Sagestone Games’ Delverium is getting its first demo on 7 February 2025, with the public invited to test its survival-crafting gameplay for the first time. Ahead of this launch, GamesHub was able to get hands-on with this preview, which is a hefty chunk of gameplay that allows you to explore an array of gleaming game facets.
Diving in, what ensued was a wildly chaotic time, filled with aggressive goblins, mean ghosts, and the cutest little chickens you’ve ever seen. Delverium‘s demo wastes little time in its setup. You simply make your character and generate a world, and then you’re dropped in a wide open plain filled with trees, grass, lakes, oceans, caverns, and plenty of mysteries.
The first person I met was a blacksmith who needed a home (walls, a door, a bed, a light source) and so I set off to fulfil their request, using meagre tools to chop down trees, gather grasses, and discover wheat. At one point, a zombie attempted to interrupt my gathering, but a few swings of my deadly gardening implements, and they were down. With these ingredients under my belt, I headed back to base – a small area in a forest clearing – and quickly set to work on building a basic room.
The crafting in Delverium is fairly simple and familiar. You select the crafting ingredients from a menu, then click and place your chosen objects down, to create a cosy space.
A lot like Minecraft, standing still for too long seems to attract the interest of enemies, as while you’re building, you’ll often be beset by moaning zombies or bats, keen to find the gap you’ve accidentally left in your walls. In one particular instance, I was harangued the moment I started building, and couldn’t figure out how the bats were getting in – until I spotted the gap, and quickly plugged it in the face of an approaching horde. Safe in the walls, I could only laugh as my enemies bounced off them.
Read: Aussie-made survival crafting game Delverium gets first demo
With a safe home established, used as a spawn point when exploring the larger world, I finally chose to set off. Delverium places you in the centre of a wide map to begin, with darkness all around you. Heading west, I hit a coast filled with special ores to mine, and then immediately, I was beset by an array of goblins that put me down, thanks to inferior weaponry.
I spawned back at home, and started off again. North, this time, towards a patch of wasps. I was slightly more successful against the wasps, as their attack pattern meant I could run around and jab them before they stung, but I did meet death once more when a goblin leapt out from behind a tree and shot me with magic.
Having died twice, I formulated a game plan, as Delverium clearly encourages you to do.
Rather than set forth immediately, I needed to work on my gear. So I sold some of the materials I’d collected, until I had enough to establish a forge and work bench, and then to create a new helmet, pants, boots, and a sword.
This time, armed to the teeth, I went cave diving, and defeated a bunch of roaming zombies. I found a worker in need of help, brought them to the surface, gave them a new home. Then I went back again, dived deeper, and found a cave opening leading to another corner of the map. Emboldened, I ventured further, faster – and then I entered perhaps my most horrific stretch of Delverium.
On the other side of the map, I’d clearly uncovered something deep and dark. From the shadows, ghosts emerged, trailing me behind. Then goblins. Then wasps. Then strange, uncanny spectres.
I survived long enough to spot a pathway leading to something other – and then I was incinerated by a magic blast. I had a sense, then, of how under-levelled I was, and how much work needed to be done. And so, I made a very sensible decision: to become a chicken farmer, instead of a monster hunter.
Delverium is an open crafting sandbox that encourages you to forge your own path forward, however you see fit. As I found more folks in the overworld, I had access to new and more powerful weapons, all of which required significant investment.
So I sold some stuff, bought some chickens, and immediately created a little pen to house them as they multiplied and began producing items for me. I bought a bug net to catch roaming critters. I spent my days foraging for new materials to sell, and to produce new items and armour. Then, I got comfortable.
With the freedom Delverium offers, you don’t really need to spend your days hunting creatures. They’ll approach you at a slow pace anyway, and you’ll need to hide or get out your swords to protect your peace, but if you want to play the game as a cosy farm sim, you certainly can – and that’s what makes it so compelling.
When you begin, it’s easy to flag it as paying homage to Stardew Valley, or Terraria, or Minecraft, or others in the survival-crafting genre. And it’s certainly learned lessons from these games – as Sagestone Games has made clear. But it also twists concepts from these games into a new format, mashing features so the game becomes a self-guided survival-adventure experience where you can choose your path forward.
If that means ignoring monsters and the promises of the deep dark, in favour of finding tiny little animals to mind, or growing plants, then that’s alright, too.
By nature, the slice of Delverium available for play is limited, but it gives an ample look of what to expect, and how gameplay systems encourage this experimentation. You don’t need to take your time if you’re fine with a challenging fight. But you can also go slower, building up your resources, creating a steady income, improving your armour and weapons, for a more dominant defeat of the beasties that lie on your doorstep. Either approach is rewarding, and makes Delverium a compelling new entry in the survival-crafting canon.
As announced, Delverium‘s first public demo will be available from 7 February 2025, so keep an eye out if you’re a keen chicken farmer, monster hunter, or someone in-between.
