Run Demon Run (C64)

Have you ever heard of a demon who likes to run? Well apparently Icon 64’s Demon loves to run as a way to relax from the daily grind of torturing souls and you have the opportunity to control Demon in Psytronik Software’s latest release, Run Demon Run, as he jumps and rolls his way towards the horizon. But he needs to be careful as a mistimed jump or running into robot droids will mean the end of Demon’s running days as he spends the rest of his eternal life on disability payments.

The objective in Run Demon Run is to simply accumulate as many points you can by running as far as you can, collecting boxes along the way for bonus points and jumping into mechanical robots in order to collect enough power ups that will allow you to convert into a jet plane.

Upon starting up the game, you will immediately be impressed with the size of the demon character and the smoothness of his animation. The parallax scrolling effect in the background is a nice touch, all topped up with a great driving musical soundtrack.

Controls for these types of games need to be highly responsive and I don’t think we are let down on this front. You can move your demon character left and right within the play area, while pushing down will invoke a duck roll and the fire button will make your demon jump.

Endless runner games is a genre that you either love or hate. Before playing Run Demon Run, I was not a fan of these types of games as I expect them to be repetitive but Run Demon Run has changed my perspective.

You see, Run Demon Run has a few nice tricks up its sleeve. The first is that once you get passed the initial section involving three jumps and a duck roll, the game map generated is different with every game. Add to this what I felt was a subtle layer of strategy in respect to knowing whether to position your demon forward or have him sit back to the left side of the screen plus the transition to jet plane mode all adds up to a game that is deeper than what you initially expect. As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to end up investing a few number of hours over the course of three days as I tried to beat my best score with each round and I have found myself continuously going back to the game from time to time.

However, there is one glaring fault with Run Demon Run, that is, the lack of a high score save facility. Considering the game’s objective is to beat your best score with every game I find it some what odd that the high scores are wiped out when you switch the game off. Surely, a little bit more time could have been spent on including such a feature.

Despite this, I enjoyed my time with Run Demon Run. There is not a lot of variation in game play and it’s not going to convert many players who are not a fan of the endless runner genre but for those who are then you should get a real kick from it and its great to play something else on a C64 other than platform or shooter game.