Demos Are Taking Over Games (Again)

0:00 Video games are no stranger to retro revivals.

0:03 About 30% of indie games right now, for example, deliberately evoke the blocky,

0:07 low-poly PlayStation 1 art style for nothing

0:10 more than a couple of cheap nostalgia points.

0:12 Equally, a whole bunch of the most popular genres of games out there

0:15 are just reanimated versions of games we all once thought were dead and buried.

0:19 And look, Bandai Namco are still trying

0:22 to capitalize on the popularity of Pac-Man,

0:24 for goodness sake, and he can be traced back to the late Mesozoic era.

0:27 Point is, when it comes to the world of video games,

0:29 blasts from the past are pretty common.

0:31 But if there's one old-school trend that I

0:33 don't think many people expected to come back,

0:35 and I don't think anybody expected to dramatically change

0:38 the face of video gaming as quickly as it did, then it would be the demo.

0:42 Seriously, just a few years ago,

0:45 video game demos were one of those things that seemed destined to be

0:47 consigned to the history books forever as a weird relic of the 20th century.

0:52 But if you take a look at the front page of any gaming store front today,

0:55 you'll see that demos have staged a massive and surprising recovery.

0:58 They regularly [music] supplant the likes of real games in terms of popularity,

1:01 more of them seem to be releasing every day,

1:03 and there are even entire festivals on Steam dedicated to the art

1:06 of giving you a little bit of a game for free,

1:08 just like everyone told us drug dealers were going to, but they actually don't.

1:12 Now, I know what you're thinking.

1:13 Everybody knows that the return of demos is basically a good thing.

1:16 And the reasons why they're a pro-consumer development,

1:18 particularly in comparison to something like early access,

1:20 are pretty self-evident.

1:22 So, why am I making such a big deal about this?

1:24 Well, it's because I think the return, or rather the revenge of the demo,

1:29 is about much more than a simple change in the way games are getting marketed.

1:32 The increased popularity of demos also coincides with a fundamental

1:36 change in the way many games are getting designed as well,

1:38 even counting titles that don't have a demo.

1:41 Yes, you didn't mishear me just then.

1:43 I think demos are so powerful that they're even

1:46 beginning to affect games that don't actually have them.

1:48 And in order to understand why that is,

1:50 we need to first ask the question of why demos went away in the first place,

1:54 and what caused them to come back.

1:57 While demos were a big deal back in the '90s,

1:59 Doom had a legendary successful one,

2:01 and Metal Gear Solid had one that was so good people

2:03 even stomached ordering food from Pizza Hut in order to get it,

2:06 they had two big problems.

2:08 First, demos were reliant on physical media like floppy disks and CDs,

2:12 which according to my research were

2:13 a slightly more advanced form of cuneiform tablet,

2:16 and which took as much cash to produce and deliver

2:18 as a real copy of the game you could actually sell.

2:21 And second, there simply wasn't as much competition back then.

2:24 Publishers didn't need even an extra marketing angle

2:26 in a world where fewer games were being released,

2:28 and most had a finite playtime.

2:29 The main gamers were always looking for something new to buy already.

2:32 As a result, starting in the 2000s, demos began to go out of fashion.

2:36 And while there were obviously a few standout exceptions,

2:39 most notably PT, which I'll mention again later, once they began to decline,

2:43 demos were kind of dead for the better part of 15 years.

2:46 Fast forward to the modern day, however,

2:48 and the video game ecosystem has changed substantially.

2:51 Not only are there more games than ever being released,

2:53 but also the gaming market is now dominated by titles with limitless playtime.

2:57 Games that people have invested thousands of hours and often

3:00 hundreds of dollars into, making it impossible for a new

3:02 game to get noticed if it doesn't already have a multi-million

3:05 dollar advertising budget or some juicy dirt on Geoff Keighley.

3:08 And even if a new game does get noticed,

3:10 it's going to be competing with titles that have

3:12 decades [music] of patches and emotional investment in their corner.

3:15 Going toe-to-toe with so-called forever games in a fair

3:18 fight is an uphill battle to say the least,

3:20 and that's why modern demos have seen such a dramatic and effective revival.

3:24 Demos are all about having the lowest possible barrier to entry,

3:27 but using their tiny window of opportunity

3:30 to prioritize one thing and one thing alone.

