When I saw the trailer for Demon Turf, I absolutely loved the energy and the vibrant colours of the levels on show. Demon Turf is a 3D platformer utilising 2D characters that released on 4th November on Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC. Developed by Fabraz and published by the wonderful people at Playtonic Friends, who bought us the likes of Yooka-Laylee and its respective sequel, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. Demon Turf has you playing as Beebz, a young devil who lives in Fork Town in the Demon World and has a dream where the Demon King dares her to challenge him. When she wakes, she decides on going to the castle to overthrow the Demon King. The Demon world is separated into turfs and their gangs and it is Beebz’ mission to take over the realm one turf at a time. Each turf contains seven levels and a boss battle, and each level has you collecting candy and batteries in order to open the Demon King’s gate. Once you beat the boss of a turf, you become the queen of that turf and control it.
Demon Turf is comprised of 57 levels and five boss battles, making this a pretty decent sized game. You start out in a tutorial level with a small amount of platforming and traversal moves that slowly build as you defeat bosses and take over each turf. The movement controls are simplistic and smooth, although I found the combat controls to be less than perfect. Attacks don’t deal damage to the enemies, so it’s up to you to find inventive ways to dispose of them. At most, all you can do is spin your enemies and push them into something dangerous like spikes or off a cliff or ledge. I found this mechanic very tedious as I progressed. A noteworthy aspect of Demon Turf is the ability to place your own checkpoints around a level. This gives the opportunity to set respawn points where Beebz needs them, however you’re limited to only a few flags per level.
The landscapes and art style of Demon Turf are very unique. 2D characters and animations over a 3D landscape fit surprisingly well. I found the level design and platforming quite good, however the game did have quite a few impediments with the first of which, the camera controls. I found the camera didn’t always give you the best angle or view, even after switching to manual camera controls from automatic, and I was constantly misjudging jumps and gaps, having to restart from my last checkpoint over and over. Secondly, the boss battles were a bit lackluster and frustrating as they force you to use a trick based on one of our protagonist’s skills.
Overall Demon Turf is full of features and despite some flaws, has loads of personality and energy. Besides the regular levels, Demon Turf boasts side-quests galore, time trials, photo mode objectives and more. This game has a ton of replayability and will keep completionists going for ages. Fans of the platforming genre will need to check this title out..
This review utilised a PlayStation 5 key provided by Renaissance PR. Demon Turf is available now on Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC.
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Written by: @Blustreak81
