Demo Disc #8: The Next Fest Thing – Day 4
Greetings, digital nomads!
We’ve reached the end of the week, but Next Fest rolls on. Which brings us to a question I had failed to consider; will there be newsletters across the weekend? After some consideration, I have decided that there will be a newsletter this weekend. I’ll be doing one last Next Fest roundup that will drop on Saturday. But as the benevolent deity of this small yet devout creed, on Sunday I must rest (by which I mean clean the house I have neglected because I’ve been too busy writing demo recommendations).
For now though, there are more demos to dive into. Today’s newsletter includes a genre I haven’t featured yet, and a game I thought was from a genre I hadn’t featured yet, but proved to be something else entirely. Intrigued? Read on.
Symphonia
Developer: Sunny Peak Release: Tba
Symphonia is a 2D precision platformer, but wait pleasedon’tclosethewebpagejustyet. I know we’ve had a few of these lately (they demo well because they’re immediate and easily grasped), but I’m recommending this one because of its setting. Symphonia takes place in a fallen musical metropolis, like Bioshock’s Rapture if Andrew Ryan had been super into Mozart instead of the crackpot theories of Ayn Rand. You play as a masked, clef-haired violinist who is brought back from the dead to save his silent city through the twin powers of music and jumping. A fiddler on the hoof, if you will.
Aside from the gorgeous 2D art, which conveys the decayed grandeur of Symphonia in luscious detail, there are a couple of interesting quirks to the platforming. Not only do you play your violin to activate switches, which is oddly moving as it echoes through the hushed city, you also use your violin’s bow to flick yourself off the floor and perform an extra-high jump. You can do this multiple times in quick succession, hopping between hazards like a flea. This, combined with a system where you can spring yourself off cushions, makes Symphonia’s platforming pleasantly nimble, and in the demo at least, challenging without being too difficult.
The demo is a tad on the short side; I would have liked another ten minutes or so to see it evolve further. Moreover, I’m surprised the platforming is not more musically infused given the theme, though perhaps that develops over the course of the game. In any case, it looks stunning, feels great beneath the fingers, and promises a distinctive adventure. More than enough to make it worth a try.
Download the Symphonia demo here.
Spirit X Strike
Developer: MAICHA Studio Release: 2024
Spirit X Strike looks and plays like a PS2 game. The good news is that PS2 game is God Hand. This is an outwardly ridiculous yet inwardly technical 3D brawler that will make you feel sublime when you click with it and have you chewing your controller if you don’t.
There’s a story that the demo summarises in one pre-game line of text. But to be honest I forgot what it said the moment the fighting started. While the basic punches and kicks of Spirit X Strike are easy enough to grasp, the system soon starts layering in complexity. Jump attacks break enemy guards. Dodging ranged attacks will let you rush that distant foe. Parrying certain melee attacks will let you respond with an instant special move.
It's tricky, and your enemies give no quarter, happy to bounce you between their attacks like a pugilistic pinball. But when once you’re familiar with how enemies attack and got into the flow of combat, it’s enormous fun. Performing a leap kick to break an enemy’s guard, tenderising their stomach like a pork loin until they stagger, then grabbing them by the waist and piledriving them into the ground, it isn’t so much off the chain as whipping you round the head with it.
The demo lets you fight through a small desert village (with optional tutorial prompts) culminating in a boss fight which was frankly far too hard. Spirit X Strike would benefit from balancing and a good spray of polish (sometimes your attack animations don’t trigger where they should, for example) but at this stage I’ll trade a little roughness for something this propulsive and satisfying. Play with a pad if you can.
Download the Spirit X Strike demo here.
DEMO OF THE DAY: Scarlet Deer Inn
Developer: Attu Games Release: Tba
I’ve wanted to feature an adventure game into the newsletter for a while, simply because I like each issue to be as varied as possible. But none of the adventure game I’ve tried have demo’d particularly well. This could simply be a quirk of the genre. It’s hard to encapsulate a narrative-heavy game in its opening half-hour. But a lot of them are, dare I say it, quite tiresomely written, either having far too much dialogue or attempting the zany Monkey Island shtick while lacking the comedic chops.
I thought I’d cracked it with Scarlet Deer Inn, which starts out similarly to 2022’s beloved detective mystery Pentiment. Set in a medieval Czech village with splendid hand-embroidered art, you play as a young woman running errands around the village and getting to know the locals. Like Pentiment, it is deeply grounded in its historical setting. Also like Pentiment, it is excellently written. The dialogue is effortlessly naturalistic, while the characters all feel rounded and deeply human, from the old woman you visit who humblebrags about her doctor son and plays on her age to get you to do jobs for her, to the kids gleefully hunting for slugs in the village street. It feels like a real community, a swirling mix of discord, gossip, backbiting, and genuine neighbourly care.
Between the great character work and the presence of an inventory system, I thought I’d found the winning adventure game I was searching for. But it turns out Scarlet Deer Inn is as much a platformer as it is a narrative experience, with the character exchanges giving way to jumping puzzles halfway through the demo.
So why is Scarlet Deer Inn demo of the week? Well, partly because the jumping puzzles are fun too. But mostly because Scarlet Deer Inn is also something else – weird. Without wanting to spoil anything, the story takes a couple of turns that I did not expect at all, and as I played I found myself leaning closer and closer to my monitor. I was genuinely annoyed when the demo ended, not least because it’s a bit of a cliffhanger. Scarlet Deer Inn’s embroidered art is lovely, but the aesthetic is honestly the least interesting thing about it. If you decide to try this out, go in with as little foreknowledge as possible.