3:32 Pitching themselves to you and getting you

3:34 hooked in and invested in the quickest,

3:36 punchiest, and most evocative way they can.

3:38 And it's this approach of combining immediate accessibility with a full frontal

3:42 charm offensive that's informed many

3:44 of the most effective demos in recent memory.

3:46 The likes of Balatro initially appeared to be just another deck builder,

3:49 but it wowed with an intuitive gimmick and immediate dopamine spikes.

3:53 CAN stuck in players' memories by giving them

3:55 a whole mountain to climb right off the bat,

3:57 and by not pulling its punches at all.

3:59 And the massive early success of Arc Raiders could

4:01 be attributed to the fact that its free testing period,

4:03 which was basically a demo,

4:05 eased players into a genre that's normally very hard to get to grips with.

4:08 Half-Life recently run into just how powerful demos

4:11 can be in the form of Of the Devil,

4:13 a game with a demo that was so good that I had to do

4:15 a last-minute re-edit of my best games of 2025 video just to accommodate it.

4:20 All in all, demos have been a revolution for developers and players alike,

4:24 with them providing hours of fun for us players,

4:26 but also giving devs a way to undercut

4:28 more established titles and put their best foot forwards.

4:31 But it's not just the fact that they

4:32 solve a marketing problem that's made demos so influential.

4:35 Demos have taken over games because they

4:37 also solve an endemic design problem as well.

4:40 I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the start

4:42 of a game is more often than not the worst bit.

4:45 All too many otherwise great titles are bogged down by suffocating tutorials,

4:49 or the fact that they take ages to introduce

4:51 the ideas that make them unique and interesting,

4:53 or simply the fact that they take a bunch of time and effort to start being fun.

4:56 It sucks, and the sluggishness of many gaming intros

4:59 leads to players dropping titles before they get good,

5:01 and being hesitant to pick up new ones as well,

5:03 because the games they already have don't require anywhere near as much work.

5:07 But demos solve many of these issues

5:10 because by virtue of their ephemeral nature, they have to be flashy, efficient,

5:14 and immediately compelling in order to stick in a player's mind.

5:17 Everything that many older,

5:18 more bloated gaming introductions utterly fail to do.

5:21 And so, as the more aggressive approach of demos has become

5:24 more popular and more of a necessity in a hostile gaming ecosystem,

5:27 [music] regular paid video game openings have begun

5:30 to learn from the example that demos have set,

5:32 and if you ask me, are beginning to warp around them.

5:35 Obviously, I'm not saying that demos are

5:37 solely responsible for a change in design standards,

5:39 just that the revival of demos was the first sign

5:42 that video game introductions were sorely in need of some modernization,

5:45 and that with their success,

5:47 the rest of the industry has begun to follow the demos' lead.

5:50 As such, I'll be referring back to Of the Devil's demo a few times,

5:53 not just because it's very good,

5:54 but also because its relative simplicity as a visual novel lets me demonstrate

5:58 that the key to a good introduction isn't due to any one mechanic or system,

6:02 but is instead all about structure.

6:04 But, what is it specifically about the new wave of demos [music]

6:07 that's prompted this broader change in how video game openings are designed?

6:11 What structural and design ideas have they introduced

6:13 that make them so different and so successful?

6:16 Well, I think the best way to think about demos and the change in video

6:19 game introductions they've inspired is that a demo

6:21 does not exist as a complete unit.

6:24 Its job isn't to satisfy or resolve or even fully explain itself,

6:28 but to give players a sense of investment

6:30 and momentum that drives them forwards into the real game.

6:33 And I think all good demos,

6:35 as well as the more general new style of introductions they inspired,

6:38 lean into this element of purposeful incompleteness, wowing players early,

6:42 giving them stuff to get excited about, and most importantly of all,

6:45 reminding them that right when you think you're done,

6:48 things are really only getting started.

6:50 The first thing that all great introductions do,

6:53 and that all bad ones fail to pull off,

6:55 is to properly set a player's expectations.

6:58 Uh, you know how at the start of every James Bond or John Wick movie,

7:01 there's this big bombastic borderline pornographic action scene, right?

7:05 Yeah, those don't just exist to be cool.

