For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Jack Barau.
I had hoped to play this DEMO a few weeks ago, when i first saw it listed on the UK eShop page but when i clicked the Download Demo button nothing would happen and i didn't see the demo on the Switch eShop either. when it finally was available on the eShop i jumped on it and even tho the game is out now i still wanted to give it a go.
The Jack Barau DEMO goes straight into gameplay. there's no trailer, no story cinematic, there's just a world map. i do appreciate that the map clearly shows where the demo ends, but like most demos the game never says if our save file will carry over to the final game. it took me about 20 minutes to complete the demo and another 10 to get all the possible gold stars. once it's finished, there's nothing left to see. there's no trailer showing what's coming in the game, no screenshots or artwork, and perhaps strangly for this game in particular there's nothing talking about the motivation behind this game because Jack Barau highlights an issue on the island of #Réunion of fledging Barau Petrels getting lost and confused by human made lights. the eShop page mentions it a little but with nothing said in the demo it feels like a missed opportunity.
The only other knock against this demo was the odd audio bug that occured on occasion when our character Jack spoke. it sounded like the audio was peaking and distorted even tho it was the same level as the rest of what he said. But other than that it ran great, it looked great, and after some initial adjustments to the controls is played great.
The difficulty of what we played was fairly low but it didn't detract from my time with the demo. i had fun and i wanted to continue playing to get more story and to try and collect more of the fledglings. i'm unsure if there is more than just the island we saw on screen to play through so you'll had to judge whether the price is worth the risk. but if you're curious i'd say try the demo, but i think there's something fun here.
