LudoNarraCon, the annual digital festival celebrating narrative games, has officially returned to Steam, bringing a host of neat game demos, developer interviews, live game playthroughs, and more. If you’re looking to bulk up your Steam wishlist for the year, or just to experience cool, novel, and innovative narrative games, you’ll want to make time to pop into LudoNarraCon this week.
There’s a lot to discover during the event, with the spotlight on dozens of worthy games. By all means, explore the event for yourself – but if you are looking for some key pointers, we’ve got some great demos to highlight, here on GamesHub.
After diving into LudoNarraCon a bit early, here’s a few of the standout demos you should play before the event ends on 5 May.
Table of Contents
Battle Suit Aces
Battle Suit Aces is a sci-fi battle deckbuilder where you corral an army of fighter pilots as they take on alien threats. This game is a lot like a traditional TCG in design, with my personal time in the demo reminding me of MTG Arena. In battles, you’ll assemble your crew and gather energy, then figure out how best to deploy attacks, to maximise enemy damage.
Each hero has their own moves and buffs, and playing your cards in strategic order will give you a distinct advantage, particularly as battles become harder. You can also spend time with your pilots to boost their strength, with card battles overlaid by a complex plot and plenty of character-building moments. It’s a neat mix, and one that makes Battle Suit Aces entirely compelling.
Schrödinger’s Call
Schrödinger’s Call is a mysterious, richly-textured narrative adventure game that kicks off with few context clues. It’s a rare game that keeps you hooked with no knowledge of your protagonist or their plight, but with its surreal undertones and snappy opening, Schrödinger’s Call is immediately exciting.
You begin the game as a young girl known as Mary, who finds herself in a room with a telephone. A voice tells her to speak through the phone, and eventually, she finds herself connected to a mysterious deer woman, known as Lucy. From there, you must puzzle your way through sparse dialogue, comforting Lucy and finding out the reason why her soul may be adrift. The discovery is one of surreal beauty, as Schrödinger’s Call intersperses its action with strange imagery that hints at Mary’s past, and her current circumstances. It’s all very cool and mysterious, and paints a pretty picture of what’s to come.
A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe
A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe is a very endearing point-and-click “stealth” adventure where you must guide an awkward, asocial giraffe through life, without talking to anybody. That proves a challenge, as you live in Friendly City, where everyone wants a chat – and if they do chat, your head will explode. Despite the extreme premise, this is a wonderful puzzler.
Read: A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe is incredibly endearing
You must spend time in the game analysing your environment as you tackle a variety of challenges, but also spare a thought for the titular Giraffe, who lives his life with a necessary care. His plight is incredibly relatable and endearing, and it makes the entire experience just plain lovely.
Psychotic Bathtub
Psychotic Bathtub is a short narrative adventure that focuses on some very dark themes. You will need to be in the right mindset to experience it, but if you are, it’s a very powerful, innovative game. The premise is this: you are having a psychotic episode in a bathtub. You have several steps forward, but they all force a self-exploration. Who are you? Why are you in the bathtub? Why is your duck also Jesus?
The game explores the impact of mental health challenges deeply, representing them in a bold visual style, with slim dialogue illuminating the plight of its protagonist. As noted by developer natsha, it aims to de-stigmatise mental health disorders, and provide deep insight for open-minded players.
Compensation Not Guaranteed
Compensation Not Guaranteed is a Papers, Please-like game focussed on Southeast Asian politics, through the lens of a cartoon world of anthropomorphised animals. You play the new attendee at a “Ministry of Urban Development” tasked with taking back land from citizens. In your quest, you must receive and analyse the title deeds and identification of various people, and then figure out if the land really belongs to them, or if the government can claim it.
What’s most impactful about Compensation Not Guaranteed is that this process genuinely feels so insidious. In one moment of the demo, a small date discrepancy in the papers of an old woman means her land is taken away with no recourse. In remorseful bits of dialogue, you attempt to explain you’re being fair to everyone – but as the woman remarks, she’s lost everything, and you’re the cause. It’s a powerful interaction, and there’s plenty more in this unique, often dark narrative sim.
Check out Steam to discover more from LudoNarraCon 2025.
