Hyper Demon is basically just Doom Eternal for people who liked Eternal’s shift towards being a ‘game-y game’ but didn’t like how it executed its mechanics.
Both games try to combine Ninja Gaiden’s high difficulty and hyper aggressive enemy design with fps combat, creating stylish action games focused on RAW EFFICIENCY - killing enemies faster than they can kill you. Whereas Eternal took influence from MMO combat with cooldown management, infinitely replenishing resources, frequent healing, and damage rotations - Hyper Demon takes influence from minimalist arcade games, focusing on simple tactical trade-offs, routing, and long term risk/reward with a small but multi-faceted toolset.
An easy example is by looking at the first enemy you meet in the game - a Spawner (don’t know the official names, sorry). You can instantly kill the Spawner with a long-range laser, kill it with a melee attack to grant an instant speed boost, or kill it with your daggers to drop an item box.
If it drops an item box, you have 3 options -
1. Destroy the box with a laser to spawn a large swarm of homing daggers, automatically killing any nearby enemies
2. Destroy the box with a dash for a speed boost
3. Destroy the box with your daggers to spawn GEMS
Anyone familiar with Ninja Gaiden’s essence system knows exactly how this works. Pick up theessence gems to level up your weapons (HD does this automatically, no need to buy things from a menu) or destroy the essence to charge up a UT high damage super attack (in this case a big-ass laser beam). You’re balancing the short-term value of laser attacks vs the long-term value of powering up your weapons. And it’s not like you can stockpile these lasers - just like NG, you either use it or lose it.
BUT THEN, you have to consider aiming the laser directly at an enemy vs aiming the laser at the ground, splitting the shot to stun multiple enemies simultaneously.
The other enemies are also interesting to fight against! Larvae are trivial if shot from afar but function as jump pads if you dash into them, giving you a reason to get close. Spider enemies are annoying because they absorb any essence you leave on the ground, but if you deliberately leave them alive for long enough, they‘ll spawn explosive canisters that can be shot to decimate waves of enemies (and the explosions are bigger if you use a laser). There are also Snakes which are mostly harmless, but if you leave them alive for too long, they’ll block access to slow-mo power-ups by surrounding them with impenetrable steel tails (and the power-ups themselves can be sacrificed in place of Essence if you want to shoot a fat laser). Enemies spawn in large groups, so you always have to consider ‘What enemy should I keep alive? Who’s my biggest priority right now?’ There are even more enemy types in the game, but those will be a surprise for anyone who can survive for more than 2 minutes (much harder than it sounds!).
I’m not gonna list every decision you make in a run (I haven’t even talked about all of the movement options like bunny-hopping, fakes, or shotgun jumping) or go over its commitment to fairness (great sound design + spherical projection provide near perfect information) but hopefully you can see how every interaction is about making a deliberate trade-off that can subtly snowball over the course of a run. Routing what enemies you want to kill and how you want to kill them has a lot of depth! And this is all tied together with a simple scoring system where you lose points every second but regain points anytime you kill an enemy, forcing you to play as aggressively as possible if you want to maintain a high score. I’m absolutely in love with this game, and can see myself chasing high scores for the rest of the year. If Eternal rubbed you the wrong way (or you just want an alternative to Ultrakill’s Cyber Grind), then I highly recommend Hyper Demon!!!
Both games try to combine Ninja Gaiden’s high difficulty and hyper aggressive enemy design with fps combat, creating stylish action games focused on RAW EFFICIENCY - killing enemies faster than they can kill you. Whereas Eternal took influence from MMO combat with cooldown management, infinitely replenishing resources, frequent healing, and damage rotations - Hyper Demon takes influence from minimalist arcade games, focusing on simple tactical trade-offs, routing, and long term risk/reward with a small but multi-faceted toolset.
An easy example is by looking at the first enemy you meet in the game - a Spawner (don’t know the official names, sorry). You can instantly kill the Spawner with a long-range laser, kill it with a melee attack to grant an instant speed boost, or kill it with your daggers to drop an item box.
If it drops an item box, you have 3 options -
1. Destroy the box with a laser to spawn a large swarm of homing daggers, automatically killing any nearby enemies
2. Destroy the box with a dash for a speed boost
3. Destroy the box with your daggers to spawn GEMS
Anyone familiar with Ninja Gaiden’s essence system knows exactly how this works. Pick up the
BUT THEN, you have to consider aiming the laser directly at an enemy vs aiming the laser at the ground, splitting the shot to stun multiple enemies simultaneously.
The other enemies are also interesting to fight against! Larvae are trivial if shot from afar but function as jump pads if you dash into them, giving you a reason to get close. Spider enemies are annoying because they absorb any essence you leave on the ground, but if you deliberately leave them alive for long enough, they‘ll spawn explosive canisters that can be shot to decimate waves of enemies (and the explosions are bigger if you use a laser). There are also Snakes which are mostly harmless, but if you leave them alive for too long, they’ll block access to slow-mo power-ups by surrounding them with impenetrable steel tails (and the power-ups themselves can be sacrificed in place of Essence if you want to shoot a fat laser). Enemies spawn in large groups, so you always have to consider ‘What enemy should I keep alive? Who’s my biggest priority right now?’ There are even more enemy types in the game, but those will be a surprise for anyone who can survive for more than 2 minutes (much harder than it sounds!).