7:07 They're there to establish the tone going forwards

7:09 and build some momentum right off the bat,

7:11 immediately earning the audience's interest by setting them up for what's

7:13 to come and showcasing what's different about this particular title.

7:17 Surprise, surprise, a good video game intro or demo works exactly the same way.

7:22 It's why the demo for Tears of Metal,

7:24 which is like Hades mixed with Dynasty Warriors boiled inside of a haggis,

7:27 starts you [music] off not on the map screen or fiddling with meta progression,

7:30 but instead chanting a glorious battle cry and charging straight into a horde

7:34 of English soldiers to have fun hacking and slashing for a bit.

7:37 With the game not teaching you anything except

7:39 for the most basic controls until your second run,

7:41 once you've had a chance to get your teeth stuck in.

7:43 Equally, it's why the intro and demo for Monster Hunter Worlds,

7:46 once you're done trying to get it to run halfway decently, that is,

7:49 throws you right into the deep end and lets you gasp hunt a monster right

7:52 away instead of making you spend 4 hours

7:54 foraging for mushrooms like in the old games.

7:57 And it's why Sifu gives you a badass martial arts opening where you can't lose

8:00 to demonstrate what the game is going

8:01 to look like after you've learned how to play.

8:04 This opening salvo approach works even in narrative

8:06 games like the superhero workplace comedy Dispatch.

8:09 Its demo skips you ahead to the funniest bit of chapter

8:11 two and gets you into the management gameplay right away.

8:14 This is because the game knows that if you're on the fence,

8:16 then you're probably not going to want to sit through

8:17 all the setup for the romance arcs and Robert's backstory without

8:20 some assurance that the game is going to be doing

8:22 something a bit different in addition to playing the telltale hits.

8:25 Naturally, Of the Devil's demo works along similar lines.

8:28 You don't do any actual mystery solving for the first 20 minutes or so

8:32 because you already know that the game's going to have a bunch of that stuff.

8:34 Instead, it hits you with this effortlessly slick bit of cyber

8:37 noir world building and showcases all of its coolest visual flourishes,

8:41 instantly setting itself apart by leading with what makes it most different.

8:44 These big opening moments aren't just a cheap bit of emotional bribery though.

8:48 They're also key for establishing the way we should think about

8:51 a game while our understanding of its structure is still malleable.

8:53 It's no coincidence that in the demos and intros for almost any game

8:57 that revolves around the loop of dying a bunch or steep cost for messing up,

9:00 there's a concerted effort to imbue you

9:02 to failure while you're still acclimating to the game.

9:04 So, when the stakes get real,

9:05 you don't react by turning it off and running away.

9:07 You've instead been emotionally prepared to learn

9:09 the tricks you need to in order to survive.

9:11 Obviously, all the Souls games do this with a big

9:13 tough boss designed to kill you right at the start.

9:15 Hades makes sure to murder you in an unfair

9:18 way as a learning experience before introducing

9:19 you to the Mirror of Night or magic tarot cards to let you even the score.

9:23 And Resident Evil games love throwing you

9:25 into unwinnable horde battles or fights against

9:27 immortal bosses as part of their introduction or at the capstone of their demos,

9:31 serving to put you in your place and push you up against

9:33 their resource management systems to remind you that once the real game starts,

9:36 you shouldn't be expecting to simply mow down enemies without breaking a sweat.

9:40 These moments aren't just evocative, they're there to give you a reason to pay

9:43 attention to what the game is telling you

9:45 and to highlight the key ideas and vibes the game

9:47 wants you to focus on as it expands and develops.

9:50 This is also the secret sauce that powers

9:52 the iconic demo for the game that never existed, PT.

9:55 It hits you with its central gimmick in the first two or three minutes,

9:58 priming your brain to A, notice the loop and B, focus on all the changes,

10:02 ensuring you don't miss any of the build-up

10:04 and making sure you get the full escalation

10:06 of spooks rather than not noticing what's going

10:08 on until you've missed some of the coolest moments.

10:10 The most significant advantage of hitting players hard and fast

10:13 with an introduction's best bits is that it gets

10:15 past that old "it gets good eventually" problem by giving

10:18 us a glimpse of the good stuff nice and early.

10:20 This is particularly important for longer or more

10:22 complex games that take a while to get going.

