For the most part, Demon Turf is the personification of that feeling you get when you finally master a platformer. That point where you’ve mastered your character’s movement and start to make every obstacle look like a joke, speeding along without a care in the world. Never mind trying to get every doodad in the world, I’ll be learning how to jump backwards up the stairs, thanks. That’s what Demon Turf is. It’s a high-octane speedrunner’s dream that’s full of charm when played at pace, even if it occasionally stumbles when it tries to slow down.

Demon Turf has you playing as TikTok superstar, Beebz the demon, who is looking to take over the demon realm and become queen. It’s a simple plot that’s held up by charming dialogue and characters. Despite the game describing itself as a platformer with attitude - the only attitude I’m seeing here is a wholesome one.

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That wholesome attitude carries over to the art style too, with the Newgrounds-esque sprites radiating pure zoomer emo charm and the varied worlds being a joy to explore, even when running through at top speed. The soundtrack is also full of bops, specifically in the hub worlds and boss fights. Just try getting the victory screen jam out of your head, I dare you.

As a platformer, Demon Turf is pretty standard. There are four main hub worlds to explore, each with seven levels and a boss fight to be conquered. Instead of getting a power star at the end of each level, you’ll be grabbing a battery - a pretty literal take on power - and using it to gain access to the hub’s boss fight. Beyond just getting to the end as fast as possible, each level also has hidden sweets for you to find, which can be used to buy cosmetics for Beebz and mods to make movement and abilities more useful. You can run faster, fall slower, and execute a number of techniques that make conquering harder levels much easier.

Demon Turf feels the need, the need to go very fast. Beebz is a joy to control, changing directions at the slightest movement, triple-jumping with ease, and having enough weight to make spin-jumps feel satisfying. The moveset is comparable to Super Mario 64, but if Mario had downed five Red Bulls beforehand and decided to borrow Crash Bandicoot’s Death Tornado Spin.

Not only is Beebz base moveset great to mess around with, but towards the end of each hub, you’re given a new powerup that expands it further. You can turn into a ball and whiz around like Sonic, or glide across gaps - both of which add to the game’s quick tempo. The grappling hook, however, is a little underused, but that might be a clever metaphor for the ways blockbuster gaming embraced and then rejected the grapple hook over the past two decades. Probably not, though. It’s the most satisfying moveset I’ve seen since Super Mario Odyssey and makes getting through each world even more enjoyable.

Demon Turf is at its best when it’s letting you use its moveset to move through short levels without ever having to stop. When it does this, it’s one of the best 3D platformers I’ve played in some time, but when it shifts its focus away it can lose a lot of its momentum.

As the ‘turf’ part of the name implies, JK Rowling is the game’s central villain. Oh wait, sorry that’s ‘Demon TERF’, otherwise known as ‘life in the UK’. Anyway, in Demon Turf, a key mechanic allows Beebz to manually place up to three flags in a level that act as checkpoints. You can return to the most recent one at any point, but you can’t remove or regain them, meaning once you’ve put a flag down, the checkpoint is permanent.

Although the idea is unique and will likely be appreciated by speedrunners who want to manipulate parts of the map, it felt like putting a hat-on-a-hat. Demon Turf is all about speed and at its best during those moments, but the checkpointing feels at odds with that as it needs you to slow down. It doesn’t help that later levels can double in length, making forgetting to put a flag down a much bigger pain.

When it works, it can be fun to grab a collectible and instantly come back to where you need to be, but more often than not I’d forget that I was placing checkpoints myself, die, and then find myself way further back in the level and swearing never to get annoyed at a game automatically doing things for me again.

Another area where Demon Turf trips up is in its combat, which is its weakest element. Beebz can’t actually kill enemies herself - she may be a demon, but she’s just a kid after all - so she instead charges up little palm slaps to push enemies into spikes and off cliffs. For a game that lets you choose your own checkpoints, it’s oddly restrictive and, worst of all, slow. You’ll unlock more attacks as you progress through the campaign, but these combat arenas remain a chore.

Every time the ‘combat zone’ prompt popped up, I audibly groaned and wished Demon Turf had the guts to just be about platforming, especially because it does it so well. It makes the game feel at odds with itself, forcing you to stop and slap things around to carry on, despite also trying to get you to run along and earn speedrunning trophies. Thankfully, combat isn’t frequent enough to slow the pace down too much, and some optional character mods can speed things up further, but Demon Turf would have been stronger without it altogether.

I feel the same way about Demon Turf’s long list of extra content. I’m not the type to 100 percent games very often, but Demon Turf is so full of stuff to do it gave me shivery flashbacks to Crash 4’s road to completion. There’s even repeat trips to levels, but thankfully they’re done a ton better and actually change things up considerably, rather than just slapping on a filter and calling it a day. No, I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

Although I’m sure completionists will find a lot to love here, I had the most fun with Demon Turf when I forgot about its myriad side quests, collectibles, and second visits to a level, and just ran through stages with my mastery of Beebz’s moves letting me fly through levels like I was Sonic and I’d finally learnt how to work in 3D. When Demon Turf is fast, it’s glorious, it’s just a shame it has some extra baggage stopping it from peeling out.

Demon Turf is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC. We tested the PS5 version for this review. Review code was provided by the publisher.

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