Welcome to the first-ever Demo Dive! The title says it all: the time of demos is back with great force, and more and more developers, especially on the Indie scene, are keen to show off their game ideas without hesitation, offering players demo versions to dip their toes and check if what they are playing is right up their alley. It’s a great way to catch attention and hook potential players on your project before it releases. But of course, there are thousands of games being made at all times, so nobody has time to play and try them all. And that’s how I hope this demo dive, where I share my initial thoughts on some games based on their demos, will help some of you find out about some interesting titles! Without further ado, let’s jump into it.
Trash Goblin
I have a little bit of an issue with the Trash Goblin demo, because in my eyes it commits a grievous crime—it doesn’t show off the game's potential well. Or, at least, I hope that’s the case. Trash Goblin has a lot of charm from the get-go. The visuals are great, and the vibe and atmosphere are very cozy and gentle, but they also have that fun roughness to them. The gameplay loop presented is a rudimentary one, but, to my delightful surprise, it is not a braindead one. Uncovering the knick-knacks from the blocks is never demanding or hard, but there are some fun block types presented that offer a tiny bit of puzzling to the experience while washing the trinkets is almost meditative. It’s a pleasant experience.
But! And that’s a big thing, but the demo is very narrow in scope, and I sure as heck hope that the game has more to offer. There are four spaces within the tiny shop, two of which we’ve seen zero utility so far. There are obviously three types of currency, yet we have no clue what two of them will do for the time being. In short, while I had a good time with the short demo, it really felt like it did not try to hook me up on the game, didn’t show a single ‘oh my’ moment, something to really make me think that yes, I do need to play this game. I am still looking forward to it, but I cross my fingers in hope that there’s just more to it than the systems shown in the demo.
Nonetheless, if you like a gentle game about handling a tiny, cute shop—a little bit of manual labor with very simple but relaxing puzzles—I sure recommend checking it out.
Preserve
Oh my, yet another tile-laying game! This genre is booming as of late, isn’t it? It feels like ten of them come out every month. Preserve, fortunately, mixes a few mechanics in to get out of the box and offer a more unique experience. First of all, we have two kinds of tiles: big ones, with the ‘earth’, the very ground with which we need to connect together in some sensuous fashion, and cards, which are either actions or tiles themselves we’ll be populating our landscape with. As usual, we do that in order to garner points, which we need to keep getting new tiles. Cards… To keep on going and complete our quests and ultimately the given scenario.
It works well to be sure; it is a little bit cerebral but sometimes, unfortunately, in a bit of a frustrating fashion. You never know what hand you will be dealt, and it often feels like the RNG is attuned to mischief, making sure you never get exactly the things you need to make your placements, forcing you to hope for missing bits in future draws or to make suboptimal plays without the gift of foresight. Getting a river quest and river card late into the game, where most of the tiles are already well-filled, is quite a pickle. But even with that, I had fun since the game offers enough interconnected little mechanics to keep you engaged. Getting those ‘biomes’ set up and filling them with animals to score some proper points might feel a bit like betting against the odds, but it is still within reach of some considerate planning.
Another great thing going for it is its style and vibe. It’s pretty, simply put. Vibrant with colors and growing before your eyes, with animals slowly populating the forests, meadows, mountains, and plains, and water flowing down elevated tiles in waterfalls, creating a miniature, serene landscape to be proud of. If tile-laying mixed with some card management sounds like a fun time for you, be sure to check out the demo. My only hope is that the new big biomes and animal variety will also offer some extra mechanical bits to play around with.
Diceomancer
My biggest winner of this round, and to my surprise as well. Initially, I was not too enchanted by the concept presented. It felt like just another, rudimentary deck-builder, roguelike. There’s like a hundred made every week. Sure, the art style is a little unique and has plenty of charm to it, but that’s rarely enough to sell me on the game on its own—unless it’s completely breathtaking. But the demo is very well made, for it shows the game's potential in a pretty brilliant way. Not only do we get the main gimmick shown in a fun fashion, with the dice being used together with the cards to influence various outcomes, but the whole idea of altering any visible number on the screen with our magical super-dice is pretty ingenious.
The whole concept resonated with me instantly. I was deeply enthralled by the wideness of the idea and its numerous applications. Need mana to cast cards? Why just cheat out that 0 for a new, random number? A boss health bar seems too big. It's time to trim it down. A deadly attack is coming your way. Edit it in your favor. There are no limitations here; if you see a number, your cheating dice can modify it, and it opens so many brilliant avenues for player freedom in approaching challenges.
But even that isn’t just the end of showing off; Demo managed to show off that we can expect a ton of content in the full release; multiple classes define our abilities and cards that we forge ourselves by mixing various mana types. A boatload of relics, both passive and active, that impact our gameplay and deck capabilities. The rich library of keywords and peculiar card mechanics made it feel, at times, like I was playing a full TCG with a big history to it. In short, it feels extremely promising and packed to the brim already, and after completing the demo, I had a mighty hunger for more.
Which is possibly the best outcome any demo can hope for.
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