Slam Tank Steam Demo Review
Played 27 Oct 2026 · 30min
Verdict: Play
The turret is a sword, the scoreboard is a leverage multiplier, and whoever's inside the tank would be scrambled eggs by the end.
Slam Tank is a stylish single-player tank Action demo from Next Stage Inc. I had scrolled past it twice because the main-title font annoyed me and the premise sounded like it would just be dumb. Then I saw someone's clip on Twitter and it did look dumb and fun, which was enough. Half an hour later I had crashed through an AI's machine army on day five of Steam Next Fest. The tank's turret turns out to be a sword, and the score counter at the top of the screen is called AI Inverse ETF.
Play. Dumb and enjoyable, half an hour to do one run, and I had a laugh with it. The replayability sits in chasing a leaderboard, and the top of Normal is at 27 million against the 17 million I managed. I am not motivated by that. What I would have liked more of is a campaign and a reason I am the saviour of humanity as a tank rather than a crazy ninja tank. That is obviously not something you put in a demo. There is something here. Worth a quick go, especially if you want to chase the leaderboard. Anyone after a slow story build or a tank that fires an actual gun can leave this one.
Pros
- The turret is a sword and the game commits to it. The whole combat system is you crashing a vehicle into things, not aiming a gun
- The AI Inverse ETF scoreboard with its Leverage multiplier and live sparkline treats your score as a short against an AI stock, and the game sticks to the joke all the way through
- The enemy roster arrives one named type at a time, from droids all the way to Roll Cutter and the Armored Train, and each new one changes what you have to do by a little
Cons
- Two of the three specials barely matter. The Whirlwind carries the whole fight, which flattens the choice the number-key row implies
What is Slam Tank?
Slam Tank is an Indie single-player tank Action game from Next Stage Inc. where the pitch is in the title. You pick a tank, you drive at speed, and you ram other machines until they come apart. The surprise, a few minutes in, is that the tank does not actually fire its gun. The turret spins, the barrel swings, and the barrel is the sword. Most of my first fight was spent working out that there was no shoot button. The attack is you crashing the whole vehicle into something.
The setup gets handed to you on a wall of text. Humanity has refused to surrender to an AI that has taken control of the world's machines, so the machines are coming for us. It is easily three pages, I did not read all of it, and it should probably be a video. Then they skip the part that explains how you landed in the fight. The tank arrives inside a plane and jumps out as a tank.
What does the loop feel like?
Shift is a dash that lets you boost through things and sometimes dodge an attack when they telegraph. Boost pads under you launch into little jumps. The number keys trigger specials you build up on a yellow bar. There are three of them. The first is a Whirlwind spin that catches everyone in a radius and launches them. The other two I used and then stopped using. The spin is the best special. Once I had worked that out, my plan was spin, face-check whatever was left, spin again when it recharged. Q is a health potion, E tops up the special bar. I did not learn either of those for a while.
My own description of my strategy on the way out was that I was spamming the Whirlwind and spamming the normal attack. The only two enemies that needed a different approach were Roll Cutter and the Armored Train. Roll Cutter is the mini-boss with the spinning rock-crunch front; the train is the final fight. Everything else was the same answer.
The fun small thing I did not expect was volleying. If you hit certain enemies head-on while they are winding up, you knock them into the air. If your spin comes off the cooldown fast enough, you can keep them there. It is cheese and it works. I was not going to pass that up.
What is the score actually counting?
The score counter in the top right calls itself AI Inverse ETF. It is a dollar amount, with a Leverage multiplier underneath, and a tiny green sparkline that updates as you destroy things. The multiplier climbs while you are smashing and starts dropping the moment you stop. The game's own tagline is that the more you wreck, the more the AI pays. The HUD has committed to the joke by styling your score as a short against an AI stock. You do not need to understand any of this to play. It is funny to see it tick upward while you spin into a wall of dumper trucks.
End of my run I had 17 million. The world leaderboard for Normal starts at 27 million to crack the top fifty. I am not going to catch that. The friend-rank screen told me I was number one, because none of my friends have played it. I will take that.
How does a run shape up?
One mission in the demo, called AI Logistics Facility: destroy the train station, which turns into defeat the Armored Train. The enemies arrive one new type at a time and each gets a little label when it shows up. Droids first, then bulldozers, then Cargo Runners that are a pair of legs with a suitcase on top. Then dumper trucks, Cargo Transporters, and slow artillery that fires at where you were a second ago. Roll Cutter is the mid-run boss. The Armored Train closes the demo and did need me to actually read what it was doing rather than running at it.
The path through the arena is gated behind a red wall whenever a wave starts. I would rather those walls were debris or a collapsing beam or anything that was not a bare red barrier. At the moment the wall tells you plainly that the game is holding you in a room. There is a nice touch I kept noticing. Your health bar lives on the jerry cans welded to the sides of the tank, so you can see it on your own vehicle rather than hunting a corner of the HUD.
What will the full game need?
The pre-match screen shows three tanks, Balanced, Agile, and Sturdy. In the demo only Balanced is unlocked. I was going to pick Sturdy and the game said no. The other two being locked in the demo is fine; I would want them in from the start of the full game. At its core this is an Arcade game. The leaderboard tabs for Score and Clear Time, and the difficulty picker up to Challenger, both point at something that wants you to chase a number. That is a strong fit for some people and not for me.
Some tank upgrades you spend scores on between runs would also help give you something to be building toward. The art and the camera could still use a pass. The motion blur on max graphics was heavy enough that I dropped to medium and it was still a bit soft on fast turns.
Game Info
- Full release
- TBC
- Platform
- PC
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 30min
Watch the video review: YouTube
Watch the complete live play on YouTube
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