Review of Demon Turf – hellish platformer

Currently, such a huge number of games have been published and created that it is relatively difficult to excel with your project and at least partially break through. Surely you know this, you are browsing your online gaming library, and although its contents contain hundreds of interesting titles, you finally sigh and say: “I have nothing to play,” turn off the platform. You have so many options, but none of them are right. There’s just too much everywhere. One way to grab attention in the content stream is to come up with an original idea and then turn it into a game that has a face. And, despite various ailments, Demon Turf managed to do it.

• Platform: prefix 5
• Publication date: 4. 11. 2021
• Producer: Fabraz
• Genre: Old school platformer
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 3 GB
• Game time: 20+ hours
• Price: 635 CZK

New jumping game with old rules

The very first “face” that you will meet in the game belongs to the “only” 1000-year-old teenage demon Bibz, whose character you will get used to and together with her you will fight with the main villain the Demon King, who will observe and comment on the entire game through the screens TVs placed on some maps. The whole story begins with a dream. In it, Bibz meets the Demon King and decides to become the Queen of the Demon World and dethrone the Demon King from his throne. To do this, he will need the help of gangs that also control the local world. So the young demons have no choice but to go to separate worlds and become the boss of all four gangs. Due to her young age, no one here believes her too much and they are more like a joke. Miji’s friend, who works like a typical helper, easily helps her along the way. The Demon King’s loyal maid (read secretary) Lucy helps the couple a little unknowingly as well. The character of Beebs is sympathetic-rebellious, her charisma and audacity are sure to captivate you. However, I appreciate that he only says if you want to talk to someone. Her pubescence could have been more annoying.

However, the story is not what you should be interested in in the case of this game. It’s pretty simple and doesn’t require too much depth. The NPCs that you will meet relatively many around the world have one or two lines that do not advance the story much. After each completed world, the narrative moves forward imperceptibly, but the narrative does not attract anything. After all, in the case of a platformer, I didn’t expect a deep story full of twists and turns, so I don’t want to blame the game for that. As an addition to an interesting environment, it works great.

We will still remain on the “face”. The first thing that catches your eye when playing Demon Turf is the original graphics. The authors use a 3D environment in which they placed 2D character sprites and some parts of the world. Despite the fact that at first this is a rather unusual sight, you will quickly get used to it and begin to perceive it as ordinary. And as usual, I can’t imagine the game any other way. One of the things I love about jumping is the environment. I don’t think all Maris and Donkey Kong would be as legendary as they are now without interesting environments. The developers could easily put the whole game in a purple pseudo-hell, which I was afraid of at the beginning of the game. The environment of hell is pretty monotonous and I was afraid that I would have to spend the whole game in it. Fortunately, this did not happen. Instead, they took a more difficult path and created several different environments. Sunny beaches, a dark neon city with a hint of cyberpunk, or snow-capped mountains. On the other hand, the character models are not that good. 2D sprites often have little market, a few times it happened to me that their appearance and aimlessness took me away from admiring the otherwise beautifully stylized graphics.

The combination of 3D environments and 2D characters is visually varied and interesting, but in terms of playability, it sometimes falters. It’s often been a challenge for me to get the shape perfect so that it rotates where I want it to. It should be noted that this clumsiness was not caused by my ingenuity, but by the inaccuracy of the blow. Bibz’s shadow is supposed to help control the punch, but the moment you have a fraction of a second to react, you just can’t rely on the shadow. Which, in the case of a platformer, the gameplay of which is largely based on your accuracy, seems to me somewhat unfortunate.

Lots of music for little money

In terms of gameplay, Demon Turf offers a lot of possibilities. It’s a simple jumping game that looks simple when you look at it, but it’s not that fun to play anymore. Accordingly, it is funny, but because of your inability, it can be really bittersweet. The game does not forgive you for mistakes and every wrong step, jump or use of an ability can mean immediate death or the need to repeat the entire section. However, the developers were not as ruthless as it might seem at first glance. In total, you have three flags at your disposal, which you can place almost anywhere, and they will serve as a checkpoint. You can even teleport between checkpoints, so if you forgot to pick up one of the collectibles, then probably nothing happens. Useful mechanic that I would appreciate if I could reconsider and return the flag. However, I don’t know if my comfort is just coming to the surface.

Jumps, double jumps, mid-air turns, super jumps, successive jumps, and special abilities that you get after defeating the boss, such as a pull hook, the ability to swim or slow the platform. An impressive repertoire of movement options makes the gameplay refreshing and satisfying. In the end, I often paid so much attention to perfection that I repeated the levels two or three times in order to reach the highest possible speed and collect all the collectibles (cakes and lollipops).

In each of the four worlds, you will find several levels, at the end of which there is a battery needed to advance to the fight with the local boss. Also in all worlds there are cakes that you can search for and then get improvements for them (slower fall, faster movement, additional jump, etc.) The whole game shows that the developers wanted to offer players a lot of music for little money. Immediately after completing the standard levels, you will unlock the same ones, but redesigned into a different form. You have twice as much experience. Instead of cakes, you collect candies here, which can be used to buy cosmetic accessories. In addition to the “main task”, you also have the opportunity to spend time in a variety of side activities. In the base location of Forktown, where you regularly return, you can play golf, take part in the battles in the arena, shop or participate in a “photo hunt”. Use your camera to take photos of places or people and then exhibit them in your local gallery. The side quests (other than the arena) are fun and definitely worth trying at least some of them.

Unfortunately, Demon Turf also features combat, which is nowhere near as exciting as the rest of the game. Unlike the relatively well-designed and meaningful jumps, this one is tediously boring and unimaginative. Most of the time you use attack to try and knock enemies off the platform/press down on the deadly red spikes. However, the whole operation is extremely unsatisfactory and terrifying. If the developers had not included combat, they would have done better.

If you like Mario 3D platformers, you will feel like a duck to water. Demon Turf is a modern old school tribute to this type of game. You will find a large amount of content (about 20 hours for the classic firmware, up to 50 hours for the full one) for little money. A fun platformer with a fairly variable gameplay, which sometimes overtakes control inaccuracies and boring combat. However, for every platformer, this is a “must have”.

You can play Demon Turf on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switches.