Video Game / Demon Turf

Let's fork 'im up! ^note  From left to right: Midgi, Beebz, and Luci.

”The demon world is inhabited by all kinds of nasties. It's separated into turfs and their gang leaders. But none stand a chance to the Demon King himself. I say it's time to kick his sorry butt outta here!”

— Beebz

Demon Turf is a 3D Platform Game developed by Fabraz and published by Playtonic Friends. A demo version, Demon Turf: Trials, was released for PC in November 2020, and was later converted into a weekly challenge to compete with other players for positions on a leaderboard. The full game was originally released in November 2021 for PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One, with a "Neon Splash" standalone expansion released in April 2022. A free DLC, Demon Turf: Tower was announced on November 2022 and it was released on March 6, 2023.

The player takes control of Beebz, a bratty demon girl who's tired of the way the current Demon King has been restricting what she can do, and decides to usurp him. However, standing in her way are a bunch of other demons with the same idea, who she'll have to reach and beat up in order to become the next Queen of the Underworld.

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Turf Tropes:

• And Your Reward Is Clothes: While there are a ton of upgrades at the in-game store that can alter how Beebz can navigate the stages, she's also free to purchase new outfit dyes or pets that follow her around.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Rather than each level having set checkpoints, Beebz has three Checkpoint Flags she can set down at any point and can teleport to once they're placed, making it easy to practice difficult sections as well as to backtrack for missing collectables.
  • In exchange for some sweets, the player can hire the resistance to steal batteries from a level if they're having trouble with it. The player can later complete the level themselves to get the sweets back.
• Anti-Hero: Beebz is mainly motivated by her own selfish desires being restricted by the Demon King, and doesn't care about how anyone else is treated under his (or her own) rule. She changes her attitude after gaining some friends to care about.
• Art Course: The "Neon Splash" DLC, rather than being set in some area of the underworld, has the main cast be sucked into a painting world with a vibrant neon palette and obstacles that can splash the screen with paint.
• Bandaged Face: There's a "Weird Kid" in the starting hub area whose face is covered in bandage wrap, with only his eyes and a few spots of shadow visible in the gaps.
• The Cameo: Slimemantha and Vanity, a Slime Girl and dragon girl created by Ross O'Donovan, are NPCs in the first hub town.
• Casting a Shadow: The Demon King takes the form of a being of pure shadow, with glowing yellow eyes and jagged mouth. Later, he uses his shadow powers to fight Beebz as a dark version of herself, and then reveals that his true form is a lot less intimidating.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Beebz's goal is to usurp the Demon King and rule the Underworld despite just being a kid. It turns out at the end of the game that the Demon King himself is just a kid too.
• Collect-a-Thon Platformer: In addition to the required Batteries, each level and optional challenge has cakes and candies that can be exchanged at the shop for upgrades and cosmetics.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each hazard and projectile in the game is colored to indicate their function. Blue projectiles (also Beebz's default attack) can push enemies and objects, green projectiles can cause poison damage, light blue projectiles can freeze Beebz and anything bright red causes instant death.
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits at the end of the game depict Beebz having fun with her new friends, intercut with bits of dialogue in which Luci's in shock over the Demon King's true form while Midgi is backseating the Weird Kid's attempts at playing Slime-san.
• Cute Monster Girl: The majority of characters in the game are fairly good-looking despite being demons, with main protagonist Beebz appearing quite cute despite having a bratty attitude.
• Dark Reprise:
  • "Damp's Seadog Shanty" has this occur immediately after the lighter version of the song. On entering the second phase of his boss fight, the song's instrumentals become less upbeat, the vocals become angrier, and Damp stops saying "shake your pirate booty" at the end of the second verse. For the third phase, the singing stops altogether and it turns into a hectic, intense heavy metal track.
  • The game's theme song, "The Demon Queen," gets this treatment in the final boss fight, when the Demon King begins mimicking Beebz.
• Defeat Means Friendship: At the very end of the game, Beebz is impressed by the Weird Kid's power and, since all he really wanted was friendship, invites him back home to play video games with her, Midgi, and Luci.
• Disappointed by the Motive: At the end of the game, Beebz calls the Demon King/Weird Kid's whole plan of goading her into gaining power and coming to his lair just to befriend her "super dumb", and even the Weird Kid admits it was, but she still accepts his friendship.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The game's theme song, "The Demon Queen," is sung by Beebz's voice actress Susan Crecelius.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The true identity of the Demon King is the Weird Kid from the first town, who was tired of being the "big bad dude" and wanted to hang out with Beebz.
• Emotional Maturity Is Physical Maturity: Protagonist Beebz is a demon that's over a thousand years old, but has the appearance of a child and acts like a brat.
• Evil Knockoff: During the Final Boss, the Demon King's second phase has him take Beebz's form, even asking if she's taken a look in the mirror, and fights using her powers. Including the ability to set down a checkpoint whenever she wants.
• First-Person Snapshooter: The game has a Photo Mode, in which Beebz can take photographs of her environment as well as selfies. There's also a series of in-game challenges for taking pictures of specific things.
• Fisher Kingdom: After beating the boss of each hub, the levels gain challenging new variants (usually with Beebz's picture added all over the place) and NPCs have new dialogue to reflect how Beebz is now in control of the area.
• Foreshadowing: Notice that some of the voiced characters in the game are Beebz, Midgi, Luci, the turf leaders and the Demon King. In other words, major characters. You may also notice that the Weird Kid is the only voiced NPC in the game. There's a good reason for that...
• "The Hero Sucks" Song: "Golem's Superiority" is a song about how Beebz (as well as organic life forms in general) are "inferior" to Gol & Lem and their gang of golems.
