The Six One Demo Days event concluded on Friday, August 7th after a week-long demo event showcasing over 150 demos for upcoming indie games. I’m a huge fan of the idea behind Steam’s triannual Next Fest event, which if you’re unaware is similar in that it showcases demos for upcoming video games, including independent, double-A, triple-A, and anything in between (including AI slop and porn). My hang-ups with Next Fest and how Valve conducts it are many and varied, but predominately I’ve found myself most anguished by the lack of discoverability for games I myself have already wishlisted and the inclusion of piles and piles of AI slop, usually recommended to me above many other much more interesting titles (including things I’ve wishlisted).
That all is to say I always participate in Next Fest (hell, I have multiple articles covering the last event that took place in June here, here, and here) but it’s always with a thick layer of annoyance and stress. So when I saw Six One doing their own demo event with specifically curated indie games I knew I had to partake. I’m a bit burnt from just having completed a demo event in June and then writing all about them, but I’ll be damned if I’m not supporting independent forays into these types of events. I mean, I run my own independent game awards show and I am genuinely constantly asking for more people to attempt to step up into the scene, so I would feel quite hypocritical if I didn’t give my all to uplift events like this.
With all that out of the way, I’m doing this one a little differently from Next Fest since I just simply did not have the time to play 50 demos like I did for Next Fest. If this event becomes annual, or semi-consistent, I will absolutely plan better in the future so I can dedicate more time to it, but this one kind of snuck up on me. So, for this article I will be talking about every demo I played for the Demo Days event and how I felt about each of them - be it good, bad, or middling. My goal here is to get you interested in demos and the idea of downloading them to try out more new games; so while some of these reviews may be a bit on the negative side I really want to stress the joy of getting to load up a new game and become completely immersed in the developers’ world and setting. There is a joy you get from loading up a slew of demos, getting to form your own opinions on the media you're interfacing with, and creating your own list of games you're immediately much more excited for than you originally thought.
What I’m saying is: Don’t let me dissuade you from trying a game with my negative thoughts; let me sway you to check out the landing page of over 150 unique demos and try something new.
ANOMALITH
ANOMALITH is a 3rd person over-the-shoulder shooter where you play as a relatively strait-laced soldier, Reona, on her first operation into an anomaly zone. Not only is it her first operation, it’s the entire team’s first operation as this is a new task force put together by the government to investigate anomaly zones and bring back artifacts. Long story short, these anomaly zones appear seemingly at random and swallow up parts of Japan that, previously, were normal and housed normal human beings. However, now that it’s an anomaly zone, basically all the people have been turned into monsters that attack you on sight. Battle your way through linear zones, pick up ammo, health packs, and occasionally rare materials that bank you upgrades, money, and more back at your base. While levels are relatively linear, especially the tutorial mission, they open up as the game goes on and offer different paths and secrets.
I quite liked my time with this demo. I’m not always a shooter fan as I find them to, oftentimes, be derivative and immense power fantasies based purely around murder, but I found this one to be much more than that. The gunplay, to start, I found to be much more interesting and satisfying to engage with due to the fact that your character not only has sway when aiming but also climb (also known as muzzle-rise or, simply, recoil) when consistent firing. I’m not sure if this is hotly debated on in the shooter community, as I said I don’t really play them, but I found this to be a much more engaging system than simply putting a crosshair on the enemy’s head and ‘click’ headshot every single time. I really had to learn how each gun would fire and account for that when using it or risk running out of ammo, and I quite liked that.
I also really enjoyed the setting.
Anomalies are always something I find interesting. I’m an SCP girly, an ARG queen, a horror fanatic, the list goes on; so when anomalies enter the scene I’m sitting pretty and participating. ANOMALITH was no different, with weird enemies, cool anomalous items with functions beyond our understanding, structures bending in on themselves and making no sense, and more hallmarks of the anomaly genre. While I did find a lot of the cast’s personalities to be a bit one-note or, for lack of a better term, cliché I found the world they inhabited to be more than interesting enough to keep me glued to the screen. I also found the game to have a bit more dialogue than I would have liked but I thought the gameplay was so engaging it, likewise, kept me glued to the controller despite some shortcomings.
