I’ve always been a fan of two things, rhythm based games and RPGs. If you’ve ever listened to our Girl Pod podcast then you have heard me talk about my love of both. So when the opportunity play a game that blended the two came up at Pax East 2025, I gave it a shot.
But it wasn’t just the gameplay that intrigued me, it was also the premise. I was also familiar with the Amazon Prime series Upload which also tackled what it would mean to be uploaded to an afterlife. But how would these differ in their approach? What would it be like to be a more active participant as opposed to a just a viewer? First, let’s talk about the story bits in this demo.
The Story So Far (At Least What We Know)
In this preview, we awaken as Karma, someone who has just been uploaded after passing away. We have arrived in Maya, the upload afterlife and we’re supposed to meet our brother. Unfortunately he’s not there and Maya looks quite a bit different than what we expected. It’s very empty, there are massive creepy crawlers running around, and much of the world seems run down. We meet Kimothy who is on his own and quickly becomes our friend. I had to remind myself that Kimothy is a child and he’s very well written as one. Which did mean that yes, he’s a bit over eager, a bit excitable, and scared of the dark. Kimothy does also join you throughout the travel and introduce you to a giant fish person named Satoru who helps you understand that sound and silence are.
Through Satoru’s teachings we learn that we can cure the corruption that is happening in Maya. As we try to find a way to find our brother, we also learn quickly that at one point Maya essentially crashed. When it came back, suddenly Nocturne was in charge, a rogue AI that Kimothy believes is eating souls. As it turns out, Nocturne wants to meet Karma and sends one of their lackey, Yako, after him. It’s here that we learn that not only can Karma get rid of the corruption, he manages to get into the consciousness of Yako and deletes him, something that only an admin can do. What is this strange power that Karma has and why can he do this? We’ll have to play the full game to find out.
Combat
The rhythm based combat is quite interesting. I played the game on controller and I’ll be honest the first thing I did was remap the buttons. I had to find something that felt natural for shifting quickly. Thankfully the remapping was quick to find and then once it felt natural my attempts at sticking with the rhythm was… better. Not because the game is bad, but because my goodness, the easiest difficulty still brings quite a challenge!
Of course, I can’t talk about the combat without talking about the music. For the songs that we’ve heard so far, while genres may overlap, none of the songs blend too far into the others. Each song feels different from the last and don’t overstay their welcome. With just a few enemies in this demo of course you’re bound to hear the same songs, but the length is seems to have been perfectly curated so fights do not drag on.
It felt really good to get a song where I had no misses. Did I ever get a perfect song? Nope, not in the slightest. The good news though is that you can go back and keep playing the songs in the arcade mode to perfect them. Thankfully, in the regular game mode, you’re also able to equip different items and attire to help you throughout your battles. Want to increase your health regeneration? Completely possible. Want to increase your attack power with your bo staff? Done, well that is once you get it.
The Small Fixes Required
Thankfully I never ran into any game breaking bugs during my time with this preview demo. What I did see though was certain times when the text boxes could use a bit more editing. Some sentences would begin with lower case instead of upper case letters. This isn’t anything huge but for those who are paying close attention to the text boxes (or spends too much time editing her own writing) its something that catches your eye.
One thing that may not be an issue but something that I noticed was that our character was seen with a bo staff even before he received one. It would be great to see our character evolve in the combat scenes but even if the evolution isn’t as possible, it would make more sense to see him without the staff before acquiring one. This isn’t necessarily a fix needed but something that felt odd once I finally actually received the staff.
The good news though? That’s the only issue I ever came across and the only nit picky thing I had. Calibrating the game so I can hit the rhythm beats on time? Perfect. Visual glitches? I didn’t see any. The demo looks wonderful so it makes me think we’ll see a great final product when the time comes.
Final Thoughts
The game play is a bit challenging, even at its easiest difficulty but thankfully it isn’t impossible. In this demo, as long as you survive the song, you still get the win, which is great for someone like me who struggled. I’m very curious to see where the story goes and who else we meet on our journey. The demo did skip ahead to introduce us to more of the world and we clearly find a town with more characters. How did we get here? Who are these people? How do we convince them we can fight on our own as well?
The demo gave me exactly what I was hoping to get. The potential to see what the story could be and how the combat would work. I also very much appreciate that they skipped ahead in the story to show us another area to show how they have been progressing. Did Pracy Studios show us a bit of chapter 2 or chapter 3? We won’t know until the full game is released. But the game has 8 chapters to look forward to and over 100 songs so I’m very excited to see this full release if they can keep up this level of polish. It may have been a game a long time in the making but Pracy should be proud of this demo and I hope they can be proud of what comes next.
Nocturne is developed and published by Pracy Studios. It is currently listed for a September 24, 2026 release on Steam. Thank you to Pracy Studios for the preview code.