10:24 For example, Frostpunk 2 and Crusader Kings both start you

10:27 off in a little isolated petri dish to play a mini

10:30 version of the game for your first session in the form

10:32 of this crashed train and all of Ireland respectively,

10:35 giving you a little taste of what a complete playthrough is like

10:38 before opening you up to the rest of the game once they're done.

10:41 Many multiplayer games put you in a bot lobby first for the same reason.

10:44 It's not just to massage your ego,

10:46 it's to show you that victory is possible [music] at all and to give you

10:48 an initial success to build on rather

10:50 than just getting obliterated at the very start.

10:53 This strategy might seem like a bit of a bait

10:55 and switch and that's kind of because it is,

10:57 but you've got to consider that without

10:58 juicing players' enthusiasm in the first session,

11:01 they won't come back for session two,

11:02 especially when that extra hurdle involves spending money.

11:05 So, it's no surprise really that a lot

11:07 of demos use this kind of manipulation to their advantage.

11:10 It's for this reason that loads of Metroidvanias give you

11:12 some cool powers at the start and then take them away,

11:14 a lot of the best open world games employ soft gating to let you

11:18 see late game areas without letting you access them safely and many long RPG

11:22 and strategy games like to hit you with a boss that feels a bit too

11:24 tactically sophisticated for its place in the intro

11:26 or demo while still being pretty easy.

11:28 It all serves to give you a point on the progression horizon

11:30 to work for and keep up the momentum as the game expands.

11:34 Of course, that initial rush of novelty and surprise can't be sustained forever.

11:38 At some point during a demo, players need to get their teeth stuck into a game's

11:42 systems and ideas and start playing it for themselves,

11:45 rather than just feeling like they're being given a guided tour.

11:47 It seems logical that a demo ought to be tightly

11:49 controlled in order to show players all the best bits.

11:52 But in actuality, without giving us players

11:54 the chance to explore games on our own terms,

11:56 we never develop a deeper connection with the material on offer,

11:59 and thus we feel no incentive to come back once the demo is over.

12:02 This is why highly systemic games like the new

12:04 Zeldas or Hitman or BioGenics don't sit players down

12:07 and go through all the ins and outs

12:08 of the mechanics at the start, even if they could.

12:11 And that's because discovering this stuff is all part

12:13 of the fun and helps build an attachment to the game

12:15 and its systems that runs much deeper than if

12:17 we were a passive observer for the same information.

12:20 Unfortunately, loads of games still run into exactly this issue.

12:23 By strapping players down and over-explaining everything

12:26 without giving them a feeling of agency,

12:27 we come out the other side not caring about the lessons

12:30 we were taught or interested in putting them to use.

12:33 Compare the intro for Deus Ex: Human Revolution,

12:35 developed at the height of slow-paced cinematic games,

12:38 which is basically a series of boring, safety-padded corridors,

12:42 to the immediate action of Gloomwood or Fallen Aces demos,

12:45 which deliberately and daringly leave you

12:47 confused then by forcing you to develop

12:49 your own strategies and explore for yourself in order to get your bearings.

12:53 All leading to a much more personal sense

12:55 of investment in where all these ideas end up going.

12:58 In openings where the player is just asked

13:00 to push buttons in order to move the script along,

13:01 we feel like the game would more or less happen without us.

13:04 But when our actions [music] end up defining the gameplay,

13:06 even if it is within the relative confines of a demo,

13:09 an otherwise controlled experience can end up feeling much more personal.

13:13 And that's why many great demos give

13:14 us a chance to make important-feeling choices,

13:16 even if we know deep down we're still playing in the kiddie pool.

13:20 This is why Pokémon's first big moment is making you choose a little guy,

13:23 and it's why the demos for the cute tactics

13:25 game Double Dungeon and the not-so-cute tactics game, Menace,

13:28 let you start messing with your builds

13:29 and equipment almost right away because they know

13:32 the game to customize your units is

13:33 what makes you develop an attachment to them,

13:35 and by extension, the rest of the game.

13:38 A demo giving players important feeling choices doesn't

13:40 just have to amount to explicit branching paths, though.

13:43 Simply giving us the chance to demonstrate

13:45 and reward our agency is more than enough.

