BODY: Alice wakes up with no memories in a prison for the dead, and FURYU wants you to try escaping it for free. On October 22, the publisher rolled out demos of its new roguelike action game CRYMELIGHT on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, following an earlier Steam trial — and the slice on offer is unusually generous.
The demo contains the whole of Chapter 1, which FURYU estimates at anywhere from 90 minutes to over three hours depending on how thoroughly you poke at it. Players control Alice, an amnesiac girl thrown into a lethal game inside "Wonderland," a holding pen for departed souls. Combat is built around combo strings, dodges and grabs, layered with a "Poker System": after each fight you draw skill cards, and the poker hand you assemble out of them determines how hard your buffs hit. Weapon and accessory upgrades persist across runs, so the roguelike loop pushes forward even after a loss.
The supporting cast leans into the Lewis Carroll framing — Mad, Cheshire and Mary circle Alice with their own agendas — and the scenario is supervised by Naoki Hisaya, the writer behind Kanon and FURYU's earlier CRYSTAR.
FURYU has also been visibly reacting to demo feedback. A Steam player survey found that more than 55 percent of those who picked the gentler Story mode still found the game hard, and the company says the full release will ship with retuned difficulty, an easier Story mode, chainable dodge moves, clearer card-build traits and stronger presentation in its ADV story scenes.
CRYMELIGHT launches November 5 on PS5, Switch 2 and PC. Digital runs ¥3,278, with a ¥4,378 physical edition and a ¥10,978 "Tea Party Box" bundling DLC, an artbook, a soundtrack album and original playing cards. The demos stay up until the full game launches.
The insider take
The ¥3,278 digital price is the giveaway: it is a modest price for a game like this, which makes a full Chapter 1 demo a confident move — the demo does the selling. Releasing the console demos after the Steam trial and promising changes based on feedback also suggests FURYU treats the demo as part of development, not just marketing.
Originally reported by AUTOMATON (Japanese).