Devil's Dare 悪魔の挑戦

Gave me the old and good feelings of playing a Beat'n'up game. In my opinion, between all the ones that I've played in that last years, this was definetely the best one, if you have friends do play together is even better
pros:
- Dificulty is just on point
-Don't have the feeling of being repetitive
-Very fun when on multiplayer
-Feels like an arcade kinda, because you dont have unlimited continues
-Best Trailler ever

Cons:
-For some reason couldn't detect my control right (logitech F310)
-When not with friends, pretty boring

As much as I hate to say it, I cannot recommend this game.

I've actually had a chance to play it, and I loved it to death (when I was able to play it).
The graphics are amazing, the references are nostalgic and enjoyable, and the sound design is wonderful. It plays like an old-fashioned beat-em up, and I loved it.

However, recently the controls have become completely unusable. The escape key will bring up the key binding screen when you start the game, but any button pressed will result in the same result - Joypad up. I've tried multiple configurations, multiple controllers, and keyboard only. I've even unplugged all of my extra controllers, restarted my computer, and tried with the keyboard again. Nothing works, and that's up to and including uninstalling and re-installing the game itself.

pros:
- graphic's nice
- some 90's reference if that's your thing
- a few characters to choose from with different move sets
- in-game voice acted and sound effect is nice
- there's this ninja kid with sai. he's pretty cool.

cons:
- control's stiff
I'm not sure if I just have bad fist impression because I used some girl in tank for my 1st playtrough, I tried playing ninja kid after beating the game with the girl and it did feel a bit better, but still doesn't feel street of rage remake tight.

-you get stunlocked pretty easily and some enemies don't get stunned by combo. and special doesn't give invincibility, nor do you have invincibility frame after getting up.

- pickups dissapear after few seconds
so you get pickup if you execute 3 or more mobs with special attack, which means bunch of pickup's gonna drop, and you can't get those without getting hit by remaining enemies because taking them takes quite a while, but you can't finish the remaining enemies first because pickups dissapear. not to mention with bunch of money pickups dropping on 1 spot, if there's HP recovery item in that stash, it's gonna be hell to try to pick it up.

-no jumping and no grabbing
for me thoe 2 are essential in beat em up games. even if there's no jumping AT LEAST I'd like some grab attacks. ninja kid has grab special attack but that's just his special attack, not a grab mechanic, so it doesn't count.

-buggy
I had to close the game quite many times because I encounter bugs preventing me from going on, like dissapearing from screen or enemy being stuck on air (where it's supposed to fall off the map). a quick goole shows some, or an achievement is bugged too. not sure if they fixed it.


unfortunately for me, I can't get a refund because I left the game running when I went to watch avenger movie, and fell asleep when I got back. oh well.
I mean, it's not the end of the world, the game isn't shitstain terrible and I DO get some enjoyement out of it, might even end up playing it again after I 100% it from time to time, but to recommend it.. I can't.

btw, sorry for my English, it isn't my first language.

I really like this game, but it is lacking some critical things... It will be great for steam machines and links, because there is no online multiplayer. All local coop. It would be a blast with a couple of friends. It's got a good art style, and controls are pretty easy to pick up on. It's missing 2 mechanics though, which I feel could have added hours of gameplay to it. A jump and a grapple. Could have had all kinds of platforming. It's very close to being a streets of rage or turtles in time. Very close. I hope to see a second one here. And they do update this game still. It feels like it's beta because they update it so much. I think they may be thinking about adding online multiplayer but maybe are working on something else. As is, its a solid and fun game.

Devil's Dare is a rogue-like, 4 player, local co-op, side scroller brawler themed around 80's-90's movies and video games. I highly recommend it.

Pros
+4 initial playable characters with 2 more that are unlockable. All the characters handle very different and each character has their own set of 3 special attacks.
+Risk/Reward upgrade/revive system. You collect money by finishing enemies with special moves. This money can be used for upgrading your character or for reviving yourself. If you die and you don't have enough money, you'll have to start the whole game over. If you pay to revive, the cost of reviving next time goes up.
+If you manage to finish off 3 or more enemies with a single special move, you'll be rewarded with a health drop. This addition makes the combat much more strategic than most brawlers.
+Depending on what order you choose the stages, you'll have to go play more levels of that stage to finish it. (EX: 1st pick is 1 level, 2nd pick is 2 levels, 3rd pick is 3 levels, 4th pick is 4 levels) The levels also have tougher enemies if you choose a stage later.
+Solid replay value between the 6 playable characters, build strategies, stage order, achievements, and the expert difficulty's betting system.

