During The Game Awards 2025 week, I got to get an in-depth hands-on preview with Arc System Works upcoming title Damon and Baby. I played a development build, so many of the assets, animations, items, and designs aren’t final. But what I played was still a pretty fun time.
A Demon and a Baby Walk Into a Bar
The game follows the demon king Damon as he teams up with (you guessed it) a baby, an unlikely pair who are forced to work together throughout the entire game. It’s a top-down isometric twin-stick shooter, and with it comes a bit of difficulty curve. The controls feel fluid and natural, but only after having adequate practice with it. This is something common with most other twin-stick shooters. Moving with the left stick and aiming in 360-degress with the right takes some getting used to. Combine that with the onslaught of relentless enemies and constant melee attacking and shooting you’ll have to do to survive, and you have a challenging experience. This isn’t to the demo’s detriment, but it’s worth noting the difficulty for those caught off guard by its cartoony art style.
One my favorite aspects of Damn and Baby is the RPG elements. There’s seemingly endless possibilities when it comes to customization, from both aesthetic and character build perspectives. After I played the introduction level to learn the game’s story and mechanics with just the bare minimum loadout, I was able to load up a save from much later in the game. Here, I had access to more weapons, like the shotgun, machine gun, and an RPG. I also was able to use a sort of ultimate attack that charged up over time. This allowed me to take out multiple enemies should my aim be precise.
Levels Are Filled With Things to Do
The exploration bit of Damon and Baby is done through both environmental puzzle solving and plenty of platforming sections. I found myself exploring a mansion and its grounds to look for the proper keys to unlock the boss room, and there are moments where jumping with precision or dashing in mid-air to gap a 90-degree angle turn were necessary. Luckily, these are some of the easiest aspects of Damon and Baby, although at times knowing what to do did not feel the most intuitive.
Plenty of Customization Options
Since there are a wide variety of weapons, skills and other customizable components to Damon’s loadouts, you’ll naturally have to find a place to sort through them all. The game is split between two distinct phases. As I mentioned above, you’ll be exploring and blasting your way around a level to progress the story. But the home base is where you’ll kit Damon out and upgrade his skills. There’s a skill tree to unlock throughout your adventure, and you can change your weapon loadouts to suit your desired playstyle.
I’m normally a big shotgun fan in shooters, but Damon and Baby’s shotgun only shot out three rounds at once with an extremely wide spread – I found it somewhat difficult to use successfully. I did, however, really enjoy using the machine gun. I just held the trigger down and and aimed directly at enemies. The reload timer on each gun is different, but fast enough to where it doesn’t affect pacing too much.
Overall, my roughly hour-long preview of Damon and Baby left me excited for the full release. There are some notable difficulty spikes and a slightly poor performance. But I can easily chalk this up to playing a development build. I’m excited to check out the full game when it launches on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC in early 2026.
