Demon Turf: Queens Edition

Demon Turf… honestly, idk where I stand with this game. You’ve probably read this exact sentence a million times in reviews, but if there was a “neutral” review button, I genuinely would’ve used it. I had fun with the game for a while, but the more I played, the more bored I got. To be fair though, I can totally see myself finishing it someday… I just don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon. First of all, you kinda do the same thing over and over throughout the entire game (or at least from what I played). Every time you finish a world, something slightly changes, but it’s never enough to make me actually excited to keep going. Most of the time it just feels like “wow, cool I guess.” And man, the combat gameplay honestly sucks. Outside of the boss fights, fighting enemies is insanely repetitive. You can’t even touch enemies directly, so most encounters boil down to pushing them into hazards or off the map for the millionth time. It gets old really fast. Anyways, without dragging this review on forever, I think the game seriously overstays its welcome. I could absolutely see myself loving this game more if it was shorter. I’m only on the third world, and you can already see how much time I’ve put into it. I even tried going for all the cakes and lollipops in the worlds I unlocked, and eeeeeeeehhhhh… it was fun at first, but it slowly became more annoying than rewarding. The game being repetitive wouldn’t even be that big of an issue on its own, but combined with some of the weird platforming quirks, it starts getting frustrating. For example, not being able to wall jump after a double jump just feels wrong at first. You do get used to it eventually, but there are a bunch of little things like that throughout the game. Overall, I’d only really recommend Demon Turf if you absolutely adore the art style and you’re a hardcore platforming fan. Otherwise… naaaaaah.

I got this because I played Demon Tides, which was amazing, and wanted to see its origins. That was a mistake, Demon Tides is so much better in every way. Demon Turf, while it has a cool graffiti art style and hand-animated 2D sprites, the rest of the graphics are like a DOOM mod with extremely pointy and blocky geometry, garish colour palettes and piles of fog. The game is a lot more frustrating when you only get 3 manual checkpoints per level, because you don't know how long the level is. Demon Tides is much better with its infinite manual checkpoints. Overall: get Demon Tides, what a great game! This one's not as good.

TL;DR: the art style captures an old-school level of worldbuilding in a very charming way. I appreciate the style and the snarky writing. Unfortunately, the flow of the game is quite limited for a platformer, and I find some elements janky in regards with how you interact with the world. I.E. if a platform has spikes on TOP of it, touching the bottom or side of the platform has killed me. Also, I have ran into several bugs that have caused me to lose lots of progress in levels and having me to redo them. All-in-all, a charming and fun attempt, but it does become tedious fast.

its not necessarily bad, but feels extremely uninspired, like it feels like that can I copy your homework meme but after copying it the dude then decided to write up a ton more levels that don't add anything to the experince like best way I can describe it, is you know those rifts in hat in time that where completely disconnected levels that had no bearing on the over arcing story or world building, imagine if some one made a game out of those and that's what you have here. if what I described doesn't sound like something you'd enjoy then give this one a pass

Pretty decent 3D Platformer with cute art-style and A LOT of content to dig, took me 33h to do everything in the base game!

Honestly, I get why so many reviews of this have very few hours and are pretty negative about it: it's definitely an acquired taste due to the stylistic and structural choices made by the developers, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't one of my absolute favorite 3D platformers of all. The main game itself is plenty satisfying albeit a bit too long for my taste (for instance, I wouldn't have made the requirement for the final boss 50 batteries, cause that is a ton of alternate-version levels to beat, despite them being clearly intended for a more seasoned player than your average). That being said, it was still a ton of fun to play through even the hardest levels, and especially speedrunning them. They did manage to strike the perfect balance between too hard and too easy, while maintaining a pretty fair difficulty curve. The abilities and the movement options they unlock are extremely satisfying, with my only issue being with the last one due to the tons of inconsistencies associated with it. Also my other small ick was with the base movement being too slow unless you're continuously jumping around which, in turn, makes you more likely to fall in gaps. As I said, an acquired taste. Now, the first dlc however is incredible: straight up perfect from start to finish albeit a bit easy if you've already completed the main game, with the exception of the remixed crane level which felt so cutthroat. Every issue I could possibly have had with the main game gets resolved in the expansion, starting from faster movement and ability usage and ending with the incredibly colorful backgrounds that compliment the artstyle much more than the Hell-inspired setting of the original. They even went ahead and cut on the amount of slow-panning cutscenes and number of button presses needed to utilize abilities. This is just generally cleaner and the same could be said about the second DLC, which, admittedly isn't my vibe and wouldn't have brought me to buy the game if it was all as rage-inducing, but was definitely a nice switch up. All in all, I think the 3D platformers lovers out there will be in love with this at least as much as I was (so much so that I 100% both DLCs despite them having no steam achievements).

