What begins as a cooperative hunt for a few ordinary rabbits almost immediately reveals that the forest has much worse things waiting beyond the trail. The group enters Hunted Buddies expecting to shoot wildlife, meet weight quotas, and return their catches to camp, but familiar hunting mechanics are repeatedly disrupted by creatures that crawl toward them, charge from the darkness, attack from the trees, or masquerade as increasingly strange versions of the animals they are supposed to find. That collision between mundane objectives and unpredictable horror gives the demo its identity. Bringing back three rabbits should be straightforward; doing it while friends accidentally shoot one another and something resembling a nightmare version of Gollum appears nearby is considerably less routine.

The opening works particularly well because neither the players nor the audience receives a detailed explanation of what the forest contains. The group experiments with guns, shoots birds and rabbits, learns how to drag animals, deposits catches, and chooses between trails while gradually encountering things that clearly do not belong in a normal hunting game. One creature appears to bait players into approaching before attacking, while another crawls toward the group and immediately turns curiosity into panic. Later threats include a Wendigo-like creature, something lurking in the trees, hostile rabbits, a horse-like apparition, and other monsters whose mechanics are often discovered only after someone has already been killed. The lack of preparation gives the horror encounters effective surprise, although frantic reactions frequently make it difficult to determine exactly what attacked or how a particular threat is supposed to work.

The hunting objectives provide enough structure to prevent the session from becoming an aimless monster showcase. Early contracts require rabbits and a buck, later objectives introduce the laughing rabbit, and eventually the group has to collect specific amounts of meat and shoot crows. Animal weight matters, dragging a carcass back safely matters, and damaging a target can apparently affect whether it remains useful. The players discover that pulling a deer when it becomes caught on environmental geometry can cause the body to explode, forcing them to find another one. Whether that is an intended mechanic or a demo-era physics problem is not established, but it produces one of the video's better examples of ordinary hunting frustration becoming absurd comedy.

The laughing rabbit is the strongest individual objective because locating it requires more than simply shooting the next animal that appears. The group initially has no idea what its laugh should sound like, mistakes other noises and creatures for possible targets, and eventually notices information indicating that it can be found in the dense areas of the Warrens. Once the distinctive distorted laughter becomes recognizable, tracking the correct rabbit turns into a simple audio hunt. The creature is also surrounded by enough other danger that identifying it does not automatically make the objective easy. Later contracts benefit from that accumulated knowledge because the players understand where to search and what they are listening for rather than starting from zero every night.

Much of the entertainment comes from the group's ability to make survival harder for themselves. Friendly fire is constant, players run ahead, somebody shoots while another person is handling an animal, and useful communication regularly collapses into screaming, insults, jokes, and confusion. Discovering that trees can be climbed and apparently used as protection from monsters provides an actual survival tactic, but even practical discoveries quickly become material for comedy. The game supports that behavior well because death and revival appear forgiving enough that being attacked does not permanently derail the session. Failure creates another chaotic moment rather than forcing the group through lengthy recovery.

The downside is that the same chaos frequently obscures the game itself. Multiple people speak at once, gunfire interrupts explanations, creatures appear during shouted conversations, and objectives sometimes advance before the mechanics behind them are clear. There are hints of potentially interesting systems involving trails, nighttime contracts, dangerous regions, monster avoidance, animal preservation, climbing, weight requirements, and distinctive supernatural targets, but the demo is played more as a comedy playground than a careful exploration of those systems. The opening request for likes and subscriptions arrives before the main session has developed, and the ending immediately asks whether viewers want more once the full game releases. Those engagement prompts are brief, but they frame an already limited demo rather than allowing the session to stand completely on its own.

Still, the demo produces a surprisingly effective escalation. Ordinary rabbits lead to bucks, strange humanoids, demonic animals, tree-dwelling threats, a laughing rabbit, heavier quotas, and eventually a contract involving a substantial amount of meat and multiple crows before the available content abruptly ends. The players themselves seem surprised that the demo stops when it does, which underscores how quickly the game establishes a loop worth continuing. It remains unclear whether the full release can provide enough creature variety, objectives, locations, and mechanical depth to sustain the premise beyond the initial novelty. Within this session, though, combining recognizable cooperative hunting with supernatural interruptions creates exactly the right environment for a group whose first instinct when confronted with something horrifying is often to shoot it, shoot each other, or argue about who should drag the rabbit home.

Pros

• Straightforward hunting contracts give the session clear objectives while supernatural creatures continually complicate what should be routine animal hunts.
• Introducing monsters without extensive explanation makes the first encounters genuinely unpredictable and gives the group's panic a natural quality.
• The laughing rabbit provides a more distinctive hunt through location information and recognizable audio rather than functioning as another ordinary target.
• Animal weight, carcass transportation, trail choices, climbing, and changing contracts suggest more mechanical depth than a simple cooperative shooting game.
• Friendly fire, failed rescues, exploding carcasses, mistaken creatures, and confused communication generate comedy without requiring elaborate manufactured challenges.
• The progression from conventional rabbits to increasingly bizarre forest threats gives the short demo a strong sense of escalation.

Cons

• Overlapping voices, gunfire, screaming, and rapid reactions often make it difficult to understand what a creature is doing or which mechanic caused a particular outcome.
• The session prioritizes chaotic comedy over explaining systems, leaving several hunting, survival, and monster mechanics only partially demonstrated.
• Some strange behavior, particularly carcasses becoming caught and exploding, could be intentional absurdity or unfinished demo physics, and the video cannot clarify the distinction.
• Frequent friendly fire and reckless play make it difficult to judge how threatening some enemies would be for a coordinated group.
• The demo ends before the expanding contracts and supernatural systems can demonstrate whether the concept has enough variety for a full-length game.

Hunted Buddies* provides just enough conventional hunting structure to make every supernatural interruption feel more absurd, and the group's reckless cooperation amplifies that contrast through friendly fire, failed rescues, bizarre creatures, and increasingly strange contracts. The chaotic presentation sometimes hides mechanics that deserve more attention, while the demo ends before its long-term depth can be judged, but the laughing rabbit and escalating forest threats show a promising formula for turning a routine hunting trip into unpredictable cooperative horror.