7 More Demos I Recently Played (Demo Impressions Part 5)

7 MORE demos I recently checked out!

With so many demos available to play, of course I have some more demo impressions to sink your teeth into! Like always, I’ll put a (*) for any games with demos still available.

Beastieball*

Another Pokemon-like, but with a twist? Yes please. Beastieball takes place in a world where there are these creatures called Beasties and these little guys love playing volleyball. There’s even plants that grow into volleyballs so these little guys can volley in the wild. Knowing this, humans have since became coaches for these guys and there’s this whole ranking system now. We, in this universe, live in a town that takes care of a Beastie preserve and hosts one of the best Beastie coaches, or at least when he was in his prime. However, the Beastieball League has decided to build a stadium right where the preserve is. Instead of letting them do what they want, you decide to get the League’s attention by rising up the ranks and qualifying for The Crown Series.

The battles, or volleyball matches, system was a bit confusing but hopefully it’s something that you understand it better the more you play (though you can just do auto-mode or auto victory…but that’s no fun). Aside from the basic moves (like move, block, volley, and free ball) your Beasties can have three moves added to their play plus a combo dictated by the type of relationship they have with the Beastie on the field with them. The moves added to a Beastie’s play varies, but seems to fall under support moves and attack moves. Support is as you expect, giving boosts, heals, and even moving the teammate forward when the ball is passed, but attacks will have your Beastie do a powerful serve. Attacks will deal either Mind, Body or Spirit damage and can aim at a row or column. If a Beastie is there to receive it, they’ll take damage and the ball will be in their control. And then the team without the ball can do a defense move before the game continues. You can also do more damage when you’re in the front row, but that also means you take more damage, and you can have Beasties in support, which their support bonus will be active and you can switch out Beasties when you need to (like when one is low on health and you don’t want to risk it.

You can either win by taking out a Beastie or through scoring by the volleyball hitting an empty lane. And the same goes for your lose condition.

It does seem this is big on predicting your enemy’s moves and taking risks. Will your opponent move a Beastie to the lane that’s empty? Will they move a front line Beastie to the back? Should you move forward to do a more powerful attack? Will they try to attack an empty lane? It’s interesting and I wonder how battles will be deeper into the game.

So far, I like Beastieball. The combat will get a bit getting used to, but I do like the designs of the Beasties as they’re so cute (I personally chose Bildit as my first Beastie) and the battles are definitely unique by turning it into a turn-based volleyball game. I also like how you have to figure out their recruit condition (either by accident or after some data is gathered with the Beastiepedia.

Coffin of Andy and Leyley*

Wow, this one was a ride. This was another game I wanted to try just based on the visuals. I love the artwork for Andrew and Ashley and I love the look of the overworld (which did not make this look like the usual RPGMaker game). Anyway, you play as Ashley as her and her brother, Andrew, is stuck in quarantine. Their parents? Gone. Food? Gone. It turns out, the water sent to this apartment complex was tainted and the solution was to keep them locked inside their apartments. It wasn’t supposed to go on for as long as it did, but the extensions just kept on coming even though nothing was being done other then sending wardens to keep track of who’s still alive and that no one is escaping. We join in when these siblings completely run out of food and when they see their neighbor doing satanic ritual. And well, everything spirals from there. I mean, what do you expect, locking people in with little to no food for months as they see those outside mocking them and not giving a single fuck about them.

The dynamic between Andrew and Ashley is…interesting to say the least. You can tell they love each other (Ashley a bit too much perhaps), but their relationship is very shaky due to Ashley being a psychopath and trying to get Andrew to be more like her. And Ashley believing that her and only her will be the only woman in Andrew’s life. And Ashley constantly having a crisis whenever Andrew is going to leave and hang out with someone else. And Ashley tormenting Andrew’s friends and girlfriends. This is even more enforced as we see flashbacks to when they were kids (which is when they went by Andy and Leyley).

I am definitely looking forward to when the full game releases and we get to see what happens next. And to see Andrew continue to go down the same dark hole Ashley is in as her years of slowly corrupting him finally has results.

Home Safety Hotline*

This was a game I didn’t know about until I saw the demo up and I honestly downloaded it on the name and cover art alone. Little did I know that this was an analog horror game.

As you can probably guess from the game’s title, this game has you as a telephone operator for a home safety hotline. Starting out, a lot of entries for pests and hazards are inaccessible, but the further you get into the game the more entries are unlocked. It starts out as normal as you’d expect, having some gross pests (*gag*) and each entry giving you a description (so you can identify them), the possible danger they pose, and how to get rid of them (which I assume is sent to the client or whoever is sent to solve these problems). Aside from the weird calls, all seems normal. Well, until you unlock the next set of entries which include some…not so normal pests and hazards. Some horrific pests and hazards that this hotline specifically specializes in.

The game doesn’t tell you when you get a question wrong, but man will you know later on. From what I can tell, I only got one call wrong and he called back to tell me how mad he is. Not gonna lie, I’m totally going to do a run where I get every call wrong to see what happens when this fully releases.

In Stars and Time*

I’m so glad the demo got released again! Last time it was available I missed it because I didn’t know it was going to be a limited time demo (man, I wished demos stayed up instead of being taken down). In Stars and Time follows a group of adventurers as the aim to kick their evil king in the butt. It seems like the king has been causing the country to freeze in time with floating water (or Tears) that causes you to freeze when they’re touched.

