The Demon Rush is a PC RPG made in 2008 by Dragoon Entertainment, A.K.A The D. It is about a conflict between humans and demons called the Demon Rush, which has been going on for three years by the start of the game. However, a new breakthrough may put an end to the war. The city of Tiriad has built the S.S. Pursuit, the first spacecraft created in the Mittu System. This ship may be able to find the power needed to end the war. However, the mission goes awry, leaving two soldiers stranded on a distant planet.
The game gained some notoriety when the creator advertised it
on the Something Awful forums, selling it for $20. Most Goons who saw the thread felt this was too high, and the price was eventually lowered to $10, and then made free in December of 2010.
The game has a cult following thanks to its simplistic graphics and character art, catchy music, and the plot's mixture of familiar JRPG conventions with strange and unexpected twists. Mikwuyma did a live broadcast of the experience, recorded in these two very long videos.
While the original game is no longer available, an Updated Re-release called The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt was released to PlayStation 4 and Play Station Vita on June 2nd of 2020, with a Steam release on January 29, 2021.
The Demon Rush provides examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: A strange example. While levels cap at 8, it takes many fights to get there, due to the fact that most enemies (including several bosses) give out low amounts of EXP.
- Aerith and Bob: On one hand, you've got Cherry Venus, Sect Mawashun, and Brooks Cracktackle. On the other, you've got Jimmy, Joe, and Steve.
- Animesque: Every single character's face has a very tiny nose, and eyes so large that they also take up forehead space.
- Anti-Grinding: Higher leveled characters gain no experience from fighting weak enemies.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have 3 characters fighting at once. This is averted in the penultimate battle, though; all available party members will fight against the Possessor.
- Armor Is Useless: Despite being the only PC with visible armor, Knight is actually a Squishy Wizard.
- Big Damn Heroes: Anna, Evif and some yellow guys save the heroes from DEST in the end cutscene.
- Bonus Dungeon: Once you get the airship, you can visit several of them.
- Chrome Champion: The Enforcer dons a metal sheen when you fight him.
- Cool Mask: Jimmy, the "superhero" fighting against Necromancers (including his own father), is always wearing a baseball cap and head-covering (and eye-covering) black balaclava, only taking it off when the party defeats his father and Jimmy's listening to his dying words. Long after the Necromancers are dealt with, Alberto asks why he's still wearing it, but Jimmy doesn't understand the question.
- Cool Shades: Kent Buckle, AKA Cook Falsch, is always wearing a pair of silver-rimmed sunglasses.
- Cut and Paste Environments: There's not much variety in the scenery.
- Cyborg: Commander Nolan, after surviving a grenade thrown by Alberto, is shown to have been hiding metal implants under his skin and face, having been a test subject to a Legend Viper experiment in their youth in exchange for power.
- Defend Command: Reduces damage taken by 90%. Quite useful. It's even better during extremes, as defending will restore 25% of the character's maximum health and MP.
- Duel Boss: Tara fights alone against the zombified Fleming, stating this is something she's got to do herself.
- Dying as Yourself: At the very end of the game, after the Absolute Siphon compels Cook to fuse with it, Cook has one last moment of clarity while flying into space and transforming into a new planet.
- Egopolis: Thormia, the Legend Viper of Fire, renamed his planet after himself after conquering it.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The man in the knightly suit of armor that rescues Cherry and Alberto from some goons early on asks them to just call him "Knight". His actual name is a major twist.
- Evilutionary Biologist: E. N. Fleming, who, alongside his daughter, profits off of genetic experimentation and seals any out-of-control experiments into an ancient pyramid to serve as guardians of its treasure.
- Face–Monster Turn: In the game's ending, Cook turns against the party to fuse with the Absolute Siphon after being compelled by it, briefly turning into a monster before sacrificing himself and becoming a planet.
- Faceless Goons: Many humanoid non-boss enemies are completely identical to each other with no defining features. It's most literal with the "Shadows" serving the Demon forces, who lack mouths or noses.
- Fun with Acronyms:
- DEST stands for DEcide to Support Tomorrow.
- Tratas stands for The Resistance Against The Absolute Siphon.
- Gameplay Story Segregation: Averted in a very strange instance early in the game where two characters ask a Guest-Star Party Member why he didn't gain experience points at the end of a battle.
- Global Airship: Global Rocket: You eventually get the S.S. Pursuit, which can travel between Earth and Thormia, and land anywhere.
- Half-Human Hybrids: The Legend Vipers are half human and half Viper, and each control a planet.
- Happily Adopted: While Cook very awkwardly introduces Claire as his adopted daughter, Claire makes no indication that she feels her family as being anything but. There is that matter of keeping her original last name, though...
