The over the hill demo is closed. It opened publicly on June 12, 2026 during Steam Next Fest, ran through June 29, and stopped accepting players on June 30. It is no longer downloadable, which is the single most important thing to know if you are looking for it.
The build covered one area, Emerald Lake, and offered three vehicles that could be upgraded and customised rather than the single vehicle older previews described. It also introduced Pebbles, the in-demo unlock currency, and a meteorite radar tool alongside meteorite shower events. Reception came in at 81% positive across nearly 2,000 reviews, which Steam classifies as Very Positive.
The full demo timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April 9-16, 2026 | Closed playtest registration open |
| April 24-26, 2026 | Closed playtest ran |
| June 12, 2026 | Public demo launched on Steam, ahead of Next Fest |
| June 24, 2026 | Steam Next Fest extended run ended |
| June 29, 2026 | Final day of the public demo |
| June 30, 2026 | Public demo closed to access |
Reports that describe the demo as a June 12 to June 22 window are mixing up the festival schedule with the demo schedule. Next Fest is what ran in the middle of that period; the demo itself outlived it by more than a week. The June 30 closure is the date that matters for anyone checking whether the download is still live.
What lived inside Emerald Lake
Emerald Lake is the opening area of a region called the Valhallas, and the demo contained that area in full — nothing else was playable. It sits in the Valhalla mountain range in British Columbia, Canada, and the wider Canadian region is one of the two confirmed launch regions. The other is Algeria.
The demo also featured fishing, so it was not purely a driving sandbox. Four-player online co-op was available in the same build that shipped to the public, with progress recorded per player and shared between solo and multiplayer sessions.
Three vehicles, not one
The demo let you upgrade and customise three vehicles, and the names visible in the demo UI were Protector, Burro and Trail Burner. Earlier preview coverage described a single vehicle type, which undersells what was actually in the build. If you read a review saying the demo had one car, it was written from an earlier or partial build.
Upgrades were gated behind the currency named Pebbles, which you earned rather than bought. That matters for the full game too, because there are no microtransactions — Pebbles is an in-world resource, not a purchasable one. Liveries and cosmetics are collected separately from vehicle upgrades.
Meteorite radar and the meteorite showers
A meteorite radar was available in the demo, along with meteorite shower events that put new material on the map. The radar is what made those events navigable rather than a surprise, and it is the reason a demo limited to one area still had something to hunt for.
The developers also documented the extraction procedure in detail during the demo. You park the vehicle with clearance from the meteorite, attach one end of the winch to the rear, attach the other end directly to the meteorite, then hold throttle while pulling the winch away. A correctly attached meteorite should come free within a few seconds.
In multiplayer, every helping vehicle must attach to the meteorite directly. Chaining vehicles together does not work — the connection has to be individual, or the pull fails.
Terrain, recovery and what went wrong
Terrain deformation is officially confirmed, so surfaces visibly change under load rather than behaving like a fixed track. Recovery gear is confirmed as wooden planks for bridging, a winch for self-extraction, and portable winch anchors, with a grappling hook listed as an additional option beyond the standard kit.
Hands-on coverage documented the failure modes as clearly as the recovery tools. Reporters flooded the engine in a river, sank into a peat bog, slid down a wet steep slope, beached on rocks and rolled the vehicle onto its side. None of those count as failure states in a game whose own store tagline reads: this is a driving game, not a racing game.
Activity types inside the demo
Free driving was only part of it. Abandoned crates were scattered around Emerald Lake holding parts — fenders, lights, spare wheels and shovels — along with roof racks carrying camping equipment or canoes. Trail challenges and scenic viewpoints were placed around the area as well, and cabins acted as fast-travel points, which on a map this size is what made the drive-find-return loop practical.
Item recovery missions completed the set. Those had you towing a stalled Land Rover, a deliberate contrast to the relaxed cruising tone elsewhere in the demo. The demo's structure is a fair preview of the full game's region hierarchy too, where a Region contains Areas and Portals move you between them.
How the demo performed
The reception figures are the strongest argument for the demo having worked. Roughly 500,000 players tried it, and the review average settled at 81% positive across close to 2,000 user reviews, which Steam labels Very Positive.
The commercial effect followed quickly. Steam wishlists passed one million in April 2026 during the Algeria trailer and closed playtest window, then climbed to about 1.2 million after the demo. SteamDB data cited by GamingOnLinux placed that total around 21st on Steam's all-time most-wishlisted chart.
What came before, and what might come next
The demo was the second public test rather than the first. A closed playtest ran April 24 to 26, 2026, with registration open April 9 to 16 — a three-day window behind a signup gate, which is a much smaller sample than half a million players.
A limited playtest may also happen before launch, but that is not guaranteed. Given that the June demo has already closed, an interested player currently has no way to sample the game ahead of the October 14, 2026 release.
Demo saves and the closed download
Whether a demo save carries into the full release is 待确认. The game supports Steam Cloud and Xbox Cloud saves, but no source states whether demo progress transfers, so treat any demo save as disposable rather than as early progress on the real thing.
Beyond that, what remains open is mostly about what comes next rather than about what the demo contained. The demo closed on June 30, 2026, and the Steam store page now carries only the October 14, 2026 release for the full game. The full game covers two regions — Canada and Algeria — and ships with three vehicles that expand to roughly twenty through later updates, so the demo's single area and three cars were a sample rather than a statement of the finished scope.