Demon Tides review: "Super Mario Odyssey and Wind Waker collide in this expressive 3D platformer that's already one of my games of the year"

Demon Tides is tricky, but this 3D platformer is less about rising to beat specific gauntlets of jumps than it is handing you a toolbox of ways to break any challenge apart and asking how you want to get started. Evolving on the expressive movement in Demon Turf, developer Fabraz has now taken platformer structures themselves into the workshop. Like deftly drilling together The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker with Super Mario Odyssey, demon queen Beebz can blast through an open world ocean full of islands, each offering its own, twisty, platforming levels.

Beebz' core moves hit many of the genre's foundational pillars – you can chain together multiple hops to go higher, for instance, turn sharply to do somersaulting jump, or push the trigger for a Wario-like dashing attack. But, unlike plumbers, Beebz can instantly transform into (surprisingly cute) demon forms that interact differently with her surroundings. Turn into a bat and she can double jump, a one-eyed drill to float in space and reposition, or a snake to wheel up a burst of speed. But, the order you chain these forms together, and the properties for how they work is up to you to customize. No two Beebz need to platform through stages in quite the same way, and I've become quite fond of my own cobbled together set of platforming rules.

Hell on the horizon

After receiving an invitation from her absentee father, Beebz and her friends travel from the turf lands she rules to visit the expansive ocean of Ragnar's Rock. At first nervous about meeting her estranged family, an explosive welcoming makes it clear her presence isn't appreciated, and she's mixed up in a clash between the rulers and revolutionary commonfolk of the biome-spanning archipelago. The solution? To jump, spin, wall run, and grind in order to assemble enough golden gears to power up a great big cannon so she can bring the fight to her father's commanders, and topple a regime using the power of friendship.

Ragnar's Rock is split into three segments of ocean, but besides that it's up to you which islands you want to tackle in what order to accrue the necessary number of gears to progress. Varying in theme and size, islands can present wildly different challenges, from short but sweet linear goals to progress to the top of a structure, or much more sweeping areas filled with collectibles, NPCs to chat with, or hidden objectives. Beyond the gears needed to progress, you can also nab a large amount of costumes and talismans.

It's the talismans that really shape how Demon Tides plays, as equipping these can alter your platforming powers significantly. Just like Fabraz' upcoming and also excellent Bubsy 4D, Demon Tides is all about expressive movement above all else. Sure, platforming sequences have an obvious way their design will encourage you to move, but they're mostly just suggestions. Most sequences of ledges have several stop-offs that can be ignored if you're confident enough in your long jumps, for example, or you might be able to excise some sections entirely by eking out every bit of vertical movement from your powers to deviously throw yourself up almost sheer cliffs.

The order in which you use demon forms is your first way into experimenting with Beebz' movement possibilities. While you may be itching to double jump, learn to briefly float in drill form before transforming into a bat, and rather than a little extra hop you'll fling yourself forward as you shift for a burst of horizontal movement (time letting go of jump just as you hit the ground to dribble yourself like a ball to keep that momentum going, too). On the other hand, transform the other way around, and the slow falling drill spin may help you land some more precise jumps, or defer your descent just enough to safely land on moving platforms beneath. Beebz can only transform or boost once per jump sequence, so you'll need to learn to commit to your movement, though some sequence-resetting crystals make for some quite intense sections of shifting power usage.

Talismans let you further tweak those properties. Do you want to allow your bat form to briefly glide when you hold down the jump button? Trade off a bit of bat height for more distance when you flap? Alter the trajectory of a bat boost? Likewise, you can alter the drill to give just a touch of vertical height when you first spin to act as a smidge of a platforming lifeline, or adjust your snake form to allow it to double jump to clear big gaps at speed. Talismans can also give whole new core abilities for Beebz across any form, like the power to paraglide a short distance, or suspend yourself indefinitely in a bubble – a real power move for Mr Candy's devious jumping gauntlets, but one that won't win you any time trial merits.

Talismans can bring challenges of their own as well. In an icy level where you're intended to move from bonfire to bonfire lest your health fully freeze, I instead popped on Infernal Engine to boost my speed at the risk of exploding if I stood still too long, negating the drop in temperature but adding extra risk to my approach. Or you can simply strap on rollerskates to give yourself more momentum at the cost of, well, being on wheels – it's surprisingly fitting for the scratchy, funky beats of the soundtrack, allowing you to tear through Demon Tides' level like they were Jet Set Radio Future levels. Talisman slots expand as you progress, and you can hotswap between two loadouts on the fly (with their own costumes, too), giving an almost brain-melting number of combinations you could use to tackle any challenge.

Putting the difficulty reins in your hands began back in Demon Turf, where each level allowed you to manually place your own checkpoints, creating a tension with how long you could go before affording yourself a break. That ethos carries through in Demon Tides, but limitations have been dropped, right down to the checkpoints which are no longer a limited resource, meaning you can almost always spend a couple of seconds dropping down a respawn point. On top of that, lengthy sections will frequently have shortcut ropes you can drop down to sea level to climb back up if you fall – which does, admittedly, almost negate any risk/reward factor for choosing when to place your own checkpoints.

Drilling down

Overall, Demon Tides is a much easier game than Demon Turf, though it can still be tough in its own right. It's just that the sheer openness in providing a platforming canvas can make it easy for genre enthusiasts like myself to break open a lot of sequences. Yet, I don't feel too annoyed, as I'm aware that's partially my own fault for equipping talismans that make it easy to do so in the first place. It's hard to fault Demon Tides' deliberately low-stress approach, which impressively manages to make even some absolutely fiendish gauntlets (once again shaking my fist at Mr. Candy) feel approachable.

Even so, I can't help but wish for a bit more structure when it comes to progression. The huge amount of islands and chests only contain a small number of golden gears, and they can often feel a bit inconsequential to discover, not standing out among other unlockables. Far too many are attached to repetitive and fairly dull gear guardian boss battles.

The openness of Demon Tides' best islands might recall Super Mario Odyssey, but I wish it could match up to that game's joy of discovery. Often in Demon Tides, the sheer joy of making it through a section is reward enough, but a bit more could be made of its bigger moments. The open approach meant that the high points can feel a bit randomly spread out, and I ended up liking the third ocean region's frequent caves a lot less than the more diverse level twists of the earlier levels, making my final gear clean-up end on a bit of a low note. (There's such a thing as too many Elden Ring references, I'm afraid).

When bopping through levels at high speed, reacting to twisting, varied pathways to progress, and dribbling, popping, and spinning my way in and out of those confines like I'm taking the lines for coloring in as mere suggestions, Demon Tides is fantastically fun in the hands. While I would like a bit more tightness taking me from level to level, I can also appreciate that the sheer looseness is part of the Demon Tides charm, and the creativity that brings to platforming on a moment to moment basis is more inventive than any platformer I've played in years. This is one platformer you'll want to hoist your sails to catch.

Bubsy 4D is a 100% legit platformer for genre sickos like me thanks to the dev's surprisingly stacked portfolio of bangers