Yep, that’s a fine 3D platformer, and boy is it chunky. Lookit all that content. The design most reminds me of Sly Cooper, with the traps and pitfalls, Beebz’s nimble jumping, and the progression of mobster-like setpiece bosses, though it doesn’t contain the same stealth elements. Also, the kappa sidekick is sort of Bentley-coded, I guess. The look is more Paper Mario-like with its mix of cutouts and models, along with a bit of PaRappa-like puppetry, though I wouldn’t say the visuals are this game’s strong suit. The movement has a good variety of tools, with a new ability unlocking on each world. The platforming’s pretty tight, giving you a good feel for the environment so that you can chain your moves to move freely throughout the level. There is a bit of stiffness, but it’s mostly for the sake of challenge. You have to commit to jumps and use your abilities when you’re in a pinch, rather than just yank the joystick. The custom checkpoints prevent the levels from being too grueling, while the time trials balance it out to give the main game some challenge. That said, it took me longer than I would have liked to remember not to use the spin if I wanted to use one of the unlockable abilities mid-jump. It’s fair because there have to be some limitations on your agility, but it’s slightly irritating that the spin jump is the best option for clearing distance, but you can’t save yourself with the glide once you commit. The hitboxes are a little difficult to eyeball, with red death objects rubbing up against you when you think you can barely slip past. The enemies feel interchangeable as obstacles when most of what you do is push them with your charge attack. Finally, the characters and story are pretty limp. Beebz’s vocabulary is a little juvenile, and the arc of the story is the most basic self-actualization. It’s not interesting, but it’s also unobtrusive. Kids might like it. These issues are pretty much nitpicks, anyways. Now back to all of that delicious content. It too, is not all sunshine and rainbows. Literally. The mirror levels hold up well from a gameplay perspective, so I didn’t mind too much that you have to complete a majority of them to unlock the final boss, but why did they all have to be so dark and dreary? Some stuff I didn’t engage with much, but seem like nice additions. I didn’t pursue the collectathon for very long, but there were a few cake-related challenges I enjoyed. I didn’t attempt the photo hunt because it looked like a lot of work. I bought a couple of power-ups to further enhance Beebz’s agility, but didn’t really experiment. Neon Splash and The Tower are whole other game modes that look like they’d be exciting to try. Demon soccer, though? Oof, that does not handle well at all. Using the grapple on the balls is excruciating. Still, positive on the whole, and I didn’t even mention the community-designed levels. I’d like to try a couple of those. In summary, it’s a game with a solid base packed loads of optional diversions and challenges. Not the most beautiful or intricate game from this genre, but high value and fun to play.

