Fear Effect Sedna has a free demo

At the turn of the millennium, Kronos Digital Entertainment and Eidos launched Fear Effect—a stylish but slightly strange cyberpunk dystopia action adventure game for the original PlayStation. It was well received but also generated an enduring cult following, with many players expecting more beyond its 2001 Retro Helix follow-up at the time.

This wasn't to be, sadly, however French indie outfit Sushee—the studio behind Goetia—returned to the series via Kickstarter last year with Fear Effect Seda, an isometric tactical adventure game that echoes the PS1 classic.

Here's a look at some prototype footage the developer shared earlier this month:

As of today, Fear Effect Sedna also has a free demo which can be downloaded over here.

Having played through the first 15 minutes or so, I assumed control of both Hana and Rain and was able to switch between the two protagonists at will. Individually and collectively I took down gangs of hostile thugs, making use of the game's dual-wield weapons, stun guns and slow-motion mechanic that allows you to map attacks on the fly ahead of time.

This update post reckons there's 30 minutes of stuff in there—"not an early prototype: the actual demo"—however I came a cropper to a bomb defusal puzzle that I couldn't work out the solution to. As I say, I only poked my head into the demo and I dare say I was overlooking something obvious. Nonetheless, Sushee suggest the game's puzzles are "challenging" and that we should "prepare to fail!"

No concrete launch date just yet, but Fear Effect Sedna is due later this year.