- Heel–Face Turn: Tara, who before the turn was better known as Argentia. This is fully cemented when the people she worked for kidnap her entire town and turn her daughter into a monster, whom she has to kill herself.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Though, despite being a computer game, you can't just type it in. You have to select each letter like a console game.
- Identical Stranger: Alberto mentions early on how much Claire resembles his dead girlfriend Amy. Also, a likely unintentional example—Thormia's Half-Human Hybrid son Redfast looks exactly like Cherry Venus, down to the same outfit.
- Killed Off for Real:
- Brooks Cracktackle is killed early into the story, though their Siphon manages to manifest as a purple-skinned version of himself and rejoin the party near the game's end.
- Tara can also be permanently killed if you lose the Duel Boss fight against zombified Fleming. The remake no longer allows this.
- Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Trailer: Tara is deliberately not mentioned in any capacity in the manual or promos for the game.
- Limit Break: Extreme mode, which increases a character's power and defense, and they recover HP and MP when defending.
- MacGuffin: The Absolute Siphon, a nexus of spiritual energy, is what the demons are plotting to obtain in order to rule the universe.
- Mind Screw: The story can be hard to follow because the game doesn't introduce characters, places or items very well, much of the plot is revealed in exposition rather than on-screen events, and a lot of characters and environments aren't very distinct from one another.
- The Mole: As war breaks out between Tiriad's forces and the Demon army, General Evif starts to suspect that Alberto and Cherry have gone turncoat and betrayed their organization. It's revealed soon after that there's indeed a traitor in the army, but it's Commander Nolan, Evif's superior.
- Obligatory Swearing: Alberto. His sister Anna manages to outdo him.
- Odd Name Out: Continuing from Aerith and Bob above, the names of the three Legend Vipers, Physical Gods of the universe, certainly qualify: Legend Viper of Time Diamo, Legend Viper of Fire Thormia, and Legend Viper of Thunder... Steve. It later turns out that Steve's actual name is Stevant.
- Offing the Offspring: Alberto refuses to work with Kent Buckle, the man who rescues them from the goons of Legend Viper of Fire Thormia, because he'd read reports that Kent Buckle murdered his own daughter.
- One-Winged Angel: In the ending, Thormia turns into a dragon-humanoid, and Cook turns into a grey humanoid with More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
- Only Six Faces: One for humans and one for dragons (seeing Pound's maternal family takes Identical Grandson to a whole 'nother level).
- Our Dragons Are Different: Legend Vipers, who can take human form.
- Our Souls Are Different: They're called siphons, and there is an Absolute Siphon.
- Post-End Game Content: There are several challenges after beating the main game, available from the main menu.
- Pre-existing Encounters: One of the game's main claims to fame is this. However, there are so many encounters littering the dungeons that Random Encounters would almost be preferable.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: Alberto is once described as wearing a "durag".
- Scaled Up: Thormia turns into a dragon for the later fights with him.
- Schizo Tech: There are somehow spaceships and terraforming devices in 1918.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Alberto in the epilogue, referring to Tara.
- Summon Magic: The party gains access to a dog named "Barklord" after completing one sidequest, which can be summoned into battle with a special command in order to heal allies, decrease ability cooldowns, and charge into enemies. His abilities can be improved, but rather than using Augments like playable characters, he requires "Dogments".
- Sword of Plot Advancement: Archrip, the holy sword of Thormia. It has the power to split siphons.
- Terraforming: About half of Thormia's surface is taken up by the Devil's Playground, created by Thormia himself.
- The Dragon: The Enforcer, a man with the ability to change his body into metal that frequently opposes Cherry and her allies, is Thormia's top subordinate.
- The Reveal: Knight's true identity is Sect Mawashun, the man who stole Earth's holy sword.
- The Unfought: You never fight the Absolute Siphon-infused Cook.
- The Vamp: The backstory for the Legend Vipers reveals that Diamo would often seduce the other Legend Vipers to create many babies, put the babies on ice, and later absorb them all in a big ritual to gain power.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Alberto and Cherry are constantly trading barbs; at one point, Alberto tells an aspiring adventurer that he thinks is hitting on Cherry that she wouldn't go out with him even though she's cheap and easy, and Cherry states that it's no wonder people don't think they're actually friends.
- Useless Useful Spell: Averted. Status effects and even instant death moves even work on bosses, although they still have success rates to worry about.
- Villainous Lineage: At the end of the game, despite having heroic intentions up to that point, Cook could not resist the urge to fuse with the Absolute Siphon. From what little can be gathered from the story, Legend Vipers are Always Chaotic Evil:
- Thormia is openly xenophobic from the start of the game.
- Diamo is the Possessor, AKA the leader of the Demon Army, at least according to Steve.
- Steve Jumps Off The Slippery Slope in the endgame.
