Article December 1st 2021 Ian Howarth

Welcome to the last Dem-OH! Round-up of 2021! “What about December?” I hear you say. Well, as I, the demo king, will be travelling back home to be with family this holiday season, there’s sadly unlikely to be any demos recorded as I’ll be without my wonderful PC. However, videos will still be going up on the DarkZero YouTube channel all throughout December and there might even be a few special streams to look out for!

As you’ll notice below, most demos this month were actually recorded as part of livestream events (which are run twice weekly *wink wink*), so there aren’t that many individual demos to see. However, that should also be changing next year as we start to chop up the livestreams into individual demo videos, to make them more digestible for viewers and so every game has a fair chance of being a ‘Stand-Out’.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who supported us this year, as we started to move take part in more livestreams, events, and simply outputting more video content – it has been a fantastic whirlwind!

Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! We’ll meet again in 2022, and with a few tricks up our sleeves!

Stand-Out Demo of the Month

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo – Was on Kickstarter with Demo on Steam

A heart-warming narratively inclined adventure puzzle game set in limbo, as inspired by classic Mexican folklore, that sees our protagonist, Kulebra, guide lost souls to their afterlife by helping them understand their own feelings and learn to let go. By using a sort-of odd play on Majora’s Mask-esque time manipulation and day resetting, it’s up to the player to solve all sorts of mysteries set over the course of the day to progress the story before the memories of the souls-in-need are reverted. Learn about their lives, regrets, and desires in order to understand how to put them at ease in this beautiful looking and genuinely touching title.

Demos

Knight Vs Giant – Demo on Steam

This almost too simple and fast-paced top-down action roguelite is so fun because it is exactly that. With only a basic attack and dodge-roll available, it is entirely up to the player to build out their passive and active abilities in a way that makes sense for their playstyle, and learn to overcome the attack patterns of the different enemy types. It is entirely skill-based and so easy to jump right into that it becomes incredibly moreish. Hopefully the full game only deepens this experience with other, more interesting weapon types, and an array of challenging giants to defeat.

Helvetii – Was on Kickstarter with Demo on Steam

This very generous demo of a 2D side-scrolling action roguelite is a wonderful, chunky taste as what this Kickstarter success is going to be bringing early next year. Although the visuals can be a little confusing, the different character classes, diety-based magical abilities, and slew of monstrously challenging baddies to fight are pulled together with an adrenaline-pumping combat system that will keep you coming back time and time again.

Dem-OH! Dashes

Lots of streams this month! Twice-weekly seems to be a nice cadence for demo streams when there’s no special events happening so expect to see this pattern continue in 2020, hope to see you pop in and say hello!

NOTE: Ratings are basically representative of how much I enjoyed the demo and the likelihood that I’ll come back to the title in the future (or even would liked to have continued playing it right then), with regards to gameplay, quality, and (of course) personal preference to genre, etc. A zero represents that the game is too non-functional to really get a feel for it. It is essentially a non-rating.