Irresponsibly maximalist and ambitious obstacle course gaming that runs pretty counter to a lot of other indie platformers that I've played, sacrificing a sense of tight brevity in favour of a sprawling odyssey of endless collectibles and challenges. Demon Turf is a really cool game in a lot of regards, having some of the most fun movement in the genre and then basing everything around being able to utilise it to its fullest extent, throwing a lot of linear, abstract obstacles at the player instead of really trying super hard to make something that feels especially cohesive. While this initially doesn't sound especially great, I think it works well for something like this that's basically entirely focused around utilising your moveset to increasingly grand heights, regularly revealing little nuances to the player without really feeling interested in elements beyond the pure experience of being able to soar between platforms in increasingly scary ways. Unfortunately, the ambition that this game embodies comes with some drawbacks, as not all of the ideas implemented are especially enjoyable, with things stacking up and becoming increasingly unpleasant as time goes on, leaving things feelings weirdly unsatisfying in certain regards. The movement in this game is incredibly good in the way that it strikes this careful balance of being intuitive and fun to pick up, without ultimately being too unobtrusive and mindless to utilise to its fullest extent. It's all about limitations, with quite a few moves preventing you from pulling other ones off, leaving the player in a state where they're constantly having to think about the best way to approach any given situation, not able to just completely wing it and have it all work out in the end regardless. My favourite of the techniques you're given is the spin boost jump, taking a lot of cues from the Mario 64 long-jump (one of the best things in a video game ever) and twisting it around a little bit to become and even more versatile and powerful tool in your arsenal, filling a bit of a different niche, but being one of the best feeling things ever nonetheless. I also need to commend how intuitive and readable everything is on a base level, with no depth perception problems nor difficulty in figuring out exactly where you need to land despite the artstyle at first glance seeming as if it'd be devastating for readability, so massive props there. On the other hand however, you've got an assortment of items that you slowly gain throughout the game, one for each new zone, and most of these are pretty rough in their own unique ways. The grappling hook, despite being so simple in theory, ends up faltering a bit due to how it controls. You need to have your camera pointed directly at the hook point you're aiming at, preventing a lot of it from flowing especially smoothly due to constant camera movement shenanigans you need to be doing on the fly to ensure you actually latch on properly. On top of this, your momentum comes to a halt as soon as you hit the hookpoint, limiting how powerful it feels since you'll always be coming to a halt once you've begun leaving it with a strange stop-start motion that never ends up feeling good. I similarly find the gliding to be an unpleasant tool for extremely similar reasons, especially with how you can only really control your height and turning angle by moving the camera, which feels off. There's no real disconnect between the character and this abstract game construct that by all rights feels as if it should be kept at some level of separation from the player in this context, which just always makes gliding feel so off, despite the fact that the Spyro fan within me should adore this manoeuvre in theory. The time slow power is my least favourite however, since I don't really find that it contributes much to the level design at any point and more feels like another small inconvenience to add to certain sections without really adding much that's actually compelling to what you need to do, now you just, sometimes have to switch to another item in order to make it through an incredibly easy section, it feels arbitrary and just all around annoying and serves to break up the pacing in a rather stilted way. I like the wheel powerup a lot though, very snappy and the only time where the camera controlling aspects of the character in transformations works to its benefit, essentially granting you the ability to make certain sharper turns in a far more precise and controllable way. On the whole though, the extremely iffy powerups consistently make the game feel worse as it goes on, paving the way to more sections that momentarily drag you away from the phenomenal core movement in favour of gimmicks that feel bad. I also feel like the ramping difficulty gradually made collecting everything feel less enjoyable, as after the 2nd world, you kinda hit a point where just beating the level can become such a challenge in its own right that the idea of exploring around everywhere stops being quite as enticing, there no longer was that same drive for me to get to know everything inside and out when I was out here struggling just to survive at all. This is exacerbated by how the later stages will often have more instances of one-way gates that stop it from being especially easy to backtrack at any point. Some of the remix stages also feel like a big misstep, recontextualising the stages in either very minor ways, or ways that run counterintuitive to its initial appeal, the latter of which is best seen in the Urbtops remix stage where you're given a giant, open cityscape and are told to find 8 keys strewn about, without any real sense of direction. Despite all my complaining though, this game is still really neat and absolutely adorable. I love the artstyle and I think that the way Beebz is written is endlessly endearing with her PG-rated punk attitude that gives Saturday morning cartoon vibes. The game in general is one that makes me incredibly excited for future projects that this dev will create, and while I might be a little mixed on what this one does at points, it's still a game that I can see myself looking back at with fondness whenever it crosses my mind, there's too much cool stuff here to think otherwise. 7/10
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