Demon Turf – Review | Collectathon in Hell

Demon Turf aims to capture your time with interesting visuals and by harkening back to the “Collection” days. Published by Playtonic Games and developed by Fabraz, what did we think of this 3D Platformer?

Raising Hell

Demon Turf stars Beebs, a plucky young Demon who is being constantly provoked by the Demon King. Enough is enough and Beebs sets on an adventure to capture all the Demon Turf and dethrone the Demon King.

While there are cutscenes and plenty of characters to talk to, I never really felt swept away with charm like titles this game aims to emulate. What I mean by this is for example Banjo Kazooie, while not known for its main story, had plenty of fun characters and the banter between the main characters was amusing and enjoyable. 

Here in Demon Turf, while there are traces of charm, it never quite matches levels that were set decades before. It often feels like an afterthought, which is a shame considering the art style and premise.

Jump for Demon Love

Demon Turf is a 3D Collectathon Platformer, the style that dominated the era of the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64. More recently, the genre has been revived with titles like Yooka Laylee and Super Mario Odyssey.

There are five hub worlds in total for you to explore; the main city hub and the four demon turfs are there for you to conquer. In each of the 4 Turfs, there are 7 stages for you to tackle which grant your batteries. These are used to fight the final boss and you’ll require 50 of the bad boys. 

Each turf also has an often fun boss battle. Upon conquering them, you’re met with an alternative set of stages in the Turf. These are required for completion. Here the game feels padded out, as the number of batteries required means you’re effectively playing the same 4 worlds twice to artificially extend playtime.

Zoning Permission

Stages are made up of platforming areas, search zones, and combat zones.

Platforming zones are straightforward and require some precise jumps for you to navigate. They can be quite finicky at times with what is required but a little practice doesn’t hurt. 

Search Zones pit you in maze-like areas hunting items to progress. Fortunately, with the press of a button, you get a handy arrow to direct you to your nearest item.

Combat Zones is where Demon Turf starts to deviate from the traditional platformer blueprint. Rather than jumping on enemies’ heads or rolling into them, Beebs can send a pushing blast into them. The way to K.O enemies (or indeed yourself) is to push or be pushed into red spikes; think of it as demonic bumper cars.

There are plenty of side objectives and mini-games to keep you playing and items to collect. Unfortunately, the game never really hooked me in the way other titles of the genre did. The combat felt disjointed with the rest of the product and the amount of padding didn’t help matters any.

Demon Lady In Red

Visually Demon Turf is marmite. It has 2D sprites on a 3D playing field which at times looks fantastic and at others really looks at odds with itself.

I can’t deny the various animations of Beebs as she jumps, flies, and even turns into a wheel are charming. That said, when compared to some pretty muddy 3D visuals it makes me wish they had stuck to one art style instead of bleeding two together. 

Then sometimes the style just works. This is mainly earlier in the game and the main hub world. Later on, it just lacks that wow factor that you would come to expect.

There is some voice acting which is mostly fine if unremarkable. No one stuck out to me. Even Beebs, who should have been dripping in attitude. 

The above comment also applies to the soundtrack. As much as I hate to compare to other titles, it just doesn’t have anything that sticks with you.

Verdict

I wanted to love Demon Turf and at its bone, there is a good title here. It just seems a little disjointed and awkward at points that make this little demon stumble.

The asking price is more than fine for the game, and you get around 20 hours out of it. Just note that not all of it is gold, and has more padding than a push-up bra.

WAIT FOR SALE ON DEMON TURF

If you would like to read about Platformer games, you might be interested to read this review of Sonic Colors: Ultimate.

Many thanks to the Playtonic Games for the PC review copy of this title.