New Demoniaca Footage Hurts an Otherwise Promising Kickstarter Campaign

Demoniaca: Everlasting Night recently launched on Kickstarter, and at first, I thought it looked quite promising. Sure, the King of Fighters-meets-Castlevania project might have been selling itself partly through the promise of sexually-explicit content, but the decent concept, lovely pixel art and atmospheric soundtrack made up for that (to an extent).

Then I saw the new gameplay trailer, and I lost my faith, somewhat:

What’s up with the idle enemies? And the fiddly platforming? The animation looks perfectly good, but overall there seems to be a huge lack of motion on display, leaving the gameplay looking quite flat and generic. Does it make the game look good? Do the mechanics look fun? Personally, I don’t think so.

Before you get all wound up, I am aware that Demoniaca is still in early development. Hell, it still has a full 21 days left on its Kickstarter campaign. However, I feel like the campaign would have actually been more persuasive without this new trailer. Kickstarter campaigns aren’t the time for half-measures. If your gameplay isn’t ready to show, don’t show it. Even as proof-of-concept footage, it looks kinda rough (lovely art aside). Alongside the promises of ‘adult’ content and cheap teases like the one below, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Did I mention there’s an entire stretch goal devoted to the development of an additional sex scene?

Thankfully, the campaign’s lead trailer is much more compelling, and that’s mostly due to the fact that it doesn’t include much gameplay footage, focussing instead on the game’s narrative:

At lot of work has clearly gone into rendering the game’s, ahem, ‘assets’, but the gameplay doesn’t look quite there yet, and the latest trailer doesn’t do the project any favors. On the other hand, we’ve seen only the smallest slice of gameplay from the project, and for all I know, it could be in much better shape than this new trailer implies. Still, if that’s the case, then why not show something better?

Regardless, I’m sure Demoniaca‘s tastelessly topless ladies will help the project reach its perfectly reasonable €15,000 goal in no time. For more information, check the game’s campaign over on Kickstarter, and stay tuned to Cliqist for future coverage.