With all that said, I did have some issues. Like I said, characters are a bit stereotypical and it can become a little annoying once they’ve said their hundredth voice line. There’s a lot of dialogue and, while I really didn’t mind all too much, it did feel like a lot of it was unnecessary and didn’t do much to add to the plot. There were also plenty of times where you're fighting enemies and the characters chime in to have an entire back and forth. This would be fine, I suppose, if I spoke the language but it’s all voice acted in Japanese so I have to read the subtitles to understand what they’re saying. I don’t mind reading at all, but I simply cannot read and play a demanding shooter at the same time. Putting moments of discussion with moments of reprise, instead of moments of battle, would help a lot. Even if the game were in a language I understood, I still think it would be difficult for me to pick up on the complexities of some of these conversations while fighting for my life in a small cubical room.
Overall I really enjoyed this one a lot. I played this demo for over two hours and had a ton of fun with it. I think the world being built is really interesting, both from a narrative perspective and from the visuals of the areas you get to navigate. I like the gun-play a lot and think this is the driving factor when recommending this game. On top of that, there’s some really killer melee you can do (even though it does come in kind of late in the demo). Despite some issues with characters, I do still think the role they play in the story is really interesting and I was consistently wanting to learn more about them, their motivations, and so on. I’m personally pretty excited to pick this one up when it releases later this year.
Check out ANOMALITH on Steam
Demo is still LIVE as of writing
Release Date: October 28th, 2026
Deep Pixel Melancholy
Sometimes you aren’t ready for what a game does to you. Sometimes it’s too personal. Sometimes it hits too close to home because you’ve experienced something similar. Sometimes it’s because you’re living in the exact society depicted in the game and it just makes you want to cry so hard your eyes fall out of your head and your brain seeps out onto the floor.
So yeah, that’s kind of what Deep Pixel Melancholy did to me. I wasn’t ready for it. Upon booting up the game it gives you this cute little warning we’ve all seen time and time again when playing dramatic games. “Warning: This game will depress you deeply! We are serious!”
Psh. Yeah, been there done that sweet cheeks, now start up my visual novel video game.
Oh... Oh god. Oh god no! I was warned but I didn’t listen!
Seriously, this one is kind of a gut punch. I don’t know what it is about this game. Deep Pixel Melancholy is a visual novel all about a depressed, poor, hard working fella named Ega. Ega lives in a massive city in the deep north, so he’s no stranger to long, cold winters. Despite that, this winter is especially long and especially cold, which makes this setting especially depressing. Wake up right before your alarm like we all unanimously hate doing. Fuck. Well, you’re up now, might as well get ready. You check the mail. Bills. You get on the bus to go to work. Pay for a ticket. You get to work. Layoffs and soul-crushing work. You get off work. Shop for food with the last two pennies you were planning to rub together to stay warm tonight. Wake up the next morning and do it all over again. But… is this the same day or is this just the rut you live in called "Life"?
I guess that last question, after the excruciating day we just participated in, is what killed my heart the most. Was this similar to living through some of the worst days of my working life? Absolutely. But then being groundhog day’d and not even really realizing it until the day was basically over was gut wrenching because you had to come to the realization that it almost didn’t matter.
I don’t know what else to say about this one. It has a truly stunning art style and that’s what pulled me in to begin with but I'm also morbidly curious about where this narrative will take Ega and myself. With all the said, it really is depressing. I felt pretty bad after playing this one, but I am a bit of a Joker Baby™ so all the corporate life, cubical work, bills bills bills, and such may have had more of an impact on me than others. On that note, I’m mostly just going to say I enjoyed this one for the emotional roller coaster it was and neigh promises to continue being. Did I have fun? Absolutely not. Is media always about fun? I don’t think so, but one of my favorite movies is Beau is Afraid so take that how you will.
