If you love old-school 3D platforming, then you might want to put Demon Turf firmly on your radar.
This quirky platformer is scheduled to release on PC and consoles this November and, packed with retro charm, it’s well worth keeping an eye on. It casts you as Beebz, a young demon with one very specific goal: she wants to become the Demon Queen, but in order to do that she needs to conquer each of the Demon Turfs. Cue a level-based adventure which sees her tackling platforming-based challenges in order to claim each Turf for herself.
Each level of Demon Turf is a platforming challenge, tasking players with jumping, wall-jumping, gliding and fighting their way to the finish line. There’s nothing here you won’t have been doing in 3D platform games since the late 90s, but it’s smartly presented, with a few nice ideas of its own thrown in. One cool thing about Demon Turf we’ve already spotted is that it allows you to place your own checkpoints. Just passed over a particularly challenging jumping section? Put down a flag, and you’ll respawn right there so you don’t have to do it again. You don’t have unlimited checkpoint flags, though, so you do need to be somewhat considered about where you place them. Still, it’s a very neat, and very welcome, idea.
You’ll often have to chain various moves together to achieve your goals in Demon Turf. Need to get up an especially high ledge? You’ll be expected to perform a jump, wall jump, then a double jump in quick succession, so precision in moving and button-pressing is paramount. The controls, thankfully, seem fairly tight – although Beebz has a tendency to skid forwards a little when she lands, which may prove to be problematic when landing on small platforms.
Along with tricky platforming, you’ll also have some foes to defeat, and for those, Beebz has a punch attack up her sleeve. A quick tap of the button does a quick-fire attack, while holding it charges up a more powerful attack. Combat seems rather rudimentary but functional; so far, rather than defeating enemies we’ve simply pushed them off platforms or sent them hurtling into a dangerous obstacle. But it does the trick.
And of course, like any good platformer, Demon Turf has various collectibles to find in each level. These come in the form of cakes – or ‘sweets’ as the game refers to them, but they look very much like gateaux to us! These are usually hidden away around corners or down a precarious path, but for players who want to get maximum score on each level, it’s an additional challenge to undertake.
Outside of Demon Turf‘s levels, there’s a hub world of sorts to explore. We haven’t seen much of what it offers yet, but there are plenty of characters to talk to, and seemingly a handful of a missions to complete, bringing a bit of variety to gameplay. We wandered into a photography store, where a friendly “demon” tasked us with capturing photos of NPCs, and there’s a “demon soccer golf” stall that we’re interested to find out more about.
If old-school platforming with a fun, demonic twist sounds like your sort of thing, keep an eye out for Demon Turf. It’s coming to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC on 2nd November.