I’m not gonna list every decision you make in a run (I haven’t even talked about all of the movement options like bunny-hopping, fakes, or shotgun jumping) or go over its commitment to fairness (great sound design + spherical projection provide near perfect information) but hopefully you can see how every interaction is about making a deliberate trade-off that can subtly snowball over the course of a run. Routing what enemies you want to kill and how you want to kill them has a lot of depth! And this is all tied together with a simple scoring system where you lose points every second but regain points anytime you kill an enemy, forcing you to play as aggressively as possible if you want to maintain a high score. I’m absolutely in love with this game, and can see myself chasing high scores for the rest of the year. If Eternal rubbed you the wrong way (or you just want an alternative to Ultrakill’s Cyber Grind), then I highly recommend Hyper Demon!!!
there's a divine sickness here
kaleidostepping thru wormholes and slipgates as glass contortionist. future ghosts looming in red silhouettes. shapeless forms ticking down toward birth. a remote viewer orbiting above a shrinking planet. a killing field itinerary. liquid gold warping into sinister geometries as you try to claw sand back into a broken hourglass
so thoroughly enveloping as to be transportive; the exit back to common sensation being as disorienting as the ominous entrance. delayed anxiety and nausea upon release from cruel hypnosis. rewriting neural pathways with everything you don't want in your brain
long live the new flesh
kaleidostepping thru wormholes and slipgates as glass contortionist. future ghosts looming in red silhouettes. shapeless forms ticking down toward birth. a remote viewer orbiting above a shrinking planet. a killing field itinerary. liquid gold warping into sinister geometries as you try to claw sand back into a broken hourglass
so thoroughly enveloping as to be transportive; the exit back to common sensation being as disorienting as the ominous entrance. delayed anxiety and nausea upon release from cruel hypnosis. rewriting neural pathways with everything you don't want in your brain
long live the new flesh
Devil Daggers but take it to the club - feels positively blissed out in comparison! Ludicrously addictive from the get go, few other games in recent memory come to mind with movement this satisfying and I've barely scratched the surface of the tech on offer. The dynamic leaderboard where you watch your name scroll up the list with every new personal best score is exactly the kind of feedback I wish more games provided as reward for performance too...anyway get in on the ground floor this is GOTY material easy.
The stagnation brought about by trends is an illness you can only truly see when you manage to get your hands on something unique and fresh, a moment that I gladly experienced when I first played Devil Daggers all the way back in 2016. The simplicity of its unachievable taunting goal and its hellish display of lovecraftian inevitability did more to revitalize a genre in less than 30 seconds than what a decade+ of modern console First Person Shooters failed to do.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
Simultaneously one of the fakest feeling games I've ever played while also being one of the realest at the same time. Not sure if I'm patient enough to actually achieve DEICIDE though.
I love hyper demon (HD). It improved upon the core appeal of devil daggers (DD) while fixing some of its biggest flaws. I believe it's one of the best spiritual sequels ever made (in the ballpark of DOOM, Dark Souls, and Bayonetta).
I saw the following one sentence 1.5 star review on here recently:
"Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials"
This review is funny to me because it isolates one of the biggest flaws of DD but touts it as something essential. DD didn't have a tutorials menu. But what is a tutorial? Is it just something the game labels as 'tutorial'? Must a tutorial be separate from the game proper? I don't think so; I argue that DD's first few minutes serves as enemy tutoriaIs in all except name. Among many other changes that improve replayability, HD extracts and largely removes these enemy tutorials. I only played each of the tutorials in HD once. However, because they are inextricably baked into DD, I played each of the enemy tutorials in DD hundreds of times. Am I supposed to believe this is a good thing?
It is common now for people (including the 1.5 star reviewer above) to believe that the 'correct' way to design games is to have seamless, built-in 'tutorials' that show the player how to interact with something rather than telling them. Ideally, these don't bring attention to themselves and are thus not labeled by the game as tutorials. It works great for many games, but DD->HD highlights a way in which a more 'traditional' approach to tutorials can be better for replayability. It's difficult to hide/obscure a tutorial and also make it optional because an unknowing/first-time player won't know not to skip it. This means that hidden tutorials are often mandatory, ensuring that experienced players still have to go through the tutorial even though they won't gain anything from it. DD has an extreme version of this, in my view. Sorath (DD/HD dev) recognized this, removed the tutorials and made them optional. In doing so, they had to reveal the tutorials as what they are which is maybe not ideal but, in my opinion, is completely worth it for the boost to replayability of HD over DD. You only live for a limited amount of time, please don't spend it replaying tutorials.
I saw the following one sentence 1.5 star review on here recently:
"Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials"
This review is funny to me because it isolates one of the biggest flaws of DD but touts it as something essential. DD didn't have a tutorials menu. But what is a tutorial? Is it just something the game labels as 'tutorial'? Must a tutorial be separate from the game proper? I don't think so; I argue that DD's first few minutes serves as enemy tutoriaIs in all except name. Among many other changes that improve replayability, HD extracts and largely removes these enemy tutorials. I only played each of the tutorials in HD once. However, because they are inextricably baked into DD, I played each of the enemy tutorials in DD hundreds of times. Am I supposed to believe this is a good thing?
