GameSpot - Spike's new 2D platformer, Sumioni: Demon Arts, seems to be taking a lot of cues from 2006's Okami from an aesthetic standpoint. You have your sumi-e art style for the background, cell-shaded characters and enemies in the foreground, the Japanese folklore setting, and even the gameplay bits, where you have to use ink to affect the landscape. But whereas Okami is an epic adventure game, Sumioni sticks to being an arcade-style action platformer with multiple branching levels for added longevity.
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "Just like Artdink, Acquire is a quirky Japanese developer with a history of experimentation and big ideas, but has unfortunately been at the mercy of low budgets throughout the years, leaving gamers with some fantastic titles that suffer from a large amount of jank. Acquire worked on Vita from its launch in Japan through to early 2017, injecting a nice level of variety to the console’s library despite some of the technical shortcomings of its titles, making the company a prime candidate for examination here."
"The shadow of Okami looms large before you’ve even started to play Sumioni: Demon Arts, with the sumi-e art style apparent right from the LiveArea. If that were all there was to it, it’d be easy to shake off the idea that Sumioni is something of a knock-off, but then there’s using a magic brush to paint platforms and set enemies ablaze.", says CalmDownTom.
GodisaGeek: "Like Dokuro, which I looked at recently, Sumioni is a game that received a full-whack retail release in Japan. It was a surprise to hear that both would be published in the UK, and was encouraging to hear of a drop in price – it is fair to say that most Western gamers would most definitely baulk at the idea of chucking forty quid at titles that are shorter than other cheaper fare available for download on this and other platforms."
