A strange, unique game that plays like the mishappen lovechild of Quake, the medieval practice of jousting and Sonic the Hedgehog. The rather minimal story concerns an astronaut who manages to crash his spaceship on a planet crawling with hostile entities who inexplicably look like medieval knights. Our hero grabs a rusty sword and, having apparently never seen such a weapon before, decides to hold it out in front of him and charge into battle, impaling his enemies by running into them at full speed. The levels are set up to allow this, mainly consisting of large circular pathways with plenty of room to build up a decent speed. It's pretty fun, on top of being filled with a heavy, vaguely oppressive atmosphere, with no music whatsoever and level architecture that recalls the grand gothic halls of Quake, filled with dense rusted metal corridors and bottomless pits. There's a surprising amount of skill involved as well, since keeping up momentum requires a good amount of timing and precision, especially later on, when the game really starts to crank up the number and density of its enemies. But it's at about that time that you'll come into contact with Daemonic Runner's fatal flaw, which is that it simply ends far too quickly. The storepage talks about 1~2 hours of playtime, but that's probably pushing it, since a singular playthrough is unlikely to take more than ~45 minutes. And while there is some level of replayability due to randomized enemy placement, the overall amount of content is still nowhere near satisfactory, especially given the game's pricepoint. At least this means that you can run the whole thing through once or twice without leaving the refund window, so maybe give it a shot if the base idea appeals to you.
Final rating: 6.6/10
originally written on 20/04/2023