It is common now for people (including the 1.5 star reviewer above) to believe that the 'correct' way to design games is to have seamless, built-in 'tutorials' that show the player how to interact with something rather than telling them. Ideally, these don't bring attention to themselves and are thus not labeled by the game as tutorials. It works great for many games, but DD->HD highlights a way in which a more 'traditional' approach to tutorials can be better for replayability. It's difficult to hide/obscure a tutorial and also make it optional because an unknowing/first-time player won't know not to skip it. This means that hidden tutorials are often mandatory, ensuring that experienced players still have to go through the tutorial even though they won't gain anything from it. DD has an extreme version of this, in my view. Sorath (DD/HD dev) recognized this, removed the tutorials and made them optional. In doing so, they had to reveal the tutorials as what they are which is maybe not ideal but, in my opinion, is completely worth it for the boost to replayability of HD over DD. You only live for a limited amount of time, please don't spend it replaying tutorials.
Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials
Current personal best, 406.897
Masterclass in design. A general & vague term wholly applicable in every aspect from thee leaderboard crawl, heat-sensing enemy proximity radar, blitzed out uptick scoring system; superbly playful despite a rather oppressing & suffocating field. Thee offense to Devil Daggers defense.
Look no further than thee lobby if you want to bear witness to thee harmonious elegance present. A player finds themselves surrounded by birds fluttering about, surrounding your respectively-ranked dagger which, upon touching, commences thee onslaught. Hours of mastering & learning new tricks until you face thee boss, hours more to learn how to defeat an angel, & said angel will explode into a frenzy of docile birds, allowing your dagger to appear once again. Without breaking sequence, simply touch it to begin again.
My two main gripes with this game are minor, in a way. First of which is being at thee mercy of RNG. At times, snakes will spawn underneath spiders, scuttlers will spawn within snakes. Higher level playing depends on a quality route & when that becomes muddled at a dice roll, it can feel as though some runs are simply wasting your time. Secondly, there are a couple little inconsistencies in some mechanics. Scuttlers seem to have priority during a rail ricochet despite your target being dead center on a spawner, etc. Stomping feels like a crapshoot, particularly with snake heads. Seemingly damning strikes, but ultimately these do not ever really become a problem until you're fighting for milliseconds. Thankfully, some of these faults can be easily worked around with some smart improvisation, which this game allows for a plethora of.
A vicious Sisyphean cycle.
Masterclass in design. A general & vague term wholly applicable in every aspect from thee leaderboard crawl, heat-sensing enemy proximity radar, blitzed out uptick scoring system; superbly playful despite a rather oppressing & suffocating field. Thee offense to Devil Daggers defense.
Look no further than thee lobby if you want to bear witness to thee harmonious elegance present. A player finds themselves surrounded by birds fluttering about, surrounding your respectively-ranked dagger which, upon touching, commences thee onslaught. Hours of mastering & learning new tricks until you face thee boss, hours more to learn how to defeat an angel, & said angel will explode into a frenzy of docile birds, allowing your dagger to appear once again. Without breaking sequence, simply touch it to begin again.
My two main gripes with this game are minor, in a way. First of which is being at thee mercy of RNG. At times, snakes will spawn underneath spiders, scuttlers will spawn within snakes. Higher level playing depends on a quality route & when that becomes muddled at a dice roll, it can feel as though some runs are simply wasting your time. Secondly, there are a couple little inconsistencies in some mechanics. Scuttlers seem to have priority during a rail ricochet despite your target being dead center on a spawner, etc. Stomping feels like a crapshoot, particularly with snake heads. Seemingly damning strikes, but ultimately these do not ever really become a problem until you're fighting for milliseconds. Thankfully, some of these faults can be easily worked around with some smart improvisation, which this game allows for a plethora of.
A vicious Sisyphean cycle.
I played this when I was so high and I can't top that score
Devil Daggers' cooler cousin, but the blistering pace combined with piling on new tech means a lot more salt. The hyper-aggresive scoring essentially repairs the frustrations of DD - Hyper Demon is entirely the climax of a DD run with none of the setup. In exchange, however, it's added a lot of new tricks & tactics to help you keep up with the new paradigm of aggression. This makes the skill ceiling seem higher, but also leads to drastically more frustrating or unreadable deaths. I'll elaborate for a bit:
- The dash / stomp keybinding takes a while to adjust, and you will be constantly misdashing into enemies.
- Scuttlebugs are a source of frustration, eating a lot of damage if you fail to stomp them out or rail laser them (and those misdashes will inevitably cause such an occurrence).
- Snakes are extremely difficult to read and have to be widely avoided when attempting to grab the powerup, which is made difficult by their flailing hitboxes.
- The dodge is interesting, but seems to fuzz up hitboxes or squeeze you out of unlivable situations, which leads to some uncertainty with what is lethal and what isn't.
- The triple-laser auto aim is just fuzzy enough to feel inconsistent, with no clear indication of range beyond a sound that I find occasionally hard to parse (it'll ding '3' times and only target one or two enemies).
