Back in May, I wrote about the demo for shadow-platforming game SCHiM, a neat-looking indie game I’d been excited about for a while. The full game came out yesterday for PC and consoles; if you played the demo, it’s basically more of that. Maybe too much more, which is not something I expected to feel, and which is making me think a lot about the strengths and pitfalls of the recent glut of Steam demos.
I write a lot about demos on Aftermath. It’s not a beat I intended to create; instead, they’re a good way for me to cover a lot of games without spending a ton of time or money, two things that are in much shorter supply than they used to be now that I own my own site. I like that I can give readers hands-on impressions of smaller or unknown games that they can also check out, instead of writing up a press preview that has limited access and feeds into the marketing machine. And while I’m not in the business of telling anyone what their time or money is worth, I know that things are tough all over, so I appreciate that money won’t be a barrier to a reader checking out a demo I wrote about if they’re interested. And, apart from work, demos are a good way for me to get a sense of whether I might like a game that I’ve either been hearing about or stumbled across.
With events like Next Fest, Steam has been leaning hard into demos of late, which has definitely increased my awareness of them. In a recent thread on a game dev subreddit, some developers said they found an increase in wishlists following demos, which help boost a game’s visibility, or at least remind interested potential players when a game comes out. Others in the thread posited that demos can lead to press and influencer coverage that can help a game, or that demos have become more valuable as more players feel burned by games that don’t live up to their marketing hype. Others, however, also saw downsides: that people get their fix of a game from its demo and don’t subsequently buy it, or that demos can hurt larger games, or those that already have strong marketing, more than they help. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that making a demo is a lot of work, and that there’s no guarantee they’re an accurate representation of a full game.
Which brings me back to SCHiM, a game I’d been excited about since its reveal and whose demo I really enjoyed. A quick recap: You play as a little shadow guy, which is a splotch with adorable googly eyes, who becomes detached from their person and has to find their way back to him. In the full game, you do that across 65 levels of various lengths by jumping from shadow to shadow. Hopping between stationary objects gives way to catching rides on passersby or cars, bouncing off signs or clotheslines, solving little environmental puzzles to create new shadows, or timing your jumps between flickering lights.
The demo gave a glimpse of the narrative that, as a truncated slice, felt a little confusing. Seeing the full story, told wordlessly, made it compelling and surprisingly moving. You watch the person go through some struggles–a breakup, losing his job, going back to what I think is his hometown to recuperate–and it’s a relatable narrative premise that definitely made me feel for the person and want to see his story through.
But in terms of gameplay, you mostly do the same thing in the demo you do in the full game. This isn’t a knock–you would hope a demo would be an accurate slice!–but the trouble came for me once I realized that while SCHiM’s bigger levels are creative–traversing a giant automated factory, or exploring the different enclosures at a zoo–and they’re a lot of fun to move through, the game never quite does anything new with the core mechanic the demo shows off. After the first 20 or so levels showed me what the game had to offer, the experience started to feel draggy and repetitive. Despite the number of levels, the game itself only takes a handful of hours to complete, so it doesn’t quite wear out its welcome, but I found myself ready to be done with it far sooner than I expected to when I first booted up the full game, eager to have more of the experience I’d enjoyed so much in the demo.
When I imagined what I would tell a friend if they asked me about SCHiM, the first response that came to mind was, “The full game is cool, but you could really just play the demo.” It made me wonder if the demo actually hurt the full game for me, showing me the best of what SCHiM had to offer in a way that made the full game feel disappointing. Would I have been less dissatisfied with the shape of the game if the shortened experience of the demo hadn’t been so strong?
With the growing popularity of early access games, as players we know how we can burn ourselves out on a game or develop opinions on something that isn’t finished. Do demos have the same problem? Early access games are works-in-progress; while demos are as well, they’re also curated experiences, whether on Steam or at a convention or press event. Designing one is surely a careful balancing act between representing a game well and leaving players wanting more, a careful line to walk with pitfalls on both sides.
I still essentially enjoyed SCHiM; it’s charming and, as I wrote in May, “feels like play in the way games can sometimes lose sight of.” But it’s weird to feel like the demo was better than the full game, whose only major difference from the demo was that it was longer. For all a demo’s potential strengths, maybe it’s better to experience a game in its entirety once it’s ready, to have the experience developers are actually making and not one designed with the extraneous variables of marketing and Steam wishlists in mind.