13:47 Esoteric Ebb's demo, which takes a few cues from Disco Elysium,

13:51 if you haven't noticed,

13:52 very smartly gets players immediately invested by constantly asking

13:55 them how they feel about the plot details they learn,

13:57 forcing players to at least entertain the idea

13:59 of emotionally committing to the story as they progress.

14:02 Similarly, Of the demo elegantly solves the issue of how

14:05 to get players to take in the details of the mystery

14:07 and keep them invested at the same time by giving them

14:10 little pop quizzes and rewarding them with currency throughout the demo,

14:12 encouraging you to pay attention with the promise of extra scenes

14:15 and maybe a keychain at the end for getting them all right.

14:18 [music] People like feeling in control and like what they do matters,

14:21 so letting them do it early and often can pay off big time,

14:24 even in a relatively limited demo.

14:26 The excellent climbing game, Can't demo,

14:29 could have just been a static series of climbing walls,

14:31 and it would have still communicated what the game's

14:33 all about and also shown off its core climbing mechanics.

14:36 But in giving us the challenge of navigating

14:37 this training mountain entirely under our own power,

14:40 the game forces us to make more decisions

14:42 for ourselves and thus immerse ourselves deeper into the game.

14:45 In fact, optional challenges in general are

14:47 actually a really good way that many demos

14:49 and intros draw in players during what can

14:50 sometimes be a tediously easy part of the game.

14:54 By throwing down the gauntlet nice and early,

14:56 demos can give us the chance to prove

14:57 our skills and provide a break from all the teaching,

14:59 all while still giving us a nice personal stake in continuing the game.

15:03 I put hours into Titanfall 2's awesome training race track because

15:06 it dangles a seemingly impossible time right in front of you,

15:09 hinting at the possibilities of the movement system that you

15:12 won't fully master until the end of the game.

15:14 And Claire Obscure has no less than

15:16 three optional fights in the very first hour.

15:18 The Lumiere Mime, the Myel Rematch, and the Chromatic Lancier give more

15:22 experienced to more confident players a chance

15:24 to stretch their legs and let them

15:25 feel like they're getting rewarded with something special.

15:27 Building an ever greater sense of momentum and a desire

15:29 to push past the intro and towards the rest of the game.

15:33 While a strong demo or intro does have

15:35 to tempt players and build the sense of momentum,

15:37 it's imperative that they never actually pay off that desire to fully explore

15:41 the game or allow players to reach the potential that the demo describes.

15:44 A demo or intro that's too complete and neatly resolves all of its

15:47 ideas squanders the whole purpose of getting people to play the real game.

15:51 Because if the demo leaves the player completely satisfied

15:54 and doesn't give them a reason to come back,

15:55 then they'll miss out on all the more sophisticated

15:57 gameplay that all of this was building up to.

15:59 I've unfortunately felt this a bunch with some otherwise great demos.

16:03 Yap Yap, a lethal company style runaway from monsters game,

16:06 had a really cool gimmick with vocal spell

16:08 casting as well as some fun physics action.

16:10 But even after just a few runs of the demo,

16:12 my friends and I felt like we kind of fully explored what we could

16:14 do with our tools and felt no desire to return for the full game.

16:17 Equally, the demo for Blood Thief, a great first-person speedrunning platformer,

16:21 has a bunch of levels with some really

16:23 hard challenges that all build to a satisfying crescendo.

16:26 So, by the time I got done beating them, I kind of felt like I'd had my fill

16:29 and didn't really feel enthusiastic about the main game.

16:32 As weird as it is to say, a demo or intro needs to leave you

16:36 dissatisfied because it's that very impression that you've barely

16:39 gotten started that there's so much more you want

16:41 to do that catapults you into the real game.

16:43 They need to give you a reason to keep playing and they can't

16:45 do that if you get the payoff before the game's ever really gotten started.

16:49 It's exactly this idea that makes the demo for Realm Warped World so good.

16:54 It starts off as a pretty cool

16:56 puzzle game about combining elements to make spells, but right towards the end,

16:59 the game casually drops a time delay spell that lets you

17:02 set up multi-step combos and dummies that cast spells for you,

17:06 allowing you to cast multiple spells at once.

17:08 Deliberately denying you the ability to fully

17:10 explore these insanely cool mechanics and instead

17:12 just hinting at all of the cool possibilities that are now just out of reach.