- The rail laser itself is extremely precise and requires much harsher aim than anything else in the game.
- The mega-laser you get from holding rclick when you nab the powerup is almost totally useless without a green bomb or a big crystal.
- Spiders are meant to drop and become vulnerable when approached/dashed under, but the trigger / indication for their drop-invulnerable states is mediocre (a sound cue very late into their descent, and not much more than a leg flail when spawning a bomb).
- The arena's dim-lit wobbliness makes it hard to tell where any edge is when shit's gone wrong until you're already walking into it, and enemies completely disappear when outside the border.
- Loads of bullet-time slowmo + crazy ultra-bendy FOV nonsense makes gauging distances hard.
Since a lot of these are less "hardline issues" and more "control scheme and enemy handling fuzziness", I expect to care less about them the more I play. At ~200 seconds, I still find them decently frustrating, but it was distinctly worse as I was initially learning the ropes. That's more likely a consequence of Devil Daggers' extreme simplicity and my own expectations, though. That is to say - if anyone can correct/inform me on why these features act this way, please do. Even with a tutorial mode, this game is fairly obtuse.
The tl;dr here is that HD has managed to squeeze the best-est bits of DD's prime, but has lost a lot of the level-headed consistency and simplicity during the translation. I wouldn't disagree with anyone who thinks that's a good thing, but I think it means HD is less of a Devil Daggers replacement, and more of a fantastic accompaniment when DD's frustrations boil over (and vice-versa!)
I've not spoken much on the visuals because they can't really be conveyed thru anything other than gameplay. This game opens your third eye or some shit. It's pure magic. Play at 180 FOV and develop perfect vision.
- The dash / stomp keybinding takes a while to adjust, and you will be constantly misdashing into enemies.
- Scuttlebugs are a source of frustration, eating a lot of damage if you fail to stomp them out or rail laser them (and those misdashes will inevitably cause such an occurrence).
- Snakes are extremely difficult to read and have to be widely avoided when attempting to grab the powerup, which is made difficult by their flailing hitboxes.
- The dodge is interesting, but seems to fuzz up hitboxes or squeeze you out of unlivable situations, which leads to some uncertainty with what is lethal and what isn't.
- The triple-laser auto aim is just fuzzy enough to feel inconsistent, with no clear indication of range beyond a sound that I find occasionally hard to parse (it'll ding '3' times and only target one or two enemies).
- The rail laser itself is extremely precise and requires much harsher aim than anything else in the game.
- The mega-laser you get from holding rclick when you nab the powerup is almost totally useless without a green bomb or a big crystal.
- Spiders are meant to drop and become vulnerable when approached/dashed under, but the trigger / indication for their drop-invulnerable states is mediocre (a sound cue very late into their descent, and not much more than a leg flail when spawning a bomb).
- The arena's dim-lit wobbliness makes it hard to tell where any edge is when shit's gone wrong until you're already walking into it, and enemies completely disappear when outside the border.
- Loads of bullet-time slowmo + crazy ultra-bendy FOV nonsense makes gauging distances hard.
Since a lot of these are less "hardline issues" and more "control scheme and enemy handling fuzziness", I expect to care less about them the more I play. At ~200 seconds, I still find them decently frustrating, but it was distinctly worse as I was initially learning the ropes. That's more likely a consequence of Devil Daggers' extreme simplicity and my own expectations, though. That is to say - if anyone can correct/inform me on why these features act this way, please do. Even with a tutorial mode, this game is fairly obtuse.
The tl;dr here is that HD has managed to squeeze the best-est bits of DD's prime, but has lost a lot of the level-headed consistency and simplicity during the translation. I wouldn't disagree with anyone who thinks that's a good thing, but I think it means HD is less of a Devil Daggers replacement, and more of a fantastic accompaniment when DD's frustrations boil over (and vice-versa!)
I've not spoken much on the visuals because they can't really be conveyed thru anything other than gameplay. This game opens your third eye or some shit. It's pure magic. Play at 180 FOV and develop perfect vision.
YO WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, i was legit glued to my fucking screen this shit is so mesmerizing it's beautiful, and a great FPS honestly
Good art
It is trippy and unique and I liked it. I definitely think it was a bit too hard for me and I was not going to put in the hours needed to actually become great at it and win.
Definitely not my type of game, but I see the appeal and it's absolutely beautiful to look at. I have no idea how they made these visuals but its absolutely insane and I loved every second of it. If only I wasn't god awful at actually playing it.
Fantastic game, fixed every issue I had with Devil Daggers while also being extremely innovative in graphics, audio, and gameplay. Knocking off half a star for the objective flaw that is how inaccurate and obnoxiously precise the laser ricochet is. At higher levels of play you need to spam it constantly and it randomly missing causes so much frustration. (Not a skill issue, my PB is 287) Also the final boss is pretty lame and cheap. Also readability isn't as bad as it looks, but has still gotten me killed a handful of times. Other than that this is peak arcade.
playing this for about half an hour and then watching the current top time/score's replay was like playing with fire without understanding how to even start one - flailing in the dust before touching the monolith - and then witnessing god/aliens descend from the blazing sky in incomprehensible fractals. i will never be that good at this, and some people mastered it in an afternoon. absolute fuckin warlocks
incredible game
incredible game
Simultaneously easier than DD, but also more insane and significantly more illegible. I kind of hate it much much more, and also can't help but respect it more. The biggest issue is that I am personally tired of treating the game as half a manual, things especially here are so counter-intuitive that even the training mode is simply teaching you how you're 'kind of' supposed to be playing at the very minimum. This sort of compounds into a glorious but sort of fucked combo shooter that desires to be as ultimately incomprehensible as possible for you to pass over.
