Your wedding night is supposed to mark the beginning of a new life.
For Silviya Nebula, it begins with her husband being murdered by something that apparently has very little respect for either romance or traditional ceremony.
Not a Cat Studios has released a public demo for STARCULT. Night: Twisted Age, a dark fantasy visual novel built around murder, manipulation, supernatural horror and an unusual dialogue system where choosing how Silviya feels can completely change what she is able to say.
The demo is available now through Steam, with the full game currently targeting a fourth-quarter 2026 release following Steam Next Fest.
STARCULT. Night: Twisted Age announcement trailer
A wedding night goes horribly wrong
STARCULT follows Silviya, an artist and noblewoman from House Nebula who marries the young head of the family, Hans.
Any hopes of settling into married life disappear almost immediately when Hans is brutally killed by an unknown creature on their wedding night. According to the game’s Steam description, the monster does not simply murder him either. It devours half of his head, which rather firmly rules out natural causes.
Silviya calls in a detective to investigate, but she soon finds herself pulled into a much larger mystery involving conspiracies, dangerous relationships, strange nightmares and supernatural forces.
The central question may be who killed Hans, but the game appears equally interested in who Silviya becomes while searching for the answer.
Players can form romantic, platonic and potentially deeply unhealthy relationships with the people surrounding her, while every conversation offers another opportunity to uncover motives or make the entire situation considerably worse.
Choose how Silviya feels before choosing what she says
The Emotion Palette is the feature separating STARCULT from more traditional choice-driven visual novels.
Rather than immediately selecting a line of dialogue, players first choose the emotional state influencing Silviya’s response. Different emotions unlock different ways to approach the conversation, potentially exposing hidden intentions, changing relationships or revealing information that another version of Silviya would never discover.
That means anger, empathy, suspicion or curiosity are not simply decorative labels placed beside otherwise similar responses.
They help determine which responses are available at all.
Not a Cat Studios says the system can offer as many as 15 dialogue choices during a single conversation. Each emotional decision also nudges Silviya’s developing personality and affects how other characters perceive her.
The same encounter in STARCULT could therefore play out very differently depending on whether players approach someone with warmth, aggression, fear or a slightly unhealthy enthusiasm for manipulation.
Understanding people creates more options
Studio CEO and artist Liliia Sitailo said the game is being built around empathy, with each character possessing their own goals and motivations.
The better Silviya understands them, the more options she gains for deciding how those relationships should develop.
That creates an interesting contrast with the usual morality systems found in choice-driven games. Instead of reducing everything to good, evil or a suspiciously neutral middle option, STARCULT appears more interested in emotional intelligence.
Understanding someone does not necessarily mean helping them.
It could also make them easier to influence.
The Emotion Palette is presented as a way to recognise the feelings and intentions of friends and enemies, alter their behaviour and potentially make them do what Silviya wants. That makes empathy another tool within the mystery rather than an automatic route towards becoming a nicer person.
The demo includes multiple routes and endings
The public demo gives players an early opportunity to investigate Hans’ murder and test how different emotions reshape Silviya’s conversations.
Not a Cat Studios says it contains several possible routes and demo endings, encouraging players to revisit scenes and choose different emotional approaches.
The full game is also being designed with replayability in mind. Its Steam page promises multiple conclusions and relationship types, with routes capable of becoming romantic, toxic, codependent, casual, platonic or something considerably more unsettling.
Players will also control how Silviya spends different parts of each day. Choosing her morning, afternoon and evening activities can affect how the wider story develops, adding another layer of decision-making beyond individual conversations.
That combination of scheduling, emotional choices and changing relationships could give each playthrough a noticeably different version of Silviya rather than simply sending everyone through the same story with a few altered lines.
Romance, horror and an approaching catastrophe
STARCULT is not limiting itself to the murder investigation.
The wider setting is described as a mysterious world standing on the edge of catastrophe, with romance, psychological horror and supernatural forces all sitting beneath the immediate search for Hans’ killer.
The game is intended for an adult audience, with Steam warning of graphic violence, sexual content, psychological abuse, self-harm, torture and dismemberment alongside its broader themes of death and morality.
That suggests the title may lean into some genuinely uncomfortable relationship dynamics rather than treating every potential romance as a harmless route towards a happy ending.
Given Silviya’s ability to manipulate others through emotional understanding, the most dangerous person in the room may not always be the obvious monster.
Our take on STARCULT
The Emotion Palette is an immediately interesting idea because it treats feelings as part of the game’s mechanics rather than something dialogue merely describes.
Visual novels often present players with several fully formed responses and ask them to choose which version of the protagonist they prefer. STARCULT instead appears to ask what Silviya is feeling first, then lets that emotion shape what she is capable of expressing.
That could make conversations feel more personal and unpredictable, particularly if the system genuinely supports up to 15 possible responses rather than offering several lightly rewritten versions of the same choice.
The emphasis on empathy is intriguing too.
Understanding another character can create intimacy, but it can also expose weaknesses and make manipulation easier. That feels particularly suitable for a story involving noble families, supernatural conspiracies and relationships that may become toxic or dangerous.
How naturally all those routes fit together remains to be seen. A large number of dialogue options only matters when each one feels meaningfully written and leads somewhere worthwhile.
Still, STARCULT already has a stronger hook than another visual novel asking whether you would like to be nice, rude or mysteriously silent.
The public demo for STARCULT: Night Twisted Age is available now through Steam. The full game is currently planned for release in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Whether Silviya finds her husband’s killer may depend less on what she knows than how she feels when she asks.
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