Demon Peak Demo

Action-platformers can be considered a genre of the past, given the fact that most people remember it thanks to games like Metroid or Castlevania, but modern developers are still trying to innovate and create new adventure even today. Hence, this new sub-genre is cleverly called Metroidvania, and it’s basically all about fluid combat mechanics and level exploration.

Demon Peak is a 2D action-platformer in which your goal is to survive the encounter with all sorts of monsters and defeat them by using your special abilities as efficiently as possible. The combat is the main aspect of the game, especially since this beta version doesn’t really feature anything else, but the full experience promises to contain quite the adventure and an interesting story as well.

You are free to roam the 2D levels as you see fit, although they seem rather linear at this point, which undermines the whole experience. However, the combat is quite engaging, especially since you have to attack and defend at the same time. Hence, your character has a normal attack, a special ability and the option to block incoming blow. They must all be used at the right time in order to survive the encounters, which is why the game can be perceived as rather difficult by beginners.

Most of the monsters you get to fight seem to be rather big, which might remind you of games like Shadow of the Colossus or Ico. It’s obviously not the same scale, but at least you don’t fight tiny bundles of pixels that make no sense on the screen. On the other hand, it would be nice to see more animations when it comes to the enemies because their movements become repetitive after only a few minutes.

As mentioned before, the game is designed to look retro, which means that the graphics are very similar to Castlevania as well, not just the gameplay. This is great in theory, but at the moment the backgrounds and the level design in general is rather poor. Obviously, this is probably going to be addressed in time, especially since this is barely the beta version of the game.

In the end, Demon Peak is on its way to becoming a great action-platformer, but it still needs a lot of work before that becomes reality. Hence, it’s worth keeping an eye on this project if you are a fan of the genre.