Resident Evil Village‘s latest gameplay demo, entitled “Village”, has come and gone thanks to a questionable 8-hour only access window that gets you 30 minutes of game time. Despite the limited time, the demo gives a fantastic sneak peek into the village and its inhabitants, showing us bits and pieces of the story but not enough to spoil us when the full game launches next month.

So what does 30 minutes buy you? It’s not a lot, so if you’ve gotten around to exploring and want a bit more time, you can actually go on ahead and use another account to log in another playthrough worth 30 minutes. By the time you read this, the access period will be over, but worry not, because a new demo comes out next week and we can do this all over again.

In classic Resident Evil fashion, you have to collect two crests to get access to the Castle and get some quality time with Lady Dimitrescu. The first crest is easy enough to find, it’s at a nearby chapel. The second crest though is at Luiza’s house and that’s where the bulk of the gameplay happens.

In terms of gameplay, you’ll have access to a handgun, a knife, and a shotgun. The “Maiden” demo from before didn’t equip you with anything, so you’ll get a feel of the combat mechanics this time around. In my 30 minutes of gameplay, I came face to face with a Lycan but didn’t stay long to engage. These lycans move fast, so they’re pretty menacing to face with limited tools to use, and I’m not looking forward to facing them anytime soon. They seem to be very smart too, and I don’t like smart lycans.

If you’re in it for the story, you get quite a few zingers. You’ll meet that creepy old lady and some of the desperate townsfolk that Capcom keeps showing in the trailers. Elena is probably the character you’ll spend the longest time getting to know, and probably her father too. You’ll spend some time in Luiza’s house and there are some creepy cult vibes going on, which is a nice change of pace from all the zombie killing, adding another layer to the story of the game.

In terms of jump scares, it’s not too bad, I have a feeling they had a window of opportunity for that in Resident Evil VII and now, I kinda know what to expect.

One thing that this latest demo shows is how Resident Evil Village is putting a big focus on the story, and if you find the time to do so, a playthrough of Resident Evil VII is highly recommended. I feel that they’ve really gone out of their way to showcase these personalities and from what I’m seeing, it’s coming along very well.

Oh, and did I mention anything about loading times? Nothing? That’s right, because there’s virtually no loading times at all. I don’t know if that’s actually a good or bad thing, since I might want to use those loading times to un-scare myself.

We’ll see you next week where we explore the Castle and of course, see Lady Dimitrescu and her lovely daughters.

Resident Evil Village is scheduled for a May 7 release for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.