That's kind of sick, but it leaves me rather in the dust. It doesn't induce the panic that Devil Daggers does to me and instead feels like a sense stress test. For its modus operandi of some utter hellish ultraplanar fight against some undefinable deity I can't think of many things in general that's such a perfect match. It absolutely continues on its predecessor of being a congruous entity that you have to fully understand in order to survive and even progress. Its arcadey nature asks for creating clarity out of unwatchable madness.
So as a realized vision I have to like, sort of stan it! But I also feel an utter bone to pick, a sledgehammer I want to take to this sort of approach. From a personal note, for one, this game is absolutely irresponsible. The steam page fine print has an epilepsy warning but the game should fucking start with one, if not more, as should its creator be saying such shilling this game past twitter and youtube. When I first streamed it in front of a friend they felt so unwell they had to tune out for a solid 15 or so minutes because they felt like they were going to have a seizure and they're not epileptic. It's rudimentarily so overzealous in its mission that it genuinely hurts my eyes after a little bit of time to play, and its mixing and sound design just hurts and nails on chalkboards but all of those are Intensely Important Indicators to play. To be blunt I almost feel a sort of noxious "loves its ingroup and hates everyone else" vibe from all that.
But idk, it's like mostly fun past all that. Things connect pretty smartly and it can lead to some intense fun, and it'll certainly satisfy those who REALLY REALLY like Devil Daggers and this uncompromising way of creation. Which is totally valid. It has got crazy good game design top to bottom.
That's kind of sick, but it leaves me rather in the dust. It doesn't induce the panic that Devil Daggers does to me and instead feels like a sense stress test. For its modus operandi of some utter hellish ultraplanar fight against some undefinable deity I can't think of many things in general that's such a perfect match. It absolutely continues on its predecessor of being a congruous entity that you have to fully understand in order to survive and even progress. Its arcadey nature asks for creating clarity out of unwatchable madness.
So as a realized vision I have to like, sort of stan it! But I also feel an utter bone to pick, a sledgehammer I want to take to this sort of approach. From a personal note, for one, this game is absolutely irresponsible. The steam page fine print has an epilepsy warning but the game should fucking start with one, if not more, as should its creator be saying such shilling this game past twitter and youtube. When I first streamed it in front of a friend they felt so unwell they had to tune out for a solid 15 or so minutes because they felt like they were going to have a seizure and they're not epileptic. It's rudimentarily so overzealous in its mission that it genuinely hurts my eyes after a little bit of time to play, and its mixing and sound design just hurts and nails on chalkboards but all of those are Intensely Important Indicators to play. To be blunt I almost feel a sort of noxious "loves its ingroup and hates everyone else" vibe from all that.
But idk, it's like mostly fun past all that. Things connect pretty smartly and it can lead to some intense fun, and it'll certainly satisfy those who REALLY REALLY like Devil Daggers and this uncompromising way of creation. Which is totally valid. It has got crazy good game design top to bottom.
if this game came out 20 years ago videogames would be banned in every civilized nation.
My best score is 146.441 as of writing, run here. Another short review, wrote this one pretty quickly.
Ninja Gaiden essence: the game. If you've played NG that should immediately give you an idea of the type of interactions at play here, but if you haven't Yeahlookiehere has a good review, I won't bother repeating it all. I would just add that the official replay website is simple to use, and the spider and fish enemies are very well-designed. The core design is pretty damn solid, the devs are clearly on the right track and know what to go for.
However, there are some notable issues that started getting under my skin after a bunch of runs. It's clear that the devs have made giving the player lots of information a priority, but nonetheless readability can be an issue. Certainly the aesthetic is unique and striking, but the spherical projection combined with only having one main color for enemies makes things blend into a black-and-gold soup at times. The spider re-emerging is especially prone to get lost in this, which can be quite deadly. For some reason enemies will disappear from view if they go into the darkness, a very odd decision. Usually this isn't too bad, but for the skulls and especially the centipede it gets very obnoxious.
The centipede in general doesn't fit this game well IMO, apparently it's a carryover from Devil Daggers. It doesn't really interact with the essence system at all, and the only reliable way to deal with it seems to be to stand under it and shoot, but then it becomes difficult to see because it's so large and can curl in on itself. Laser ricochet feels a bit awkward to use, it's difficult to tell what (if anything) it will go for in many situations and big shots have a tendency to wet-noodle and not do much. Grab and laser being bound to the same key is a major design flaw, you will naturally be wanting to aim your laser at the big gems so it's very easy to accidentally mouse over and grab them instead. Stomp has a similar issue, and not having access to it out of normal jumps feels counterintuitive, especially in the heat of the moment.
