There is a particular kind of swagger, rare in a genre that usually hands you a kingdom and a tragic flashback, in racing across open water and discovering that home is a word with a crew in it. The ocean is still an ocean. The drip is still drip. The first ledge that tries to eat you is not a metaphor. Demon Tides, the open-ocean platformer from Fabraz, is built on that swagger, and the swagger is ruder, kinder, and more useful than a twenty-five-dollar tide has any right to be.
I played the PC version, the 19 February 2026 launch that Fabraz walked onto Steam at $24.99 after four years of work and a launch window that cut the ask to twenty for anyone who showed up on time. You run, you jump, you put a checkpoint on a rock, and you learn Ragnar’s Rock has already hired a night shift of secrets. Talismans that rewrite a move, ghosts that would like your time, graffiti that would like a wall, a mobile hub that sells you a hat, and a randomizer that rearranges the weather. Forty Steam achievements sit in the background. The Steam sample is Overwhelmingly Positive, 838 positive of 874, which is the honest weather report and not a dare. Great, not glossy, and very much a weekend I would recommend you spend if you like a platformer that knows it is a sentence.
Ragnar’s Rock Does Not Care What Turf Was
Most sequels begin with a speech and a cheerful recap. Demon Tides begins with a horizon. Official copy on Steam says you follow Beebz and her crew on a journey of self-discovery across the vast oceans of Ragnar’s Rock, then adds, with the grammar of a person who has been awake too long, that you can hop in without ever having played Demon Turf. The store page prefers the easter eggs for existing fans and the narrative for new ones. Both versions agree on the next sentence. Navigate the open seas. Uncover every hidden nook. Express yourself through your schmovement.
That is not flavor text. It is the design refusing to pay for a homework assignment when an ocean will do. You start running on water, collecting a talisman, and putting a checkpoint on a ledge because the alternative is becoming a rumor the tide already filed. The first jump is staged like a punchline that forgot to be funny. You leap. You land. You are faster for now. The script, still a little breathless, asks whether Beebz will be crushed by what awaits her. Nobody can assure the next structure is kind. That is the rest of the map.
I like a premise that prices expression as a mechanic and then lets you walk toward it anyway. Distant structures sit on the water like questions with walls. Why are there ruins and no peace. What was that chest. The more you explore, the more the kingdom answers with another locale and another thing that would like a piece of you. Story is environmental and stingy, which is the right instinct for a game that wants your move-set more than your diary. You are not reading a novel. You are looting a self-discovery that is still happening, and the self-discovery has a paraglider.
The fantasy is not mastery of a lore bible. The fantasy is competence arriving about half an island after you invent a reason to mix a hookshot with a bubble. You will die in ways that would be funny if the checkpoint were not so sincere. You leave a ledge. You walk back. You become the kind of person who thinks a talisman is a personality. Fabraz already made Demon Turf and Slime-san, which is a polite way of saying the studio already knew how a jump should feel before it learned how an ocean should argue. Demon Tides is the bigger sentence, and you can hear the old religion in the timing even when the joke is drip.
Schmovement, Then a Talisman That Rewrites You
The loop is the old religion and Fabraz does not pretend otherwise. Locales, chests, the usual platform groceries of coins and ledges. A move-set that makes the groceries arrive faster if the groceries are a secret. A paraglider if the wind agrees to exist, a hookshot if you would like dinner to stop being a swim. Expression is on the character sheet because a platformer without a verb is just a walking tour. Weather changes its mind. None of that is a revolution. All of that is the sentence the rest of the toybox has to live in.
Movement is straightforward in the way a good workbench is straightforward, and then it is not. You are not drowning in a combo list that could unionize. You are looking at a gap and deciding whether you have been useful enough today. Talismans are flexible without becoming a second career. Paragliders, hookshots, bubbles, snake tricks, a defensive thought that you will test the first time a challenge decides your default jump is a suggestion. Official copy calls it a highly customisable move-set with nearly unlimited combinational depth, which is a polite way of saying the clearing can grow a brain if you keep showing up.
I have played a lot of games that treat the first jump as a tutorial and the hundredth jump as a spreadsheet. Demon Tides is lighter than that on purpose and heavier than that on accident. The developers wrote it into the store page with the candor of a person who has already lost the argument with feature creep. Every solution is the right one. Express yourself through the game’s movement. That sentence is both a promise and a warning. If you want a single correct line that could unionize, you will feel underemployed. If you want a weekend that turns a swim into a sentence, you will feel hired.
