark, exploring several areas and battling multiple bosses.
Download The Shaman's Ark's demo here.
Silent Sadie
Developer: Kapra Games Release: Tba
I love a side-scrolling platformer with a powerful aesthetic, and Silent Sadie’s playable ode to the cinematic arts of Chaplin et al is precisely that. But what truly makes this game sing isn’t its stylish black & white visuals or its artificial film blemishes. It is, appropriately enough, the music.
Sadie’s slapstick adventure across a montage of movie sets is accompanied by a dynamic piano soundtrack that adapts to the events on screen, giving you a splash of sea shanty as you pirouette across a pirate set, before switching to a sneakier score as you slink through a speakeasy. Moreover, Sadie’s own jumps and slides punctuate the performance with a clash of cymbals or a shriek of violin. My favourite flourish is how, when you drop from an especially lofty height, the soundtrack shifts seamlessly into a drumroll.
The platforming itself is pleasingly lithe, with Sadie able to perform an array of acrobatics from springing on trampolines to gliding across gaps with an umbrella. The stealth sections aren’t quite as fun, although I enjoy Sadie’s sneaking animations, glancing to either side as she enters and exits cupboards, and the way she shuffles forward when hiding in a barrel. I do have one big gripe, which is that the sequences where you push boxes around take far too long, and kill the demo’s otherwise propulsive momentum. Otherwise, this is an accomplished and neatly self-contained little escapade, just like the quiet comedies of old.
Download the Silent Sadie demo here.
DEMO OF THE DAY: JUICE
Developer: Colorfiction Release: Tba
I blasted through Juice’s demo in exactly nine minutes, and it was comfortably the best nine minutes of my day. This hallucinatory horror bills itself as a “dual narrative FPS”, and while I’d quibble with the “S” at the end, depending on how pedantic you want to get about what constitutes shooting, everything else is pretty on the money.
That dual narrative sees you play as both a monster rampaging through an unsuspecting city, and a survivor of said monster rampage. Presented in line-drawn monochromatic art that resembles bloodstained back-alley graffiti, the demo’s opening half sees you tearing through train carriages and backstreets as the monster, mulching papercraft humans by the dozen with your tentacled maw. The gore is so thick, and your tentacles so, uh, protrusive, that you can’t clearly see what’s happening on the screen. Instead, you experience the horror of your own actions primarily through the audio, namely the cacophonous screaming of the people you blindly devour.
It's quite astonishing; one is sorely tempted to use the prohibited ‘V’ word typically associated with the rending of virtual flesh. Then, just as you’re wondering whether mindlessly threshing humans is all Juice has to it, the game suddenly switches perspective to a random dude waking up in his filthy apartment and proceeding to clean it. I’m not going to spoil how events proceed from there, but it again relies on canny use of audio to convey a mounting catastrophe, and it is likewise startlingly effective.
It's a rollicking one-two punch of a demo, though I should caution you that it comes with a stark seizure warning, and that, for my experience at least, the mouse sensitivity was massively overclocked. I also suspect Juice will not be the most mechanically sophisticated game when it releases in full, but I’m nonetheless eager to discover where its double-barrelled disaster narrative heads next.