Laika: Aged Through Blood gives you a taste of grit and exhaust in its demo

destructoid.com:

Excitebike crossed with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night isn’t a mash-up I really considered, but that’s how Laika: Aged Through Blood is pitched. A “motorvania” as they put it. It’s gated, side-scrolling exploration, but you’re also playing a dark version of Uniracers. Goodness.

As part of Steam Next Fest, a demo lets us get all our paws on it to find out exactly how Laika pulls off this unholy union. At over an hour long, it’s a surprisingly big bite of the game, and it reveals quite a bit.

You play as the eponymous dirtbike-propelled dog, Laika. From the very first moments of the game, it’s made evident that we’re in for a dark ride. Poochie has been killed. He was killed by the birds and crucified “with his own guts.” Oh, lovely.

The whole anthropomorphic animal angle gives Laika: Aged Through Blood a feeling like Redwall mixed with Mad Max (the first one). Everything is really wasteland-y, and while I don’t recall anyone mentioning an apocalypse, it certainly looks like the world ended at some point.

The story is revealed painfully slowly. You’re dropped a lot of information without knowing who these characters are or what you’re fighting against. It certainly gets there, but that’s a lot of weight to get dumped on your shoulders when you’re first learning how to dirtbike.

The Excitebike comparison is rather apt, but I think a closer one would be Joe Danger or even the aforementioned Uniracers. You have to constantly roll your bike in midair to try to land in the best way possible. However, Excitebike didn’t let you flip your bike completely, which is key in Laika. Partway through, you’re provided with a pistol, and in order to reload it, you have to, strangely, do a backflip. You can also block incoming bullets