Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Demo Is Out a Day Early, and Your Save Carries Over on 15 October

The free demo of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is already playable: its Steam listing gives a release date of 30 September, a day before the 1 October date Konami announced, and progress made in it carries over to the full game when it launches on 15 October. The catch is that the save only moves if you stay on the same platform and the same account.

This report is built on the Steam store and Steam's public player-count API, Konami's demo announcement as reported by VGC, and early reports from Push Square and Nintendo Life. We have not played the demo; performance notes below are attributed to the outlets that did.

What's in the Belmont's Curse demo?

Steam describes it as the beginning of the game and warns that some content may differ from the full release. Push Square calls it essentially the opening of the full game, and Nintendo Life quotes Konami describing "the early stages of the game". Konami has not said how long the demo lasts, and there is no official word on whether it will stay available after launch.

Belmont's Curse is the first new mainline Castlevania in more than a decade, made by Konami with Evil Empire, the studio behind Dead Cells' later updates. You play Rose Belmont in Paris in 1499, as we covered in our report on Castlevania's 40th anniversary.

Does demo progress carry over to the full game?

Yes. Both the Steam page and Konami's announcement, as reported by VGC on 20 September, confirm that demo saves transfer. Konami's condition is that the demo and the full game are played on the same platform with the same account, so progress made on a Switch will not follow you to PC or PS5.

How does the demo run on Switch 2?

Better than on the original Switch, by early accounts. There is no dedicated Switch 2 edition, but Nintendo Life reports that the Switch demo appears to run at a smooth 60fps on the new console, double the locked 30fps Konami announced for Switch. A thread posted to r/castlevania at 16:18 UTC on 30 September made the same claim. Nobody has published a frame-time analysis yet, so treat it as an early observation rather than a measured result.

How many people are playing it on Steam?

At 11:38 UTC on 1 October, Steam's player-count API showed 1,754 people in the demo, on a weekday morning in Europe and the middle of the night in the Americas. The demo page had no user reviews at that point. Console numbers are not public, so the Steam figure is a floor, not a total; the bigger signal is on Reddit, where around a dozen threads about the demo appeared in r/castlevania, r/metroidvania and r/NintendoSwitch2 within a day of release.

What should you do now?

• On PC, use the demo as your compatibility test: the full game's Steam page asks for Windows 11, an Intel Core i5-8400, 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1650, and Valve has not rated it for Steam Deck yet.
• On Switch 2, the Switch demo is the closest thing to a preview of the Switch 2 experience, since no native version is planned so far.
• Konami's only stated conditions for the transfer are the same platform and the same account. If you are planning the rest of the month, Belmont's Curse shares 15 October with several other launches in our October release calendar.

What we don't know yet

Konami has not explained why the demo appeared a day before its announced date, published unlock times by region, or said whether the demo will be withdrawn at launch. We could not check the Xbox Store listing directly. A native Switch 2 version and a Steam Deck rating are both unannounced. We will update this report if Konami answers any of those before 15 October.