Circuitry - Mini Demo

I can't judge whether this is a good game or not, but this is a pretty lousy demo. Remember how fast Undertale gets you into the actual gameplay? There's no frontloaded wall of text; Flowey makes a few remarks—skipable, plot-forwarding remarks—and then you're thrown into the first battle sequence.

Speaking of which, the two battles played almost identically to each other. TarZ mixes it up with a fourth attack type, but otherwise, it's fire, dodge, fire, dodge, repeat with two different graphics sets. And I guess the scan feature is an alternative win condition taking the place of the vast, handcrafted variety of noncombat interactions found in Undertale, but I didn't get to see the point in the demo. I consider any combat system in which the player does not make meaningful decisions most turns a fail, and neither holding down the spacebar while tracking an enemy or matching arrow keys to slew of attacks requires a meaningful decision.

The graphics are lovely, but the mechanics and narrative fail to be anything that Undertale hasn't already done better. (And switching monsters to robots doesn't make the plot original in itself.) You miss a great opportunity for in medias res mystery and wonder by having Cudzy dump so much info on the player.

I wish I could find something to genuinely praise in this demo besides the graphics, but I can't. The original graphics are great, but other than them, the demo lacks an original spark to set it apart from Undertale. Which is too bad, because the demo shows that a lot of time and effort has gone into it.