Demon Throttle: A Physical-Only Game
There are a lot of “retro” styled games these days, especially from indie developers…but no one is taking it as far as developer Doinksoft and publisher Devolver. Announced during E3, their upcoming video game Demon Throttle is a physical-only title for Switch. That means no digital version, ever. Not even a digital demo.
The story is your basic revenge plot: two badass figures, “a beautiful vampiress and a dusty gunslinger,” are after an evil demon who stole from both of them. She lost her mystical chalices, he lost his wife (he caught the demon sleeping with her). Now they’re stomping into the demon’s domain and shooting everything that gets in their path.
Of all the “fake NES” styles we’ve seen, this one comes closest to being authentic. The filter looks great, the three-color-per-sprite rule is followed to the letter and all graphics are created from 16 by 16 pixel tiles. The only thing that gives its modernness away is the number of active sprites onscreen. On the NES this would cause massive slowdown and a lot of flickering.
Preorder copies of Demon Throttle will be offered from now until October, and then that will be it. The number of preorders taken will be all the copies of Demon Throttle ever produced. Is the game good? Is it bad? There’s only one way to find out..fork over your cash for that box. Just like the old days, isn’t it?
There’s no way to know if Devolver and Doinksoft will break their promise to never offer a digital version of Demon Throttle. We suppose it depends on how well this experiment turns out for them. You can order a copy from Special Reserve Games from now until October 13. The game will be printed and shipped sometime in 2022.