The Wild Eight now has a free, "pre-alpha" demo

Co-op survival game The Wild Eight was revealed in February with a trailer and some screens, and is now a little over halfway to success on a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign. The premise sounds like a lot of fun—a handful of plane crash survivors must work together to stay alive in the harsh Alaskan wilderness, and of course one of them is a cannibal lunatic—and now there's a “pre-alpha” demo so you can get a little taste of what it's like.  

The demo doesn't support multiplayer, but it does showcase the game's visual and play style. You start off building a basic shelter, and then a fire—never mind that the whole plane is already on fire—after which you'll get into crafting, upgrading your skills, and journeying toward the rugged life of an intrepid woodsman.  

“Please keep in mind that this is still pretty early and that you'll probably encounter some bugs,” developer 8 Points explains in the demo's introduction. “The sole purpose of the demo is to give you a tour of the core gameplay mechanics currently implemented in the game.”     

The demo, which weighs in at a relatively light 230 MBs, is available for direct download here. The Wild Eight Kickstarter comes to an end on May 13.  

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Latest in Action
A hunter hefts a massive Mega Barrel Bomb in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds players can't stop blowing themselves to smithereens with its rollable barrel bombs
A hunter poses with a large hammer as their palico cheers nearby in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds weapon tier list
Naoe looking at the wrist blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft backflips, says Assassin's Creed Shadows will support Steam Deck at launch, but I doubt I'll actually want to play it there
character creation in Monster Hunter Wilds
The best Monster Hunter Wilds mods
Two rising ronin facing each other
Rise of the Ronin is another crappy PC port, performance patch coming 'soon'
A hunter grins and throws two peace/victory signs while wearing a Mimiphyta helm in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds' best change is to its layered armor, letting me finally run amok with dressup the way I should have always been able to
Latest in News
A photo of an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor surrounded by DDR5 memory sticks from Corsair, Kingston, and Lexar
Fresh leak suggests Intel's on-again-off-again Arrow Lake CPU refresh is back on the menu (boys)
A Colorful RTX 5080 and its box
Three lucky folks in India can win the dubious honour of buying an RTX 5080 GPU at Nvidia MSRP
The Facebook 'Like' emoji logo is seen in this photo illustration on 22 August, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Get ready to argue with your weird Uncle on Facebook again. Meta is rolling out its new fact checking solution to it's 190 million users in the United States
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Go ahead and complain the discounts aren't as steep as they used to be, but Steam just had its biggest year ever for seasonal sales
Valve Steam Deck OLED handheld PC
'The future of hardware at Valve is bright': Valve celebrates the success of Steam Deck and Steam OS
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers