I wish more games had playable demos. Even after the game comes out, just rip part of it out and let me play it. It’s one thing to watch a gameplay video, it’s another thing entirely to try it out for yourself.
I get that in this case, the demo showed too much (giving the impression there would be more growth), and that was a disappointing experience, but I’d argue that’s an issue with the demo/game combo itself - it’s for a game that only takes a couple hours total, so it’s very limited in what it can do with a demo. It would be like a demo of stray (2 hours to get through the story) or tinykin (under 10 hours for 100%) both also very short games with very limited abilities. You can do a short teaser, but then people would complain it’s too short and whatever… it’s a no-win there, I think, because the author even says there’s a good story missed in the demo.
But if you have a demo of, for example, dysmantle, it doesn’t matter that the gameplay is exactly the same for 100 hours, and the only thing that changes is -what- you can smash… there’s some progression involved, but not much… it’s basically just smashing and exploring, and that’s all the demo would be. And that’s ok too, because holy SHIT is that repetition fun!