Dyke Knight - A Rave Review of the 1348 Ex Voto demo
The way I found out that the demo for 1348 Ex Voto dropped yesterday, 02/19/2026, was a dumb fuck article about how the demo was a flop because less than 100 players had it running at one time, and that this was incontrovertible evidence that "woke kills games."
Before I get into my little review, I need to address how fucking stupid this take is.
This post will have a lot of fuck-words in it, as well as spoilers for the demo, so proceed at your own discretion.
The first reason this is a dumb fuck take is this:
The demo is about 20 minutes long.
That's not a lot of play time to overlap with other players world-wide, so these numbers are certainly not indicative of "a woke flop."
The second reason this is a dumb fuck take is that the demo released on a fucking Thursday. What are most people doing on a Thursday? Fucking working.
Declaring a demo a flop before the weekend has even arrived is a dumb-fuck take.
The third reason this is a dumb fuck take is that anyone who still unironically uses the word "woke" is just plain and simple a Dumb Fuck.
This requires no further explanation.
On to the review.
1348 Ex Voto is a medieval action adventure game set in Italy, by French publisher Dear Villagers and Sedleo, a new Italian studio made up of international AAA veterans. It stars Aeta as the player character, a young woman training to become a knight who has lost her parents to a pestilence (insert Mother Gothel from Tangled saying "THE PLAGUE" here), and her bosom friend (ha) Bianca, who is about to be carted off to a nunnery.
The demo opens with a very short expositional cutscene and a brief tutorial of the fighting system. The girls spar, Bianca departs, and then all hell breaks loose. Briganti (outlaws) have attacked the town, and the remainder of the demo consists of a fairly linear journey from the lush, green outskirts, into the razed town. As Aeta, you put some very cunty briganti in their places and explore the burning and broken village, looking for Bianca among the many dead.
The demo concludes with a beautiful cutscene in which Aeta finds the golden pendant Bianca wore, and makes a vow before God to find her.
The storyline had me enthralled from the beginning. Lesbian knights in plague-ravaged 1300s Italy? Yeah, go ahead and put me down for a hundred.
The voice acting is unsurprisingly stellar.
Alby Baldwin provides the voice and motion capture for Aeta. They may not have the most extensive credits under their belt, but I foresee them becoming a major hit. Their agency describes them thus: "Husky, characterful Londoner; praised for their ‘exact and delicate’ though sometimes ‘deliciously sceptical’ performances across theatre and tv, video games and audiobooks."
Opposite Alby as Bianca is none other than Jennifer English, who once told me to "keep being gay" as I came out of an elevator after meeting her at a signing. Oh, and she also played fucking Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3.
As far as the gameplay goes, it IS a demo. The character models are pretty, if a bit crunchy. The backgrounds are gorgeous, although the camera is a bit nauseating. The controls are responsive and intuitive; the battle loop is fun and challenging enough to keep me interested without being frustrating. And the sound effects are VERY crisp and pleasing. I think I could listen to the flutter and creak of Aeta's clothes and armor as ASMR for hours. The in-game UI is subtle and doesn't distract from the action, while the menus are straight-forward and accessible.
As stated earlier, the demo is only about 20 minutes long; a mere nibble. But that 20 minutes is all it took to convince me that I need to play this game, even beyond the need to show up anti-woke dude-bros and slake my thirst for dykey knights. It was just FUN!
And unlike another Knight Game that's been in the news lately, it doesn't use shitty AI.
Everyone should play it. Go download the demo on Steam IMMEDIATELY!
*All images used in this review were sourced from the official website. I was too busy playing to take screenshots. Oops.
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