Check out Deep Pixel Melancholy on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: 2026
The Well's Blessing
Yeah, so after that I needed to play something cute. Cue The Well’s Blessing, a first person cozy puzzle and exploration game with aesthetics that make me think of things like Animal Crossing or WEBFISHING. You play as a young adult named Kai revisiting his hometown to meet up with some friends, Alex and Val. From what I gathered, you are most likely a young college student who is still trying to find his place in the world. Your friends Alex and Val seem to be in a similar position, going to college, trying to figure out who they want to be for the rest of their lives, what they want to do, and how they feel about it all. You’ve all met up at a local park due to its recent reopening and Val’s interest in shooting a documentary for her film class. Intrigue and kindness drive you and Alex to help Val on her mission to discover something worth shooting on film and, through talking to the people around the park and completing puzzles, seem to find just that.
There are two things about this demo I liked quite a bit that will get me to come back and play on release. The style is, of course, gorgeous and is what initially drew me into the game but it’s not one of the two reasons I’m so intrigued by this game. What I loved most here was the map design and the writing. The map is designed in such a way that you can get lost in exploring it and, at least to me, that never felt like an issue. I wasn’t there to speed through my time with the demo, but I also didn’t load it up with the idea that I would meander through it. And yet, I did, because it was just such a wonderful time to meander in. Some media will make you feel this way, a kind of cozy yet melancholic peace. I’ve most often felt these feelings when playing things like the highly liminal Animal Crossing on GameCube, watching the lonely adventure of Kino’s Journey, or reading the expansive adventures of Blame! The Well’s Blessing made me feel this so deeply in the moments of wandering around the park, despite the fact that I had my two friends by my side the whole time and other patrons at the park to talk to and discover the personalities of. Similar to all the media I mentioned in reference to this feeling, you can reach out and talk to anyone at almost any time, but the environment is so all encompassing that it threatens to swallow you up at any moment, if you just let it.
Sorry, I’m getting lost in it as we speak.
I also adored the writing of The Well’s Blessing. Without getting too much into spoiler territory (because I really think this is a great moment to experience on your own) all isn’t sunshine and rainbows with our main cast of characters. There’s a strange sense of loneliness, even before you’ve started to see the cracks. Something is just… off. Maybe it’s because we haven’t seen one another for a while, Kai, Alex, and Val, and there’s some awkwardness to shake off. Maybe it’s because we’re all becoming different people and can’t quite connect like we used to. Maybe it’s something more. Similar to speaking to the complete strangers in the park around you, there’s a slight feeling of unease as the conversations with your friends continue. There’s something to the nature that feels alive and beckoning to you that is even alluded to in the puzzles. The written plot works with the map design and overall feeling of cozy melancholy that I mentioned previously, mirroring and amplifying one another.
Maybe I’m giving too much credit. Maybe it’s just a cozy coming of age story where you do puzzles in a park as a cute little furry guy. But maybe not. As I recall my experience with this game there’s a dizziness to it that I can’t quite describe but that was utterly intoxicating and feels highly intentional. I can’t wait to go back. I’m desperate to spend more time in that world and I’m invested in seeing more of the story for many reasons, the forest calling to me being chief among them. It is calling for me, right?
Check out The Well’s Blessing on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: Coming Soon
Wish Upon A Llama
This isn’t going to have near the fluff the last demo review had, so just be prepared for that. I liked this demo, but realistically there just isn’t much to talk about with it. Wish Upon a Llama is a pixel farming sim-like where, instead of getting a farm to grow crops, you are given a barn to raise animals in. The town where you move, named simply Llama Town, used to be known for its variety of animals around the town and the villagers’ wonderful relationship with them. Now the animals are all but gone and the new mayor, your grandfather, has tasked you with building the population back up.
I liked this demo, especially since I’ve seen my fair share of farming sims but not specifically animal raising sims. The color palette for the game is really beautiful and I thought the animals were very cute, which I think are major positives for a cozy game like this. The world design is very cute as well and a lot of the shops are already well developed once you get there, so there is no lack of things to do or stores to visit. I also really liked the character sprites of the villagers in your town.
