Demon Tides is one of 2026’s best platformers so far

Tip screens are useful in their own way, but I didn’t expect one of the hints in Demon Tides to contain the game’s entire soul in it. “It’s all about combos!” the hint reads. “Will you boost -> bat spin or spin -> superjump -> cannonball?” This sounds like gibberish, except I found myself thinking variations of those things more often than not. Demon Tides really is all about combos — slick movement, flying by the seat of your pants, and pulling off a wildly improbable set of moves you designed yourself. That, and tearing down some of the genre’s most annoying, enduring obstacles.