17:16 Equally, the demo for Lies of P very smartly doesn't stop

17:20 at the conclusion of this nice satisfying boss fight against the cool robot,

17:23 but a few minutes after.

17:25 Just in time for it to introduce a massive

17:27 upgrade system that you won't really get to use.

17:29 It's frustrating, but in a good way,

17:31 because it makes you excited to play the rest of the game

17:33 and squeeze as much enjoyment as you can out of all the optional challenges.

17:37 This is also why more successful demos for roguelikes cut things off early,

17:41 rather than give players a full run, but with a limited toolkit.

17:44 Balatro most stops right at the point your engine is starting to come together

17:47 and the bizarre gives you just one run with each of its three basic characters.

17:51 Both games only giving you enough time to get a taste of all

17:54 the cool strategies that you won't get to use until you come back.

17:57 Conversely, in other roguelikes like the excellent Demon Bluff,

18:00 which is like single-player Blood on the Clock Tower,

18:02 the tile-managing strategy game The King is Watching,

18:04 or the let's go gambling simulator Club Bet,

18:06 all of which give you free rein to get to the end just with less content,

18:10 it's kind of easy to just, you know,

18:12 play them a few times until you win and then you've had a complete experience,

18:15 but it's difficult to find a reason to revisit,

18:17 because it feels like you've done everything even when you haven't.

18:20 Basically, it's the classic showbiz rule that you've

18:22 always got to leave the audience wanting more, except applied to game design.

18:25 And it's this rule that informs the fantastic

18:27 closing moments of Of the Devil's great demo,

18:30 which are a small spoiler for the real premise of the game,

18:33 so go here if you promise to play it yourself.

18:35 Okay, cool.

18:36 Right when you're done solving the case and proving that this guy is innocent,

18:38 Of the Devil gives you a big congratulatory pat

18:40 on the back and then immediately hits you with a bombshell twist.

18:44 The heartbreak killer, who actually did the murder,

18:46 is none other than Morgan, the player character.

18:49 And not only have you been helpfully

18:50 covering up her involvement the entire time,

18:52 but also her undefeated prosecutor co-worker is on her trail and has solved

18:56 the demo case faster than you without

18:58 the inherent advantage of being the culprit.

19:01 Oh[ __] the spoiler people are coming back.

19:02 The fact that it was all a dream is a huge reveal

19:05 that not only recontextualizes the last hour and a bit of demo,

19:08 but it dramatically expands the scope and stakes

19:10 of the story and sets up a bunch of cool new

19:12 adventures with a much more nuanced central character dynamic

19:15 that are too big to be contained within a demo.

19:18 And that's kind of the point, right?

19:20 Demos and introductions are just a small part of a much larger piece of art.

19:24 But it's in embracing and refining this individual

19:27 idea the games are beginning to realize

19:28 their full potential as a more mature and developed

19:31 medium that understands its own rules and structure.

19:33 Back in the days before demos returned and before most games worked

19:37 out that tie players down with boring suffocating tutorials wasn't a great idea.

19:41 This impression that if players missed something then they'd

19:43 be totally lost or that we couldn't be trusted

19:45 to develop our own relationship with the game spoke

19:47 to a fundamental lack of confidence in their design.

19:49 But now as developers are beginning to work out

19:52 what makes players tick and develop a more consistent language

19:54 of video game design our scrappy underdog of an art

19:57 form is beginning to take its place alongside the others.

20:00 This is why I think it's kind

20:01 of short-sighted to view demos in strictly economic terms.

20:05 Don't get me wrong, without the obvious financial

20:07 incentives they wouldn't be anywhere near as widespread.

20:09 But even before market forces conspired to make demos the correct

20:13 business decision several pressing games saw the potential they represented,

20:17 took a huge risk and games are all the better off for it.

20:20 Without the likes of Doom's shareware demo which showcased

20:22 the potential of a whole new genre right off the bat

20:24 with a dramatic fast-paced intro the first-person shooter as we

20:28 know it may never have left the design cradle.

20:30 And without more modern demos that serve as a proof of concept for a game

20:33 that hasn't even been made yet many fantastic

20:36 experiences would never get the chance to be played.

