Скачать или смотреть Silly Polly Beast | Demo Version

Silly Polly Beast is one of my favorite games among what I checked out for Steam Next Fest back in October. While the demo only gave a tease about the larger story at play in this world, it's presentation and use of sound are impeccable. This is a game that knows when to use silence, and a variety of little touches convey both personality and gameplay information.

For example, one of the first abilities you're given is a hood that you can wear to evade detection. It's not a magic hood that makes you invisible as far as I can tell, but it's introduced in a situation where lazy cops are looking for you, where the simple act of wearing a hoodie to make yourself less obvious will do the trick if you don't draw attention to yourself. Putting the hood up causes the screen to pull in a little bit and get darker. This both conveys the information that you're incognito and emulates the act of wearing a hood in real life. Does that make sense how I explained it? I can never tell.

The game seems to have an emphasis on blending reality with the supernatural and does a lot of that with it's art direction. This game merges bright colors and soft features with grunge and gross in a way that both things feel like they belong together, but are separated enough to not merge. This also has the secondary benefit of improving visibility. It's extremely clever.

As I played through the slice of demo, I was unsure if the events unfolding were actual demonic forces at play or all in my character's mental state. I've played a lot of indie horror games that play with this idea, but few succeed, and I'm happy to say that Silly Polly Beast falls into the latter category.

All of that conveyance would be wasted if the game wasn't fun to play though. In the demo it seems to be a series of "challenge rooms" where a small puzzle or traversal or combat objective needs to be completed to continue. While we don't get too much escalation in the demo, as you collect upgrades the challenges become more complicated.

You have access to a skateboard that can be used as a melee weapon with a recharging stamina system, firearms that can be aimed with the right stick but have very limited ammo capacity that is only refilled from specific locations, throwables and health consumables that have their own timers and buttons, and a dodge roll with recovery frames. Because healing/reloading isn't instantaneous, ammo cannot be refilled during combat, and your melee stamina doesn't recharge while dodging, combat almost feels like it's own sort of puzzle, where you have to take timing, resources, and environmental hazards into account when deciding when to do what. This is further complicated when you acquire a very fun upgrade that allows you to hover above the ground, but you can only move by firing your limited ammo gun so that it's recoil pushes you.

The demo ends with a simple boss battle where you fight an opponent that chases you around an arena, making it difficult to have breathing room, while enemies are chained to the ground around you, limiting your movement. It's a great way to cap things off as a test of everything you've learned, then the demo ends and right when you think you've got it figured out for the most part, it shows a video of your character doing the sickest skateboarding (a mechanic that you don't seem to have an opportunity to play with in the demo) in proverbial hell while rad heavy metal music plays. If that's not a way to get people to immediately want to buy your game, I don't know what is.

This game is now available to purchase on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/15...

Or do it through their main website: https://tophat.studio/games_SillyPoll...