Hello! I'm Shibuya from Studio Snowblind, the developer of Glaciered.
Surprise! We've released a demo for Glaciered, available right now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2486780
Over the duration of Tokyo Game Show, many players visited the PLAYISM booth to play the Glaciered event demo. Even early in the day, we already had so many visitors that we needed to give out numbered tickets for people to come back to the queue later. In order to let as many people play the game as possible, we shortened the play time of the demo as much as we could, but still we sometimes had to turn down people due to the long wait times. We're sorry we couldn't let everyone who wanted to play the game have a chance to try it out.In order to let more people try out Glaciered, we carefully discussed releasing the demo to the public, and now we're confident that the timing is right. This new demo is different from the TGS demo, removing the time limit and adding more features for further polish.
This demo starts from the very beginning of the full game, and features the core gameplay features of underwater battles and character growth mechanics. There is no time limit. The player character level is capped at Lv 5 in the demo, but at your base, the Seeker's Hideout, you can experience the core gameplay loop: buy and craft items, unlock a wide variety of passive skills, raise your companion the Pui, and feed a giant mussel and receive equipment upgrade items in return. And after you beat the demo, there's actually a bit more you can work towards...
This demo might be rather early for a game slotted for a 2025 release, but the main reason we're doing this is to receive feedback from our players. We're very fortunate to have a wonderful community, and we've received a lot of constructive feedback at events like BitSummit and Tokyo Game Show, which have all been very helpful. More on that later, but even so, we could only really receive feedback from within Japan, where we're based. As we've gotten wishlists from players from all over the world, we think it's important for us to get feedback from global players as well and reflect that in development.
We would love it if you could share your feedback with us on the Steam forums or the official Discord server. We'll take your opinions into consideration as we continue to work hard on development.
And yes, we have an official Discord server now alongside the new demo! Please join the server and enjoy the beginning of this futuristic adventure with us and other players!
And now that the demo is out, we would like to answer some frequently asked questions we've already received so far.
Q. Can I play this game with a controller/keyboard and mouse?
A. This game is fully playable with either a controller or a keyboard and mouse. You can use whichever control scheme you like for everything in the game, from combat to exploration. We also have various keybind settings you can change in the options. However, since the gamepad input is built on XInput, other controllers such as PS5 and Switch controllers may need some extra setup elsewhere. If you run into any problems, please tell us on the Discord server.
Q. Can I change the FOV? Can I change the graphics settings? Can I use DLSS? What's the framerate limit?
A. This game has FOV slider support as well as individual options for DLSS and V-Sync. You can select a framerate limit from the presets of 60, 120, or 240, but there is also a limitless option. As a PC gamer myself, I want to implement a wide variety of options for accessibility. If you have any more requests for options like these, please tell us on Discord.
We also support graphics card options with Standard, Low, and Lowest settings. In the full version, we're planning on implementing even higher-level ray tracing settings, but as keeping the lighting consistent during development is very time-consuming, this is not included in the demo.
Q. What are the required specs for this game?
A. They're as listed on the store page. For a smooth gameplay experience, we recommend using a PC with a GPU of GTX1060 or higher, with a VRAM of 4GB or more. If you see framerate drops, please try lowering the framerate in the settings.
We have tested the game on Steam Deck, which played at an average of 30fps on the lowest graphic settings. We will continue to optimize the game until the full release.
Q. Does this game support ultrawide screens?
A. Yes, you can play this game in wide resolutions such as 32:9 and 21:9. We think it'll be thrilling to play this game with an ultrawide screen and high FOV!
Q. Are the Tokyo Game Show survey results reflected in this demo?
A. We implemented a lot of your feedback in this demo. For example, we've added the ability to automatically lock onto the next enemy nearby once you've defeated the first one, made the camera automatically rotate around the player character according to their movement, swapping the A and B buttons in the UI, and more features that were requested in the survey. Of course, you can toggle all of these on or off according to your preferences in the options.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask us on the Steam forums or the official Discord server!