Every person with a lizard brain lives by this one cardinal rule. The bigger the number, the better you are. It’s just basic math. Across all genres, video games have conditioned us to believe that we always need to be vying for bigger numbers, whether it’s character levels, health, damage, the list goes on. Demonschool flips that idea on its head. As it turns out, smaller numbers can make a big impact, too.
Developed by Necrosoft Games, Demonschool is a tactical RPG that reminds me a lot of 2018’s Into the Breach. The latter is a tactical game that allows you to see all your enemies’ moves before they make them, and your task is to use what you have to defend yourself as best as you can. Demonschool doesn’t quite give you that level of clairvoyance, but it’s very similar in theory. All enemies will always take one turn each, and they’ll always try to attack you. Given your limited number of action points, you need to use them wisely and optimally to take out as many enemies as possible during a turn while minimizing your damage taken.
What struck me immediately was the fact that all of my characters only had 3 health points starting out. 3 HP? That’s gotta be a mistake, right? But no. Each character gets 3 HP and every enemy hits for 1. For the most part, your characters hit for 1 too, and most enemies have 2 HP. If you’re able to weaken an enemy or activate a special skill, you’ll be able to hit for 2.
This simple shift in numbers made every move in Demonschool feel that much more impactful to me. While I had gotten used to five- and six-digit figures in games like Final Fantasy and Diablo, Demonschool‘s smaller numbers brought me right back to reality. Every hit counts, and Demonschool absolutely punishes reckless moves and players who just try to attack the thing nearest to them. Instead of trying to tank hits and power through, Demonschool demands that you study its game board and figure out the best course of action.
Most of your characters will move a few spaces in straight and diagonal lines. To open up more movement options, you can also perform a sidestep to move a character left or right. These movement limitations set Demonschool apart from its genre peers, making it feel more like video game chess than anything else, just like Into the Breach did. Your goal, then, is to line up your enemies just right, then knock down all your pins.
The importance of positioning, coupled with the incredibly low numbers across the board, make combat in Demonschool feel extremely tactical and dangerous. While your characters do have a chance of resisting an attack, the fact remains that every hit counts and even a single hit taken near the start of battle could mean the difference between life and death.
Whereas those ridiculously huge numbers you see in most RPGs can start to make you feel numb after a while, I’m nowhere near that point even after sinking a good amount of time into Demonschool. I’ll have much more to say in my full review once I’ve wrapped up my first playthrough, so keep an eye out for that. But yeah, I guess good things really do come in small packages sometimes.
A review code for the game was provided by the publisher. You can check out our review policy here.