Despite my issues, the game is lots of fun overall. Any fan of fast-paced arcadey action or Ultrakill's Cyber Grind should add it to their list, it's well worth a spin.
Edit: The final boss sucks ass
Ninja Gaiden essence: the game. If you've played NG that should immediately give you an idea of the type of interactions at play here, but if you haven't Yeahlookiehere has a good review, I won't bother repeating it all. I would just add that the official replay website is simple to use, and the spider and fish enemies are very well-designed. The core design is pretty damn solid, the devs are clearly on the right track and know what to go for.
However, there are some notable issues that started getting under my skin after a bunch of runs. It's clear that the devs have made giving the player lots of information a priority, but nonetheless readability can be an issue. Certainly the aesthetic is unique and striking, but the spherical projection combined with only having one main color for enemies makes things blend into a black-and-gold soup at times. The spider re-emerging is especially prone to get lost in this, which can be quite deadly. For some reason enemies will disappear from view if they go into the darkness, a very odd decision. Usually this isn't too bad, but for the skulls and especially the centipede it gets very obnoxious.
The centipede in general doesn't fit this game well IMO, apparently it's a carryover from Devil Daggers. It doesn't really interact with the essence system at all, and the only reliable way to deal with it seems to be to stand under it and shoot, but then it becomes difficult to see because it's so large and can curl in on itself. Laser ricochet feels a bit awkward to use, it's difficult to tell what (if anything) it will go for in many situations and big shots have a tendency to wet-noodle and not do much. Grab and laser being bound to the same key is a major design flaw, you will naturally be wanting to aim your laser at the big gems so it's very easy to accidentally mouse over and grab them instead. Stomp has a similar issue, and not having access to it out of normal jumps feels counterintuitive, especially in the heat of the moment.
Despite my issues, the game is lots of fun overall. Any fan of fast-paced arcadey action or Ultrakill's Cyber Grind should add it to their list, it's well worth a spin.
Edit: The final boss sucks ass
A nightmare in an extravagant hell
Seeing the main menu and overall shader design for this game reminded me of Beach House's self titled album. Translucent diamonds in an sepia space filled with expensive jewelry. HYPER DEMON provides a simple gameplay loop at first glance but there's so much at play, it's hard to completely condense in the two hours I've played of this alone. A visual trip from beginning to end, no ramp up as you're in the heat of it from the first second of gameplay and provided some gameplay improvements to the genre I didn't really think was possible.
If you played Devil Daggers, it should feel familiar. Trying to get the highest score possible but saying the gameplay loop is that simple and leaving it at that would not be the complete picture. Aiming and movement feels completely fluid as can possibly be. Bunny hopping, dagger (rocket) jumping, and dashing feel great to pull off. Being able to translate some of my decades of first person experiences made me feel right at home with this title and managed to get a pretty high enough score to see the boss and man it's a visual spectacle in itself. What will probably grab your attention immediately is the visuals. The whole game feels like an RTX demo in itself with how some of the lights reflect off the enemies and the floor at times combined with how the game perceives peripheral vision pretty well makes for a visual light show when performing well. The enemies each have specific ways to beat each of them and some of them are harder to pull off but makes for faster kills which does increase the skill ceiling too. The better you do, the more gnarly it gets and the more likely you're going to end up with a visual induced migraine after an hour of play.
It almost feels like a human didn't even design this game. There's a lot of small yet complex decisions to make in every second of gameplay, it lends itself to being replayed an extreme amount of times with each accomplishment and improvement being visually shown on the leaderboard with a victory cry of sorts. The combination of peripheral vision, light reflection and haunting sound direction which feels like cries and energy dissipating. I remember watching a demo of getting far and I don't even remember how I pulled some of the stuff off to begin with. It takes you elsewhere. Your true potential.
Seeing the main menu and overall shader design for this game reminded me of Beach House's self titled album. Translucent diamonds in an sepia space filled with expensive jewelry. HYPER DEMON provides a simple gameplay loop at first glance but there's so much at play, it's hard to completely condense in the two hours I've played of this alone. A visual trip from beginning to end, no ramp up as you're in the heat of it from the first second of gameplay and provided some gameplay improvements to the genre I didn't really think was possible.
If you played Devil Daggers, it should feel familiar. Trying to get the highest score possible but saying the gameplay loop is that simple and leaving it at that would not be the complete picture. Aiming and movement feels completely fluid as can possibly be. Bunny hopping, dagger (rocket) jumping, and dashing feel great to pull off. Being able to translate some of my decades of first person experiences made me feel right at home with this title and managed to get a pretty high enough score to see the boss and man it's a visual spectacle in itself. What will probably grab your attention immediately is the visuals. The whole game feels like an RTX demo in itself with how some of the lights reflect off the enemies and the floor at times combined with how the game perceives peripheral vision pretty well makes for a visual light show when performing well. The enemies each have specific ways to beat each of them and some of them are harder to pull off but makes for faster kills which does increase the skill ceiling too. The better you do, the more gnarly it gets and the more likely you're going to end up with a visual induced migraine after an hour of play.