Checkpoints keep the commute from becoming a museum. Place your own. Return to them any time you meet your untimely demise. Points of interest sit on the map like dares. You loot them. You leave. You come back when you have a better bubble. The checkpoint can be opened if you would like the ocean to behave like a to-do list, which is a kindness for people who freeze when a sandbox says do what you like. I left one on a rock for an evening and another on a pinwheel I should not have trusted. The ocean did not mind. The pinwheel minded either way.
I will not invent a highlight reel with fake timestamps and tidy jump counts. The nights that stay with you are the ones where you thought the line was finished, then something started flowing in a rhythm that was not weather, and then you were on the wrong side of your own architecture. Movement can feel like two people agreeing to take turns being delighted. That delight is real. It is also priced into an expressive loop that would rather you experiment, retreat, and come back dressed. Talismans help. Commitment helps more.
Ghosts, Graffiti, and a Checkpoint That Matters
Other players are the temperature change. Early ghosts establish that this is not a peaceful walking simulator with nicer lighting. They will run farther than pride would recommend. A clean line handles the general population. The evolved, speedrun-shaped editions will empty your dignity if you treat them like scenery. Further in, a wall would like a word, and the word is yours. Getting a time with actual manners takes a while. Until then, racing is a strategy, not a cowardice.
Ghosts and graffiti are the other half of the short description and the kinder half of a walk. Compete for completion times. Challenge a ghost. Tag a wall and share a message that will appear in someone else’s world. They are why a clearing that felt like home at noon can feel like a conversation at dusk. Social variety is not a town. It does not need to be. Presence is the variety. A checkpoint that holds is a better reward than a new silhouette if the silhouette is just another way to lose your flow.
The mobile hub is good practice and a grocery run. Chill with the crew. Buy items of interest. Change your appearance with head gear, outfits, and hair dyes. Official copy is not shy about drip. What the store page cannot tell you is how quickly you will start treating a successful outfit as a mood stabilizer. You shop. You dye. You put the hookshot down and look at the ocean like a person who has decided civilization is a hat.
NG+ and Randomizer are the other vehicle. Official features list extra modes where rewards, enemies, and even the weather are randomized. I will not write a randomizer white paper. What I can say is that the loop is kinder when the kingdom remembers it can shuffle. Someone races. Someone tags. Someone learns, too late, that a randomized boss reward does not respect the plan you brought from the last tide. The ocean becomes a shared instrument instead of a commute, even when the sharing is a ghost.
A 1.1 patch later formalized a vertical-momentum trick the speedrunners had already named, which is a sentence no designer writes for fun unless the designer likes the people who break the toy. Hotfixes kept arriving for poles, pinwheels, and a graffiti rule around baby creatures. None of that is a revolution. All of that is the manners of a 1.0 that wanted the ocean to stay a conversation.
Crew, Drip, and an Ocean That Gets Smaller
Traversal is the moment the kingdom changes tense. Official features list a seamless open ocean to explore at blazing speeds, and that job is the job an overworld is supposed to do in this genre. It does not just make you faster. It makes yesterday’s horizon into this afternoon’s errand. A distant structure stops being a pilgrimage. A hidden chest stops being a commitment. You start thinking in loops instead of marches.
That shift is the closest Demon Tides comes to a power fantasy, and I like it more than a new hat. Mastery, here, is logistics dressed as style. You gather, you stash a talisman, you run a ridiculous little line over a place that tried to eat you last week, and you land like a person who has mail. The map does not get smaller because the developers deleted water. It gets smaller because you invented commuting with a bubble.
Secrets are the other vehicle. Discover them. Unravel the world’s mysteries. Official copy asks whether you are ready to conquer this kingdom or whether Beebz will be crushed by what awaits her. I sold my patience to a challenge I was sure I needed and then needed a different talisman, which is the oldest chest joke in the book and still a good one. Thirty to fifty hours will see the 100 percent if you are the kind of person who likes a receipt. I will not invent a census of nooks. I will say the kingdom is better at beginning a sentence than at making the sentence a chore.
Steam Deck Verified is on the feature list now, which is a polite way of saying the ocean agreed to travel. Full controller support was never in doubt. Forty achievements sit behind the loop for people who like a receipt. Escape the Wreckage. Talisman Tinkerer. Fashionista. Freedom of Choice. None of them change the central truth. You are here to hold a flow and then find out what holding is for.
