DEMO DIVE #1 - April 2026

April is finally warming up! Sun, heat, longer days, they are all conspiring together to put me in a better mood and with it, get my energy levels up to get back to doing what’s important. That is, playing lots of games to write about them on my little internet corner! Had quite a few great demos to enjoy last week and I am happy to share my excitement about them here, so as usual, let’s not dilly dally and get to it!

ZOOMINOES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNuKx9C6ug

I had no idea what to expect since I downloaded a demo of this game on a whim. Never heard of it, didn’t see any marketing materials, didn’t flash over any of my feeds… Just hungry for game demos, browsed Steam a little and here we are. And I must say, I am delighted to find this precious gem!

ZOOMINOES is a combo-heavy, synergies smashing game to its very core. The name is a little tricky, because there isn’t much of the ancient dominoes DNA remaining in this offering. Sure, adjacency matters! Colour, animal, type… But your goal is to mostly break out of the rigid rules by accruing a mass of items and modifiers that let you set up powerful combos on the board without worrying about such silly constraints.

What enchanted me and made me play the demo multiple times is extreme player agency. Most roguelites – because systemically, it is one – tend to be a little stiff about giving player too much leeway in crafting their “deck”. After all, if a player has too many ways to craft their perfect setup, where’s the challenge? Here however you have a vast variety of Souvenirs and Snacks to modify your tiles, your board and your synergies, to quite frankly astonishing degree. And yet, even with that plethora of options, you need to have a firm game plan in mind, make a working engine, or the ever-increasing score threshold is going to outrun your ability to catch up to it. It is frankly addicting and superbly well crafted. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game and squeeze the bejesus out of it.

BIOVOID

BIOVOID got under my skin, in a good way. I don’t really know why. The game is simple as it gets. The core mechanic doesn’t change an iota. Bah, even the balance is broken, as it wasn’t hard for me to repeatedly become way too overpowered for the game, untouchable and impossibly devastating to the zooming hordes of hexagonal clumps that constitutes the enemy throng. And yet, and somehow… It felt good.

It might be the jaunty tune, slick and engaging. Perhaps the supreme simplicity of the concept, easy to grasp interactions and the construction of your “organism” tickle my brain the right way. The demo manages to do the most important thing of all – hook my attention with great force. And I know more is coming! Different biomes with modifiers, 10 scaling difficulties to actually pose a challenge and variety of species of creatures you start with. Still, it feels it needs a bit more, a tiny extra. Perhaps the arena should scale up as your organism grows big and unwieldy. Perhaps bigger, chunkier enemies need to appear more often? I don’t know, maybe I am trying to overcomplicate a formula so well streamlined that it would lose its charm if bloated too far.

Nonetheless, do not be deceived by its simple looks. This is a small game, but the demo is a great proof of concept here, and I am rather excited to get my mittens on the full title to see how far I can push the game and if it will manage to actually bite back against the powerful biological engine I am going to be constructing with its systems.

TOKENS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etijy9Dh1n0

There is a silent competition going on in the dark underbelly of the vast Indie sphere. A race to out BALATRO the BALATRO. To become the better version of the champ, to dethrone the master and become the new ‘numbers go big’ king upon the Points x Multiplier throne. We know the formula that BALATRO popularized became vastly exploited. Countless games now use this scoring system, transforming every imaginable tabletop game and experience through its lens. And many of these are lovely games, of course, but none could ever truly outdo the grandfather of the idea in its own game.

Until now! TOKENS is a game that tries its best to streamline the experience even more. To squeeze the quintessential juices out of it, lay them bare and make them sing. The concept is extraordinary in its simplicity. Small grid, three by three. Two-sided tokens giving either score or multiplier that flip randomly on placement. And of course, a deep sea of items to modify the run, to create build, to offer players a vastness of strategic options.

I’ll be first to admit that when I first seen the trailer, I snorted in amusement, thinking the game is going to be a rather cheap copy of already well-established ideas. A little cash-grab hanging on the coattails of its betters. I am happy to report that I was very wrong! TOKENS has the juice. Excellent art style, superbly addictive tunes, animations and vibe with smooth jazzy rhythms guiding your play. Countless ways to score big, fun challenges, extreme player agency in crafting your pile of tokens. The game signs and is an extremely fun take on this classic formula. Excited to play the full version and check out the scaling difficulty levels!