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5 Simple Steps to Better Game Demos

5 Simple Steps to Better Game Demos

Last week I played the downloadable demo for Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, the latest in a great series of dungeon-crawlers for the 3DS. It struck me as an example of a particularly good demo, one that made me very interested in playing the full game.

We don’t get a lot of game demos these days, because they can take too much time from actual game development and, if the demo or game isn’t very good, can actually lower sales. Still, quality demos can help raise a game’s profile and improve sales, especially for niche games or new franchises. Here are five things that all game demos should copy from Etrian Odyssey’s demo.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Many game demos plop you down somewhere in the middle of a game. For heavily story-based games, this is particularly confusing, but it’s always problematic. Every game has a learning curve, and dropping brand-new players into the middle of the game generally results in frustration.

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold’s demo is the actual beginning of the game. It works particularly well because there isn’t a huge story dump at the start, and tutorials are built naturally into the gameplay. That’s good game design in general. If a game is so front-loaded with cutscenes and heavy-handed tutorials that a demo placed at the beginning would bore players to death, well, that’s a sign that maybe the beginning of the game should be re-worked, anyway.

Include a Meaty and Representative Slice of the Game

Include a Meaty and Representative Slice of the Game

Few things are more annoying than a game demo that doesn’t let you play long enough to actually get a feel for the game. Some demos toss you out just as you’ve started to understand how to play but before you’ve had a chance to put those skills to use. It’s like those annoying three-minute gameplay segments you get from amiibo tap: Nintendo’s Greatest Bits. How are you supposed to decide if you enjoy a game when you’re not allowed the time to actually start enjoying it?

The Etrian Odyssey demo I played gave us an unusually generous amount of gameplay, with its storyline stretching over three large dungeon levels. You can even keep exploring after you’ve exhausted the available story, with the caveat that you can’t level above 10. I wouldn’t expect that amount of gameplay from every demo, but they should at least give us a reasonable amount of time to see what playing the main game is actually like.

Help Us Learn How to Play

Help Us Learn How to Play

Here’s something that mightily ticks me off when I start a demo, be it one available to consumers or at a press-only event. The demo starts, and on the loading screen flickers a diagram of the controller with every button helpfully labeled in teensy tiny text. Then, as soon as you’re able to actually play the demo, there’s no way to get back to that diagram.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to learn by doing, so showing me which button does what isn’t very helpful before I’ve had a chance to actually play. A good demo should give players access to its “how to play” information at any time, whether it’s through on-screen prompts or at least the ability to see the controller diagram from the pause screen. It should also give them the time and space to learn how to play before tossing a major challenge at them. This allows players to get a realistic idea of the final game’s difficulty.

Etrian Odyssey’s demo dodges this issue entirely by taking players naturally through the game’s opening segments and allowing the same access to the help menu that a player in the full game has. Any demo can provide this kind of help, however, with just a bit of thought on the part of its creators.

Provide a Teaser of What’s to Come

Provide a Teaser of What’s to Come

A good demo doesn’t just say, “OK, here’s a bit of our game, go to town.” It gives you a reason to want to keep playing. Ideally this isn’t a cheap trick like stopping you right before you get a chance to try out a boss fight, but rather a broader reason to want to explore further, whether that’s a tantalizing puzzle to solve or a segment that shows off some of the best gameplay available, promising more to come.

The Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold demo gives us a tantalizing look at the game’s central mystery, as the main character is having dreams of childhood events that, for some reason, he can’t remember. In addition, the final demo message discusses some of the main gameplay systems that haven’t yet been unlocked. It gives both story fanatics and RPG system geeks a little taste of what’s to come, urging everybody to grab the final version and enjoy what it has to offer.

Give Us a Present for the Full Game

Give Us a Present for the Full Game

Since the Etrian Odyssey demo is literally the beginning of the full game, players can carry their progress over once they buy the full thing. That’s great! I don’t have to replay the segment of the game I’ve already completed, but instead can carry right on from where I left off. It certainly gives me an incentive to buy the full game, and early, before I forget what I was doing.

Even if a demo doesn’t allow you to carry over progress, it’s nice to give players some kind of reward that carries over into the full game. You know – some starter gear, an alternative outfit for the main character, a special Pokemon… something fun that encourages gamers to take the next step and plunge into the full game.

What do you think? Was there ever a demo that made you fall in love with a game? What did it do that other game demos should do? Let us know in the comments!

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