Yesterday I played the demo for Resident Evil Village. With how awesome the Redident Evil 7: Biohazard demo was I was quite excited. While this new demo didn't have all the details, secrets and content that the last demo had it still left me wanting for more.

As with any demo it does of course come with limited content. This time however they're limiting us not only by content but also by game time. You can only play the demo for a maximum of 60 minutes before being thrown out (unless you do some tricks to reset the timer). That means we gotta play smart and be effective while playing.

I'm gonna break down what we get to see in the demo and what kind of hints/teasers it leaves us for the full game. We get to explore a small part of the Village and the Castle.

The Village

The Village gives us a taste of what the general story will be about. We play as the character Ethan who has come here looking for his missing daughter. Ethan Winters is also the main character from the last game. Right off the bat we meet this creepy, but at the same time cozy, old lady that warns us about this place and tells us to turn back. Spooky.

The village seems to be pretty much abandoned which is always a good sign. We can do some exploring and find some items. It's mostly consumables that has no real use to us in the short demo. I did stumble across some intractable stuff that I didn't figure out. There was a drawer that could be lock picked but I never found the lock pick. There were some wells that could be used to hoist something up as well if you had the right item. Probably a lever or something. I never found that either. This could just be red herrings to make us curious or waste time, or it could be that I just wasn't thorough enough.

There were some interesting notes as well. One note was a poem of sorts about lycans and "monster wolves of old". There's gonna be werewolves in the full game? That's pretty cool. This is also sort of confirmed when we shortly thereafter meet some mutated villagers with fur and long arms.

We end up meeting some villagers huddled up in a cabin. They talk about how they're the only ones left and how all the others have "turned". We also hear something about a deity figure that has apparently abandoned them. And of course the very awesome Lady Dimitrescu.

As we're talking one of the people in the cabin turn and all hell breaks loose. The house starts burning and we have to escape. As we leave the house we see some apparition or something suck the life force out of a man and disappearing into the fields. The scene ends with us solving a pretty standard, but classic, puzzle in the style of Resident Evil.

The game looks great though

The Castle

While the Village was cool I was infinitely more excited for the Castle. To start off castles are just way cooler than villages from the get go. It also meant there was a chance we got to see Lady Dimitrescu. While there was a small glance of her I wasn't at all disappointed at what the game threw at me instead.

As with the Village we get to explore a stunning environment and collect some mundane consumables. Interestingly enough though we meet a pretty big guy who acts as a shop keeper. He doesn't really have anything of interest to us but I end up buying a shotgun anyways. Might come in handy.

Now I have to mention again that the Castle is absolutely stunning. What a beautifully crafted environment this is. There's a lot of locked doors in the location. If there's any way to open them at all during the demo I didn't find them. I did however manage to open the one important door that had me stuck for a while. The door was showing a maiden with bleeding eyes and one eye was missing. I had found a "maroon eye ring" earlier. No matter what I did it wouldn't interact with the door. Turns out I had to look at the ring from the inventory and interact with it to loosen the eye.

As we open the door we're attacked by a swarm of bugs and a sexy vampiress materializes in front of us and starts attacking us. I honestly don't mind and would let her attack and bite me all day if only it didn't kill me. So I ran instead.

As we make our escape from her we fall down into the dungeons of the Castle. Now this is a proper grim and dark location. There's a ton of cells with a lot of dead bodies down here. There's cages, torturing devices, masks and all sorts of nasty business. We find a couple of notes explaining what they've been doing down here. Apparently the sexy vampiress is named Daniela and is one of Lady Dimitrescus experiments. Pretty sweet experiment if you ask me.

There's also some failed experiments down here that we have to fight. A couple of shots to the head and they're down. They drop some crystal heads which I suspect we're meant to take back to the start of the level to open the main entrance to get out. There were four statues with missing heads there so it can't be a coincidence.

Daniela comes back to bite us one last time, thank god, and the demo ends. I actually made it through everything with seven minutes to spare. That means I could have been more thorough than I was. Oh well. The demo has done its job in captivating me already so it really doesn't matter.

I'm excited for the release of this game. It's out in two days and I might just pick it up come the weekend. Depends if my girlfriend is interested as well. I might have to wait for us to get a Playstation 5 then so we can play it together. The PC isn't all that great for relaxing and playing together. She likes to watch as I play these kinds of games, horror games especially. We always discuss the plot and make choices together. It's great!

Did you try the demo? Did you manage to open any of the locked drawers, doors or crank up the wells? Let me know in the comments!

I'll end this post with some excess screenshots that I thought were cool.