20:39 Demos are an exercise in giving players an incomplete experience

20:42 and somehow managing to spin that to a game's advantage.

20:45 And demos don't work unless we know which bits we've got to remove

20:48 and how to make the most of the bits we need to keep.

20:50 And it's only by understanding the structure and hidden rules of video

20:53 games as an art form the developers are going to get

20:55 better at marketing the fun bits of their games to us

20:58 and we are going to have more fun playing more persuasive demos.

21:01 Which is hopefully already beginning to happen.

21:04 So So next time you're bored or looking for something to play,

21:07 maybe don't boot up an old favorite and instead,

21:09 why don't you have a go with a few demos?

21:12 Not only are you probably going to find a brand new game you like,

21:15 but the more of them you play and the more you encourage

21:17 developers to think a bit harder about how they introduce their work,

21:20 the better games as a medium are going to get as a result.

21:23 Just remember that sometimes, when something feels incomplete,

21:27 it's like that for a Hello and welcome to the after the video segment.

21:32 Wow, it's been a bit of a while, hasn't it?

21:33 Yeah, I put what was supposed to be the first real video

21:36 of the year on pause because I realized the Steam Next Fest

21:39 was coming up and I wanted to talk about demos and so

21:41 I restarted everything to bump this one to the front of the queue.

21:43 So hopefully the next one won't take as long.

21:46 Anyway, this is the part of each and every video where I plug

21:48 some things that you really ought to support and this time it's Thinky Games.

21:53 Over the years, Thinky Games have come to be

21:54 my number one resource for puzzle game recommendations and reviews.

21:58 They are seriously the number one big bunch of nerds if

22:01 you're looking for any game remotely focused around using your brain.

22:03 They've got yearly awards, they've got a whole bunch of recommendations for easy

22:06 puzzle games for newbies and as of recently,

22:08 they've also got a series of daily puzzles of their very own.

22:11 The Thinky Dailies, as they're called,

22:13 are great and will be coming out pretty soon for the public,

22:15 but in the meantime, if you want preview access to the first season,

22:18 you need to derive an eight-letter code

22:20 from this image and put it onto their website,

22:21 which is very clever indeed and a sample of the cool stuff they've got to offer.

22:25 If puzzle games are your inclination, please do check out Thinky Games.

22:29 Of course, the other bunch of people you should check out is, without a doubt,

22:32 my bunch of supporters on Patreon and YouTube who

22:35 help me each and every month to keep the lights

22:36 on and who you have to thank for me

22:38 expanding Games You Should Have Played into a monthly format.

22:41 As thanks for supporting the channel,

22:43 you get all sorts of goodies like early access, behind-the-scenes stuff,

22:46 bonus content, my eternal permission to adblock the[ __]

22:49 out of YouTube and also your name in the credits.

22:51 Donate $5 and you go on the site, eight and you get a special gold name and 10,

22:56 I read out your name in the illustrious list

22:58 of mysterious benefactors who are Ali Wright, Andrew Lebrano,

23:03 Anna 94, Baroness Caroline, Bobby, Constantine Amend, Cosmic 360,

23:08 Daniel Metches, Daniel Ursyn, Dat Ellie, Dirk Jan Karen Belt,

23:13 Diglett Ear, Diss Ellie, Ekton, Edward Franklin Woods,

23:17 Edwin of the Space Bun, Eric Woolston, Eugene Bulkin,

23:20 Full of Axi, Furious Hulk, Gas Coal, How,

23:24 Hackett's Noah, I Support Trans Rights, Jacob Dillah Riddle,

23:27 [music] Jinkaloid, Kevin Help Us, Konoluf, Kangy, Leap Year Every Day,

23:32 Luke Cocoran, Makes 154, Mark Vallant, Mika Oy,

23:36 Michael C, Mike Oxlong, Nate Graph, Oliver Mahofa,

23:40 Patrick Romberg, [music] Peter Tomasik, Reddit X, Regal Rex,

23:44 Sandimus Phone Booth Club, Sez Lux, Silver Wolfy, Tyler Duncan,

23:48 Timotheus Beck Sack, Whimsical Wisp, Zack Brant Myer, and Ciao.

23:54 Okay, that's me done.

23:55 Hope you like the video.

23:57 Bye.