Demon Turf Review

 

Hellishly Entrancing-A Demon Turf Review

Before we get into this one, I just wanted to take some time here at the start to thank any regular readers here at this little review site. Today marks the 50th (WOW) piece I've written on this blog and it is just so great to share my thoughts with you all each week. Here's to the next 50! 

Demon Turf is another installment in the "games I saw early in development that I forget about then just randomly see get released" category of indie titles. This linear 3D platformer occupies one of my favorite genres in all of gaming, so let's look into its trenches and see what it beholds. 

Focused on Fun

Demon Turf is a prime example as to why I far prefer the more focused moment-to-moment gameplay of linear games to their more sprawling non-linear counterparts. What Demon Turf accomplishes in its runtime far surpasses any of the monolithic 50+ hour collect-a-thons that exist out there with their troves of backtracking and empty worlds. What Fabraz accomplished here is a testament to remaining focused on what makes platformers fun: platforming. 

But don't mistake focus for a lack of content! In fact, one of the many surprises in Demon Turf comes in its breadth of things to do-a shocker in linear indie titles. My playthrough, where I beat the game but didn't completely collect everything for 100%, took over 20 hours to get through and left me completely satisfied. 

In this 3D platformer you'll traverse a variety of environments, all with different types of collectables, at a consistent pace. Never in Demon Turf did I express anger at a lack of direction, and the addition of one clever little feature played a huge role in that. By holding down a button you can summon a little arrow that will point you in the direction of the nearest hidden collectable, and I cannot overstate how amazing this is. If you found yourself scouring the map for that one last piece to a puzzle in other games, this nifty feature steers you in the right direction so you can keep up the pace with new challenges. This made going for full completion of the game's main levels much more manageable and actually allowed the devs to hide these collectables (cakes and lollipops for this title) in hard to reach spots without being cryptic. 

By taking away a portion of exploration, Fabraz has shifted the focus onto pure level design-and done a wonderful job. I thoroughly enjoyed all the types of platforming challenges presented here, whether it'd be blocks that disappear and reappear each jump or curse segments where you complete a portion of a level without using a specific skill. 

On the topic of skills, I found that Demon Turf did a particularly splendid job allowing for a range of movement options without overinflating it. Sure it's not gonna sniff the freedom of movement present in games like Mario Odyssey and its cappy mechanics, but it still allows for the player to tackle sections in their own ways-especially with the introduction of special abilities you unlock throughout the adventure. The special abilities in question are quite inventive, but only 3 of the 4 really hit the mark that they should. Traversing levels by turning into a high speed wheel was thrilling; utilizing the grapple hook to fling along sections was interesting; flying across gaps and using wind currents to explore with the bird power was exhilarating; however, using the time stop projectile was overtly finnicky and was never utilized in a meaningful way other than slowing down platforms. Especially when things ramp up in the final level where you use all 4, it became glaringly obvious that this mechanic just wasn't even close to the quality of the other three (the game ultimately would've been fine with this completely omitted). 

Sticking The Landing Visually

Within Demon Turf all characters are 2D sprites in a 3D environment-think along the lines of paper mario. When I first saw this game, I was curious of if they'd be able to pull off this aesthetic in a platformer. I believe what makes this work here is the large variety of animations and poses for our main character Beebz depending on where she is situated with the camera and geometry. As you change angles and positions, that 2D sprite also changes to better accommodate what a 3D character model would look like in that situation. While I had my doubts going in, this art style never tampered with the gameplay and creates something totally unique for the genre as a whole. 

I'll also lump in audio here as well, and it is mostly great. I felt I had to turn character voices down a notch after hearing Beebz make the same exact noise every few jumps or so, but other than that the voice acting is a nice touch and the music is serviceable. 

Some Story and Scattered Extras

While I largely not a huge advocate for complex stories in platformers and thus deem them not a big deal to have in these games, I found Demon Turf's silly little narrative enjoyable enough. Characters are lively, but its nothing that will change the world. Your journey, as the title suggests, tasks Beebz-a demon queen looking to gain credibility and territory-with adventuring to 4 distinct areas to beat their demon lords and take over their turf. An interesting aspect of this involves return trips to the areas you conquered, which feature all new levels for those you've previously beaten with the accompanying area seeing you as their leader. It was an interesting way to essentially double the content through these 4 worlds in a way that didn't feel stale (I at first thought this would mean playing the exact same levels again, but I can assure you its all new content). 

There's also a general hub area that features various merchants and secrets, some of which are ok and some of which are less than stellar. For example, buying alternate outfits was fun, but the NPC that lets you play through these unintuitive golf levels was not. You can also buy and limitedly equip some general upgrades to your character, but none were impactful enough to make much of a difference and some are downright useless (this at least gave some meaning to collecting throughout the game as you use what you find in the main levels to shop in these markets).

I'd like to add here as well that as of December 22nd the team at Fabraz released an update that allows for the creating and sharing of your own levels through the steam workshop and a level editor. Even from the little time its been live, you're sure to find some really fun extra community made content to stroll through. 

Verdict

Demon Turf is absolutely my game of the year for 2021, and I'll be closely keeping my eyes on the development team of Fabraz in the coming years to see what kind of special experiences they create next. Even through some of the minor nitpicks I had with it, there is no doubt that Demon Turf deserves to be in the conversation with some of the greatest platformers out there.

10/10-The New Modern Standard of Linear 3D Platforming