Dentures and Demons Review: Who's the real demon?

[SPOILERS ALERT!]

Conclusion first: this is the most interesting game I’ve recently played on mobile and I freaking love it. Please definitely try it if you are quite into story-rich puzzle adventures. And it would be an even better choice if you are, just like me, obsessed with games that go meta and frequently break the fourth wall.

My obsession with so-called meta games, which usually refer to games that acknowledge (and sometimes tease about) their nature as video games or have characters that are aware of their fictional presence, starts with the very famous roguelike card-thriller Inscryption. I later tried another two titles (Pony Island and The Hex) created by the same indie studio Daniel Mullins Games and were caught in some kind of Meta Game Complex for quite some time. Then one of my friends recommended this Dentures and Demons, which unlike the former ones, is a 2D pixelated game on mobile. I just finished the easy mode of this game (which took me two hours and a half in total) right before I started to type in the first word of this review and for your reference, it’s 11 at night in my timezone.

Dentures and Demons is a point-and-click pixelated adventure game that integrates challenging puzzle solving, wonderful story-telling and interesting mini arcade games. The story unfolds in a fictional town named Varedze, where our protagonist Junior Peexelated gets involved in a dangerous sect and a series of murders together with his childhood friends Timmy, Tommy and Tony (who later becomes Tonya). The story begins as all four of them are exploring a haunted mansion, where Junior’s friends get kidnapped by a pervert and trapped separately. As Junior, you need to make full use of your keen observation and the items collected to free your friends and save them from the mysterious ritual. The killer is later caught, but the case is far from being closed. After several years, Junior becomes a detective and starts to investigate the other four sect members that prove to be involved in this plot.

One particular way the developer showcases the “meta” elements is through the creative solutions to the in-game puzzles. I’ll just give you one example here cause you know, spoilers included. There’s a scene where Junior needs to wait until one suspect comes back for the night shift, which starts at 10. After waiting for some time, you will suddently realize that the time displayed on the clock is in sync with the real time displayed on your phone. You just need to change your system time and the game will proceed. There’s also a part where an NPC throws you a very classic wolf, goat and cabbage riddle (everyone should have encountered this brain twister back in the school days), and the programer will show up and beg you not to google the answer. These aha moments really boost the overall gaming experience and make you feel closely related to the developer.

Dentures and Demons also tells a good story. With 6 chapters in total, the story gradually unfolds as you explore deeper into the case and collect more info. Throughout this process, you will have the subtle feeling that you seem to play an important role in this, not as the outsider, but as one of “them”. This kind of feeling gets reinforced everytime you are invisibly invited to resort to out-of-game methods to solve in-game problems, or witness another side of the story from an omniscient perspective.

I also love the amount of irony and self-deprecating humor interspersed in between. Some lines are just hilariously mean and reveal a weird sense of amusement. To name one, Junior’s boss always leaves harsh comments on his old jacket like [ “Let me guess, the killer is your jacket and the victim is your good taste.”] And you can even get an exclusive pack of various hilarious insults on the jacket if you pay no more than $2 for ads removal and extra content.

To conclude again, Dentures and Demons is definitely a game worth trying. The game is created independently by one developer and already has a sequel. Both games are free to play but contains extra premium content for those who would like to show some support for the developer, who describes himself as having “this nasty habit of eating to survive”.