I've got to admit that I'm a sucker for titles like Kaia and the Kingdom of the Green Valley. Unusual protagonist name? Check. Pastoral reference ("green valley")? Check. Since this was only a playable demo, I decided to give it a spin.

The good:

Our heroine, Kaia, is certainly quite appealing, and the game wastes no time establishing her backstory as well as setting up a problem for her to solve within the first few minutes of loading up.

The game does a good job of establishing personalities for its non-playable characters - even those who have nothing to contribute to the actual gameplay have interesting things to say, and their reactions to you change after key events.

The map (it's just a single town) is nice and compact, and there are no messed-up exits or annoyingly hidden passages.

Samvi is an interesting character who proves, by the end of a short demo, to have hidden depths to him. I'm looking forward to learning more about his past (how did he go from White Mage to town drunk?) and to seeing how his relationship with Kaia unfolds.

A possible romance angle is teased between Kaia and the village chieftain's son. While there isn't much time to see if this goes anywhere in the demo, it might be important later down the line.

Gameplay is a refreshing change from the usual "fight, level up, buy items, rest at inns and kill bosses" fare: so far, it is shaping up to be more of a puzzle / adventure game than a typical RPG.

The bad:

Grammatical and spelling errors, though none of them are major game-breakers.

Gratuitous use of profanity. Of course, we haven't yet seen enough character development for Samvi, so this may just be a facet of his personality.

The "die die die die I hate you" parchments in Martha's house came off as corny rather than scary. It wasn't particularly scary when Stephen King came up with "REDRUM REDRUM REDRUM", and it's even less scary 35-odd years later.

Calling the main religious group "The Church" betrays a lack of originality. The real-life Church has not been burning witches for centuries now. Either call it the Church of X, or find a more interesting name for it.

Summing up:

As the old proverb goes, "well begun is half done". The demo for Kaia and the Kingdom of the Green Valley begins well by quickly giving us a plot and conflict, as well as a player character whom we can actually care about and an intriguing team member. While there are a few missteps - and larger issues that may need to be ironed out over the length of a full game - this demo shows promise, and I look forward to seeing more chapters of this story.

Recommended with some caveats.

(No star rating, as it's a demo, but it would probably score around 3/5 as of now.)