Bit of a mess of a game. At first, it's off-putting because the jumping feels awkward due to ledges having that strange feel where you're not quite sure where the actual edge is, so you end up running off the side like an idiot sometimes. Also unsure about the early design decisions for platforms in general. Two ledges of equal length stacked over each other so the player has to jump out and back around to get to them can be a pain, but it's extra frustrating in this game with the weird edge distance uncertainty.

Anyway, that gets resolved fairly quickly as you eventually get yourself a double jump in short order. At that point, 99% of your jumping grief is gone.

The rest of the issues with the game, not so much.

The maps are awful -- each area displays on its own with no way to look at the linking of previous areas to it, and all the maps are just differently-sized blue squares with little spaces missing on the edges of the squares depending on where exits are. There's also red squares to indicate save points, though this isn't immediately intuitive.

Your progress is hard-tied to the save locations and it's a little strange because they feel like bonfire concepts like in Dark Souls, but in actuality, they're more like just pulling up a menu and hitting a save slot and saving that way. This means the game isn't auto-saving when you pick up useful power-ups, currency, or even beating bosses and that you MUST go back to a save point when you want to confirm your progress in any fashion.

You can smash lanterns that are hanging in the ceilings to get currency or healing stuffs, but sometimes the items don't fall from the ceiling and just hang out there -- or in the case of underwater sections, can get stuck in the ceiling and you can't actually pick them up at all.

Hitboxes on enemies are weird. Sometimes you stun them and they don't get a free attack, sometimes you don't, and it's a mystery as to how things are going to turn out and discourages close combat since you can't be certain you won't just eat a hit because you thought you had the stun instead of dodging in and out for one hit over and over to be sure you get the kill safely.

Your dash is tied to your Essence (MP). Essence regenerates, but since using your strong attack and a number of special moves uses this also, it can be minorly prohibitive for no real reason.

Some moves ask you to put in command similar to fighting games. This was really off-putting for me because I love fighting games, but I couldn't do the Backward->Forward->Light Attack 90% of the time when I tried to do it. As soon as I got the power-up, I sat there and tried to do it a few dozen times and it didn't work, so I re-read the monolith that gives you the power because I thought I was doing it wrong. Nope, the timing is just strange for it. The Down->Up->Light (or Strong) Attack ones weren't quite as annoying to pull off, so at least there's that. Unfortunately, these commands also affect the ability to access some areas of the game, so if you can't get a handle on them, it's going to be a LONG DAY trying to play Demon Peak.

There are progress crystals in the game that unlock sliding doors for you to go through -- but some of them are only temporary crystals and there's no way to tell other than trial and error (you can essentially put yourself in a position to be stuck on a one-way path that hopefully will terminate somewhere you can get back from without too much trouble).

Music is nice, at times, but some tracks overlap between areas (I think? Maybe they're just very similar).

Bosses are -- well, that's tough to define. The first one I encountered had a variety in its moves, but due to the nature of how it appeared on screen and its speed in doing so, it felt very overwhelming. A couple times, hitboxes worked in my favor and it didn't hurt me when I would be contacting it. Other times, it would knock me over with even the slightest graze or just juggle me to my death. Another boss I fought had me striking them to start the fight, but then I couldn't seem to land hits on their body anymore and they eventually bounce-juggled me into a pit of lava. Difficult? Unsure because I was dodging their attacks just fine for most of the time until I gave up on trying to move around and just tried striking their body, to no avail. The save point for that area in relation to the boss is in a location that is cumbersome to get to from one side or the other, so it discouraged actively trying again to get back into it quickly.

I feel like there was something else to mention, but it's eluding me now, so I'll just say that the game is alright, but not without a number of issues to overcome. If you're wanting to pick it up, get it on sale and SAVE REGULARLY.

EU release played via Steam on a Lenovo Y50-70.

What an utterly fantastic metroidvania. The music and atmosphere of the levels are the first things that capture you and with the wonderful creature and enemy designs, this is a hard game to put down. The jumping does take a bit of time to get used to and you will find yourself dying on multiple occasions at the same point. But Demon Peak lets you experiment, going back to previous levels to get more gold and abiities before moving forward again.

A couple technical hiccups, namely the odd screen-length line of black pixels appearing in one particular point at a level and another experience where I had closed the game but could still hear the music, forcing me to go to the Task Manager and finding it in the background processes. But other than those two minor issues I can't say there were any game-breaking bugs.

Overall, well worth the price of admission and definitely an instant favourite of the pixelated adventure genre.