With all that said, I did find it to have a lot of negatives that I feel are all too common in this genre of game. The days felt like they flew by before I could do much of anything, which concerned me as I didn’t have many animals to take care of at the beginning so that makes me nervous for the balancing of days in the future when I, in theory, would have a multitude of animals to take care of, pet, feed, and so on. I also found specific NPCs really hard to find because they move around a lot but they also aren’t represented on the in-game map, so you have no idea where someone is without learning their patterns or, more likely (especially for a demo), running around like mad looking for them. The NPCs also felt like they were marathon runners, sprinting around the map at all times. I sometimes found it hard to keep up with them long enough to initiate a conversation, which felt strange. It kind of felt like the game was on 2x speed, which made it a little less cozy and a little more stressful.
Overall though I did enjoy this. I know I had some nitpicks, but I feel these are things that could be relatively simple to remedy either by the developers before release or with a mod like with most of these other farming sim-like games. I like the concept revolving around animals and wish there were more games doing this type of thing. I love ranching, I love raising animals, I want more like this. Wishing Wish Upon a Llama the best!
Check out Wish Upon a Llama on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: 2026
Mouseward
Boy oh boy was this a good one! Mouseward is a 3D souls-like adventure where you play as a small mouse in a large medieval kingdom rife with political strife. Journey across the kingdom, defeat enemies and bosses, and uncover different mysteries and stories along the way. The gameplay and combat are comparable to things like Dark Souls or The Legend of Zelda 3D titles with enemies you must approach strategically, lest you forfeit all of your very limited health. The health system, more reminiscent of the Zelda series, is based on heart capsules and will reduce by half a heart, one heart, two hearts, and so on each hit, depending on the enemy. Similarly, you have a stamina bar that is depicted with orange triangles. Each dodge, block, or swing of your weapon costs stamina and, once depleted, will restrict those specific actions until you recover enough to execute the move again. Both your hearts and stamina can be upgraded with pickups you can find, if you look hard enough, throughout the map.
One of the main things I’d like to praise Mouseward for is its map design. The map itself doesn’t seem that big when you first walk into an area, but the verticality of the map design extends these spaces and not only makes them more interesting to traverse but also makes them feel almost puzzle-like in nature; forcing you to really piece together what paths you take, where they go, what advantage they give you, and so on. I think the map design, right above the combat, is what makes this game so unbelievably fun to play. While the combat is great, and we’ll get to that, the maps create a phenomenal sense of wonder and discovery through their design and how they demand players engage with them. I haven’t been this impressed with map design, especially vertical map design, like this since Dark Souls 1; which, if you don’t know, is one of my favorite games of all time due in no small part to its map design.
In addition to phenomenal maps, I found the combat to be impeccably tight and responsive. There are two difficulties you can choose from before starting the game, Adventure Mode or Challenge Mode. Adventure Mode is described as a more “balanced experience … for fans of adventure games” while Challenge Mode is described as “recommended for fans of ‘souls’ games”, marking it the harder of the two options. I myself chose Challenge Mode for my playthrough, which was indeed a challenge. My final tally for deaths was 19 in a three hour timespan, the time it took me to completely beat the demo. I was consistently planning every move ahead of time, paying attention to my stamina, my heavy attacks, where I was positioned. I was often planning my routes very carefully, picking which fights I wanted to engage in versus run away from. It was tense and, by the final boss, I was almost ripping my hair out. Most of my deaths were in that final fight and, let me tell you, what a final fight it was. I was forced to learn this boss’s every move, memorize it, act accordingly, and pick up a skill I had yet to focus on the entire game: guard break. While I was personally in the weeds fighting some of these enemies and bosses, I also saw others playing this on Adventure Mode and breezing through it, having a wonderful time with gentle challenge without stressing about every little encounter. This impressed me quite a bit, as I find most difficulty settings to be poorly balanced or implemented; but this one seemed to be, at least to me, extremely well done and thought out.
