After getting unceremoniously pulled from the PlayStation Store, the Stellar Blade demo launches for real this week

With the recent release of the demo for hack-and-slash action game Stellar Blade, developer Shift Up has taken to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to tell its players to go easy on the game’s demo.

With Shift Up’s Stellar Blade out in two weeks, a new behind-the-scenes video is available discussing the various processes behind development. Director Kim Hyung-tae reveals that its inspiration came from a taxi strike. With the job to be replaced by machines, he pondered what would happen if humanity were replaced.

Shift Up has a new trailer available for its upcoming action-adventure Stellar Blade, but it doesn’t highlight other cast members. Instead, it’s focused on the Naytiba, more specifically on the bosses of the species. Check them out below in all their shadowed glory.

Alongside a new vignette trailer featuring Adam in Stellar Blade, Shift Up released another focusing on Lily. Like Eve, she’s a member of the Airborne Squad but in the fifth division and provides engineering support. She’s rescued from a drop pod by chance and quickly becomes friends with Eve and Adam.

Shift Up’s Stellar Blade is over two weeks away, but the hype continues to build, especially after the recent demo. Speaking to RULIWEB (as spotted by Genki on Twitter), director Kim Hyung-tae revealed that the team completed the game and demo on the same day. However, the team will release a day one patch with “some updates.”

The Stellar Blade demo is here - for real this time - and on top of offering satisfying parrying and dicing for action game fans, it's also turned out to deliver rock-solid technical performance that'll satisfy you no matter which side of the resolution versus frame rate divide you fall on.

Shift Up has a new vignette trailer for Stellar Blade, highlighting Tachy. As the leader of the 7th Airborne Squad, which protagonist Eve is a part of, she assists her in the opening section, fighting against hordes of Naytiba. Check it out below.

Shift Up CEO Kim Hyeong-tae mentioned in an interview that Stellar Blade will receive a New Game+ option in a post-launch update, as well as free costumes. The director of Stellar Blade goes further and also comments on the possibility of DLC and whether the game will have microtransactions.

Shift Up’s Stellar Blade isn’t out yet, but the developer is already prepping for post-launch. Speaking to RULIWEB (translation via Genki on Twitter), director Kim Hyung-tae confirmed that future updates will add New Game Plus and new costumes.

Stellar Blade's developer is already hiring for its next game, a "cross-platform next-gen project."

Stellar Blade has been generating a fair bit of positive buzz in the lead up to its release later this month, thanks in large part to its recently-released demo, and more new gameplay of the action-adventure game has now been shared, which continues to look promising.

Shift Up is gearing up to face the spotlight of the mainstream gaming market with the imminent launch of Stellar Blade, but though the upcoming PlayStation-backed action-adventure game certainly has plenty of eyes on it, the Korean studio is seemingly also already thinking about what comes next.