re2 hacking conclusion: if you hack yourself the items every interaction in the demo area works, you can even blow up the C4. There's a few extra rooms to explore that way but nothing big. Not sure if/how the sliding bookshelf puzzle works in the remake, but they slide. The STARS Room has been patched out, sadly, it looks really cool in the dev streams.
It's pretty obvious that this demo is simply the build they made to show at cons, which is probably also why it has the timer. They added notifications every five minutes using Steam Achievements for a reason lol