With that said, I did find some of the combat to be a little cracked, especially at the beginning of my playthrough. In Challenge Mode melee enemies will often do a heart and a half of damage, at least once you’ve gotten to the main area of the game. It’s a lot of damage, especially when you only have three hearts, but melee is generally easy enough to counter. However, ranged enemies were also doing a heart and a half of damage in the same area, which I found to be ridiculous. If ranged and melee do the same exact damage why would anyone ever pull out a melee weapon? Generally speaking I, and I think many others, expect ranged weapons to do less damage due to them being, well, ranged. I have to dodge arrows and slowly make my way to the enemy; them doing as much as a melee enemy I kill the moment I walk up to seems a bit much, especially when they are often placed off the beaten path meaning you need to find some special way over to them. Sniping them back isn’t really an option either, as they are quite the speedy sharp shooters and will nuke you before you’ve even gotten two shots in. I really do think these enemies need a nerf.
I found the story to be quite engaging, and engaging in the same kind of way Dark Souls storytelling is engaging. On your journey you will meet characters scattered around the world. Some are bosses or enemies, but some are NPCs you get to talk to and complete missions for. I don’t want to spoil what the missions are, but if you have ever felt like Solaire was a fantastic NPC with missed story and questline opportunities I think Mouseward is going to have exactly what you’re looking for. Finding an NPC for the first time, talking to them, discovering their tale, and then completing a quest for them only to find out they will follow you to the next area with more story and quests was a fantastic experience. Running back and forth between NPCs to communicate messages and details, which then progressed their stories and questlines was such a fantastic time. I always found it to be such a missed opportunity that many NPCs in Dark Souls never even implied they knew one another, not to mention interacted with one another. The fact that Lautrec and Solaire never butted heads or spoke of one another, the fact that Siegmeyer and Sieglinde didn’t have more build up, the fact that Oscar just… dies; it all made the world feel more dead than it should have been. This is not the case in Mouseward. NPCs are often referring to other characters in the world, events that took place recently, and even moving with you to new locations and following you on your journey.
I could go on, but this is getting long winded. There are some quests you can fail that I didn’t quite see how to avoid failing, but it seemed rather minor and something I think the developers themselves have addressed fixing. Overall this is a stunning demo with some real heart, passion, and talent behind it. I highly suggest checking out the demo and putting this one on your wishlist, especially if you like 3D adventure games.
Check out Mouseward on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: To Be Announced
Truth Scrapper
From the developers of In Stars and Time comes a brand new, absolutely adorable visual novel called Truth Scrapper. Truth Scrapper follows Sosotte, a member of the Truth Scrapper Guild, on her mission to The Dwell, a sinkhole where multiple members of your guild have gone missing recently. As a Truth Scrapper you lose your memories every morning, which makes this investigation a lot more difficult. Luckily you have a magical book where you can choose what to remember from your day and use that knowledge when moving forward with your investigation (and courting a bodyguard).
I was really drawn in to this game by its extremely cute artstyle, but I was quickly turned off by the writing. It’s too bad, too, because I really love how this game looks, the ideas behind the gameplay and your memory resetting each morning, and the mystery of the dwell you’re supposed to investigate, but everything else made my skin literally crawl with disgust and cringe.
I hate to be so blunt but really I haven’t felt this negative about a game I’ve played in a very long time. The writing is, in my opinion, atrocious. Our main character, Sosotte, has an extremely off-putting personality and it killed any enjoyment I could have had with this game. Sosotte is a complete sex pest, immediately hitting on her two body guards the moment she wakes up and says “Hello” to them, which I just found to be inappropriate but whatever, it is a visual novel. In addition to that, though, Sosotte is constantly written as if she is stuttering over her words, emoting like a weeaboo (ie literally saying OwO, (>//<), (;_;), etc. in conversation), and using roleplay asterisks to describe what she’s doing. I swear, I felt like I was in an early 2000s roleplay forum with a bunch of middle/high schoolers the entire time and that is NOT a compliment. *gags myself with a spoon*
I also found the decision making in this to be extremely lukewarm. I enjoyed being able to choose which bodyguard I liked and what I would remember the next day, but that was really the only types of choices I was given the entire demo. Not once did I decide what location to visit, what direction to take, or what activity to do. I know this was simply a demo, so this point may not apply to the full experience, but I found it to be a worrying sign. I like having agency in my visual novels and not being able to even choose a path to take really was the final nail in the coffin for me on this one.
