At this point it would be hard to deny that Annapurna doesn’t have an eye for unique games. Whether they all resonate with me personally is another topic, but they are always pushing forward unique ideas and bolstering smaller developer teams. While I didn’t know about Demi and the Fractured Dream before going into this demo, I knew I’d at least be experiencing something different in one way or another. While the demo wasn’t all that long, it certainly left me wanting more!

Demi and the Fractured Dream is an action adventure game with a heavy focus on letting the player discover its world and tools naturally. It honestly reminded me a lot of how Tunic approached its puzzles, with a bit of The Legend of Zelda, as well. You have the tools to solve the puzzles, but its very hands off and lets you figure it out. There may be one small clue somewhere, but the rest is up to you to play around with and understand it.

Wake up, we need a hero!

The demo took place in what looked like a massive magical library. Story is a bit vague here for the demo, but I was quickly thrown into combat for a tutorial. Pretty classic action adventure combat with light combos, hold for charge attacks, ariel combos and slams, and a dodge move that if done in time will charge your void powers. It’s not complicated, especially for what I was given, but there will be other spells and tool unlocks that deepen the combat.

As I progressed I came to a locked puzzle room, that was simple in design but teaches you to use one of your tool. I quickly saw a mound of sand with some goodies sticking out of it, so I tried jumping on it, ground pound, nothing was working. Defeated, I decided to move on to the cart blocking the path and all it told me was to press Left Bumper. This pulled out a giant leaf that blast air and moved the cart. Well now I just found my solution to the sand mound problem. That LB prompt will be the only hint to a puzzle moving forward though, the rest is intuition and past video game mechanics knowledge.

Using the leaf will allow you to push floating platforms.

The next puzzle that got people stuck was trying to hit a crystal in order to make one of the platforms appear, however, it is too far for you to jump to and hit. Your air current from the leaf won’t activate it by itself either. Doing some exploring, you see a magic book that is shooting out an orb, putting two and two together I figured you had to push the orb through the gaps to get it to the crystal. No help or prompts, no companion giving you a hint. Just your knowledge of the current mechanics to help figure out the way. The platforming and puzzles weren’t all that complicated in the demo, but from what I saw of the teaser stuff it will ramp up nicely.

Demi and the Fractured Dream ends with a boss fight that was engaging. The boss had a nice variety of moves that kept me on my toes, from timing jumps for shockwaves, to dodging away from explosions, it was fun. Half way through the boss get more aggressive, increase attack combos and shock waves move faster. I was able to defeat the boss without too much of my health taken, but I really enjoyed it.

I wanted to explore so much more of this library.

The biggest compliments I can give a demo is that time flew when I played it and I wanted to keep going, and Demi and the Fractured Dream hit both of those. I want to see how this develops, and the cool tools and puzzles it has with that same “you’re on your own” philosophy.

Demi and the Fractured Dream launches February 2027 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2.