🎮 Are You Stuck on the Demo?

Nintendo Switch 2 launched last year. From what I can tell, it hasn’t quite captured the world the way the original Switch did back in 2017. We have a first-generation Switch at home, and honestly, we’re not in any rush to upgrade.

With hundreds of games in the Switch catalogue, one title stands out to me: Kirby and the Forgotten Land, released in 2022. It’s Kirby’s first fully three-dimensional action platformer—the beloved pink puffball, traditionally a 2D mascot sitting just below Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong in the Nintendo pantheon, finally stepping into a 3D world. It’s genuinely great fun.

What strikes me, though, is something Nintendo did with the demo.

The Genius of the Free Trial

You can download a free demo of Kirby and the Forgotten Land without buying anything. Three full levels, no charge. Play through to the end of level three, and then a three-minute video plays—showing you the sprawling adventure that awaits in the full game: over forty more levels, boss battles, collectibles, the works. Then the game loops back to the demo’s title screen.

Nintendo’s confidence is unmistakable. They’re saying: we know that once you’ve tasted this, you’ll want the rest.

A family I know recently bought a Switch. They have two daughters—five years old and two years old—and downloaded the Kirby demo. The girls were immediately captivated. But here’s the thing: months later, they still refuse to play anything else. According to their father, they’ve run through the same three demo levels well over two hundred times. Every map, every enemy, every hidden corner—they know it cold.

And yet, the moment the game starts up, those girls bounce with excitement as if it’s the first time.

Their father, on the other hand, is visibly done. “I am absolutely exhausted of this,” he told me, laughing painfully.

The Demo Life

I couldn’t stop thinking about this as a picture of the Christian life.

How many of us are running the same three levels on repeat?

There is an entire world of faith waiting—depths of prayer, intimacy with the Holy Spirit, the adventure of obedience, the costly joy of fasting and sacrifice, a life genuinely shaped by Scripture rather than merely decorated by it. We hear about this world secondhand: through testimonies in magazines or church services, through the biographies of people who clearly lived differently. We nod and say, “Yes, that sounds extraordinary.” And then we go back to level one.

What’s most telling is that we’re not even bored. The person who has been in church for five years or fifty years, whose spiritual maturity has barely moved past the entry level—they’re still genuinely happy in the demo. Still bouncing with enthusiasm at the familiar beats. Still treating every Sunday service, every familiar prayer, every known verse as though it’s fresh. There’s nothing wrong with joy. But a five-year-old’s joy and a five-year-old’s depth are not the same thing.

Paul puts it plainly:

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.”

Hebrews 5:12 (NKJV)

The Price of the Full Game

To get past the demo, you have to pay. That’s not cynicism—it’s simply how it works. Nintendo built something extraordinary. Accessing the full thing costs something.

The deeper life of faith has always cost something too.

Not salvation—that was paid in full on the cross. Jesus cried out “It is finished,” rose from the dead, and gave us the Holy Spirit. The life of faith itself, the world of knowing God, is entirely a gift of grace. To think our effort makes it possible is as absurd as claiming you had some hand in designing the game. You didn’t. You couldn’t.

But to explore it—to move past the first three levels into the forty-plus stages beyond—requires something from us. Paul again:

“But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”

1 Corinthians 9:27 (NKJV)

What does that cost look like in practice? Not the flesh living as it pleases. Daily feeding on Scripture rather than treating it as optional. Guarding what enters your eyes and ears—not from legalism, but because the heart follows its inputs. Unceasing prayer, genuinely joyful and thankful, not a ritual obligation. And above all: following the prompting of the Holy Spirit immediately, not after deliberation, not when it’s convenient.

Jesus himself taught that certain depths are reached through fasting, giving, and sustained prayer (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16)—not to earn anything, but because these disciplines strip away the noise and make you present to what God is already doing.

Still a Gift

I want to be clear, because the analogy can mislead here. The full game does not become yours because you deserve it. Grace is grace—unearned, unreserved, given freely in Christ. What I’m describing is not a transaction with God but a posture toward the gift already given.

The grace is total. The adventure is real. But most of us are still on level one, bouncing happily, never wondering what’s beyond the edge of the screen.

The question isn’t whether you’ve been a Christian long enough. It’s whether you’ve actually gone deeper. Have you paid the price of the full game? Or are you still running the same three levels, waiting for something to happen on its own?

The demo was never meant to be the whole story.