Most people think of Fire Emblem as the strategy RPG standard, but Demonschool turns the typical chess-like combat expectation on its head. Add some flair from Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, and Italian horror and it transforms into its own unique young adult adventure.
I went hands-on with a demo of Demonschool at PAX West and was impressed with its fast-paced approach to battles. It makes subtle changes to the strategy formula, but ones that make a meaningful difference when it comes to the pace of battles.
Demonschool stars four college kids investigating supernatural mysteries on their island college town in the 90s. Creative Director Brandon Sheffield notes that it’s a specific choice that felt right for the game, considering how modern times have more of an emphasis on technology. You play as Faye, the last living heir in a demon-hunting legacy family, and fight alongside her friends Nanako, Dustin, and Knute to take down cult leaders, demons, and more.
The typical SRPG unit can move a limited number of spaces in any direction depending on its speed. In Demonschool, characters can move one direction vertically or diagonally with an optional “sidestep” that lets them move one space horizontally for free. You can keep moving characters so long as you have “skill points” to do so. The first turn for each character costs one point, and the second one costs two. Each turn starts with a “Planning Phase” that determines where your character will move and who they will heal or hurt.
Demonschool encourages you to strategically stack these abilities so that you can one-hit KO enemies, like debuffing them and then buffing yourself to do three times the damage. If you don’t remember your characters’ abilities, don’t worry. You can see them in a pop-up display whenever selecting the character to move them across the board. If you end up changing your mind about an action, you can also undo it without any consequences.
The following “Action Phase” presses “play” on the attacks from the planning phase. Players then see the animated attacks from their units and how they defeat their enemies. Then, it’s time for enemies to attack. Warning: They often also spawn new friends or gang up on a party member.
Demonschool purposefully cuts excess features that I didn’t even realize strategy games had. Each battle is supposed to be short — around 10 to 15 minutes for a boss fight and even shorter for regular battles. In the demo, characters only had three points of HP versus the hundreds that they would typically have in a typical SRPG. The fighting is also contained within a smaller space where enemies spawn into battle instead of entering from sprawling hallways.
The world itself also hides quests that help players learn more about the characters. Each conversation adds points to your friends’ “friendship meters” depending on your answers. Demonschool has “Persona-like” elements like dating other characters (though thankfully, none of them are minors dating adults like in its inspiration).
So far, Demonschool is a promising SRPG that reinvents the genre’s tactics in a quick, accessible way. The only drawback I can see with the combat is with the UI during boss fights. Some visuals make it more difficult to see exactly where the boss will hit when using certain attacks, and the map is easily cluttered with incoming enemies and the boss’ limbs. That’s apparently something that the team is working on, though.
Demonschool is a watchlist item for SRPG fans that want a little bit of spice from the genre and hate the time commitments for each battle. It should also appeal to those who like supernatural young adult stories.
Demonschool is coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Steam Deck in 2033.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.