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This year’s Summer Sale on GOG.COM gives you the chance to play demos of some impatiently awaited games. From the dusty prairies of the Wild West to the space station floating among the stars - enjoy 7 demos of fantastic games for free.



Desperados III is a real-time tactics game with the story set before the events shown in Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive. In the demo released exclusively on GOG.COM, we meet Isabelle, a mysterious lady from New Orleans. She’s later joined by John Cooper, Kate O’Hara, and the rest of the band on two dangerous missions.



Destroy All Humans! is an open world action-adventure game about Crypto, an alien who lands in 1953 America. There, he must harvest human DNA and destroy all potential foes. In the game’s demo, released exclusively on GOG.COM, you’ll have the chance to test Crypto’s fancy weapons and even sit behind the cockpit of the flying saucer.



System Shock is a remake of a cyberpunk RPG masterpiece. As a hacker stuck on a space station, you must try to survive the machinations of the evil SHODAN A.I. In the 1-hour long demo you can explore the cold corridors of the space station and meet some of the SHODAN’s disgusting minions.



CARRION is a reverse horror game in which you become an amorphous creature of unknown origin. By consuming people around, this being evolves and becomes even more deadly. In the demo, you are tasked with escaping the research facility in which you are held.



Spiritfarer is a cozy management game about evanescence. You play Stella, ferry master to the deceased. The demo gives you a chance to upgrade your ferry with new elements, talk with its unusual passengers and… spend some time fishing.



Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a role-playing game with strategic elements. The game’s prologue serves as an introduction to the dark fantasy world of the game. It puts you in the shoes of the caravan leader leading his crew across a dangerous land to finish various missions.



Cris Tales is a beautiful indie game with all the best qualities of jRPG. Join Time Mage Crisbell on her journey across a world facing a grim future. In the demo, you witness the beginning of her adventure, as she’s meeting new friends and learning basics of time magic art. This version of the demo has two new characters, five new enemies, and three new time powers in the new Demo Battle mode.

Do you feel the adventure calling already? All 7 demos are available for free on GOG.COM and await your discovery. Have fun and remember to download them before 15th of June, 1 PM UTC. All the demos mentioned above will cease to be available once the Summer Sale on GOG.COM ends.
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TheMonkofDestiny: Aren't they just "buy the full game, find you don't like it/etc. and then request a refund" at this point anyway?
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theslitherydeee: Maybe. I have no idea how GOG does it, but in my experience you get dinged for requesting refunds. There's an invisible limit, that once you hit it you are revealed to be one of the bad ones. I prefer to avoid the hassle.
I don't think there is a strict numeric limit but they did add a "you shouldn't request too many refunds" warning to the "our customer service may take a while" message so it doesn't sound like they approve of "just try whatever and refund if you don't like it".

Being anti-demo and limiting refunds suggests they are still tied to the "sucker people into buying low quality games that they don't want" business model. I hoped that promoting demos was part of changing that, but with the time limit it is just a release marketing strategy. Hopefully they will still change focus over time.
high rated
Why does have a FREE demo with NO COST have to go through paypal authorization completely with 2factor auth?
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eRe4s3r: Why does have a FREE demo with NO COST have to go through paypal authorization completely with 2factor auth?
It didn't for me, are you sure you didn't add something else to your cart?
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eRe4s3r: Why does have a FREE demo with NO COST have to go through paypal authorization completely with 2factor auth?
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joveian: It didn't for me, are you sure you didn't add something else to your cart?
No, I added the demo, it moved in the cart, and the only button visible there is "pay via paypal" clicking it opens my paypal login and triggers 2FA (the login-window for paypal to be specific) even though the price is zero

But canceling that and hitting back a few dozen times still adds it the account, but this surely ain't how it's supposed to be...

And it does that for ALL of these demos. In fact is it just me? I was actually a bit surprised it opened the paypal login window there. Maybe I got some weird cookie issues...
Post edited May 29, 2020 by eRe4s3r
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joveian: It didn't for me, are you sure you didn't add something else to your cart?
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eRe4s3r: No, I added the demo, it moved in the cart, and the only button visible there is "pay via paypal" clicking it opens my paypal login and triggers 2FA (the login-window for paypal to be specific) even though the price is zero

But canceling that and hitting back a few dozen times still adds it the account, but this surely ain't how it's supposed to be...

And it does that for ALL of these demos. In fact is it just me? I was actually a bit surprised it opened the paypal login window there. Maybe I got some weird cookie issues...
It happened to me too. There is a workaround to change the payment method. Just add anything to the cart that has a price and you will be able to select credit card. After that remove the paid game from the cart and the green button "Pay for your order" will stay (instead of blue Pay with PayPal).
Post edited May 29, 2020 by Ilona
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eRe4s3r: Why does have a FREE demo with NO COST have to go through paypal authorization completely with 2factor auth?
Maybe they changed something about the checkout process since then, but "purchasing" the demos went through without any authentication bollocks for me too.
Then again I also have NoScript installed, so that might have been a factor as well.

And I'm pretty sure this bit:
"Have fun and remember to download them before 15th of June, 1 PM UTC. All the demos mentioned above will cease to be available once the Summer Sale on GOG.COM ends." refers to the demos being available for download until the 15th of June, NOT that the already downloaded demos will be removed from the library after the 15th of June.
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Zoidberg: How can you know a game is one that is good and/or that you will like without trying it?
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teceem: Reading/watching reviews and/or (about) gameplay (and other information)... interpolating with my own experience. How do you know that you won't like being tortured if it never happened to you? (this might sound like an extreme analogy, but I think the basic point is there)
I'd agree: it is a pretty piss poor analogy. :P

Also, you can make plan on comets based on whatever material the dev/publisher will give and the opinion of other people than you who played it, but you will not KNOW that the main idea will please you.