  Your hardware's obsolete
  Your software, immature
  You are the last gen
  You are inferior
  You are a minor bug
  You are bacterial
  Your flaw will be corrected
  You are inferior
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • One way for Beebz to defeat enemies is by deflecting their own projectiles at them. In a more roundabout example, enemies with spiked armor can be beaten by using the hookshot to rip off the armor and then knocking it into them.
  • Beebz defeats Fredo by using the hookshot to slam the ball of garbage he's about to throw at her into his face.
• Hub Level: Each area of the underworld has its own platforming hub area where NPCs can be interacted with, and the shop, different levels, and the area boss are accessed from.
• Inspirational Insult: At the end of the game, it's revealed that the only reason the Demon King taunted Beebz was because he thought she was cool, and wanted to motivate her into gaining enough power to visit him because nobody else wanted to (either due to fear or preferring to just rule their own turfs like tyrants).
• Kappa: Midgi, one of Beebz's few friends and the shopkeep she buys upgrades from, are this kind of creature.
• Meaningful Name: Beebz's name is based on Beelzebub, one of the aliases of Satan, while Beebz's friend Luci is named after Lucifer.
• Mob War: Each hub area of the game is ruled over by a different demon clan competing with the others to usurp the Demon King, with the leader of each gang acting as a boss Beebz has to beat to progress.
• Morphic Resonance:
  • Each of Beebz's three main transformations are colored after some aspect of herself: the double-jump bat form on her hair, the air-dash bat form on the upper layer of her outfit, and the squid form on the lower layer.
  • When the Demon King takes on Beebz' form as her Evil Knockoff, he still has a shadowy body with glowing eyes. The Weird Kid in town also having a shadowy body and yellow eyes peeking out of his bandages is not a coincidence.
• My God, You Are Serious!: Played for Drama. It isn't until after the second boss that Luci realizes that Beebz isn't joking about her "overthrow the Demon King" plan, and when she does find out, she's furious. Luci is angry at Beebz for going against the big boss so blatantly and tries to dissuade her from going after any more turf, and Luci's house contains a noteboard that clearly shows that Luci wants to join up with the Demon King's guards and earn respect and power that way. The younger demon flipping the board like this destroys Luci's own plans.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When Beebz asks what the Demon King's true motivations are, he says a variant of this, in that he wanted to befriend Beebz because he could tell she felt just as lonely as he was.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The "Neon Splash" DLC changes how to activate the unlockable snake and bird transformation abilities, and also how they function, to fit the new level designs.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Beebz dies in one hit. This is subverted in the final boss fight against the Demon King, where Beebz gains a health bar during the second phase.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Midgi's eyes cannot be seen behind the shine of the glasses he always wears, but you can faintly see his pupils.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The "demon" running the Photo Hunt in Forktown, who maintains that she's a real demon whenever anyone asks. She's actually a human that's just wearing a half mask, fake horns and a pointed tail so she can fit in, with no explanation as to how she's managed to get into Hell.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Beebz is quite durable and powerful despite being half the size of more mature demons like Luci. The Demon King's true form is roughly Beebz's height, too.
• Plot Coupon: The main collectable in the game is Batteries, which are awarded for beating a level (including the harder nighttime variants) and needed to challenge the bosses.
• Production Throwback:
  • Three of the buyable pets are references to previous Fabraz games: Slime-san from the game of the same name, a doll of Lin from Spiritsphere, and the head of Skippy from Skellboy.
  • Beebz has a copy of Slime-san at her home, and plays it with her friends (including the Weird Kid) during the end credits.
  • The titular duo from Yooka-Laylee can be found at the peak of the Demon King's Castle in Forktown; talking with them causes Beebz to start Speaking Simlish due to the language barrier, complete with the classic speech boxes.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Super Mario Bros.:
    • When encountering Yooka and Laylee, Beebz says that she'd have expected to see a "different green lizard" instead, as a nod to Yoshi's cameo in Super Mario 64.
    • "Damp's Seadog Shanty" begins with a riff on the Underwater Theme.
  • The red dye option is called Queen Crimson.
  • Midgi sings the item fanfare from The Legend of Zelda after Beebz gets the battery in Baby Canyon.
  • Cap'n Damp says "My leg! My leg..." after being defeated.
  • Hat Kid's signature top hat can be found in New Neo City's first level by a convenience store, and can be later found in Forktown's small market by the Arcade.
  • There are posters depicting demonic versions of Live Powerful Pro Baseball and Urusei Yatsura, Metall hard hats, neon signs of the “menacing” kanji from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and billboards of Bowsette singing are spread throughout New Neo City.
  • A level in Peak Plateau is called "Ice Ice Cavey."
  • The lyrics to "Hot 'n Cold Beats" mention Beebz taking her opponents out "like Rocky."
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: All of the characters in the game are depicted in a 2D art style, while all of the levels are 3D (with some levels in "Neon Splash" being played in 2D but still using 3D graphics).
• Took a Level in Kindness: Over the course of the game, as she spends more time with Midgi and Luci, Beebz goes from a complete Anti-Hero to caring about her newfound friends.
• Villain Song: Two of the boss fights are accompanied by this: Cap'n Damp gets "Damp's Seadog Shanty," a boastful Pirate Song, while Gol & Lem get "Golem's Superiority," an electronic song unsurprisingly about their perceived superiority to Beebz.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Luci dismisses Beebz as a bratty kid with wild dreams, but is still the third member of her friend group.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Beebz can turn into a bat in order to use a double-jump or mid-air dash, as well as into a squid to navigate underwater. She can also turn into a snake for ground dashing and a bird for air gliding after reaching, respectively, the second and third boss fights.