Skip to main content

Here’s exactly when you can play Resident Evil Village’s timed demos

Resident Evil Village is getting a series of demos, but with one big catch. The demos will only be available for a very limited time. Players will get to explore a chunk of the world during the demo window, but it will disappear afterwards.

Announced at the Resident Evil spring showcase, the demo strategy is a little complicated. The main demo allows players to try a full hour of the game that takes them into both the village and castle areas, and will be available on Steam, Stadia, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Resident Evil Showcase | April – Gameplay Demo Reveal

The other demo is called 8 Hours in Village and is exclusive to PlayStation owners. It’s a bit of an early access situation where players will have 30 minutes to explore the castle in one session and the same amount of time to explore the village in another. It’s not clear if this version of the demo is exactly the same as the one-hour version, just split into two parts. This is also separate from the previously released, PlayStation-exclusive Maiden demo.

Recommended Videos

It’s all a little confusing, so here are the exact times when you’ll be able to play each Resident Evil Village demo.

Village Demo

  • Platforms: PS4/PS5
  • Details: 30 minutes to explore the village location.
  • Demo time: 5 p.m. PT on April 17 to 1 a.m. PT on April 18

Castle Demo

  • Platforms: PS4/PS5
  • Details: 30 minutes to explore the castle location.
  • Demo time: 5 p.m. PT on April 24 to 1 a.m. PT on April 25

Village And Castle Demo

  • Platforms: PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S/Steam/Stadia
  • Details: 60 minutes to explore both the castle and village locations.
  • Demo time: 5 p.m. PT on May 1 to 5 p.m. PT on May 2
Giovanni Colantonio
As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…
You can kill your 2023 backlog and prepare for Halloween with these 7 creepy games
The Garrador stands tall in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Dedicated gamers have two specific, and often competing, goals whenever October comes around. On one hand, the fall season is a sign that the year is winding down. Anyone who wants to finish off their backlog of games released in 2023 before the 2024 flood begins needs to start finding ways to cut down their backlog. Though there are even more pressing matters in October: it's spooky season! With a month-long Halloween celebration in full swing, October is also the perfect time to marathon some creepy games. Usually, that might mean going back to play some classics like Silent Hill 2, leaving little room to catch up on new games.

But what if you could kill two vampires with one stake? Well, you can this year because 2023 has been a wild year for horror video games. From two high-profile remakes to a slew of indie greats, your backlog this year might already be full of great, creepy games. To help organize your October, we've put together a list of seven eerie 2023 releases that double as great Halloween games. You can fly your freak flag and cut down your list of game to play in one go -- that's efficiency!
Resident Evil 4

Read more
I played Resident Evil Village on an iPad and it blew me away
Resident Evil Village

Back when the Steam Deck was just a rumor (dubbed the Steam Pal), I had my fair share of skepticism. It’s not that I didn’t like the idea of a handheld computer; it just felt like a short-term solution. At that time, I posited that we were quickly approaching a time when phones and tablets would be able to run PC games natively, making devices like a Steam Deck feel like a pricey stopgap. I’ve been won over by Valve’s handheld since then, but my prophecy may be coming true sooner than I expected.

Apple dropped a bombshell announcement this month when it revealed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 4, two current-gen games, will be natively playable on the iPad and iPhone 15 Pro, alongside older titles like Death Stranding and Resident Evil Village. That announcement has the potential to radically shift the handheld gaming market if Apple is able to launch new games on its devices at the same time as consoles and PC. That is, if those games actually run well.

Read more
Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways leaves me hopeful for a Resident Evil 6 remake
Ada Wong holds a gun in Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways.

This year’s Resident Evil 4 remake was an important victory for the horror series. Not only did it successfully reimagine a beloved classic, but it finally concocted the perfect action formula for the series at large. That’s an important milestone considering that Resident Evil has historically run into trouble when fully dropping survival horror in favor of blockbuster action (see the misunderstood, but undeniably sloppy Resident Evil 6). The remake paves the way for Capcom to once again evolve its series, taking another crack at the third-person shooter genre it struggled to nail.

In that sense, Resident Evil 4’s new Separate Ways DLC feels like a taste of what’s to come. Capcom uses Ada Wong’s solo chapter to push its action formula even further, weaving in some exciting new tricks that are already leaving me hungry for a true spinoff. It’s not the series’ finest DLC, playing more as an asset-reusing victory lap, but it gives me hope that Resident Evil’s second decent into pure action will be much more successful this time.
Grappling forward
Separate Ways follows Ada Wong, the anti-hero mercenary on a quest to retrieve a Plaga sample for Albert Wesker during the main game. The lengthy bonus episode is a remake in itself, but it's perhaps even more radical than the base game’s reinvention. Right from its completely new opening scene, it's clear that Separate Ways is diverting pretty far from the original DLC. That’s a sensible decision considering how much the new version of Resident Evil 4 reworks Ada Wong. She’s no longer a careless hired gun, but a nuanced character struggling to balance her professional responsibilities with her moral ones.

Read more