You won't play the whole game as released true but you will get a lot more if you can get a "vertical slice", like they say.
Post edited May 29, 2020 by Zoidberg
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teceem: Reading/watching reviews and/or (about) gameplay (and other information)... interpolating with my own experience. How do you know that you won't like being tortured if it never happened to you? (this might sound like an extreme analogy, but I think the basic point is there)
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Zoidberg: I'd agree: it is a pretty piss poor analogy. :P

Also, you can make plan on comets based on whatever material the dev/publisher will give and the opinion of other people than you who played it, but you will not KNOW that the main idea will please you.

You won't play the whole game as released true but you will get a lot more if you can get a "vertical slice", like they say.
I'm not claiming that YOU know if you'll like a game, based on all non-demo information available - but I do.

Many years before I had internet access, I read PC Gamer (UK) - and I haven't made a single wrong purchase since the first edition of that magazine. Not just based on the "opinion" of the writers or the final score, but by reading everything cover to cover.

But like I said, I am not you. And I like my analogy fine.
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eRe4s3r: Why does have a FREE demo with NO COST have to go through paypal authorization completely with 2factor auth?
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Swedrami: Maybe they changed something about the checkout process since then, but "purchasing" the demos went through without any authentication bollocks for me too.
Then again I also have NoScript installed, so that might have been a factor as well.

And I'm pretty sure this bit:
"Have fun and remember to download them before 15th of June, 1 PM UTC. All the demos mentioned above will cease to be available once the Summer Sale on GOG.COM ends." refers to the demos being available for download until the 15th of June, NOT that the already downloaded demos will be removed from the library after the 15th of June.
Of course they can't remove the already downloaded demos. They're safely stored in my HD.

If their wording said "remember to add the demos to your account before 06/15" it would make me think I'm allowed to download the demos anytime now that I've "bought" them. Which is what you believe they meant, if I'm not misreading you.

That would be [VERY STUPID], but they are not content with just that. Their phrasing appears to imply that anyone who hasn't downloaded the demos by that date won't have that chance anymore, regardless of whether they had them added to their account or not. And that would be [VERY STUPID] elevated to a googol.

Pity the fool who didn't have the 13 GB free in their HDs for the Desperados 3 + Destroy All Humans demos until June 15, or who forgot to grab them but will remember by late June.

(For the math unsavvy: a googol is a number very very big)
Post edited May 30, 2020 by joppo
I'll join the crowd saying it's an awfully stupid decision to have time-limited demos. And also to point out that they're free! I mean, seriously? A demo being free is something to point out?

But in more practical terms, will any of Spiritfarer, Vagrus and Cris Tales (the demos, I mean) run on a 32-bit OS? None say they require 64-bit (while Desperados 3 does, so that's out, and didn't much care for the setting anyway), but...
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eRe4s3r: No, I added the demo, it moved in the cart, and the only button visible there is "pay via paypal" clicking it opens my paypal login and triggers 2FA (the login-window for paypal to be specific) even though the price is zero

But canceling that and hitting back a few dozen times still adds it the account, but this surely ain't how it's supposed to be...

And it does that for ALL of these demos. In fact is it just me? I was actually a bit surprised it opened the paypal login window there. Maybe I got some weird cookie issues...
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Ilona: It happened to me too. There is a workaround to change the payment method. Just add anything to the cart that has a price and you will be able to select credit card. After that remove the paid game from the cart and the green button "Pay for your order" will stay (instead of blue Pay with PayPal).
Thanks, that workaround works.. around it. But.. uh, GoG needs to wake up and fix that.
Thanks for the demos. It's good to know in advance that neither of my choices (Vagrus & Cris Tales) will work on my machine without having to waste money on the full game. It seems my golden age of nearly every game working without much fuss has gone into reverse lately. Probably my machine trying to tell me I already have too many games.

Edit: I have a personality disorder that disallows me to leave things like that unfinished. I got both games working. Vagrus needed write permission in the game dir to avoid a silent hang (bad game! don't do that!) and CrisTales needed wine-5.x-staging+mfinstall. Not worth it, though. Don't really care for either game. One's a twitchfest and the other is more of a management sim than an RPG. Off the wishlist they go.
Post edited May 31, 2020 by darktjm
Really enjoyed Spritfarer and Destroy all humans.
A tab on galaxy for demos perchance? I could set up a tag myself but that would require effort
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Cavalary: But in more practical terms, will any of Spiritfarer, Vagrus and Cris Tales (the demos, I mean) run on a 32-bit OS? None say they require 64-bit (while Desperados 3 does, so that's out, and didn't much care for the setting anyway), but...
I didn't try Vagrus but the Spiritfarer and Cris Tales demos are 64-bit only. IMO, you aren't missing much unless you like mobile games. They look nice and Spiritfarer is really pushing the cute factor but there doesn't seem to be much to them at all. In the case of Cris Tales, their unique mechanic seems to be badly designed and IMO would have been better as a buttons to see all in future/past rather than than the three way view.
Post edited May 30, 2020 by joveian