Fans of 3D Mario games, in the style of Galaxy, Odyssey, and even the humble 64, this one is for you. Demon Turf, a game made by indie dev Fabraz (with help of Playtonic), is probably one of the most successful of these sorts of games calling back to the height of the 3D platformer dominance. The twist here is that instead of being a collectathon focused sort of experience, there’s more focus on platforming challenges.
The game follows Beebz, a sassy demon in the demon world who wants to kick the Demon King’s butt and take his throne, for no other reason then petty spite. To do so, she has to collect batteries to open gates to various turfs run by various demon gangs, letting her go take on the big guy once and for all once all four turfs are taken.
It’s an amusing take on the platformer story formula, shifting the focus to kid friendly versions of chaotic neutral gremlins and monsters for giggles. The attitude of Beebz is shared by the wider world, levels and hub areas filled with people to talk to for some amusing bits of dialog and moments of sass. The few bits of voice acting are also greatly appreciated, though the mixing on the vocal lines tend to be a tad too quiet compared to the music if an actor is holding back their voice a bit. It’s an issue shared on some of the tracks with vocals, though this isn’t consistent.
Demon Turf uses a mix of 2D sprites in a 3D world, giving every character and minor NPC a unique and lively look. This is really shown off with Beebz, who takes on multiple forms based around the parts of her outfit and her hair. This helps in gameplay by making it clear visually that you’re still controlling Beebz, no matter the form, through familiar design elements. It also gives the massive bosses interesting designs, as they often mix together sprites and 3D models, selling their size and threat further with abnormal design elements (not unlike some of the Paper Mario series boss designs).
The music by Fat Bard is also the perfect mood setter for such an irreverent and wacky world. It’s probably best described like a mix of pop punk flavored electronic, Disgaea, and childish teasing. A wild mix of record scratches and kiddie choirs chanting nonsense (possibly with a chipmunk distortion effect) results in a score that perfectly nails Beebz personality and the one of the world around her.
Special mention must be made to the town theme Let’s Get Forked Up for being an ear worm that tells you everything you need to know with just its odd vibe. A few of the boss themes also go hard on the overall goofy theme, Fredo’s Fearful Fit earning points for a nursery rhyme diss rap that might catch you off guard. Meanwhile, Damp’s Seadog Shanty stands out for the evolution of the instrumentals and vocals as the battle moves through each phase and Damp gets angrier and angrier. He even gets to the point where he declares “no more crab puns!” to show he means business as the track goes into full metal riff territory.
The game oozes style, and then backs it up with its smooth controls and balanced platforming challenges. Once you turn down the move deadzone option on controllers, Beebz controls like a dream, responding to the most minor of stick sways. She has an impressive moveset as well, including a double jump, a triple jump from the ground that works as long as you’re moving (allowing for some tricky jumps while sticking to one spot if you’re good), a very exploitable wall jump, a side jump for trickier maneuvers, a spinning attack, and a psychic palm strike projectile for combat. It makes for a fun base set of skills that every level uses well for the overall design, but that’s not all!
Once Beebz jumps, she can enter the spin form for some extra air and to control your descent. Doing so after a double jump just locks you out of a wall jump, as Beebz as to be in her normal form to use it (double jumping and spinning each have a unique form she takes on). However, if you use the spin after the first jump, you can either do a double jump, or use Beebz’s long jump, which launches her forward like a cannon ball for huge distance and speed, just at the cost of your control of her.
These factors, the jump and spin forms locking off or unlocking certain moves, is where the game’s challenge comes in, as levels soon get designed to test your knowledge of knowing how to use those moves, especially in the post game tower mode for speedrunners. The main hub town even offers a mess of challenges to tackle for candy and cakes (which unlock cosmetic options). These moves can allow for a lot of creative short cuts if you know your stuff too, not unlike the best of the 3D Mario games.
Beebz also earns some unique powers from bosses, including a grappling hook (which can be used on items and enemies as well as grapple points), a snake wheel form for huge but hard to control speed, a long glide bird form, and an AOE time slowdown move. Most of these aren’t anything new to the genre (though that last one takes more note from Devil May Cry 5 then other platformers), but the snake wheel form is a mess of fun for high skill players. Otherwise, they serve the purpose of opening up more options for later level obstacles and freshening up moment to moment gameplay. The one downside is that you have to equip them from a wheel menu, which slows down things while up, but doesn’t feel fast enough in use for when the game starts chaining moments that require multiple powers.
Level design is often fair and varied, constantly adding new twists to the formula. For example, if regular platforms get boring, you eventually get timed Mega Man styled platforms mixed in, and even ones that change their corporal status based on your jumps. Wall jumps start getting way more focus once sticky surfaces get introduced, letting you really go nuts with them to climb high areas. The snake wheel introduces long road stretches to go fast on and create opportunities for long launches, and even weaving them into grappling stretches. It just keeps going and going like this, never once feeling stale.
For less skilled players aiming to finish the game, the design is rarely that punishing, giving you a lot of time to take things slow and careful. There’s even mods you can unlock in the hub town to give you some improvements to make things easier, like being able to move faster and carry more checkpoint flags (which you can set down most anywhere to decide where you want a checkpoint). More skilled players, on the other hand, have a huge toybox to mess with, and you also have an entire expansion dedicated to a faster and more satisfying challenge.
Demon Turf: Neon Splash has a unique look compared to the original game, a much more manic soundtrack, and some gameplay changes to cater to high skill players. In particular, some of Beebz unlocked moves now have dedicated buttons, like the snake wheel, which results in levels with a great focus on going fast and blasting through entire stretches of platforms with the right know how. It’s now being packed into the main game on PC with the Queen’s Edition, and this includes a level editor as well. Console versions seem to just bundle the main game and Neon Splash due to technical issues with the level editor.
As the product of a small team, Demon Turf is extremely impressive, though you can see the limitations of that here and there. The design of the 3D areas is usually colorful and eye catching, but some textures are notably too flat or shiny for what they should be. Fog and smoke effects also don’t quite work as well as they should, obfuscating too much instead of adding to the atmosphere.
These are minor issues, though more significant ones might be the iffy handling of the grappling hook (remember that the camera will adjust itself between shots and you should be fine) and the slow pace of the push and pull fights. It has the awkward camera issues of the Bowser fights of Super Mario 64, especially in Damp’s fight as you knock him off stage similar to swinging Bowser into bombs. It’s no game breaker, but it does make a lot of fights feel off, as it becomes difficult to keep track of where everything is as your sprite blocks what’s directly in front of you at some angles.
The game isn’t always as smooth as it should be, but not too often. The only other major block for some are the challenge zones starting in the third turf that limit some of your moves, which do teach you to use your move set more creatively, but can definitely frustrate some more casual players. While you get options to get batteries in the night levels (set after Beebz takes over a turf) with Beebz’s rebel friends so you can skip a really difficult level, these challenge zones are baked into main levels. Just remember to use your checkpoint flags responsibly and it shouldn’t be a huge issue if you die a bit in one section.
What we have here is a full experience with a lot of polish well worth a look for any platforming fan. The sheer mechanical depth and the added focus on making sure you can make use of those high skill platforming tricks really makes it heads above a lot of its contemporaries. Demon Turf really gets its genre, and does everything it can to satisfy enthusiasts of it.
