The Droning On demo is live. It's free, it's the first ten levels of Bootcamp, and it's enough to learn the basics, meet Gizmo, and figure out if Droning On is your idea of a good time.
What's In It
The demo is Bootcamp, levels 1 through 10. Bootcamp is the teaching mode – it hands you the language one concept at a time instead of dropping you straight into the deep end. You write code that looks and feels just like Python to steer Gizmo through a series of grid-based mazes: your first move(), then conditionals, loops, energy management, and reading the maze around you. Gizmo does what the code says, and the difficulty climbs as the concepts stack up. By level 10, you get to see the concepts coming together.
Use Your Own Editor
Your scripts aren't trapped in the game, either. They live as plain .py files, allowing you to write them in the in-game editor or pull them into VS Code or PyCharm with full syntax highlighting and live reload. Save in your editor, and Gizmo picks up the change in-game without you needing to copy/paste between multiple windows. That's in the demo, not held back for the full release.
Your Save Comes With You
Your scripts, your unlocks, your completed levels, and your run stats all carry over to the full game when you buy it. The demo isn't a slice you'll replay later; think of it as the front porch of the full game, buying the game just unlocks the front door. The one thing that doesn't carry over, for fairness, is your leaderboard placement.
If You Get Stuck
Bootcamp is also where the tiered hint system lives, the same graduated help I wrote about in the MCP devlog. It starts by nudging you toward the shape of the solution and, if you keep asking, walks you all the way to the answer. Because the demo is Bootcamp, you get the whole thing: a hand when you want one, silence when you don't.
What's Past the Demo
The bootcamp levels are the on-ramp, not the whole road. The full game keeps Bootcamp going and then opens up past it: Puzzle Mode, thirteen standalone challenges that don't play by the standard maze rules; Endurance Mode, procedurally generated mazes that scale until your code or energy can't keep up, with global leaderboards to climb; and the $crap wardrobe for dressing Gizmo up however you like. The demo is a free taste. If it clicks, the rest is right there.
Putting a demo out is the most excited and exposed I've felt during this whole project. For longer than I'd like to admit, Gizmo has only worked with a select few players; now he works with you, and I get to find out what you do with him. That's the nerve-wracking part. It's also the entire point.
Thanks for reading. As always, your feedback is welcome. If you haven't already, drop a wishlist and come hang out in the Discord. It's the best place to share feedback, follow development, and engage.