It’s not much of a stretch to say that I’m not a big fan of Demon Turf. I appreciated what it was going for, but there were a lot of things holding it back. When its standalone expansion came out, the devs made it clear that they were carefully listening to feedback, as it massively improved the level design, removed combat, and more. Demon Tides improves upon that expansion even more, catapulting the series from a solid footnote to one of the greats. Not only is this game an absolute beast in its own right, but it’s easily one of the best 3D platformers ever made.
While the first game was broken into an overworld with hub worlds, Demon Tides is divided into three wide-open sections. You can go wherever you want in these in any order you want to. You find yourself in your starting spot, and then you’re just meant to go off in any direction. The world has tons of islands to find, with an almost shocking amount to explore. While everything is covered with water, the first game’s awkward swimming is nowhere to be found. Instead, Beebz’s snake form can blaze across the water, offering up an impressive sense of speed as you jet toward islands in the distance.
The basic structure is that you need to find golden gears while exploring the game’s islands. Finding enough of these will let you use a cannon to reach the other areas, plus you’re meant to defeat bosses along the way. This collectathon focus works brilliantly here. In addition to gears, you’ll find tons and tons of purple “eyetems” around, which you can spend to unlock challenges or buy some mods or accessories. I never cared for Beebz’s look previously, but this time, you can freely change her hairstyle and outfit. There are so many of both of these, and I felt like I was always finding more.
You now have two different loadouts that you can freely accessorize with whatever outfits you want, as well as up to five mods. Mods can be purchased from a shop, but most are rewards for opening chests that require some sort of challenge to complete. Sometimes you’ll find these in hard-to-reach places, other times, they’ll be locked, and you’ll need to complete their associated challenge to open them. Challenges have a good amount of variety, too. You’ll go to special challenge levels, do a ring race, return a lost kid to its mother, and more. So many of the mods Demon Tides rewards you with are extremely useful, too.
In fact, they can change up your available moveset massively. Since you can have five equipped with each loadout and loadouts are swapped in-game with a press of a button, it’s easy to get a lot out of them. I preferred to have a speed loadout as well as a platforming loadout. For instance, one mod lets you stop Beebz in mid-air by locking her in a bubble. Upon release, she basically receives another jump. Combined with straight-up adding a triple jump, you can massively ease the challenge or simply reach plenty of things in ways they weren’t strictly intended. There’s no 3D platformer that offers a comparable sense of flexibility. It’s brilliant.
By default, Beebz already has a terrific set of moves at her disposal. She can jump, double jump, dash (both on the ground and in the air,) use a super jump, her spin move, and her snake form. She’s one of the most varied, mobile protagonists I’ve ever seen. She’s simply a pure joy to control, and many aspects of her moveset can be further altered with mods. For instance, double jumping turns Beebz into her bat form. Dashing in this form will slam her into the ground by default, which is useful in its own right. But a mod can make her dash forward instead, which can aid in traversal. It really doesn’t get any better than this.
A protagonist like this absolutely needs strong level design, of course, but Demon Tides doesn’t skimp here either. The different islands and their challenges have so much variety and are endlessly clever and interesting. There are a few repeats here and there, but there’s almost always something novel to see. Vibrant beachsides, snowy areas, and all sorts of other locales are on display here with tons of excellent platforming and item collecting to do. Even the boss battles are massively improved here compared to the ones in the first game. Combat returns too, but Beebz just uses her dash attack to dispatch them, which doesn’t break the pacing or grow tedious as the punch move from the original game did.
Granted, there’s even a mod to add this punch back, but Demon Tides is simply a massive improvement in damn near every way. One thing some folks might not like is that the series has moved from two dimensional characters to 3D models, but this too is a big improvement considering how wonky platforming in a 3D space with flat characters can be. Also, a world of this magnitude on such a small budget does mean that things can look a bit janky from time to time, plus there’s barely any voice acting in this one. The presentation isn’t perfect, but it’s still impressive for a game of this scope made by such a small team.
And the team should be incredibly happy indeed, as Demon Tides is an amazing achievement. Plus it can easily last 20-to-30 hours depending on how much you want to do. The world’s a joy to explore, the movement is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and the level design is uniformly excellent, easily making for one of the best 3D platformers ever made. If you’re considering passing on this one because Demon Turf missed the mark for you, be assured that important lessons were learned, leading to a truly triumphant follow up.
Demon Tides: Demon Tides is one of the best 3D platformers ever made. Between its incredible controls and world design, few things come close. – Andrew Farrell
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