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Demo History
June 26, 2026 at 07:29 AM
Added the June 2026 director's note announcing the combat rebuild planned for the next demo
Ahead of its Early Access launch, Ember and Blade has been playable through a free demo that has grown steadily over time. The demo began as a focused slice of combat and expanded across later builds into a much fuller showcase, adding new stages, bosses, weapons, and progression systems. It has also served as a way for the studio to gather player feedback during early development. This page traces how the demo evolved.
The first free demo launched on Steam on July 17, 2025, offering up to roughly two hours of combat. It gave players an early hands-on with the game's core loop of cutting through demon hordes and facing patterned bosses. This initial release established the foundation that later updates would build on.
The demo was expanded into a larger vertical-slice build for a major festival showcase in the fall of 2025, and a demo launch trailer debuted as part of a fall fan-fest event. This build added new stages, bosses, and more advanced weapon mechanics, moving well beyond the scope of the original two-hour demo. It notably featured the narrative-packed Acts, which introduced two new angels and a new boss.
The festival build also added a dedicated survival mode, The Arbor's Crucible. This is an endless-survival arena in which players try to last as long as possible against infinitely-spawning demons to earn points, offered as a festival-exclusive experience. A further update arrived in November 2025 alongside this mode, continuing the demo's run of regular updates.
Across its update history, the demo also introduced two of the game's progression systems. The Runes system, which lets players enhance their weapons, and the Arcana combinations were both added through demo updates, along with combat improvements. These additions let demo players experiment with the deeper build-crafting that will feature in the full game. How they fit together is covered under Progression and Builds.
In December 2025, the studio released an Act 3 reveal trailer, which introduced a new weapon, the Gauntlet. This continued to broaden the game's content and combat options ahead of Early Access. Because it was shown as a reveal rather than confirmed in a finished build, its details should be treated as provisional. More context is on the Acts page.
The demo has been distributed during development as a way to experience the game before its paid Early Access launch. For the full release schedule and where the game will be available, see Release and Platforms. For trailers and other media, see Media and Trailers.
Across 2026 the playable demo kept receiving staged updates rather than sitting still. These passes layered in clarity fixes, deeper progression, and smoother combat over several rounds, building toward a larger meta-systems update. The cadence shows the demo being actively iterated on in the run-up to Early Access, with community feedback feeding directly into each round.
The most substantial of these landed on April 28, 2026. On top of the Runes and Arcana systems, that update added Rifts to the field, encounters that let a player gain additional Arcana and adjust a build mid-run. Combat was tightened as well, headlined by a reworked Baphomet fight with new attack patterns, clearer telegraphs, and stronger hit reactions. The update also delivered a full overhaul of the voiceover lines in response to player feedback, replacing the demo's spoken dialogue with re-recorded performances. Together these changes made the demo a meaningfully deeper slice than the original July 2025 build.
In June 2026 the studio's director shared a note titled where the game was headed, announcing that the next demo would go well beyond bug fixes and balance passes by rebuilding combat itself. Looking back across the project, the team traced a steady drift from a slower, more traditional survivors-like toward faster, more active play, with blessings shifting from passive effects toward mechanics tied to dashes and attacks. The note framed the rebuild as finally committing to that direction, and asked players for feedback on two major changes in the upcoming demo. Early proof-of-concept footage was shown using existing assets, with the studio stressing it did not represent the final quality. This marks the most significant planned change to the demo since the April 2026 build.
