Demo Impressions Part 31

Featuring: Am I Nima, Lacey’s Flash Games, Ledgerbound, Love in Space, and Saintess of the Golden Bow.

If any of these still have demos when I post this, they’ll have a (*) as always.

Am I Nima*

Isn’t it just wonderful when a game interests you purely based on its visuals and you actually end up enjoying it? Am I Nima was just that as it definitely has striking visuals and a unique UI, plus I like visual novels. Though, I did manage to miss one important element that plays a part in the game’s mechanics when I was just hovering over the game on the Next Fest event page. In Am I Nima, you play as a girl named Nima (duh), however something is wrong. Nima don’t remember anything and she does have some…intrusive thoughts. Luckily, that doesn’t last for long as you slowly do regain bits of your memories as you progress through the game. When Nima first wakes up, she find yourself in the basement tied to a chair. A stranger comes down who you figure out is her mom and you also learn that Nima had an accident. While swimming, Nima hit her head on a rock and almost died. Nima’s mother is aiming to test Nima, to see if she really is her daughter, and you must help her pass all the tests. Even when the intrusive thoughts win and she blurts out something that hurts her case. Or you have her say something that does. However, it doesn’t seem as innocent as Nima’s mother is trying to make it. Nima gets flashes of her mother hurting her, her mother has moments where she acts weird and you can get glimpses of her true feelings, the story she tells about what happened to Nima doesn’t add up when you think more about it (especially when you learn more about Nima’s life before the game starts), and there’s just something about this situation that Nima’s gut is telling her to just say what her mom wants to hear. Which all comes to a head with how the demo ends.

Though, there is an interesting mechanic here. Am I Nima is a visual novel, but it takes a difference approach to dialogue choices. To go along with Nima having no memories and having to piece everything together from the fragments she’s told, sees, and remembers; specific words will pop up in Nima’s brain (which is located above her portrait). These words can then be combined to make new words. If it’s a new word, and not a word Nima already knows, it will be entered into her database, located to the left, so you can easily click and add it to Nima’s brain to combine it with another word. Another use is, like I mentioned, as dialogue choices. Every so often you’ll get an opportunity to steer the conversation and you do that by dragging a word to Nima’s portrait. Valid ones are outlined green and you get to see the option it brings before you confirm (so you can switch what word you want and some words do have the same option outcome). The options are more the direction that you want Nima to go in or feel, rather than purely being what she’s exactly going to say. Which I don’t mind.

Am I Nima turned out to be really interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how the game progresses after the cliffhanger that the demo ends on. I love the visuals, the story definitely hits that unsettling feeling that it was aiming for, the story has me hooked, and I liked the mechanic that they’re using for dialogue choices. Am I Nima is another game I’m looking forward to.

Lacey’s Flash Games*

This was a game I knew about before the demo came out too, but I also knew about the web series that this game is based on. Lacey’s Games the horror web series that’s about someone digging up old flash games that reveal to have surreal and disturbing twists to them. Twists that are highly implied to be the trauma that the in-universe creator went through (as well as just showing the dangers women face). However, instead of this being a fangame, this is an official game adaption from the creator. So that’s great. This demo covers the first three games, Lacey’s Wardrobe and Lacey’s Petshop, and I’m pretty sure there will be at least six in total.

Lacey’s Flash Games seems to take place within the Lacey’s Games universe as you play as Charlie. It turns out that Charlie went to meet up with Grace (one of the co-owners of the Lacey Games website, but denies being involved with making the games and didn’t realize what Rocio put in them until the complaints came in). It seems that Grace made an experimental virtual machine so Charlie would be beamed into her own memories of the website. Which, in turn, lets her explore the website like it’s still up. Though, you can’t open and play the games in any order. There is an order you need to play them in and you need to do something to unlock the next, but it also does seem to also simulate the games being released over time. It’s actually pretty cool that we got official playable versions of these games in addition to being able to click the different page tabs on the website. All you have to do is play the cutesy girl flash games…but there is a disturbing side to all of them whether it happens through just progressing or hidden requiring you to do something to unlock it. Don’t worry, Grace is with you the whole time as her video call window is open the whole time and she makes comments after every game to advance the story.

