Cogen: Sword of Rewind is a 2D action game where you have the ability to rewind time by up to 3 seconds using the Ouroboros System, a feature of Kohaku’s talking sword, ExeBreaker.  In a way, the game gave me some old-school Mega Man vibes, with the high difficulty, side-scrolling gameplay, and the buttload of robots you need to defeat along the way.  The difference is the fact that you have a gun rather than a sword and that you have no health, meaning a single hit is enough to kill you, which is where that 3-second rewind comes in handy.

This is actually one of the few demos that I wasn’t motivated to complete.  Sure, Kohaku controls well enough.  She can double jump, wall jump, dash, and attack and deflect enemy projectiles with her sword.  But the two stages included in the demo were frustrating enough that I wasn’t particularly motivated to even use up my full 30-minute time limit.

I’m certainly not going to say the game is bad because it’s challenging.  It would probably be pretty satisfying to get really good at this game.  I just can’t say that I, personally, had much fun with the demo, not to mention the graphics aren’t much to look at.  The pixel art for the characters and enemies is fine, but the background in the demo was largely black with a few grid lines here and there.  Screenshots of the full game appear to have a bit more going on, but that didn’t change the fact that the demo didn’t give me a very good first impression.

With that said, the game is $24.99 and takes about 7 hours to complete and is available on all major consoles and PC.  There are some people online who seem to feel more positively towards the game than I did, so by all means, if you’re still interested in a challenging side-scrolling game with unique time-rewinding skills, then perhaps give that demo a try for yourself and see if Cogen: Sword of Rewind is more your cup of tea than it is mine.