DEMO DIVE #1 - November 2025

Fishing for games in STEAM is like its own hobby. You push through the DEMOS tag, sniffing around for stuff that piques your interest. It's a bit like a dive into an old antique book store, the one with too small doors, dusty shelves and a curator who seems slightly annoyed to have a customer. Some pesky visitor to disturb the books! But they yearn to be read. And so I browse their flashy titles, check their covers and on a whim decide to give a few a try. Often with great results! This time too I am happy to share three interesting titles I stumbled upon. Hope they'll pique your interest, too! Let's roll.

DUPERY

What a fortunate stumble. Fortune smiled upon me, stranger. My little private eye office might not see lots of traffic recently, but my gumshoe ways are always in demand! DUPERY is a tightly designed sleuthing game about intuition, cross-referencing information and playing a little cat-and-mouse game with those pesky criminals doing the worst thing of all - lying about everything! I had no idea what I was stepping into here; the game is, on the surface, extremely simplistic. A small grid of buildings, varied occupants and an extensive list of roles, each divided into four groups of various capabilities. The innocents always help. The meddlers try to, but they can also mess things up - as the name suggests. Underlings are just bad folks trying to do bad things while the vile traitors not only play pretend, but tend to toss logs under your investigations. Nasty bunch.

The gameplay is focused entirely on your ability to connect the dots. This might sound rudimentary, but each scenario is a pretty interesting puzzle thanks to the roles' variety and their different informational output. Considering that the bad guys always hide under the pretense of a 'good fella', it is your job to get all the info needed, scrounge up the truth from the kernels of data and root 'em out. Easier said than done, as you're on the clock - and some of the roles do not like to wait before they act out.

It is a solitary board game with superlative design. Even in the DEMO I had those beautiful moments of "AHA! Gotcha!" that I had before only when playing ACE ATTORNEY games. That sublime moment of clarity when everything clicks in your noggin and you make the right call. Delicious. DUPERY is an example of how a neat idea with tight execution can provide a unique experience that is hard to replicate anywhere else. Great stuff.

HELL MAIDEN

Oh boy, a survivor-like! And just when I was done eating a full bowl of Survivor'Os with warm milk! Joking aside, I am always happy to keep my hand on the pulse of what's coming next in that genre, and HELL MAIDEN has some interesting things to show us. But before I dive into the nitty gritty of the clever mechanics they are working with, let me address the whole... premise. It's Dante's Inferno. Nice! Makes sense. Levels of Hell, perfect for a variety of stages. Hellish powers, angelic blessings. All make sense. A nice cast of characters to pull from the written pages too. But, um, there's a twist - they're all cutesy colourful anime gals. Well, I mean, okay - not exactly my cup of tea, but I am not going to complain here!

Mechanically, it's a Survivor-like starter kit. Spells, passives, different characters with different starting stuff, you know the drill. Hordes of enemies, gathering EXP crystals to outpace the growing challenge via levelling up, all the bits and bobs. What's the gimmick then? Cards! Weapons and their mods are all cards, and you can quite freely swap 'em around, merge them for levelling up and even shuffle positions as some cards impact others on their sides. It's a nifty addition that adds a bit of flexibility on the fly. Adds some zest to the build crafting, too. Lovely! The system works well enough and has promise as long as they are bold enough to add some really out-there cards to the mix to really stretch the legs of what this mix-and-match approach can provide.

Otherwise, a few nitpicks. A bold decision to make the boss do some crazy final ultra-series of deadly attacks once their HP went to zero - not my favourite, but bold for sure. Hitboxes can be a little slippery, especially when coming from the top of our character sprite. And while I like the visuals and the audio, the colourful pixelated fest can get pretty confusing and straining on the eyes, which isn't a big deal, but I would appreciate some extra clarity here. There are options to tone down the sparkliness, so not bad to begin with! In general - a fine example of the genre with some fresh goodies to play with. I will look out for the full version.

AMBROSIA SKY

Stylish! I have always had a soft spot for games like this. Walking Sims where the whole drudgery of combat is pushed aside, politely asked to wait in the ante-room for its time to shine. Preferably in another title. AMBROSIA SKY nonetheless has its moment of gentle dread, wafting over the room with a glimmer of spores permeating the chambers. You're an agent of Scarab - a mystical and yet scientific cabal of visionaries aiming to save humanity by introducing them to a goal we can all get behind: immortality. Your job? Scour various stations that have got hit hard by a terrible fungal infection to gather samples and learn more about the cosmic mycological terror. In a way, you're a mix between a scavenger, memoirist and Indiana Jones boots-on-the-ground archeologist!

The fun part lies between the game's great atmosphere and its morsel-based gameplay. What I mean by that is that this isn't one big linear walk through some colossal, abandoned and very unfortunate space station, but a mission-based story where you jump between various small locales to gather stuff, solve via exploration what the heck happened there and then get your butt in gear to skedaddle away before the growing fungus consumes all. Your chemical spray can only do so much! Your tether grappling hook thingy is a fun toy that allows the designer to make levels with some nifty verticality. Hiding secrets in the vents and chutes, hoping your keen eye will pick 'em up properly. As well as using gravity and various environmental hazards to test both your reaction time, ability to traverse under duress and if you have enough spatial memory to recall how to go back to extraction when mushroom-based fertilizer hits the fan.

Demo was pretty fun! I love the vibe of the game, the style of it. As a mushroom enthusiast, seeing the colourful fungi as de facto antagonists made me smile. However, the demo also kinda sorta shows the broad spectrum of what the game mechanics will be about, right? Moving around, reading and listening to info bits, spraying a variety of mycoforms with your nasty juice. I hope there are more delightful surprises waiting for us in the full version. I guess we'll see when it comes out soon!