Yeah, this one scared me. Like I said before, I knew this was a horror web series before this was even a Steam game, but I only knew about it through other Youtubers talking about it. So I never watched it by myself. I actually don’t watch horror ARGs or analog horror (the latter being what Lacey’s Games is or is the closest to) by myself as I know I’m a scaredy cat. Hubris got me with Lacey’s Flash Games. Playing the game based on the web series is very different than watching a video analyzing the web series. I do think it’s done well. It does well with seeming like the usual flash girl games you’d play back in the day at first until it gets twisted and dark. It makes sense why in-universe little kids got traumatized by these games. Especially the games that hide the traumatizing aspects of the games, implying that there were kids that played those games dozens of times until they unluckily unlocked it. I also have to say that these do mimic those old flash games really well and I probably would have played these as a kid if these were real games (especially since I did play the games these are stylized and based on as a kid). The only thing is that you may need to have prior knowledge from the web series to progress, but we won’t know until the full game. I did also notice some small changes; in Lacey’s Wardrobe I feel like the Stalker image is a bit different and I could swear it had a more visceral scream and Lacey’s Petshop has two scene transitions missing (though, this could be due to this being a demo). I didn’t notice this until I was watching an analysis on the web series, but the UI of the game does also mimic how “The Rabbithole of LaceyGames.com” video is stylized.

I do wonder if this game will give us new information considering Grace is more or less accompanying us or new games (Lacey’s Love Meter technically isn’t new since we only see the game thumbnail in a video, but we get to see play that game), but man I don’t know if I can play this. It’s even worse considering I played this right before I was going to sleep so I stayed up later to hopefully not have a nightmare. So yeah. You like horror or maybe you watched the web series you’d probably like this. Just maybe don’t play it at night or before you’re about to go to sleep (or even before or after you eat).

Ledgerbound

Honestly, I kept passing this one up until the last day of Next Fest. It was a week of this game catching my eye and me passing it up until I finally just watched the trailer. The trailer for Ledgebound is really good and convinced me to download the demo and since I’m writing a demo impression it’s easy to guess that I’m glad I did.

Ledgebound doesn’t put you in the shoes of a hero, but a regular ‘ole civilian that works behind a desk. You play as a woman named Rayna Ashvale who works as an insurance adjuster at a hero insurance company called Heroes United Life Group (or HULG). We actually come in right as Rayna at the tail end of her impromptu presentation that argues in favor of working through lunch and maybe breaks unpaid. After all, Rayna is a workaholic and she will take any and every chance at working more. She’s even considered as the best insurance adjuster they have (almost three years running as Adjuster of the Month, thank you very much) that is the embodiment of the core values of the company. Rayna, in particular, is one of those heartless ones where she loves finding ways to deny insurance claims. How does this company go about it, you ask? Well, this world is pretty thorough on keeping a record on what happens during the adventures these heroes go on and Rayna uses those records to recreate the battles. If Rayna finds a way that they could have won, which is all the time, she denies the claim and leaves telling the poor families to someone else. However, everything changes when a report comes in saying that the Regulators are dead. The Regulators are the best hero group around (well was) and have the best of the best insurance and if this claim is accepted it’s going to cause the company to go under. Rayna tries to find a way that the Regulators could have survived, to save her job at her best friend the…uh…hat rack, but she can’t. The enemies that killed them, known as the Vacari, were too powerful. Luckily, or unluckily, Rayna does end up touching an Elderstone, which grants Rayna Elder Magic. Which not only allows her to go from desk worker to hero, but also opens up a possible clause that they could use to deny the claim. Except, Rayna is going to have to go on this whole adventure involving this prophecy that is a whole thing. Well, time to save her (and her coworkers’) jobs and save Eldarra.

Well, now the gameplay. If you’ve played a turn-based strategy game, you’ll be right at home here. The battle maps are gridded and you and your enemy will be placed in specific areas at the start. You adn the enemies have limited movement and if you are close enough to attack, you will. Though, they get a hit on you in retaliation unless it’s a ranged attack. Of course, it’s the same vice versa. Your allies also has abilities that the can use, like to heal, set up traps, or deal damage. Even better is that characters gain experience with every action they do, which is really nice. There is another additional mechanic here with sigils and element matchups. Everyone is associated with an element, either water, fire, or plant, and it’s pretty much like rock, paper, scissors with which ones have an advantage or disadvantage (or just neutral if it’s like a grass versus a grass). Attacking someone you have advantage over will not only increase your damage, but also increases your evasion. Sigils will also appear in the field, which can help you out. Standing on the sigil that matches your element will bless the character, making them stronger, but not will instead curse the character and make them weaker. In addition of the main objective of obviously defeating all the enemies, there are also side objectives that you can try. The first two seem to always be the same, one challenging you to complete the battle by a certain amount of turns and keeping everyone alive, but the last one is specific to that fight and might be a mystery. After every fight, you’ll see a report of how well you did, rewarding you stars for every side objective and even giving you a certificate of mastery and shareholder value when you do all of them.