Check out Truth Scrapper on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: To Be Announced
Family Reunion
Do you remember what it was like being a child at a family dinner? How everyone was talking about some nonsense you didn’t understand? How the atmosphere was so tense it could almost kill? How it seemed to drag on forever? Well Family Reunion attempts to recreate that feeling and spin it on its head to make something truly unique and interesting to play.
You start the game with a character creator with three choices: introvert, chatty, and adventurer. Each character has their own stats which affect how the dinner goes for you and what actions you can take while waiting for food. Once you’ve made your character decision you are sat at the table with an empty plate in front of you. The goal? Distract yourself long enough and well enough so the time passes quickly and you can get this boring dinner over with.
There are a lot of modifiers that will pop up and become usable during your playthrough. You may pick the “chatty” character and strike up a conversation that eventually leads to you getting the “gossip” modifier. Now you can talk more and about more things. Each action you take has the opportunity to speed up your timer; the goal being to get so many modifiers on your character and so many speed boosts to your timer than the dinner flies by. However, the family doesn’t care that you’re bored; they will reduce your timer by fighting, talking about boring topics, staring at you, and more. You can explore to find items, more modifiers for your character, or conversation topics but be careful to not get caught.
I quite like the ideas behind this game and enjoyed a good amount of time with my demo, but unfortunately I think my game was bugged. After a while of playing my game eventually started to lag really badly, to the point where text was unreadable, the UI was barely interactable, and the audio was a horrific blur in my ears. I have to assume this is a bug and not the intended experience, but there was no real feedback to indicate it was a bug and I didn’t receive a reply on my Steam discussion asking about it so really I’m unsure if I was just doing something wrong.
At the end of the day I like the concept of this one and some of the gameplay a lot, but with all the issues I experienced at the very end it’s hard to recommend this one in the state it’s in. While I did play this back in August there is no update for it that I can download so I can only assume those bugs are still present in the current build of the demo. With that said, I do suggest at least checking out the Steam page and adding it to your wishlist, as I think it’s something very unique.
Check out Family Reunion on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: Coming Soon
Gloopalaxy
Gloopalaxy is a cute and cozy fishing game where you collect fish from different planets, bring them back to your base, and set up fish tanks for them to live in before inviting a bunch of scientists over so you can earn your diploma. As a scientist, you are trying to research new species of fish on varying planets so you can earn your degree and move on to bigger and better discoveries.
Gameplay in Gloopalaxy is relatively simple, with a ship where you store your fish, a planet select screen, and a fishing screen. Select which planet you want to fish on based on climate and types of fish present before landing, fishing, and coming back home to deliver your fish to their new tank. From there you must figure out what each fish likes. Some fish will want companions, some will be scared of other fish, hate other fish, want specific decorations or climate, and so on. Discovering more fish and what they like will increase your research points, which you need in order to journey to more planets and unlock more tanks to keep more fish in. There are also quests you can complete for extra research points and more story, which I found to be a great way to keep the player motivated and eager to play.
All of the fish designs, planet designs, and UI are beautiful. The gameplay works without issue, everything is readable and easy to understand and figure out. While this game isn’t the most in-depth or unique game in the world, I found it to be really relaxing, cute, and fun especially when I just want to turn my brain off for a little and enjoy some cozy gameplay.
Check out Goopalaxy on Steam
Demo is still LIVE at the time of writing
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Whew, what a busy month August was. Not only did Six One Indie have their first ever demo showcase but we saw the release of two of my favorite games this year with Duskfade and Endacopia, prompting not only long winded reviews from me but even a video essay. It was a lot all at once but it’s been a joy to experience all these indie games, demo or full release, and then celebrate them together as a community. This article was long overdue and, while the Six One Demo Days ended back on August 7th, a lot of these demos are still live as is their landing page with over 150 indies to check out. So, give it a look, check out some demos, and enjoy this wonderful gaming scene.