During the Resident Evil Showcase event, Capcom announced a surprise Resident Evil Village PS5 demo that’s exclusive for the platform, and it’s available today!

We’ll be getting our hands on it and writing a preview up ASAP!

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out our first gameplay look at Resident Evil Village right here, as well as details on the last-gen version of the game.

Resident Evil Village is set for release this May 7, 2021 on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and PC.

Update: The official PlayStation Blog has posted details on the Resident Evil Village PS5 demo and confirmed it’s a sttandalone experience from the game.

Of course, we had one more major drop to share with you all: a stand-alone demo for Resident Evil Village, known as Maiden, that’s available for download only on PlayStation 5 starting today. As Resident Evil Village Producer Peter Fabiano mentioned in the Resident Evil Showcase, you don’t play as Ethan Winters in this demo. Rather, you’ll be playing as a character known only as “the maiden.” Unable to fight or even block, you’ll be in control of this character as she attempts to escape from Dimitrescu Castle. This is a stand-alone separate experience from the main game that is a kind of short story set within the world of RE Village.

The maiden

We asked Peter about who the protagonist of this demo is, as she’s only known as “the maiden.” As Peter explains it, “Maiden is not the name of any person, but instead it symbolizes the protagonist, a girl who’s trapped in Dimitrescu Castle.” Rather than playing as Ethan and seeing a part of his story, the character in this demo is separate from the main story of Resident Evil Village. According to Peter, both the maiden’s story and Ethan’s story take place at different times.

“The Maiden demo doesn’t take place during the main story of Resident Evil Village. Maiden was originally designed as a visual demo that would allow you to explore the inside of Dimitrescu Castle, but it evolved to include a short story and puzzle solving.” Long-time fans of Resident Evil are familiar with various castles that have appeared throughout the series, so they should feel right at home in this one, too. With RE Village and Maiden taking place in the same place but not the same time, it left us wondering if the two would be tied together somehow.

The experience

There might be a few things that eagle-eyed players should look out for as they wander the castle in search of an exit, so we asked Peter if there was anything the team wanted them to notice as they explore. “Maiden is a demo that’s separate from Resident Evil Village,” he explained. “However, it does take place in the same world as RE Village does.” He even suggests that there are a few nods between the demo and the full game, ones that you’ll only be able to catch if you play both. “When you play Resident Evil Village, or, perhaps, you come back to Maiden after playing the main game, you might discover the connections they have to each other.”

The technology

Finally, we asked about the Maiden demo being on PlayStation 5, and how the team took advantage of the technology that the PS5 offers. Simply put, “you’ll be able to enjoy the ray tracing and 3D Audio that PS5 offers,” according to Pete. The demo is designed to take full advantage of tech that will also be included in RE Village, so Maiden also functions as a sneak peek at the next-gen leap for survival horror. Of course, we also had to press Peter a bit about his comments during the RE Showcase about how art design and technology come together to create such a hauntingly beautiful and detailed environment.

“For Maiden, or rather, for Resident Evil Village, we wanted to create a game with beautiful graphics, high frame rate, and short loading times that don’t spoil people’s immersive experience of the game. The technology we mentioned in the showcase aided the director in realizing his vision of how the game is played, and the art director’s vision of how he wanted the game to look.” You’ll see this reflected in both the full game and the demo in the environments, objects, and character models, right down to the smallest details.