Hela Demo: The Cozy Mouse Co-op Adventure at Next Fest

What you don't get is online co-op. That stays locked until the full release.

What's in the Hela demo

You play a mouse, one of the familiars of a kind old witch who has fallen ill. In the demo you're stuck in a corner of the forest, and the job is to restore the Witch's protective magic and gather enough Glimmer to find your way back to her cottage. Windup calls it "a small, self-contained journey with its own story and a map made especially for the demo", so nothing you see here spoils the main adventure.

You can play alone or with a friend in local split-screen. One catch from the developer's own pinned thread: the second player has to join before you start the game, not halfway through.

How long is it? Windup hasn't said. On YouTube, a no-commentary walkthrough of the whole demo runs about 35 minutes, and a slower, chattier let's play stretches past an hour and a half. Budget an evening.

What the demo trailer shows

Windup cut this trailer entirely from demo footage, so it's a fair preview of what you'll actually be doing. At 0:04 the title card says as much: "demo footage". By 0:08 a mouse in a frog backpack is trotting along a fallen log over still water, and at 0:20 it's perched on a lily pad between pink flowers, which is about as cozy as a frame gets.

The shot worth pausing on comes at 0:44. Your mouse walks a tightrope strung between two pale, ghostly copies of itself. Those are Shades. Windup's FAQ says "Shades repeat the action you were performing when they were created", which is how a solo player covers puzzles built for two or more (holding objects, making trampolines, anchoring ropes).

Screenshot: Hela demo trailer at 0:44 (Windup Games)

At 0:52 the frog backpack itself joins in and breathes a burst of fire into a hollow rock. Then the end card at 0:56 lands the release date, with logos for Steam, the Epic Games Store, PS5, Switch 2, Xbox and Xbox Game Pass.

What the full game adds

There's no traditional combat in Hela. Progress runs through Brewing instead: you gather ingredients out in the world and prepare Remedies back in the witch's cottage, each recipe a small hands-on task rather than a menu click. The setting borrows from Northern Sweden's forests, lakes and wetlands, and everyday objects become climbing walls when you're the size of a thumb.

Screenshot: Steam store page (Windup / Knights Peak)

Online play is where the full game opens up: up to four players, and you can mix a couch pair with friends joining online.

Screenshot: Steam store page (Windup / Knights Peak)

What demo players are asking

The demo had no Steam reviews when we looked, but the forum is busy, and the complaints are about feel rather than content. Ryusennin's main gripe "is the camera speed, which is too slow on controllers and can't be changed." The developer's own list of requests so far includes inverted flight controls, a depth of field toggle and AZERTY remapping, and they've confirmed the demo only inverts the camera vertically for now.

The Epic question came up fast. One player wrote that "if EPIC forced on me it's a hard pass." The developer's answer is good news for Steam players: you don't need a separate account for solo or local co-op, and Epic Online Services only runs the online multiplayer that comes with the full game. And a Swedish player noticed the obvious gap: "Given that this game is partially developed by a Swedish team, I would have expected full Swedish language support."

Our take

We'd play this one on the couch with a partner or a kid, which is exactly what the demo supports. If your co-op group lives online, the demo can only show you half the game, so wishlist it and wait for December. Want more two-player picks for the week? Our Next Fest co-op demos list has five, the 15 Next Fest demos we picked covers the rest, and if you want a darker counterweight, the DEEPWARD demo is about as far from cozy as Next Fest gets. Worried the demo will vanish when the fest ends? Here's what happens to Next Fest demos afterwards.

There's nothing to buy yet: Hela has no price or pre-order on Steam, so this page has no store links.

How we checked this

On October 19, 2026 we stepped through the official demo trailer (timestamps above), read the Steam store and demo pages, Windup's Steam announcements and FAQ, and the Steam discussion threads on the demo. We haven't played the demo, so nothing above is a hands-on impression.

References

• Hela: of Mice & Magic on Steam: release date, platforms, system requirements.
• Hela: of Mice & Magic Demo on Steam
• Hela official site
• Hela demo trailer on YouTube
• Windup's Hela FAQ on Steam: co-op, Shades, Brewing, platforms.
• Demo multiplayer and compatibility thread (developer, pinned)
• Steamworks: Next Fest October 2026 dates