Just under one hundred scores on Level 9 last night. Should clarify it is difficult from level 3 onwards, it just throws in a twist at the end which is mad.
I captured some footage of me managing an S Rank in one of the stages on Level 9. Proper case of my hands working faster than my brain. The end is just some footage of me failing massively against the last boss. It's in 60FPS though, yummy.
I've never known a game to be so difficult to work out what the game is from the videos. The only bit of that where I can see what Tempy must be doing is the bit where he changes lanes to avoid the light snake things. I can't see the visual clues of any other interactions. The descriptions in this thread maybe make sense if you've played it. It's a game which desperately needs a demo, it's amazing that the devs/publisher don't realise that.
Admittedly Level 9 is so fast that if you have no idea what the mechanics are you're basically just staring into the end of 2001 but played at 10x speed, but there's a bit where I miss a beat and the screen flashes red.
Basically every blue pad is a pad you have to press A on, and every turn requires you to hold A and the direction you're turning. That's 90% of the rhythm. The rest of it is learning when to hold A to smash obstacles, when to jump to catch rings, and when to thump to increase the score of upcoming pads.
The lack of a demo is probably because the game is very deliberate in how it teaches you its mechanics - you don't thump until Level 3, even though its possible to do it on Level 1, and the other reason is that it's all trading off its aesthetic. Being a One Man Show (two I gues, with the soundtrack guy) also means that they just didn't want to waste time on making a demo.
A demo need only give access to level one. That doesn't mess with how it teaches you mechanics. Securing sales you wouldn't otherwise get isn't a waste of time; I can't be the only person not buying this based on uncertainty of whether I'd be able to play it.
Perhaps playing Level 1 in isolation isn't part of their vision. It has had plenty of good press so they're going to be getting sales from that, reviews, word of mouth, and from the huge amount of gaming events they took it to. Very few games have demos these days, so I'm sure the two of them aren't too bothered about the handful of sales they'll lose from not having one. Yeah they could put one out there, but on the other hand so could every other dev and it so rarely happens.