I really wanted to love this game, but after playing it for a bit, i cannot recommend it as a good game to play. The reason i decided to get it was first and foremost the wonderful and bubbly artstyle it has. I really enjoy an idea of playing a cute 3D platformer, but i just couldn't bring myself to continue the game after beating the first boss. First thing that I immediately noticed was the visual design of the levels in the first location. Levels tend to focus on using only one intense colour throughout the entire thing, which makes it tiring for my brain. Another prevalent thing i noticed is the intense amount of fog in the random areas, to the point that you actually barely see anything other than the character, trying to navigate back to the area where the fog is less intense. Moreover the levels are quite in disarray, sometimes it's very confusing to navigate through them. Not to mention the checkpoint system, which is very strange to me. I can't recall the checkpoints to place them in further parts of the level, and i only have a limited amount. It can be a game-breaking feature for sure, but why not give already placed checkpoints instead of the player having to do it themselves? Most of the time i've been completely forgetting about that feature, with the only reminder being randomly dying after a long and tedious parts of the level, and it wasn't fun to redo them AT ALL. And the game itself feels very slow and sluggish. It doesn't feel nice to traverse the levels with Beebz, the platforms take a long time to come back + all the restrictions your character gets if you do the double jump (mainly you can't wall jump or use the hook ability), which really adds to the slow pacing. Another thing that bugged me is how the world is just so... empty? You can easily tell which characters are important, because they have a unique design and most of the times they have voiced dialogue, but dear god. The pig npcs? That all look like the same cardboards, except maybe this one has hair and this one has boobs? Or maybe both? Moreover the dialogues are very bland, and not just npcs dialogues. On the npc side, there's no use talking to them. They never provide any useful information about the world-building, or the story, or about random mechanics. It's just couple lines of dialogue someone was paid minimum wage to write as a placeholder. You can find a cool little secret area with one that is slightly different from the rest, and it rewards you with a 3-line nothingburger. Genuinely, they can be cut from the game entirely and not affect it at all. The voiced over story dialogues are also really bad. I am willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt since I've only seen the first area boss, but why are all the dialogues between the main character and the rest are just the same banter over and over? There's no spunk and variety, The first boss calls Beebz a shrimp, she calls him a bacon and he immediatelly folds with an angry "Grrrh". That's literally it, for 5 different instances of dialogue they ever have. Like I said, I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it has way too many issues that build up and make the experience very unpleasant.

Sadly, I can't recommend the game. The combat feels so bad, unnecessary, out of place and is genuinely just frustrating to deal with. In most levels, it completely ruins the flow of the game. One moment you do your jump and run platformer, and suddenly you are forced to get into an "arena" and fight a few enemies by pushing them into spikes, and in other levels where it's not a small confined space, you have to search for small enemies, which you have to push down into lava/abyss. IDK who thought this was fun or good game design, but let's just say this guy needs his hardcore Minecraft world taken from him. I feel like they tried way too hard to overcompensate on the combat when they just had to copy other games like Spongebob, Spyro, Crash, Mario, etc. Simplicity works! The boss fights are equally frustrating, and no fun allowed. I get that all of them have a gimmick, but that doesn't make them fun, which wouldn't be bad by themselves, but combined with the rest, it just feels frustrating to play, especially when you want to collect all the time trophies. I also know that there are a few upgrades, but you can realistically only equip 2 useful ones, and why would you not pick movement ones in a 3D platformer? The overall level design is also hit and miss, where some feel really good and have a nice pace (3-5 min) and are fun to go through once for the collectibles and then again for the time trophy, while others again are either bottlenecked by the forced fights or are too open or rather unnecessarily prolonged by having you swim/jump through water or have you wait for platforms in a platformer... All in all, it's not the worst 3D platformer I've played, and the art style of 2D Sprites in 3D Space is not as bad as I thought it would be, but the points mentioned above, at least for me personally, ruined the enjoyment I tried to have. But apparently one of the DLCs of the game fixed a lot of the issues I mentioned, so I'm going to give that one a try and hope it's better! Update: After Playing the Neon Splash DLC, I have to say that this is what the game should have been in the first place. Most of my criticism was completely solved in it. I still have some, like not being able to reset immediately when dying so you have to watch the animation and respawn before being able to reset a run, or how some remix levels feel too much of a gimmick, like Splash City, or last but not least how the candy in some levels is going up into the air outside your jump distance for no reason at all other than to make you wait for it... But all in all, after completing it to 105%, it was overall really fun and enjoyable. Would I recommend the game now? Yes and No. If you get it on steep discount, sure, since this is the edition with the DLC, otherwise, I would highly recommend just buying the standalone version, which is currently on sale for 2.99€ as I'm writing this, but even the 5€ would still be worth it, especially since it has achievements for the DLC which for some reason this version does not have (sad). Because of this, I'm keeping it at not recommended since, for me, the DLC was the only enjoyable part.

Demon turf 5.5/10 Neon splash 6,5/10