Aside from battles, you’ll also have free time moments where you’ll be able to talk to any available characters and increase your relationship with them. You can also look at everyone’s stats and equip items to them to increase their stats temporarily. Jazz, HULG’s HR rep, in particular will give you company vouchers which will let yout rade it in for some random company swag. Which these can be used to equip to your allies. You can also find or be given items, but this is probably where most of them will come from and getting more stars in battle increases your reward tier. She also has optional challenges called Performance Reviews that will ask you to do something specific like winning without taking damage. I didn’t end up completing any of these, but I’m sure you get a reward if you do. Lastly, she’ll also show you your current relationship status with everyone. You can also replay battles and check out everyone’s stats. However, you have the time to worry about and mostly everything takes time. While at first you’ll be able to do everything, that slowly will become impossible and you’ll have to pick and choose. Will you talk to everyone, or will you talk to your favorites so you can equip items to everyone? Or will you take the time to retry a battle so you can get a perfect outcome? Either way, free time ends either when you run out of time or choose to end it early.

Ledgebound’s demo goes over the first two chapters, which is around 4 hours. This demo is long, so buckle up and make sure you have a couple hours carved out for this one. Or play until where you would guess the midway point is like I did haha. So far, I like it. It does lean more towards the hard side in terms of difficulty, but I still like the gameplay here. I especially loved the characters and voice acting. Despite a lot of these characters being more grey, the game does a really good job at endearing you to them. Heck, Rayna is the character that would have a higher hill to climb for players, with her being the one that gleefully denies insurance claims and even goes back to her coworkers’ previous approved claims to prove that they could have denied them, but she is very lovable. The voice actors also did a wonderful job and really fit their character well.

My favorite character is Jazz, by the way. I just love her character, love her voice actor, and love how her VA does her line deliveries.

I also loved the art style here and how the menus during camp after setting off on the quest are themed around the paperwork that her job has to deal with. Despite this world having different species, the artists did a good job in making everyone feel like they come from the same world. And, talking about this world, I like the worldbuilding so far.

My only complaints were that there was no way to pause so if you need to get up during conversations, well tough luck, and while I know the full game is going to be fully voiced I would like the option to choose if I want to advance text manually or auto play. I’m going to assume this is only for the demo, though, as I don’t see the full game not having these oversights. I do hope the auto play does get tweaked once the script and voice acting is done though, as there were a handful of lines that ended a couple seconds too soon. I also hope there will be a text log in the full release too.

Love in Space*

Coming sometime in September 2026

This one is definitely as quirky as the game description says. This was one where I was drawn in by the visuals and I’m glad I put this on my “Demos to Play” list. Love in Space takes place in a world where doomsday actually happened and caused Earth to be scorched. People fled to space to find a better life, however there are some unlucky few who are still on Earth. They live in Seabases, which as you can guess are beneath the sea, where the basic pleasures of life are scarce. Sadly, you are one of the unlucky few residing on a Seabase and just like everyone else, you wish to get out of there. And the only way to do that is to get a promotion which will land you a ticket to Moonbase 3 (which is…on a moon). You get to play through a night where you can’t sleep, which is actually good since you forgot to do something important, and get a feel for how it is being a Seabaser.

This demo is the game’s prologue and it has me interested for sure. It actually got my interest in the first 30-ish seconds, especially since it made a dad joke and the visual that went with it had a “really” face. I liked the writing style, the humor was a hit for me, I liked the art style and how the script can affect the visuals (like eyes appearing on a wall when the script mentions a “what if the walls had eyes” scenario), and I liked the voice acting. The karaoke part was also quirky and had some interesting visuals. So yeah, surprisingly looking forward to this one.

Saintess of the Golden Bow*

Yes, give me that sweet isekai x otome visual novel goodness. In Saintess of the Golden Bow, you play as a young woman named Celine. She’s just an office worker who has not had the best day. After another boring day at the office (which imo sounds like a call center but who knows), being yelled at, and having to cover for another worker, her day caps off with it pouring rain. Of course, she was not prepared at all. Celine is tired of adult life (who isn’t) and just want to curl up and read. She even fantasizes about being in a fantasy romance novel. Well, looks like Celine is going to get what she wished for as truck-kun comes in to kick her soul into another world.

When Celine opens her eyes again, she strangely finds herself in a forest wearing different clothes and holding a bow. Luckily, Celine does seem to have the memories of the life of the woman she’s jumping into (Celeste) and she can dive into her memories and feelings to get the feel on how she was and how she felt about various things. Plus she even recognizes where she was isekai’d into…though it’s not a place you’d want to live, there’s a war going on, and Celeste actually dies at the very beginning. Well, at least she’s not a villainess. Thankfully, you managed to survive. However, how will the story change now that Celeste is alive? Will she be able to fool everyone into thinking she’s Celeste? What does it mean for the tragic BL romance that the original web novel had? Will she be able to survive the new fate that Celeste has? Who will she romance?

I didn’t play through the whole demo for Saintess of the Golden Bow, but so far it’s pretty good. I’m a bit iffy on some of the art, but the game looks nice, it has a nice start and premise, the world you get isekai’d to seems interesting, and I did like the writing style. The game is also partially voiced and the voiced lines I heard were good. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.