Cons
-No online co-op
-The sprites are gorgeous but the color palette is exceptionally brown. I'm usually not picky about this but EVERYTHING is brown.
-Your character will say something every time they use specials or pick up items. I got used to it but it's still a bit annoying hearing your character say "EASY MONEY" 5 times in 2 seconds when you're collecting money. Although the game has a voice volume slider, it controls both the players and the enemies. The game just doesn't sound right with both turned off.
-The game only supports 1024x768 resolution. You can still play with stretched or barred full-screen though. Some people were having trouble with the game not displaying in full-screen how they would expect. If that happens to you, you should be able to fix it with this:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/279580/discussions/0/530646080856002764/

An excellent retro styled beat 'em up that gives you plenty to look forward to. It'll have you raging at some points of the game, but you realize that it isn't because it's cheesy or cheaty, simply that you're bad. Enough practice and play time will see you right to the end.

I went from not being able to beat any play through of the game to clearing all endings and bosses within a week.

Music is also excellent. Don't let this one slip by, buy it now.

Too many poor references to other video games (Golden Axe, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Mega Man, Mortal Kombat). In most instances it doesn't even get the references correct - it simply flails about and goes 'LOL LOOK I MADE VIDYA GAEM REFERENZ'. One example off the top of my head - "I'm going to kick him in the nuts, Johnny Cage style". Another is using a red version of Navi from a Legend of Zelda game, with the annoying 'Hey Listen', except in a much deeper voice. When the sword user (Link copypaste) throws his hook shot he shouts 'Get Over Here' ala Scorpion. The writing is horrid - "The world went from bad... to a total shit storm." Did a high school student write that line?

The blatant pulling of assets from other games is atrocious, as well. One of the characters uses sword & shield and these assets are simply exact copies of Link's items from Legend of Zelda. The MagiTek armor from Final Fantasy is another example. Even the SP meter refills that drop are copies of Mega Man energy drops.

The devs also utilize the 'retro pixel style' as a selling point - this is pretty obvious from the video on the Steam page. If you're going to try and convince me your game is retro at least get the game references correct. This just makes you look like a pathetic indie hipster.

I used an Xbox 360 wired controller for my attempt at playing this game. The controls were fairly responsive but imprecise - for example trying to pick up a cash bag required you to be in a very specific spot which was nigh impossible to achieve with the way the analog stick moved the character. Perhaps another controller would do the trick but I doubt this. In addition picking up items is linked to the attack button, which is just ridiculous. The game didn't even give me a chance to pick up my hard-earned items at the end of the stage - after I killed off the last zombie my character did a victory pose, the stage ended and all those cash bags on screen were lost. Take that player!

This is the sort of thing that makes indie devs look bad. Instead of ripping assets, making video game and video game culture references and using pixel art they need to actually develop their own style.

TL;DR: typical indie cash-in attempt on 'vidya gaemz' and pixel art, imprecise movement controls

The game is well-designed, as far as humor goes, and its one of those brawlers that does not require an xInput controller (a rarity those days for some reason). But good things end right there.

Being a pixel-art game, it has a limited resolution and does not seem to scale well to a modern widescreen monitor, stretching instead. Why is that, I have no idea.

And the most frustrating part is the difficulty spikes in the game.
Get to the first boss and prepare to die A LOT. Every death will set you back to the very friggin' beginning of the whole game.
Turbo-mode gamepad fixes that a bit, but you will still die. Don't smash it in frustration.
It's a nostalgia trip all right - you get all those bad design decisions from the arcade era, like lives and limited "continues", impossible difficulties and sometimes unresponsive controls.

I never finished TMNT on my NES when I was younger. Years later I found out that the game was not impossible to beat, but it had a form of anti-piracy protection (and it turned out I was using a pirated game) that ramped up the difficulty up to 11. We did not know that. We just kept on playing, never knowing that vidogames were not about frustration.

This game is all about frustration. It largely reminds me not only of that old TMNT on NES, but also of Strike Suit Zero on PC. That is to say, "cheat if you want to actually enjoy it".

This game is a nice idea with a lot of charm, and I'd been looking forward to trying it for a while, but Devil's Dare has too many problems for me to recommend it.

First off, money is extremely important in the game but the only reliable way to get a lot of it is killing monsters with special moves, meaning combat is all about spamming them constantly. Feels restrictive, not to mention that some of them just aren't worth using, or can even miss, since two of them are used by holding a direction and pressing the button. If you die in a stage you can only come back if you spend money, and the cost goes up every time. Don't have enough or an item to save you, and your whole run is gone.