Expressive by Design, Messy by Habit
I should be clear about the friction, because it is real and it is not a footnote you hide after the score. Demon Tides looks like a game that was built by a shop that wanted an ocean more than a showcase, and then had the nerve to make the ocean a toybox. Landscapes can be handsome. Acrobatic poles can be stubborn. Checkpoints can arrive on a disappearing platform you should not have trusted. I will not invent a pinwheel census. I will say the kingdom sometimes forgets to stock the ingredient you need and then shrugs like weather.
Technical manners on a 1.0 build can stutter when the game decides to remember itself. Characters can appear double when you first enter a castle. A laser challenge needed a failsafe for the person who died at the exact wrong frame. DLSS was removed after it argued with too many machines. None of that is unique to this ocean. All of that is the tax on an ambitious platformer that arrived in February still wearing some of the same boots, then spent the spring sending hotfixes like postcards.
Presentation is readable, which matters more than prestige. You can tell a wreck from a festival from a castle at a glance. If you cannot read a biome, the hunt dies and the run becomes homework. These spaces are atmospheric enough to carry a grin and clear enough to carry a plan. You always know where you are. You do not always know why a ghost is already there.
English and Japanese carry full audio. I will not turn this into a localization seminar. The voice of the game is the ocean, and the ocean talks in ledges, weather, and the occasional undead knock of a challenge that wants a cleaner line. The tone wobbles toward slang on purpose. Schmovement, drip, yeehaw. That is not a cop-out if the move is this good. I will say the kingdom is better at beginning a sentence than at keeping the sentence the same temperature, and that the sentence is still worth hearing if you like a setting that has the nerve to be this specific.
Better as a Flow Than as a Checklist
I have a rule for mid-priced platformers. If a game is worse with a flow than with a checklist, it is broken. If it is only good with a checklist, it is honest. Demon Tides is honest, and that honesty should sit next to the price.
A checklist night is a competent weekend. You run the ocean, you invent the line, you lose a ledge, you walk back, you put a better lock on the joke. A flow night is the version the systems were quietly designed around. Someone races a ghost. Someone tags a wall. Someone learns, too late, that a randomizer does not respect architecture. The ocean becomes a shared instrument instead of a commute.
The Steam sample around a game this loved is always going to look loud. Overwhelmingly Positive is the official weather, 838 of 874 on the side of yes, and that split is fair. Players who wanted a tighter campaign, a quieter slang, or a net of systems that never sulks bounce off. Players who wanted an expressive toybox with an ocean and a bad idea about graffiti stay. I am in the second camp with caveats, which is the only honest place to stand.
Compared with the giants of the 3D platform business, Demon Tides is not trying to be a career. It is trying to be a place. The developer said the quiet part on the store page. Express yourself through your schmovement and get lost in the flow. That is not a cop-out if the place is worth the swim. Some nights it is. Some nights the checkpoint is a myth and the doorway is a theology problem. Both nights are Demon Tides.
Still Standing After the Tide
Demon Tides is a rare mid-priced platformer that understands its own joke and then has the nerve to make the joke an ocean. Fabraz built a kingdom about a demon girl, a move about teamwork with a talisman, and a toybox that looks a little homemade and plays a lot more sincerely than that sentence suggests. The loop is the hook. The movement is the spine. The walk from a wreck to a ghost is the grin.
It is better as a flow than with a checklist. Poles can be stubborn. Checkpoints can sulk. The presentation has indie fingerprints, from the stubborn slang to the story that would rather be a chest than a cutscene. All of that is true, and all of that is already priced in at $24.99 on Steam, or twenty if you caught the launch window. You are not buying a decade. You are buying a weekend that can turn into several weekends if you like being a coordinated disaster, or being the person who has to explain the disaster to a crew.
I am scoring it 8.5, Great, because the identity is this clear and the limitations are the limitations of a focused platformer, not an empty one. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a jump that has weight and a map that is allowed to be rude. Distinctive ocean weather, a talisman that shrinks the horizon, ghosts that turn wood into conversation, and a price that respects your week are a lot of game for the ask. The systems repeat their manners. The manners are still useful.
The ocean is still out there, still hiring a night shift, still asking what Beebz was worth. After a few tides, you will understand why the job is not finished, and why you keep running across the water anyway.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of the Demon Tides for the PC version provided by Pressengine.
