“The horrifying truth is that you’re always afraid your game is going to explode, even years 🌜after release,” Fabraz, one of the lea🦋ding three developers working on Demon Turf, tells me.
After three years of development amidst a small team an♉d a selection of talented freelancers, the quirky platformer is finally approaching the finish line. Ahead of its long-awaited release later this month, I caught up with the team to talk about the game’s creation, aesthetic, and how it appealed to a whole new generation of gamers with♍ an explosive presence on TikTok. Turns out making games is a whole thing.
“We’re a small indie team based in New York, although that’s relative right now with the pandemic going on,” Fabraz says.”We’ve worked on a bunch of games and started off in the mobile scene but we quickly pivoted to console and realised that was our jam. The last big release of ours was Slime-San, and it had the benefit of being on Switch super early and within six months of its [launch] it really found its home. People really, really dug it there, and so we got a lot of experience making 2D platformers, and after that we were like, &l♒squo;How can we translate that into 3D?’ which is a genre I always loved the most as a child.”
Fabraz immediately notes that a shift in platforming perspecti🌜ve came with a number of new challenges, whether it be having to create a far bigger array of environments or unlocking the camera so players are free to scrutinize absolutely everything. Even in the platforming genre, Demon Turf is a massive game, taking inspiration from the likes of Super Mario Sunshine and Super Meat Boy with its precise controls and levels that constantly encourage repeat playthroughs to hunt dow🥀n collectibles.
Of course, this evolution amongst the team would have been hard enough on one platform, but with the support of ꦆPlaytonic as publisher, one quickly turned into six. “We’re still the same core team of three people, but of course we worked with a number of talented people outside of the team,” Fabraz explains. “We had an amazing composer, we worked with animators that helped the game shine and put in the extra hours we didn’t have, and in terms of how long it took it’s been a three year project almost to the day. One year of that time was entirely dedicated to just supporting all of the consoles. We’re still pretty early on with next-gen consoles, so a lot of people don’t trade in de🌌dicated builds for those yet, they just kinda make PS4 and Xbox One builds to work on all of those. We went the extra step to try and utilize all of the advantages that come with next-gen.”
Fabraz describes the pursuit of six individual platforms as “nonsense” but is excited for this passion project to reach a much larger audience, one he and his team have been surprisingly honest with throughout development. In triple-A and even across certain indie studios the act of creating games can be clouded in secrecy, but there’s a refreshing honesty that surrounds Demon Turf. For years now, players have caught an unparalleled glimpse into the game’s creation, whether it be through playable trials to provi♋de feedback or regular TikToks that aren’t afraid to dig deep into technical jargon and the struggles of making it all work without exploding.
“I’ve always taken that approach,” Fabraz says. “I’ve actually always been like that on Twiꦚtter, too, where having an open discourse, showing cool parts of development, or bugs that I think are funny. I think it’s the coolest thing to do as an indie developer because you are dictating your own process right? I can dictate how I interact with our fanbase as well and I just think it’s a fun and engaging thing to do. We also do it on Discord where we’ll often have lo🎃ng conversations about all kinds of topics, which created a nice community that transmitted over to TikTok.
“It was a platform where I could tell exactly what people were looking for. It’s all about honesty, so I just rolled with it and ended up having so much fun mak🌱ing content. It’s just a really fun platform. It’s hard t🌼o say sometimes [about being transparent] because of course withholding stuff so you can release it at a certain moment can create an epic scenario, it creates this excitement, but I do think openness is good. It’s also very good for general knowledge so that people understand how much actually goes into a game because I think it’s often underestimated just how difficult it is to ship a game.”
Such an approach has allowed Fabraz to let his audience know if development has become a little rocky, or if the team has run into an issue that might affect the release date or general performance of the game. Being quiet can often lead to unfair speculation in the online world, but Demon Turf subverts that by being front 𒅌and centre of its own perception. When all of the news comes from the horse’s mouth, it becomes increasingly difficult to twist it into something toxic, especially when a game is so close to the finไish line. “To be entirely honest, I think most developers will agree that the last part of development is the least fun,” Fabraz notes. “You’re not being creative anymore, you’re just doing the necessary work to make the final package, so there have definitely been moments where I think back to a year and a half ago when we were still experimenting and it was super fun. It’s definitely like a weird mixture of nostalgia but also excitement and anticipation for it to finally be out there.”
Demon Turf revolves around Beebz, a 1,000 year-old girl with a sassy outlook on life and willingness to cause chaos. She’s sm💦all, fun, and filled with quirky nuggets of dialogue. Her design sticks in mere moments, so it was surprising to learn how little she’s changed since the game’s inception. “It’s almost not an exaggeration to say we designed the game around her,” Fabraz tells me. “When the game started forming in my head way before I started putting things down on paper, she as a character had already formed. I recently posted a tweet showing footage of the very first day of development where I recorded the most basic thing we’d built in Unity. You’ll see that, yeah, it’s a more sketched out version of her, but her design has barely changed since. She’s always been the centre of the game, and the idea of having her with this sassy, tomboyish attitude was there from day one. We thought it would be fun to have a character who never really smiles, but is a sweetheart beneath the surface.”
