Video game demos are similar to movie previews -- they pitch the premise behind the game, trying to hook the player's interest into buying it while simultaneously not giving too much of it away. However, video games tend to be longer, more involved experiences than movies, and thus harder for publishers to properly gauge which events in a particular game showcase what exactly the game is about.
The best video game demos get straight-to-the-point, showcasing exciting moments and intuitive features while at the same time teaching the player how to play it. This must all be accomplished within a sufficiently short amount of time, yet long enough to engage a player's attention.
Placement within a game's story or timeframe is an important factor in what makes a quality video game demo—very rarely, if ever, does a demo take place at the climax or a spoiler-heavy moment in the game. At the same time, the demo must properly convey the game's story, characters, and/or unique gameplay concisely.
The Uncharted series is one of developer Naughty Dog's finest outings, featuring rogue treasure hunter Nathan Drake as he jumps, climbs and shoots his way across the globe searching for ancient artifacts. The Playstation 4 release of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection offers a demo of one of the finest moments in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
In this level, the player is taught how to take cover, shoot and utilize the constant-motion gameplay, jumping and climbing from platform to platform while defeating dozens of soldiers, culminating in the thrilling destruction of the building Nate is standing in and a challenging fight against a helicopter.
In terms of presentation and gameplay, the demo makes a proper show of Uncharted 2's stellar art design and graphics, even for the time, with a varied color palette, destructible environments, and platforms that blend seamlessly into the cinematic progression while still making it easy for the player to navigate to the next objective.
The demo lasts a rather short amount of time, but almost everything about the Uncharted series as a whole is present in this one sequence, simulating the experience of being a modern-day Indiana Jones while also inputting the series' signature character interplay.
Not every game requires a story to have a successful demo. The ever-popular Minecraft had almost no story to speak of during the majority of its existence, yet managed to make billions off the simple joy of crafting and creation interspersed with an emphasis on survival.
While the full game originally did not have a tutorial, one of the original demos for the Xbox 360 would actually teach the player the very basics of Minecraft's mechanics, giving them a decent head-start into the world they spawn in as the demo begins its timer of 100 minutes. This time limit is very generous compared to most video game demos, which typically average within 15-30 minutes.
Minecraft's demo doesn't feature everything the game has to offer; the multiplayer and creative modes are locked, so the full game's appeal of cooperative gameplay and showing off neat creations is unfortunately lost on prospective buyers. However, within the single-player mode's clock, there is no limit to what the player can do in the world they are in, from crafting houses, exploring dungeons, and if they're lucky, finding diamonds, a very addicting gameplay loop that's enough for many consumers to consider buying the game.
Some demos are so good, they may transcend even the full game in its status, becoming more valuable and influential than the developers originally intended. When P.T. released in 2014, it was considered one of the most terrifying horror games in recent memory, with visceral imagery, a foreboding atmosphere, and cryptic puzzles that encouraged multiple people to work together to uncover the mystery.
Clever and determined players would eventually finish P.T., which turned out to be short for "playable teaser." The ending of the demo reveals famed The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus to be the player character of a brand new installment of the long-dormant Silent Hill series, which was a huge surprise for anyone involved, barely aware that they were even playing a demo to an existing game.
Silent Hills was a collaboration between Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and Hollywood film director Guillermo del Toro, but despite overwhelming fan support for the game, publisher Konami unceremoniously canceled the highly acclaimed project. The company even went so far as to completely remove any evidence of the game's existence off of the Playstation network, with consoles containing the demo being auctioned off in the thousands.
The power of the Silent Hills demo and its discontinuation was such that it inspired the development of the remarkably similar Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, itself a revival of a long-dormant series. The determination of Hideo Kojima and Norman Reedus in their collaboration led to the creation of Death Stranding. P.T. alone managed to set off a horror renaissance in the mid-to-late 2010s, leaving a legacy that has yet to be surpassed.
All three of these games perfectly encapsulate the most important aspects of what makes a good video game demo—placing the player in the middle of the action, in a situation that properly explains the game's features within the allotted time. The perfect game demo makes the player forget that they are playing a demo to begin with, granting an understanding of how the game plays, a taste of what the full experience is like, and cut it right as the player gets invested into it.