Silly Polly Beast is a stylish, spooky survival horror game where you're packing some serious firepower

(Image credit: Anji)

While Steam Next Fest is over (for now), there are a whole heap of demos staying out after curfew, including the unusual Silly Polly Beast. This story-driven shooter is an intriguing mix of psychological and supernatural horror, teenage angst, stylish neon horror-punk aesthetics and aggressive twin-stick shooter combat.

Polly isn't having a good day. She's a nervous, non-verbal kid on the run from the cops after torching her orphanage for reasons unknown. She's searching for her sister, who planned the arson with her, but seems to have fallen into the netherworld along the way. Polly's also agreed to a contract with some kind of tormented spirit (and its weird boggle-eyed dog), and been tasked with hunting monsters in the shadows. Things somehow only get worse from here.

Despite a setup that leans more towards survival horror (including some tense sneaking past cops by pulling Polly's hood up and trying to be inconspicuous), the demo quickly settles into some snappy combat against shadowy demons. Polly has a lot of defensive options, starting with smacking things with a skateboard. Her primary weapon is a magical revolver that reloads when near burning barrels or shortly after killing an enemy, but it's not long before she ends up with a pump-action shotgun that's powerful but has more limited ammo, plus a bag full of explosive shadow-larvae to use as grenades.

Despite all that firepower, the combat still has a bit of survival horror tension to it, with enemies moving aggressively (especially the surprisingly skittery big shadow-people), and healing often taking multiple precious items to get you back into the fight. While this may change in the full game, I'm hopeful it'll continue to maintain this balance: not quite Silent Hill or Signalis, but not a full arcade shooter either.

The demo mixes the formula up in some interesting ways too, including some side-scrolling sections that control quite differently to the regular overhead combat, and a couple segments where you need to use a ritual spell to fly across gaps, but without the ability to control your wings—Polly has to spend bullets carefully to navigate using her revolver's recoil. A smart little mechanic, and one I hope to see built on.

If there's one thing that I'm a little wary of after playing the demo, it's the script. While fine for the most part (and the story definitely has its hooks into me), there's a few oddly-phrased sentences, or lines that are just a little too prosaic to be coming from a scared teenager. Nothing dealbreaking, but a conspicuous flaw in an otherwise excellent demo.

If you're after something with Halloweeny vibes that hit a little different, I recommend you give it a shot. The Silly Polly Beast demo is live now on Steam, with the full game coming soon.

The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. Based deep in the Welsh hinterlands where no food delivery dares to go, videogames provide a gritty, realistic escape from the idyllic views and fresh country air. If you're looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Bluesky. He's almost sociable, most of the time.