Demon Turf (Nintendo Switch) Review

Aiight, here's the deal. Spunky demon girl Beebz won't take a Chill Pill. She wants to prove to the King of Hell that she is all that and a bag of chips. So, she sets up on a grand journey, to show him who's da boss and have him eat her shorts. Before all that, though, she must collect some fly bling, which will help her unlock new cool levels to explore. Yeah, in case you haven't figured that out, Demon Turf is very '90s-flavoured, with hip-hop sounding tunes bopping along the action (scratches and all), baggy clothes, and main characters whose facial expressions range from "Sup bro?" to "Whatever… with "Talk to the hand" being a nice alternative.

Cringy? Not this is one of the elements that give it its unique character, with the art style being the second half of the equation. Taking a page from Paper Mario, this uses 2D sprites moving in a fully three-dimensional world, with characters being comprised of a multitude of frames in order to give a full, 360 view of them, pretty much like in Doom-era first person games. This got style. Sadly, being stylish doesn't mean that the final outcome is pretty. In all honesty, there are plenty of vistas that are downright ugly, especially in those levels where everything is drenched in a single colour, blending everything together, and not letting the various details stand out. It's sad, really, because with a little bit better art direction, this would be a real looker.

Gameplay-wise Demon Turf is Collectathon 3D Platformer 101. Probably way too much, to the point that there's nothing special to say about it. You explore various hub worlds, trying to find the necessary key-items that will unlock more worlds to explore, along with resources that can upgrade the heroine's arsenal of abilities. Oh, and while at it, one can collect all sorts of "needless" stuff, just for the sake of it. Extra fluff. It's a collectathon, so it's not really about the reward, but about the actual process of collecting. Which begs the question: is this any fun?

The short answer to whether this is enjoyable is: yes. The bulk of the game revolves around finding a way to go from A to B, with the whole thing having a slight puzzle approach, in the sense that you frequently have to think how to make a leap. More specifically, aside from the standard jump and double jump moves, this cute demon girl can also glide, as well as make glide/jump combos to pull of different kinds of leaps. It will take some time to get comfortable with doing a jump-double-dump-glide, or a jump-glide-jump (with a little bit of wall-jumping thrown in as well), which all behave differently, but you'll soon get the hang of it.

Unfortunately, fun as this can be, more often than not it can annoy. For starters, whether because the main character has somewhat slippery feet, or because it's hard to judge distances with a 2D sprite moving in a 3D world, combined with the heavy on verticality and endless pits level design, there's plenty of aggravating falling down. An interesting mechanic here is that one can set custom checkpoints, but this creates more problems than it solves, for the simple reason that it's hard to pick the right spot to set a checkpoint flag. The most common mistakes in regard to checkpoints will be, A: setting one way too soon, and, B: forgetting to set one, and losing tons of progress.

At the end of the day, Demon Turf is… okay. It scratches that collectathon itch, and the platforming is a pleasant deal despite the many shortcomings on offer… but it's just ok. There's nothing unique here to talk about, and most importantly, nothing that well executed. Sub-genre "superfans" can try it out, after lowering their expectations a couple of notches. The rest can safely try something else, or just go straight to the classics.