Devil Daggers was 10 years old last month. 10 years. Really? I guess time flies in Hell. With news of a sequel on the way, I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on this game on it’s anniversary. I’ve never been to Hell, but I have been to Croydon and I reckon that they might be fairly similar, although I expect that the Cronx has better rail connections.
The particular Hell in Devil Daggers is a dark, desolate place. A floating platform in a sea of darkness, The game begins and your only sensory stimulus is the distant “burping” of demonic denizens materializing into existence. That brief period of initial tranquillity is soon shattered by the constant stream of enemies that want to kill you.
And kill you they most certainly will.
See my video review on YouTube here:
The game is a brutally fast FPS, were the playtime is measured in seconds rather than minutes and the key to survival is to strafe and kite your way around the arena, desperately staving off your inevitable death. There is no health bar, no saves, one hit from an enemy and it’s game over. Your only chance is to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge again as your brain is laser focussed on the enemy movement patterns, the spawn locations and how close you are to the edge of the increasingly crowded platform.
This is no roguelike, the same enemies spawn in an identical sequence each game. Memory becomes a factor, playing the same phases of the game again and again until the early stages are as familiar as your way home from the pub and you are destroying hordes of skulls with streams of daggers from muscle memory alone.
Kill enemies and you are rewarded with glowing red gems. Collect enough and you get an upgrade. This gives you more offensive capability which helps you survive a few more precious seconds. But here’s the rub, the gems disappear if not collected within ten seconds. They do float towards you, but only when you aren’t shooting. And you need to shoot, a lot! So the game plays out in a frantic rhythm of dodging and shooting enemies interspersed with the briefest of pauses to collect gems and consider your next targets.
The demons come in all shapes and sizes. There are basic Skulls that congregate in flocks and pose little or no threat individually, but as a collective can cause you a real headache. The Horned Skull is a more advanced variant. It’s faster and bears down on you with alacrity, forget to change direction and you are doomed. But it’s not just skulls that inhabit Hell, gigantic spiders lurk at the corner of the map, eating gems and spawning spiderlings. Centipedes burst from the platform floor, twisting and turning and exposing the underbelly of their armoured carapace which glitters with red gems.
The graphics aren’t great. The textures are rough and the colours are predominately dull grey and brown, reminiscent of Quake. But this is Hell and you don’t live long enough to admire the graphics. On the other hand the audio is “chef’s kiss”. Each enemy has a unique sound and soon you’ll be able to work out the type of enemy and its position from audio cues alone. Which is as useful as eyes in the back of your head when you are in the middle of battle.
You die and die and die. And each time you die you are shown your position on the Global Leader Board. This encourages just one more go. One more chance at beating your top score. One more chance at redemption.
I’ve survived 212 seconds. Which puts me in the top 10% of the total 345k players to date.
I can do better, I just need a bit of luck or perhaps a different approach.
My next time in Hell will be different, why don’t you join me?
Devil Daggers is available on Steam here – https://store.steampowered.com/app/422970/Devil_Daggers/
At time of writing it’s priced at £6.99, but you should be able to pick it up for between £3-£4 during sales, and at the price it’s a “Hell” of a bargain!!