DEMO DIVE #1 - January 2026

January got me good. Winter hit hard, and with its terrible cold,, dark days and new year related work stress, it knocked me out of comission for quite a few weeks. But I am back to working order, functional once more! And with it, it's time to return to regular schedule, starting with a Demo Dive - as is tradition. I played quite a few great demos last week or so, but for today I offer you a look into a stellar Survivor-like and a couple very neat roguelikes. Let's roll!

TERRATECH LEGION

This is the most fun I have had playing a Survivor-like game in virtually forever. What a breath of fresh air! Now, as you might know if you look around this blog here and there, I do have a major weakness for roguelikes and bullet heavens. But I am equally vocal about my feelings regarding the oversaturation of these genres. Nowadays it seems you cannot spit in any direction without hitting a pile of such games. And so, TERRATECH LEGION managed to take my breath away with its core feature - making your own vehicle. It's hardly a first 'driving' game in the genre, introducing a much more demanding control scheme due to vehicle inertia and turning. But it is the first I see with such a rich and open-ended 'craft your own killer kart' system in place.

There seems to be hardly any limitations to what you can smash together. A wide, unwieldy T-shaped craft littered with small arms? Sure. A wobbly tower spitting explosives? Why not. A front-loaded wall-buster with all the fun ramming tools? Go for it, bub. The variety of tech and weapons to cobble together seems staggering, and that's just the demo! No two runs feel the same if you only want them to be different, but equally so, you can try to recreate your favourite builds with relative ease. One run I made a tesla-coils covered AOE monster, another run had a mighty, tough nut bulldozer and yet another scored some powerful railguns to obliterate anything in front of me in the blink of an eye. It's a spectacular success of giving the player all the agency. Add to that stellar design, great audio and visual feedback, superb, sharp art style and we are cooking with gas on this one. If you are, in any capacity, a fan of the bullet heavens, this one is likely to become a prime platinum member of that club.

WIREWORKS

Another weirdo game that, unexpectedly, turned out much more enthralling than I anticipated. It looks pretty crude - simple pixel art, mostly grey, a little on the cheap side, but that's not the focus of the game. The main thing is... Well, my friend put it most aptly - Zachtronics meet Tower Defence. You have your little castle in the middle of a small arena and a variety of enemies will charge at you from all directions. You have your weapon modules, which are, for the most part, inert and inactive. Just sitting there, hoping someone impales themselves on them. However, you also have a set of modules with which you can put some zest into your weapons. Jerk them into motion. Spirals, diagonals, circular sways. All controlled with speed, amp, often angle or other properties via knobs and sliders. You connect your weapons to such modules with titular wires, to make them do their automated motion over the arena and smash enemies for you.

Simple premise, great fun, because the whole game, despite being an auto-battler, is about constant tweaking and adjustments. You will constantly try to find out the best patterns, to cover all angles, to eliminate zones where enemies can approach unhindered by your arsenal. Then you have additional modules that can buff your weapons - if only you can find empty connector spots for all of them to work and trigger. It's a clever system that makes you constantly look out for a way to squeeze out even better performance from your kit. As well as being just... fresh. I have never played a mechanics combo just like it, and had a blast overcoming the demo.

CRIT HAPPENS

Oh boy, a dice game, what a treat! CRIT HAPPENS demo was a bit of a strange experience. On one hand, the game didn't manage to convince me that it has some freshness to it. Something new, and exciting, that would make me point it out from the crowd and shake my friends to shove it down their gullet, screaming "PLAY IT!". It lacks that wild factor, that special something that makes it instantly sellable on the premise of a brand new feature alone. But, despite that and the initial disappointment that it has no flashy bits to show off, I had way more fun with it than anticipated. It is... well made, let's put it like that. There is a great sense of balance here, a lovely pace of building up some tangible engine with which you'll be dealing with the rolling threats.

The systems in place are small, but crafted with attention to detail - rotating trinkets means you need to seek a different goal each turn, even if skewed only by a little. Statuses are crucial for victory - without paralysis, confusion, bleed, burn and more, you'll be swiftly overtaken by the long lines of enemies. Not to mention the boss keeps spamming minions, so being able to disable his activation was the key to victory. The interplay of relics and enchanting your dice is the bread of this meal. It is here where you 'make a build'. Spread your good stuff amongst all dice? Make one die have a guaranteed effect on every side? Focus on particular numbers? All depends on your relic selection, which plays they boost the most. It feel good, when your engine takes off and you can roll over a whole wave of enemies before they can even reach your hero. So yeah - it's good fun! And I am sure the full game will be quite engaging. Might not be a title to revolutionaze dice games, but it definitely has a shape of a good game amongst its peers.