Here’s where it absolutely nails the vibe. The demo drops you right into the village of Weepstone, where everything feels like it’s one bad roll away from disaster. The fields are dying, the lord’s sick with visions, and strange rituals are bubbling somewhere underground. You’re not some chosen hero or mystical knight - you’re a villager. Maybe a carpenter. Maybe a baker. Someone who got volunteered to go into an old mysterious keep because you happened to be sitting too close to the tavern door. That’s pure D&D energy right there.
You pick your party from a bunch of locals, six out of seven possible recruits (in the demo, the full version will have more) each with different stats and classes and absolutely zero hero experience. The beauty of it is that everyone feels like they could die at any moment, which makes every step into that keep feel earned.
Exploration feels tangible and tense. You move through rooms at your own pace while a dungeon master’s voice narrates everything: the flicker of the torchlight, the smell of wet stone, the feeling that something is very wrong in this place. The movement is freeform, not on a grid, which makes it feel more natural while still keeping that classic dungeon crawl anxiety - like you know there’s a gelatinous cube just waiting around the next corner.
Combat goes full tabletop. You’ve got a front-middle-rear formation system that actually makes sense, with melee up front, ranged in the back, and dice rolls for every single hit. Strength, wisdom, dexterity - it’s all there. You don’t just attack, you roll for it. Like, you literally roll dice on the floor next to the enemy and do damage according to the roll. The combat is turn based and very intense - You roll your dice hoping for a good roll and dreading a bad one because your heroes have very few and precious hit points and once they die - they stay dead. However, when a character dies, they can leave behind something called a Mortal Favor, which gives everyone else in the party a nice buff. It's both tragic and oddly poetic - like the game found a way to make permadeath meaningful.
Visually, it’s stunning in the most unflashy way possible. The black and white hand-drawn art looks like someone tore the illustrations straight out of a 1980s campaign booklet and turned them into a living world. No color explosions, no cinematic cutscenes - just beautifully stark ink lines and heavy shadows. Even the soundtrack fits perfectly, all moody and ancient and slightly eerie, like it’s been echoing in that dungeon for centuries.
Of course, there’s a catch. It’s a demo, so you’re only getting a tiny slice of the game - the opening dungeon, a few puzzles, and a peek at what’s to come. And if you’re used to modern RPGs with slick cinematics and auto-battle buttons, this might feel like a relic. The dice animations are real time, the pace is deliberate, and everything about it screams “old school.” But that’s the point.
The highlight for me was how it captures that tabletop rhythm. Recruiting your team in the inn feels exactly like the start of a new campaign. Losing a character hits hard, not because of fancy voice acting or slow-motion deaths, but because the game makes you care. The puzzles are clever enough to break up the tension - returning relics to statues, forging keys, finding hidden mechanisms. And the narration? It’s perfect. You’re not exploring a map, you’re being told the story as it unfolds, like a DM whispering it right into your brain.
If I had one wish, it’d be for more. More dungeon types, more enemy variation, more places to explore. But honestly, as a demo, it already delivers exactly what it promises - a digital version of sitting around a table at 2 AM, arguing over whether your halfling can jump the chasm.
Bottom line: if you’ve ever held a D20 in your hand and prayed for anything but a one, The Secret of Weepstone will feel like coming home. It’s not just inspired by old-school D&D - it is old-school D&D, lovingly reconstructed inside your PC.
You can download the Demo here
