Bumi Studio has released a free Steam demo for 13th Ball: The Nightmare Shift. Ellie must work through a haunted pool bar, protect her sanity and make choices that can lead to multiple endings.
Ellie's night shift starts with ordinary work. Where it ends depends on the player's judgment. Bumi Studio has released a free Steam demo for 13th Ball: The Nightmare Shift, giving horror fans the opening chapter of its narrative-driven PC game. The setting is a pool bar where routine tasks are surrounded by uncertainty.
A shift with consequences
The demo puts players in control of Ellie, a young woman working nights to pay a medical bill. Her duties are simple: serve customers, clean the bar and restock its shelves. The pressure begins when the hauntings start to weaken her grip on what is real.
That gives the demo a more focused premise than a tour through a haunted location. Ellie cannot leave whenever the atmosphere turns threatening. She has to keep working while looking for details that might reveal what the bar is hiding.
The available chapter can lead to more than one outcome. What players interact with, discover and choose to pursue can shape the ending. Paying attention matters as much as completing the work.
What the demo confirms
Bumi Studio has also published a new demo trailer centered on the horror and desperation facing Ellie. The trailer establishes the intended tone and setting. It is promotional footage, though, not independent evidence of how the game performs. It does not show how the finished game will run, how much content the full release will contain or whether every planned feature is already implemented.
The confirmed details are narrower. The Steam demo contains the prologue chapter of 13th Ball: The Nightmare Shift. It offers multiple endings and gives players two stated ways to approach the shift: complete the required work or investigate the bar's secrets. The developer has not announced a full-game release date, price or additional platform in the supplied information.
The available Steam Store search result confirms that a page exists on the platform. It does not provide enough useful identification to independently verify the demo's detailed parameters. No authoritative Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, Financial Times or Wall Street Journal report, and no official platform or publisher statement in the researched material, confirms the demo's length, ending structure or other specifications. There are also no verified sales, financing or user-statistics figures for the project.
The release follows a familiar pattern for independent horror games: a compact public sample that lets players test the central gameplay loop before the full story arrives. As with another Steam demo, the playable material is substantial enough to establish a premise without representing the complete game.
What players receive
The demo offers roughly one to two hours of gameplay. That gives players time to explore the pool bar's work routine, respond to its disturbances and try different interactions. The exact route and ending depend on how each player handles the shift.
Its main appeal is the tension between visible responsibility and unreliable perception. Cleaning a counter or serving a customer is straightforward on its own. The harder question is whether an unusual detail is a clue, a threat or something Ellie's deteriorating sanity has imposed on the room. The source material does not specify combat, inventory systems or broader progression, so those elements should not be assumed.
The demo is currently available on Steam at no cost. Players can download it, add the full game to their wishlist and follow Bumi Studio for further updates. This gives the studio a direct way to test interest in its debut horror PC game. It also gives players a defined sample instead of an unsupported promise about the finished experience. The researched material does not independently confirm a post-demo update schedule, early-access plan, localization roadmap or any additional platform.
Bumi Studio is an independent developer based in Malang, Indonesia. 13th Ball: The Nightmare Shift is its debut horror PC game. The release matters less as a broad industry event than as a test of whether a small studio can turn routine service work into a branching psychological-horror story. Based on the available evidence, the demo has a clear hook, a manageable time commitment and enough player choice to draw attention. The full game's scale and launch plans remain unconfirmed.
The available search material does not provide independent historical coverage of Bumi Studio or the 13th Ball series. The studio's prior releases, reputation and development history therefore cannot be established from authoritative open sources. Claims about the developer's location, debut status and the demo's contents remain dependent on the supplied project information rather than separate industry reporting.
Sanity systems in horror games usually create uncertainty instead of using a simple health bar. The player must interpret changing information while deciding whether to continue, investigate or retreat. Here, that idea is tied directly to Ellie's job and the bar's multiple endings. The free demo offers an early look at the game's core design, not proof of what the complete release will contain.
