DEMO DIVE #2 - February 2026

The dread of winter is over! Well, over'ish anyway. Snow is melting away like a bad dream; positive temperatures are revitalizing my energy and overall mood. The spring might not exactly be in the air just yet, but it is getting close, thrumming under the frozen soil. New week, new games! Last week I bought like 10 different indies and slowly burning through them, so expect a proper schedule of reviews hitting the blog this coming week. But, for now, as is tradition, it is time for the DEMO DIVE - three great games to check out that I enjoyed a lot. Let's roll!

HIVE BLIGHT

Are auto battlers the next big thing, or is Steam's internal algorithm picking up on my enjoyment of them and therefore keeping feeding me more? Likely the latter, but I wouldn't be surprised if the genre at large was getting some love. We are, after all, being blessed with more and more great games in that broad framework. HIVE BLIGHT is yet another autobattler without any particularly fresh ideas on the table. No groundbreaking mechanical innovations, no mind-blowing revelations on features, themes, or narration.

But by Jove, it is so well made. Yeah, I often postulate that we can't and shouldn't expect every game to be The Next Big Thing, and that games can still be great simply on the merit of being well-crafted. HIVE BLIGHT demo is a superlative example of that. It has all the bits and bobs you'd expect: Variety of units, lots of abilities, items, relics, varied events during a rouge structured runs... the whole shebang. The variety is the spice of life and the lifeblood of any good roguelike, and even in the demo I managed vastly different runs. One time I got my Spike Knights spiked up the wazoo, the fella taunting entire screens to delete them by thorns back damage supreme. Another time my archer became a rapid-firing death cannon. And yet another run I had my berserker super hornet be a virtually unkillable damage-dealing monster. It's hella fun!

Add to that the promise of a full version having multiple clans with varied units and items, many fun bosses, a great pacing and leveling-up system with evolutions, and you get yourself into a lovely game with a fun theme and visuals to boot. I can't wait for the full release!

RUNE DICE

An interesting concept runs at the core of RUNE DICE. I love dice games, likely even more than your regular card-driven deck-builders. There is something inherently fun about rolling a die that placing a card on the table can't mimic. It's the volatility, the thrill of hoping a good side will face up and reward your risk-taking. Heh. Gambling at its finest! Dice games with special dice and a variety of wacky faces with extra effects are hardly anything new. But what this title introduces to that chaos is the fling-and-merge mechanic.

Remember the old Bubble Pop games? It's kinda-sorta like that. You don't toss all your dice into the tray, but fling one starting with the lowest number onto the mess of dice already on the board. And once you make two dice of the same value collide, they merge into one of higher value and bounce off with some energy in the direction of the next die of the same value. Goal? Create a big merging, bouncing fiesta where the entire board explodes in rolling, merging dice. Each die merged is added to your action bar and lets you perform attacks, inflict statuses, heal, and more. Since every combat consists of waves of encroaching enemies, you really want every one of your turns to be as robust as possible.

It's way more engaging than I expected. And even though such a system means lots and lots of randomness is added to every combat, it is hardly ever decided in a few tosses. You have time to get lucky or to use your items and earlier rolls to build up to a decent explosion of dice. It just works!

ENTER THE CHRONOSPHERE

What a delightful gem of a game. Time shenanigans are always a fun concept to explore. We all, I hope, remember SUPER HOT. A visceral game of glass and bullets, where time flows only when you move. It was such a brutal dance of death and split-second - quite literally! - decisions. ENTER THE CHRONOSPHERE takes that concept and hammers it on an anvil of game design into a cerebral, reactive-focused roguelike formula.

You and your wacky crew of strange characters embark on journeys to crack open the titular Chronospheres: artificial planetoids, whirring with internal clocks and mechanics, polluted by crank-engine machines. Filled with deadly traps and juicy loot, your goal is to avoid being sliced to bits, shot to shreds, or mauled to death by timing your motion and dodges every tiny turn. Predicting paths of bullets, aiming your own weapons at where enemies will end, and using your acquired gear, abilities, and trinkets to squeeze out of tough spots and rough The demo showcases the strongest bits of the core mechanic, the sheer fun of unique weapons having built-in mobility tricks. Toss a shuriken while strafing left or right. A powerful shotgun makes you push back a little.

The combat arenas can be tricky. A variety of traps keeps you on your toes. There is this unending flow here, the moment-to-moment snap of reaction. Every single motion you take, every action gives you a fresh frozen-in-time vista of dangers to avoid. Notice every projectile, see where the enemies will roll out, act accordingly. It's like solving a tiny puzzle every couple of seconds, and it feels oh so very good in the brain. Sizzly.