Demon Turf is not only a collaborative effort across its small team, this ethos is also reflected in the game’s characters. Beebz isn’t alone in her adventure with Luci and Midgi, two characters who accompany her throughout the majority of levels with valuable advice and teaꦐsing jokes. “Collaboration is key,” Fabraz explains. “There were so many times where I would have an idea, played it back to my colleagues or the animator and they’d come with something and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s amazing, let’s go even further!’ and there’s always this back and forth. Adding those details is so awesome, and it was pivotal we get them right. That’s why we also have this trio dynamic, and when you hit the pause screen you see Luci and Midgi standing next to Beebz. They’re integral because they’re part of her, her life, and make her personality shine through their interactions.”
The g꧙ame’s entire aesthetic is dripping with style, taking inspiration from various different cultures alongside the archetypes we’ve seen in cartoons and anime for decades now. The hub area features a slime girl taking a selfie, which encapsulates so much of what Demon Turf is going for. It’s trying to be silly, making you laugh and smile while shouting obscenities at each new platforming obstacle. “I always like taking parts of different cultures and mixing them together to come up with my own worlds,” Fabraz explains. “Technically, even though they are demons, and you’ve got a Demon King, they aren’t in Hell per se. We never call it Hell, we don’t have angels as an equivalent, we don’t have the devil, and we aren’t directly tied to Christianity. Some demons are from Japan, others are inspired from Norse mythology, so I think the key is to find your own influences and take inspiration from everywhere and then add your own personality to the mix. We love leaning into the goofy, eccentric, and weird, each character is kin♛d of an oddball.”
This same personality is reflected in the world design, which takes inspiration from Super Mario Sunshine as Beebz can glance across the horizon and see levels or worlds she hasn’t even encountered yet. It provides a level of cohesion that traditional platformers lack, making it feel like you’re exploring a huge, branching environment instead of levels that are gamified in a way that pulls you out of things. Despite its precise platforming and massive world, Demon Turf still wants to be approachable to everyone,🧸 while maintaining the satisfaction that comes with conquering a seemingly impossible level or staking your claim atop the time trial leaderboards. As you’d expect, it’s not an easy balance to strike.
“I can’t speak for other developers, but I can tell from our experience that we always design things too hard first, and then we make them easier over time,” Fabraz says. “Our internal beta was great for that, because it helped us understand which segments were harder than we thought, because you end up becoming really, really good at your own game. I wouldn’t say I’m as good as the best speedrunners from our demo and the beta, they’re insane. But I can compete so that already means I’m too good t𝔍o evaluate whether a level is easy enough, so that outside perspective is super important. In terms of Beebz’s moveset, that was something we thought about right from the get go. She has a r🐼eally complex moveset, and I’d say the amount of things you can do, especially with later abilities, rival the likes of Super Mario Odyssey in terms of complexity. What was important to us though, is that you only need to use half of that stuff to actually beat the game. The other half is for those who are advanced enough to use them, or want to feel badass. Not everyone is going to use the side jump or triangle jump all the time, but if you start doing it, you start realizing you can unlock new paths and levels that feel really awesome. That’s the balance we wanted to strike.”
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Fabraz is hopeful that Demon Turf will become a regular fixture in the speedrunning community given how it isn’t afraid to challenge the player and ask them to learn complicated techniques, but he also recognises this is a very niche percentage of his audience, and it’s refreshing to hear 🌃the team is aware that platformers can be daunting.
“I would love to see Demon Turf in GDQ, that would be amazing,” he tells me. “But my philosophy is that I still want absolutely everybody to be able to beat my game. I think it’s really sad when somebody enjoys your game, but simply due to difficulty they cannot proceed and stop. That’s a lame experience for them because they want to finish it but they simply ꩵcan’t, and that was really important to us. We still design it in a way where it isn’t too difficult and everyone can beat the Demon King. The absolute hardest stuff is optional, so it’s about 15 hours to beat the game, but I would say it’s around 30 to 50 to actually complete it.&rdqu🐻o;
Demon Turf also makes it possible for NPCs to clear levels for you so progression isn’t stalled, but once you get better, you can return and conquer them for yourself. It’s a creative method of adjusting difficulty without stalling the campaign, encouraging you to try new things without ever feeling disheartened. While you can’t skip bosses, fellow characters can contribute by distracting enemies so dodging attacks and executing upon tricky maneuvers is so much easier. If Fabraz can stick the landing, Demon T🍒urf could be a new cult classic in the world of platformers.
Demon Turf is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch On November 4.
