DEMO DIVE #4 - November 2025

November is coming to a close and with it, the Smissmass aura is in the air. Cursed snow litters the land. Darkness envelopes the world. Morning wake up? Night. Work over? Also Night. Yeah I am not a big fan of winter in the frozen north... But what brightens my day are the games! and oh dang, do we got games. This week alone I bought over 7 new titles, because the release schedule for cool indie titles is utterly relentless! As I am playing through them to deliver to you my reviews and impressions, dearest reader, let us kickoff this week with the traditional Demo Dive. Let's roll!

LUXMAN: MOONLIT MARKET

Ah yes, at last - BALATRO 2. Jokes aside, you can definitely spot the fact that this game exists because BALATRO, in its far-reaching influence, managed to introduce many designers to the brute simplicity of its scoring system. Set a goal. Give points. Offer a multiplier. And player agency to modify those numbers to chase an ever-increasing challenge. It's a simple loop that now we can see in dozens of games, emulating its success - or trying to, at least! LUXMAN, however, is a breed apart, a thing of its own. While that core genome is the very essence of the game, it builds around it a completely different game.

For a start, this isn't just 'what if [insert known existing card or board game] was a roguelike'. That alone is refreshing! LUXMAN feels more like a custom-crafted board game, a pleasant affair with story bits and charming aesthetics. We are playing the role of a new manager for the titular Luxman, a sleazy, sparkly, bigger-than-life possible conman director of a travelling amusement park. Our role is to deploy a set of attractions at each location to satisfy the cravings of customers to earn their dosh via ticket sales. It's a card-driven roguelike, where each card represents an attraction and we want to play them well to score big and fast. Being frugal is rewarded; being clever and efficient, even more so.

What sets LUXMAN apart - other than its stellar presentation - is the extraordinary amount of agency I felt when playing the demo. RNG seemingly hardly plays any role here, as I was given ample opportunities to craft new cards, edit them, and make them my own thing. Add to that fun side systems like advertising to manipulate patrons' needs, trinkets to offer passive buffs and abilities, et voilà - you get a complex, robust game where you always feel in control.

There are some technical issues in the demo. The game chugs along like some Triple-A Unreal Engine megabeast. Even my killer rig sweats and chops some FPS here ands there, which for a 2D card game feels a little... icky. The loading screen between nights in the same location also feels, let's say, peculiar. But if the final game gets the polishing it needs, this has the potential to be quite a banger.

CLOUDSCRAPERS

I often say it, but it always bears repeating - sometimes a simple concept is all you need. CLOUDSCRAPERS is a great example of that notion. You have blocks, you put them on a narrow grid and make a tower up into the sky. That's pretty much the whole premise. What makes it fun is the challenge in managing the very limited resources at your disposal. Stone, Wood, Nature, the trio will run out fast if you just place your blocks all willy-nilly. Nah, you need to constantly refuel your tank by fulfilling quests - refreshing, ever-present little tasks on how to assemble your blocks to score a fresh intake of resources to keep you going.

Then, of course, the challenge grows. Each layer of the skyward realm introduces new obstacles. Thunder smashes your structures. Deadly spores disable them from scoring. New blueprints show up to give more challenging structures to raise to help you save on resources or offer significant buffs to your run. The pacing feels very well-crafted; there are always some tiny new things to think about.

Then there's the meta-progression! Using accumulated coins, you can unlock passive buffs, get new blueprints, and more starting resources to make each consecutive run a bit easier. What remains to be seen is the scope of the full game. What heights will we have to reach? What new biomes and challenges await us? There's a seedling of a really fun game here, clever in its simplicity. But how much enjoyment one can squeeze out of it will sorely rely on the amount of bits and bobs players are given to play with.

MICRON SURVIVOR

See, this is an interesting pick mostly because it is so... basic. Now, this isn't meant to be an insult. We all know that we are drowning in Survivor-likes; ten of them are made every week. And this one does not offer anything fresh, like, at all. No grand new ideas, no fresh systems or unique takes. Not even an attempt to blend in some mechanical features from other genres. Nope, it's as rudimentary a Survivor as you can get with all the usual trappings of the genre. Hordes of enemies, locking in choices of passive upgrades and levelling up weapons. Then spending meta-progression points to unlock new stuff, level up your little zooplankton or bacterium. It's all in here, in its predictable glory.

So why am I writing about it? Because I have got a weakness for its theme. Looking under a lens of a microscope at a miniature world of bacteria was always fascinating to me. And this game manages to sell this in a pretty literal way. No stylisations, no attempt at cartoony overlay or dab of some personality. Those aren't cheeky hero microbes fighting against the plague. Nah, it's all cold, clinical and real! Of course, I ain't a microbiologist, but I am sure most bacteria do not shoot burning symbiotes or zap surrounding areas with discharges of bio-lightning. But eh! Certain concessions had to be made. It's a game, after all!

The good thing is that it seems like the simplicity of the style meant the dev could focus on the scope. Even in the demo, there are many weapons, powers, passives, and unlockables. Bread and butter of a good roguelike, and even more so a Survivor bullet-heaven. This is what makes repeated runs fun. Changing "character" should feel like changing the game a bit. Each new attempt should offer me a different path to accruing power, spraking my joy at becoming strong in a new fashion. And MICRON SURVIVOR already has great potential on that front! So I'll be picking it up when it comes out to add it to my ever-growing collection of this genre fun-inducing examples.