When you think of a demon, you probably think of some scary winged beast with a long forked tongue. Maybe one of those big uggos you blast to bits in Doom: The Dark Ages. In Arc Systems Works’ new twin-stick shooter Damon and Baby, the titular demon isn’t frightening, nor grotesque; if anything, he’s mostly a regular dude (with horns) saddled with being a babysitter for a toddler he doesn’t want anything to do with. Their journey together makes for an enjoyable, guns-blazing romp, though some of the game’s design choices tend to get in the way of the fun.
Damon’s tasked with watching over the child at the behest of her caregiver, a priest who died before the events of the game and asked Damon to protect her. He’s now stuck with her — quite literally as he’ll teleport to wherever he chucks her. (Throwing the baby for traversing levels and dodging attacks in combat is an important part of Damon and Baby’s gameplay.) Watching over her side-tracks Damon from moving on up from a Demon King to a Super Demon King. Don’t be impressed by those titles, though — in an early display of the game’s humor, a pyramid pops up showing that that vaunted Demon King Damon is actually at the lowest level of demon hierarchy.
The pair travel through a variety of locales, like a desert town, a mansion, and a fog-covered Phoenix, AZ, as Damon tries to keep the kid safe from demons (including some real uggos!) who want her for their own nefarious reasons. Part of the fun of Damon and Baby is learning just why this kid is so important, and watching Damon grow into embracing his father-like role. He even decorates their trailer with a robot toy for her, and at one point she calls him dad. Too cute!
With the baby bouncing in a seat on Damon’s back, they find themselves in endless firefights. Damon has a trusty handgun with infinite ammo (and low damage, to keep things balanced). The best weapons are his machine gun, shotgun, and RPG. You need to pick up ammo for them, but often will find more clips than you can carry.
New versions of those weapons with different modifications are consistently dropped by enemies or rewarded by an ally. One machine gun might do a ton of damage with a single round, while another might split a round into four shots that deal a fraction of the damage, but are useful for mowing down groups of foes at once.
I alternated between that four-round machine gun and a shotgun that dealt heavy damage spread out across a five-round wave; it could take out basic enemies with just one hit. Cleaning up mobs of demon goons was always enjoyable, with some of them packing quite a punch, though the gameplay is stretched thin during boss fights.
Bosses are often giant, lumbering, and strong, but don’t require much movement to take down. During one boss fight I mostly stayed stationary unloading clip after clip into a demon while only jumping to avoid attacks. They didn’t provide much challenge, but they were cool to look at; the many bosses included a werewolf in a suit, a ronin-like swordsman, and a giant lizard-like foe who crawled up the side of a building, among others. Any intensity they had was also undercut by needing to constantly open the main menu to eat and heal Damon; there was no dedicated healing button to use while in combat.
Damon and Baby gets more annoying as it goes. All that food needed to heal takes up a ton of inventory space both in Damon’s backpack and his storage chest, and all those guns you acquire take up even more. You’re encouraged to not drop them in the levels so that you can sell them for gold, meaning that way too much time gets spent managing Damon’s inventory — not exactly what you want to be doing when there are demons to kill.
Every time I found a checkpoint, I’d always teleport back to the first town to sell off those guns and cook as many stray ingredients as I could into burgers (which heal more hearts). You need to hoard as much gold as possible too because purchasing warp points costs a pretty penny, and you won’t want to find yourself discovering one but not having enough funds to utilize it.
Physically navigating levels became an annoyance at times as well. Damon and Baby is presented from a fixed isometric camera. It works great for large, wide-open spaces, and not so much for when you’re wandering interiors. Because walls disappear so the camera can still focus on Damon (think of how the environment peels away in Baldur’s Gate 3), necessary doorways disappear from view too. I spent way too long exploring the mines in an early game level trying to figure out where to go, not realizing a wall that I thought was without a door actually contained the path needed to advance. I just had to throw Damon at the invisible wall in just the right space to get him into a room I had previously thought was inaccessible.
The camera issue is mostly isolated to those obfuscated interior spaces, so exploring the levels of Damon and Baby is more often a strength rather than a frustration. While you won’t find “Metroidvania” anywhere on its Steam page, Damon and Baby is a Metroidvania in all but name. You’ll come across ability-gated paths while wandering, and do plenty of backtracking once you acquire the necessary abilities to access them. Some of those abilities double as attacks in combat, like the dash that does heavy damage. There are plenty of side paths to go down and all number of rewards for exploration; Damon and Baby is certainly a game you can sink a ton of time into, if you want to see what every shadowy corner may hold.
Like how the toddler grows on Damon the more time they spend together, Damon and Baby rewards you for exploring deeper and deeper into what it has to offer. Though the camera can get in the way of that exploration at times and you’re constantly detoured by inventory management, the moment-to-moment runnin’ and gunnin’ is excellent. Shooting up demons never gets old.
Damon and Baby is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 using a prerelease download code provided by Arc Systems Works. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
