Someone's head is killing me in Memoirium, a PSX-styled soulslike about battling through bizarre dreamscapes and decorating your bedroom

I don’t know whose dreams Memoirium warps into action-RPG soulslike levels - it may not even be the player character’s - but whoever they are, they need to lay off the post-10pm Babybels. Besides being filled with chair-wielding thugs and hornfaced monsters, this blocky sleeprealm is lousy with the kind of shattered fantasy geometry that could send an innocent dodgeroller tumbling fatally off a hundred-foot-high-ledge. Also, the ledge is a giant sword.

Such was just one of my deaths in Memoirium’s generously proportioned demo, which is available now on Steam ahead of the game’s launch this Thursday. Even in these introductory stages, it’s clear that the subconscious you’re stuck in probably doesn’t belong to a contented vicar, opening up with a void-ravaged cemetary before routing you across a crumbling statue into a cultish school. Mundane respite, however, is available through Memoirium’s unusual take on bonfire rest spots: a bedroom that, resources permitting, you can furnish and decorate to your liking.

This is, as far as I can tell, a bit of a gimmick. You’ll still mainly want to step into your sanctuary to bump up stats and save progress, not to interact with furniture beyond its initial placement. Mind you, it does succeed in feeling like a genuinely safe space among the literal nightmares outside. And there’s an intriguing contrast between the modern appointments of the room and the more fantastical, sword 'n' sorceries flavour of the combat and enemy design, further compounding the sense of this world not being quite right.

On the subject of fighting, it’s a familiar, mostly serviceable homage to the soulslike kingpins, with a focus on stamina management and weapon art skills that’s straight out of FromSoftware’s well-thumbed playbook. Perhaps with a dash more Simon Says prompt-matching, as some foes dish out attacks that invite extra stamina – or as it’s called here, stress – damage if you counter with a specific move. Some of these strikes can’t be blocked or parried, for example, but will stress out the attacker if you time a dodge through it. Others might be undodgable and unblockable, but can be parried for the same effect.

So far, I’ve found this can encourage an overly defensive, wait-and-see fighting style of holding position until it’s time to react to a glyph. But then I’ve only been tangling with sluggish early-game enemies, so doling out stress might become more of an excitably pacey affair later on, and nothing’s actually stopped me from going full offense with a flaming pike. Unless you count those cliffs I fell off.