DEMO DIVE #1 - February 2026

February! The coldest month, and it already shows its claws when it comes to frigid frost. Stuck at home to huddle up next to a radiator, it is a perfect time to brew a big kettle of tea and play some games. As is tradition, Sunday means Demo Dive - and I have quite an eclectic selection of great-looking games for you to check out! A word-puzzle roguelite, a twin-shooter in the human body, and a chess-based tactical rogue to play with as well. Let's roll!

CURSED WORDS

What a wily game! It starts simple enough - you enter a small grid of letters and need to get some words out of that to score points over a level threshold. Very quickly, though, you realize that the goals are getting a bit demanding and merely working out some longer words is not going to cut the mustard. You need... modifiers! As it should be with a clever roguelike, you can spend your acquired currency to buy Stickers and Stamps. Stickers are those big, upgradeable modifiers that influence the game in a bigger fashion. Stamps are smaller tweaks that can curate your selection on the grid or empower a strategy. A strategy? In a word game? Why, yes! Because the letters very quickly start coming with a variety of colors and mods, and you need to sort of have a game plan - often decided by your chosen character - for how to build a big scoring machine.

One character might lean into scoring big with selected tile colors. Other characters might rely on a big score via shiny, high-powered letters or maybe go for a lot of wildcard tiles that can substitute any letter. And then, things get really wacky, as newer characters and unlockables introduce numbers. Fractions. Chess pieces! Each new set of tiles adds a fresh twist to the mechanic and, soon enough, you are going to start submitting words that look like this: 1A3(Pawn)(Queen)6XQH, and the game says, "Yeah, that obviously spells something, alright."

I cannot overstate how well-crafted this game is. Even in the demo, we get a very good insight into the possibilities, the builds that the game enables with the variety of tools at our disposal. And once you defeat a run with a character, you can earn crowns on ramped-up difficulty or face Quests - more curated challenges with a limitation to overcome. It's fun, it's robust, and most of all, it is possibly the best 'words' game I have tried since BOOKWORM ADVENTURES from 20 years ago!

PATHOGENIC

Now I have no idea what to expect here. It's not exactly breaking new ground, concept-wise - I recall multiple games set in the whole microverse of being a little bacterium on a grand adventure! But PATHOGENIC showed me that even if the premise might not be unique, execution still matters - because damn, it is good! Great vibes, great music, superbly clean and sharp user experience. Everything is crystal clear, easy to grasp and understand while supporting a berth of great systems. Systems that are both cleverly woven on a mechanical level as well as fitting the game theme. Evolving your vessel, growing internal spaces for loading up mutations and organelles. And for a twin-stick shooter, the variety on display is fantastic! Melee weapons, different frames with various slots to build your little pathogen, passive modifiers, linking of parts to make killer combos... It's a cornucopia of build options!

And it doesn't end there, either, as there is a hefty bit of meta-progression with unlockable new pathogens that change the baseline loop diametrically. As a Spore, you cannot rotate but act more like a floating turret with weapon organs on all sides. There's this Long Boy - I forgot its scientific name - that has an armored tail that can deflect enemy projectiles, and so mobility is a key offensive tool for that fella. And there are more on the horizon, waiting for the full version to be played with.

It looks great, feels great, sounds great. Just an overly impressive demo that really does its best to sell you on the game. If you're a rogue enthusiast and enjoy twin-stick shooter action, this one should be right up your alley.

CHARK

CHARK is as clever as it is obtuse in giving out information. It's a chess game, if someone took chess and extracted from it a vertical slice, reforged on an anvil into a set of puzzle challenges. The core premise is excellent and works like a charm. You have only a king and draw three movement cards every turn representing various chess pieces. Then you need to use two per turn to score the biggest amount of points by taking enemy pieces while protecting yourself from being hit back. To add to the challenge, you need to take enough pieces off the board to overcome a points threshold to progress further. This is aided by a set of auxiliary systems in the form of purchasable foodstuffs and upgrades that reward you Glory Points for performing certain tasks. It feels pretty damn great, a perfect balance between a need to stay on the offense while not taking too big risks when it comes to taking hits back.

There is, however, a certain issue with the game as it is currently. The UI and the overall user experience are a bit on the shoddy side. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out why I was seeing the end of the run screen until I figured out the points threshold. Whenever your king is being hit, the moment lacks impact and feedback, so in a few turns I barely notice that I lost HP. Text for the foodstuffs - the main "relics" of the game - is tiny and hard to read. The shop in general feels more style over function, and I also needed a few runs to notice what I could actually buy there! Progression through the run is overly fluffy, too. I have no clue what rewards, if any, I get from sparing a fight. And so on. CHARK definitely needs a complete pass on readability and user experience, so it doesn't feel so obtuse to play.

But hey! It looks great, is stylish as heck, and the jazzy tunes are surprisingly a good fit for the puzzle-combat action.