Anyway, this demo seems to take place towards the end of Act 1 when the group arrives at the House (which is where the King lives). Not only do we get the dynamic of the group, but we get to learn about how the combat is. The combat has the ATB system with some rock-paper-scissors action mixed in. The rock-paper-scissors aspect is used for strengths and weaknesses, as everyone falls into one (or two) types as well as attacks. The type you or an enemy falls under is what they’re resistant to and, of course, whatever would beat it is what they’re weak to (so a scissor type is weak to rock). The game does tell you the types of your party members early on and thank goodness it tells you right by your normal attack option. For enemies, you’re not told their type, but if you look at their hands you will. You also have Craft, which is basically your skills that falls under being an attack, buff, or debuff. What I like about this is that instead of having a MP pool it’s instead a cooldown. There’s also Bonnie who is too young to fight, but will pop up from time to time to smack an enemy with a pan or give the group a buff, and Jackpot which is a group attack that happens when you use the same attack type five times in a row. If you wondered why r-p-s been popping up on the right side of everyone’s battle profiles, it’s for this. You’ll also be exploring in the overworld, which is where you’ll run into enemies but also be able to examine and pick up any useful items.

I really liked In Stars and Time. I loved the dynamic the characters have, I loved the art and designs of both your party members and the enemies, and I do like the combat system. While it is a bit tiring having enemies respawn when you exit the room and having to fight again, I did like the combat when we got to boss battles. Especially when the bosses uses tricks like hiding their type or switching their typing up. We didn’t go much into the looping, as the demo ends after Siffrin loops for the first time, but it does seem interesting.

Knuckle Sandwich*

I really like Knuckle Sandwich so far. I actually played Knuckle Sandwich’s demo last year, but it looks like I didn’t end up writing about it for a demo impression post. Well, I wanted to play it again and I did, but this time I made sure to start from the Prologue and not Chapter 1. Knuckle Sandwich has you play as a guy who just moved into a new town and who went straight to finding a job. You tried getting a job at the job center, but that went out the window when most of them just had something against you and one just not being the job for you. So you left the job center with no job. Luckily enough, you do find a flyer for a fast food joint looking for employees. Bad news, the reason the owner is looking for more people is due to him driving them away by his attitude and not paying them. Great. Even better, after you defended yourself against a strange zombie-looking gangster he may have gotten into the business of human meat burgers.

I really liked Knuckle Sandwich last year and I still like it. I like the story and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen to our now cannibalistic boss, what’s going on with that zombie gangster guy, and what your dreams are going to be. I also like the turn based combat that also mixes in real-time dodge (is that what it’s called?) dodge and minigames both for your attacks and for some of your enemy’s attacks. Not to mention minigames the story puts you in (I personally am looking forward to that burger cooking minigame the store page has for one of its screenshots). I hope we get a release date for this one soon.

Sticky Business*

It’s probably weird that I was excited about Sticky Business, but I was. I dream of making my own stickers and, well, this is a game where you create your own stickers and sale them. This game, obviously, has you create your own stickers with different elements and sell them. You begin by designing your starting stickers and naming it (with the added addition of being able to save it to your desktop) and building a sticker sheet so you can send out your stickers. You can pretty much let the game place your stickers on the layout, and it does it pretty well, but if you’re going to have sticker sheets with different designs it’s best to do the layout yourself to get the most out of it. It doesn’t take long for orders to come in and from there, you just need to pack up your customer’s stickers (which you can add paper and filling to make it more fun) and send them out.

Of course, you can’t do everything you want to do in a day as everything takes time. You will have to manage your day between packing orders, sending your mail out (and hopefully you don’t prematurely send out your orders before packing them all like I did), printing more stickers, and designing.

So far, I quite like Sticky Business. I liked designing my own stickers, packing them up, and reading customer messages. I can’t wait to be able to see the other elements that are behind the upgrades tab.

Venba*

This was a demo I was anticipating the most, and a game I’ve been looking forward to for three years now. I really like cooking games and pairing it with a narrative quickly had me deciding that I had to play Venba when it comes out. This demo is short, being what I’d assume is the prologue, but oh my gosh I love it so far. Venba follows an Indian couple who immigrated to Canada and when the game starts they’re thinking of maybe moving back. We, in particular, play as the woman, Venba, and she has been quite sick for a few days. After her husband decides it’s too much work to make a simple, quick dish for his work lunch, Venba decides to just make it anyway. After all, she would technically be making lunch for herself too. Here we see how the cooking will go.

The first recipe we make is idlis and we have everything set out for us. Venba decides to try and make it from her mother’s recipe to try and recreate it as she remembers her mother making it when she was sick. However, there is a bit of a smudge requiring you to figure out what the heck these towels are used for. There is a hint system in place if you can’t figure it out and after you successfully make some idlis Venba is taken to a doctor to get checked out. And, well, looks like all the nausea Venba was experiencing was morning sickness! This does bring up a hard decision whether or not they should return to India like they were thinking of doing or stay in Canada now that they’re having a child, but we do end on a hopeful note. No matter what decision they’ll make, Venba is sure their child will turn out just fine.

I really think Venba so far and I can’t wait to see what else we have in store (and to maybe try a recipe or two that this game introduces to me). I like how we’re going to be able to get some information on the dish we’re making and it really gave a feeling of accomplishment when I figured out how I was supposed to use the towels. Also how cute is it that Venba’s pregnancy reveal is through food? So cute.