It almost feels like a human didn't even design this game. There's a lot of small yet complex decisions to make in every second of gameplay, it lends itself to being replayed an extreme amount of times with each accomplishment and improvement being visually shown on the leaderboard with a victory cry of sorts. The combination of peripheral vision, light reflection and haunting sound direction which feels like cries and energy dissipating. I remember watching a demo of getting far and I don't even remember how I pulled some of the stuff off to begin with. It takes you elsewhere. Your true potential.
To reach eternity through deicide.
I mean, wow? I'm honestly not sure what else I can say.
I refrained from waxing poetic on Devil Daggers because I was afraid of betraying what the game is for me at its core. I found it refreshingly simple while still being sophisticated in execution, and while I have seen plenty of talented individuals who have spent countless hours polishing their play to a mirror sheen, it was never much more than a simple time-waster for me. An excellent one, but not the kind of game so remarkable as to keep me hooked the way some others of its ilk have.
So when I first saw a listing for Hyper Demon, I instinctively cocked an eyebrow. I wasn't really sold on the idea of a sequel or successor to Devil Daggers, if only because I wasn't sure what a new game could bring to the table that a sizeable update couldn't. At least, not without compromising what seemed to make Devil Daggers special in the first place. But I looked into it regardless.
Upon viewing various trailers and gameplay videos for Hyper Demon, I was... Confused. This was unquestionably the work of Devil Daggers' creator, and without doubt a re-iteration of that game's core concept. But what was I actually looking at? Somewhere in that swirling sea of pearlescent light was a player, doing... Things. And tried as I might, I just could not parse the action happening before my eyes. Where Devil Daggers had served as a strange sort of zen experience for me, I couldn't help but feel a tinge of anxiety seeing Hyper Demon in motion. It felt like setting George Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte next to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. If you were to describe the scenes depicted as laconically as possible, they might sound much the same, but a cursory examination of each painting makes it abundantly clear they're radically different in tone and theming. I was apprehensive as I pulled the trigger on Hyper Demon, feeling quite certain it wasn't going to appeal the same way as Sorath's maiden title.
And yeah, upon seeing the multi-part tutorial, those apprehensions were very much reinforced. The fact there was a tutorial at all was a bit of a surprise, but in progressing through them I started to realize just how different of a animal this game was going to be. All of these new movement mechanics, on top of the ways you interact with your enemies, demanded a lot more out of me than the simple strafe-jump-shoot fundamentals of the original.
After checking off each box, I proceeded to step into my first game and I was annihilated almost immediately. On repeated attempts, I found that while I might have been able to survive longer, that wasn't good enough anymore. My score would continue to tick down unless my demon-slaying skills impressed. I persevered for a few more runs, struggling to place anywhere north of 30 points, before I started to feel this strange tingling in my brain. That itching, sneaking sensation that I've become more intimately familiar with as time has gone on. Is this game just not for me? Was it the elegant simplicity of Devil Daggers that had hooked me the first time? Had Hyper Demon managed to overcomplicate what was, to me, the almost platonic ideal of first person shooters? I sat back in my chair for a second and thought about it. Then I set the game aside briefly and went back to watch the gameplay videos I'd seen before.
All of a sudden, everything was so clear. Even with the thirty minutes or so I'd spent with the game, I had been gifted enough insight to comprehend the true form of the beast. New ideas were already emerging on how I could improve upon my score and watch my name ascend the leaderboard at breakneck speed.
Hyper Demon manages to be a successor to Devil Daggers while also being its antithesis. Daggers wants you to survive, Demon wants you to perform. Daggers splashes bright reds against a dim and dreary backdrop, providing perfect contrast. Demon is a kaleidoscope of color and fear. Daggers pares down FPS gameplay to its barest aspects. Demon gives you swath of new tricks and rules, and then demands that you respect them.
The current world record for Devil Daggers is roughly twenty minutes.
The current world record run for Hyper Demon is like a minute and a half.
Huh.
At any rate, I'm going to need to spend some more time with it at some point because I have definitely not played enough to decide where it stands amongst other games in my mind. It's quite obvious that while both Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon seek the same goal, they go about achieving them in meaningfully different ways. But I felt the need to say now that even if it ends up not having quite the same appeal for me, I can still appreciate Hyper Demon for what it is: A feast for the senses that is definitely one of the coolest games I've seen in recent memory.
I refrained from waxing poetic on Devil Daggers because I was afraid of betraying what the game is for me at its core. I found it refreshingly simple while still being sophisticated in execution, and while I have seen plenty of talented individuals who have spent countless hours polishing their play to a mirror sheen, it was never much more than a simple time-waster for me. An excellent one, but not the kind of game so remarkable as to keep me hooked the way some others of its ilk have.
So when I first saw a listing for Hyper Demon, I instinctively cocked an eyebrow. I wasn't really sold on the idea of a sequel or successor to Devil Daggers, if only because I wasn't sure what a new game could bring to the table that a sizeable update couldn't. At least, not without compromising what seemed to make Devil Daggers special in the first place. But I looked into it regardless.
