Devilâs Liminal (demo) by Studio Interlude
Style: Choice Select
Played: 7/2/26
Playtime: 1hr, demo complete
I am from the Southwest, letâs get that out of the way right up front. Setting a magical realist work in that setting is almost certainly starting life on third base for me, as it were. The work does a lot of things right. Its adrift young adult protagonist is hovering between high school and college, enduring a fraught home situation in a town of limited opportunity. It is all so specific, so matter-of-factly rendered that it canât help but draw you in. Our protag is starting a summer job, meeting new people, reacquainting with childhood friends and trying to keep a simmering home life from boiling over.
Among the many positives in the work, the artwork is the most prominent. Despite its southwestern setting, the palette is dark: greys and blacks where you might expect brilliant sun and tans. This choice, particularly when rendering southwest scenery, creates a kind of Lynchian mood, of rendering the familiar odd and off putting through aggressive presentation. It seems to suit the work particularly well, setting the tone of the piece nicely.
The rendering also contrasts to the more prosaic parts of the narrative, where new friendships and complicated old dynamics are awkward and sometimes uncomfortable, but in a grounded, realistic way. It has the effect of never quite letting us settle into the slice-of-life narrative we are experiencing. The artwork is aided in this mood setting by offhand references to an absent father that hint at outreâ family history but never MORE than hint. I found this portion of the work engaging - there is an admirable variety of interpersonal relationships built up, creating a full impression of the protagâs life.
The piece really came alive for me when it introduced the supernatural. It took the time to ground our protagonist and flesh her out, so that her reactions and engagement with the strange felt natural and not-quite-in-an-intriguing-way relatable. The details of the supernatural (barely introduced in this demo) are tantalizingly weird, specific and singular. To me, they sang off the southwest setting in a wonderful way, alluding to a unique-feeling mythos that was mostly in shadow. This choice let the details we DID see tickle our antenna in weird, inscrutable ways, effectively doing what much supernatural fiction fails to do: convey the existence of mechanisms beyond our physics that are at once fascinating and scary.
All this was in the workâs favor. There were, however, some elements to the work I struggled with. For one, I felt it did not QUITE fully land its setting. It will probably not shock you outlanders that the most salient element of the southwest is HEAT. Devilâs Liminal really glosses over the unavoidable central feature of this lifestyle. The amount of time the cast spends out of doors is questionable, though not unheard of. Not acknowledging the suffering that entails is less forgivable. Further, not making an overt point of always carrying water, and ACTIVELY CHASTISING FRIENDS WHO DONâT is deeply counter to my experience. If I had to put a finger on a defining detail of my southwest life, that would be it. Its absence chafed at me, not gonna lie. This is ARIZONA IN THE SUMMER. We ENDURE it. Rarely this gracefully.
Despite the ire I just poured on it, that is ultimately a quibble. Certainly it would have no impact on outlandersâ enjoyment of this work. A much bigger reservation, for me, was the revelation that our protagonist is a Special, Chosen One. The work had really effectively painted a unique, strange supernatural element that felt singular and intriguing (no mean feat against the wealth of prior art!). I couldnât help but feel disappointed when it regressed into that familiar trope - it felt like I was losing something that made this special.
My last reservation was a little more subtle, and Iâm not even sure it will outlast this demo experience. When creating interactive works, there is a spectrum of protagonist engagement. From a faceless adventurer whose entire character is supplied by the player, to super-specific visual-novel character the player can observe but not really influence. (Here I am talking about the nature of the character, not the puzzle-solving actions they must take, though admittedly there is not a hard line between those two.) Somewhere in the middle is a protagonist with shades of behavior and reactions the player can tailor while the narrative is mostly unchanged. That is where we seem to live here. I just donât think it quite landed for me. Interactions and developments typically have few choices of response, whose specifics are more alike than different. This kind of choice is an authorial challenge, no doubt about it. The cumulative weight of such choices must be provisioned throughout the length of the game. Many such choices can lead to a very subtle collaborative character that can be undone with clumsy text that does not fully honor those prior choices. It can create a spiderweb of if-else adjective space. Its LACK however is just as awkward. Here, I felt the choices were bounded by a protagonist character so closely as to render the choices too constrained to satisfy. The work seemed to SUGGEST I could collaborate on the protagâs character, but not follow through on it. This is a peril pretty specific to early game, I would say. As the plot picks up steam this would likely not be as foregrounded. But for this demo, where so much is about establishing character and setting, it looms large.
Where does this leave me? I think the things it does right DO outweigh these misgivings and I do recommend checking it out to see if this is for you. In particular, the promise of bouncing all of these deftly established relationships off the supernatural twist is particularly promising. I am on the fence at the moment whether I can let go of my quibbles and pursue the final work when released. Thatâs probably a me thing, not a you thing though.
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