I’m so glad that this isn’t another indie/retro/16-bit/roguelike. Unlike most games, and even most roguelikes, you generally don’t get significantly stronger or more powerful the longer you survive. Little by little - not unlike Dark Souls - you learn the strategies and your runs and scores inch up a little higher…until you get careless and die twenty seconds in. This is the way you learn to play Devil Daggers, not from some hand-holdy tutorial, but by watching the masters and the losers.
It’s very much a near perfect companion to the already tension-infused gameplay.Īt this early point in the game’s release, “long” runs are seven or eight minutes and every run posted on the leaderboards - including your pathetic ones that ended before they began - can be replayed. You run through and around the chaos and try not to be too unnerved by the game’s audio, a near-constant cacophony of grinding metal-on-metal, processed bio-electronic screams, and edgy noise. But mostly, you run around the platform, circle strafing the weird enemies as they spawn in and spawn in and very quickly begin to overwhelm you with numbers and frenetic movement. There are bits of replenishing health, and the basic weapon adds a power or two, and there are some momentary power ups. There are no weapons to pick up, no armor, there’s no character progression or change of scenery. Really, gameplay doesn’t come in any more pure form than this, for better or worse.
Survival is the only goal to inch up a little higher on the leaderboards and to not die in literally the first five seconds of the game thanks to a one-shot death at the hand (if that’s even possible) of a demonic flying skull.
Devil daggers series#
But Devil Daggers strips that aesthetic down even further: one continuous level with one hand wielding one weapon against an unrelenting series of monstrosities.
Eschewing nearly every gameplay mechanic or design facet that we’ve come to expect over the past decade or so - story, character, high-quality graphics, moderate or adjustable challenge - Devil Daggers harkens back to early ’90s Doom, Quake and Hexen, the era of shooters that depended on raw speed and spatial awareness.
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