Demo

Justdan opened a free demo for Dinghai: The Ocean Pillar on Steam on 25 August 2026, as its own application separate from the main store entry. It is the first playable build the studio has released to the public. Justdan estimates roughly two hours of play. The full game is still listed as coming soon, with no date and no price.

What the Demo Includes

Justdan set out the contents of the build in the announcement that went with the release. The counts below are the ones it gives.

Stages

The demo opens two map stages. Huxiu is a place that had not been named in any earlier material. Mount Buzhou is the mountain already tied to the premise, where Yi is fatally wounded and the fallen general takes his body. Justdan also mentions hidden elements left for players to uncover, without saying what they are. Accounts of the build describe a combat tutorial section ahead of the two stages, so the demo runs as a tutorial followed by two stages rather than two stages alone.

Bosses in the Demo

Three bosses have been named. Xiangliu is fought in the opening tutorial section. Nujiao (女嬌) closes the first stage, and accounts of the fight describe her as Yi's adoptive mother, who attacks on finding her son's body occupied by someone else. Jiaochong is the final boss, met deep inside Mount Buzhou, and its fight is described as bringing in a second one partway through, which matches the paired Jiaochong encounter visible in the official screenshots. The two hidden bosses have not been named. See The Mythic World for how the game describes each of these beings.

Weapons in the Demo

The full game is planned to carry five weapon types, three melee and two ranged. The demo opens three of them: a sword, a pair of dual blades, and a bow. Pairings are not restricted to one melee and one ranged, so two melee or two ranged can be carried together.

Two specific weapons are described. The Baixiao Sword (白宵劍) is a one-handed sword that turns water to ice and triggers an effect the game labels 寒圈, which deals damage while lowering enemy attack power and slowing the target. Vessels can extend it further, adding a stun or raising the number of hits and the damage it deals. The Wumu Bow (烏木弓) is a ranged weapon built for clearing space, and its weapon skill lays down a poison mist that drains health and poisons anything standing in it. With particular Vessels that mist can gain the ability to pursue enemies on its own, or summon burrowing creatures the game calls 地毒蟲 that chase a target and detonate for area damage. These are the first individual weapons the game has named.

Adornments and Vessels

Vessels (法寶) are handed out as a random ability at the end of each round, and come in four categories: 攻擊, 生存, 奇詭 and 元素. They stack the player's own stats, add derivations to weapon moves, and weaken enemies. Justdan's own English asset naming renders the first two of those categories as Attack Vessels and Survival Vessels; the other two have no published English name. Adornments (飾品) are named alongside Vessels as the other category that combines with the weapons, but nothing further about them has been published.

Screenshots released earlier show rows of unlabelled icons around the edge of the combat display, including five numbered icons under one boss health bar and eight card-style icons down the left of the screen. Justdan has not said whether those rows hold Adornments, Vessels, or something else, so no connection between them is drawn here.

Progression

Accounts of the build describe a hub area where resources carried out of finished runs are spent on talents, a permanent layer that survives death, while everything gained inside a stage is lost when a run ends. Defence is split between a block that reflects an attack and a step-dodge, with the block window described as strict until talents open up.

Access and Requirements

The demo is free, runs on Windows, and installs from its own Steam application, which the main store page links across to. It lists the same PC requirements as the full game and ships in the same five languages, English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, with Chinese voice acting.

Its listing carries a wider set of feature flags than the main store entry. Alongside single-player, full controller support, gamepad recommended, DualSense controller support and Steam Cloud, it adds adjustable difficulty, camera comfort options, custom volume controls, contrast controls, playable at your own pace, playable without timed input, stereo and surround sound, stats, and HDR support. Adjustable difficulty had not appeared on the main entry's flag list, and it is the first sign that the game carries difficulty options at all.

Relationship to the Playtest

The demo is a different application from the Dinghai Playtest listing that went up on 28 June 2026. The playtest keeps its own store entry and its own single note, a hotfix recording minor bug fixes, and Justdan has never published what that build contains or how access to it is granted. The demo, by contrast, is openly downloadable and its contents are set out in full. See Development for the store and release details of both.