Upon viewing various trailers and gameplay videos for Hyper Demon, I was... Confused. This was unquestionably the work of Devil Daggers' creator, and without doubt a re-iteration of that game's core concept. But what was I actually looking at? Somewhere in that swirling sea of pearlescent light was a player, doing... Things. And tried as I might, I just could not parse the action happening before my eyes. Where Devil Daggers had served as a strange sort of zen experience for me, I couldn't help but feel a tinge of anxiety seeing Hyper Demon in motion. It felt like setting George Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte next to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. If you were to describe the scenes depicted as laconically as possible, they might sound much the same, but a cursory examination of each painting makes it abundantly clear they're radically different in tone and theming. I was apprehensive as I pulled the trigger on Hyper Demon, feeling quite certain it wasn't going to appeal the same way as Sorath's maiden title.
And yeah, upon seeing the multi-part tutorial, those apprehensions were very much reinforced. The fact there was a tutorial at all was a bit of a surprise, but in progressing through them I started to realize just how different of a animal this game was going to be. All of these new movement mechanics, on top of the ways you interact with your enemies, demanded a lot more out of me than the simple strafe-jump-shoot fundamentals of the original.
After checking off each box, I proceeded to step into my first game and I was annihilated almost immediately. On repeated attempts, I found that while I might have been able to survive longer, that wasn't good enough anymore. My score would continue to tick down unless my demon-slaying skills impressed. I persevered for a few more runs, struggling to place anywhere north of 30 points, before I started to feel this strange tingling in my brain. That itching, sneaking sensation that I've become more intimately familiar with as time has gone on. Is this game just not for me? Was it the elegant simplicity of Devil Daggers that had hooked me the first time? Had Hyper Demon managed to overcomplicate what was, to me, the almost platonic ideal of first person shooters? I sat back in my chair for a second and thought about it. Then I set the game aside briefly and went back to watch the gameplay videos I'd seen before.
All of a sudden, everything was so clear. Even with the thirty minutes or so I'd spent with the game, I had been gifted enough insight to comprehend the true form of the beast. New ideas were already emerging on how I could improve upon my score and watch my name ascend the leaderboard at breakneck speed.
Hyper Demon manages to be a successor to Devil Daggers while also being its antithesis. Daggers wants you to survive, Demon wants you to perform. Daggers splashes bright reds against a dim and dreary backdrop, providing perfect contrast. Demon is a kaleidoscope of color and fear. Daggers pares down FPS gameplay to its barest aspects. Demon gives you swath of new tricks and rules, and then demands that you respect them.
The current world record for Devil Daggers is roughly twenty minutes.
The current world record run for Hyper Demon is like a minute and a half.
Huh.
At any rate, I'm going to need to spend some more time with it at some point because I have definitely not played enough to decide where it stands amongst other games in my mind. It's quite obvious that while both Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon seek the same goal, they go about achieving them in meaningfully different ways. But I felt the need to say now that even if it ends up not having quite the same appeal for me, I can still appreciate Hyper Demon for what it is: A feast for the senses that is definitely one of the coolest games I've seen in recent memory.
This game kicks all kinds of ass but it reminds me of that episode of Adventure Time where Finn and Jake encounter a ghost that challenges them to a game of "drop ball."
MY high score...
...is 10. :)
MY high score...
...is 10. :)
This review contains spoilers
I wish I could like it more, but the final boss section broke my backbones and now I still can't recover from it. Having 15+ Unification with the eye of god is surely an experience.
windows media player visualizations in 2022
Holy shit
This review contains spoilers
some very cool visual style and gameplay, but it's too hard for me.
fenomenologia do espirito
unreal horrific imagery, astoundingly ingenious game design, watertight perfectly crafted punishing gunplay, absurdly high skill ceiling, helped with an accessible and inviting tutorial and a fantastic ranking system that makes it instantly addictive to want to grow and get better at the game....
i would go on more about the way this game is designed - from the 4d 360 degree proximity warnings that flash on your screen, to the way enemies move and behave in a way that is contingent with everything else in the game, to sound cues and movement tricks and metas and tricks that can be learned with frequent play - but ill be honest, im not good at talking about that shit. the game design here is too complicatedly crafted for me to explain, but trust me this game is absolutely perfect when it comes to killing you fairly and killing you often.
from just a technical standpoint this is absolutely everything i want in a fps game mechanically speaking. while there's no story or real function of the game beyond "shoot the fuck out of everything as fast as possible", it doesnt need it at all.
and no theres no way in hell im beating this i could not even beat devil daggers these games are way too hard for me.
i would go on more about the way this game is designed - from the 4d 360 degree proximity warnings that flash on your screen, to the way enemies move and behave in a way that is contingent with everything else in the game, to sound cues and movement tricks and metas and tricks that can be learned with frequent play - but ill be honest, im not good at talking about that shit. the game design here is too complicatedly crafted for me to explain, but trust me this game is absolutely perfect when it comes to killing you fairly and killing you often.
from just a technical standpoint this is absolutely everything i want in a fps game mechanically speaking. while there's no story or real function of the game beyond "shoot the fuck out of everything as fast as possible", it doesnt need it at all.
and no theres no way in hell im beating this i could not even beat devil daggers these games are way too hard for me.
every decision in this game is designed to make you lean closer and closer to the screen until you die, then you do a three second lean back & adjust shoulders before hitting restart again