Compounding this is that everything about the game seems designed to punish you if you make any mistake. Get hit by an enemy, and you're stunlocked for a bunch of damage unless you use a move that drains your special bar, keeps you from using them until it completely recharges, and is pretty unresponsive. Die in a stage and you probably won't get a proper upgrade for it. Even helpful things can screw you over, as a lot of the time I got hit because my character decided to pick up money instead of attacking. It feels like they wanted to take everything from the old arcade beat-em-ups, even the frustrating parts that were products of the time.

It does have an easy mode, but even then the game doesn't really feel fun or satisfying to play. This review is done from the perspective of single player, granted, but it's probably not all that likely you'd play it with others, since there's no online co-op. If they added some, maybe it would be more fun, but as it is there are beat-em-ups on Steam already that do grant that option, like Castle Crashers or Double Dragon Neon. I'd try one of them before this game.

Bought this game for my mac, crashes on launch. Re-installed, got it to run once, but still crashes on launch. Posted in discussion/ emailed devs, no response. Still waiting to hear back, paid for a game that won't launch. This is the only game in my steam library that won't launch.

Devil's Dare is definitely a fun game. Full of references, little easter eggs, and a bunch of fan service-y type things. That said... it's not exactly a smooth game. The game controls very much like the original Double Dragon. As in, every action feels very deliberate, and somewhat clunky at times. Button mashing will get you killed. Not paying attention will get you killed. Poor placement / timing / usage of abilities will get you killed.

Devil's Dare is hard, but not unfair. If you like, consider it the Dark Souls of beat 'em up games. Continues are hard won, and levels are usually beaten with a fraction of health left. You have to be smart about the perks you choose at the end of each level, particularly towards the end.

I think one of my favorite things about Devil's Dare isn't that it's meta, but that it's meta about being meta, almost like it's mocking itself for referencing what it is. If you get the bad ending (and I did, at first), the game legitimately shames you for being so selfish / bad. It actually made me want to try again and again.

I'm not sure what the solo experience is like, and quite frankly, I'm glad that it doesn't have online multiplayer. Timing / client issues that would happen aside, this is a couch / party type game, and I can't imagine it would have the same feeling / intensity online as it does when you're sitting next to friends, either high-fiving, or going "Ooooooh nooooooo~" with each other.

Lastly... This isn't really a pick up and play type game. If you play this casually, you will probably not have a lot of fun. This is something you sit down with a group of friends and say to yourselves, "Ok, this is what we're going to do. We're going to kick this game's ass, or die trying. Repeatedly." It takes practice, patience, and a bit of dedication to learn how to beat enemies and bosses.

Anywho... It's a good game if you're up for a challenge and are one of those weird people who has friends that can play next to you. Good luck!

I can say that this game is something that will make you cringe when you die.


The game is a mix between rougelike randomness with the upgrades, Permadeath with the fact that if you die and don't have enough to revive yourself or have a soul token to continue your save game is deleted automaticly(wow...what a way to punish you for failing) with the action of beat 'em up games.

I loved playing this game and i can say it's good...the one thing i don't like is the fact that for local play it's set the amount of players for this save and that's it...i would have loved a drop in feature..but I dunno how to it could have been implemented...


The game is worth the money if you need a new beat 'em up the sate you hunger for mindless action.

Hmmm... The game is worth its price (though I got it on sale). I think the content and the gameplay was good and it really takes some strategic thinking to avoid getting hit and to keep your HP healed up. If you're smart about it you can get through the entire game without dying.

There are two things that make me not recommend the game. Controller sensitivity appears to come either too high and you make movements you did not intend resulting in completely different special attacks or that you get stuck on environmental objects. Your character has to stand in place to swing their weapon so stopping to destroy and object when enemies are on your tail can be deadly.

Honestly, what tipped me further into this direction is that I made it all the way to day 9 and was in an elevator level. I got knocked into a environment box and was clipped into the floor then transported back in time to get knocked off the platform and die. I can accept defeat from standing too close to an edge while fighting on normal circumstances but when it looks like I got glitched into that situation is just annoying.

Its an excellent games with a bunch of pros, but a few cons:
Pros:
-fun fast paced arcade action
-easy to learn and fun to pick up
-great controls
-fantastic combo system
-integration of a fair permadeath system
-great soundtrack
-graphics that pay obvious homage to everything great about the 90s
-fun refrences to modern day and retro games
Cons
-somewhat repetitive gameplay
-No online multiplayer

Almighty christ. Here we have Devil's Dare, a beat em' up nostalgic game that has many fun easter eggs hidden within its levels for your viewing.

The overall gameplay is easy and fun to play with. It has set special attack combos for you to read or you can figure them out yourself. Many upgrades for you to choose from and a selection of achievements for you to try and unlock. Also two unlockable characters and two endings.

I believe the game is worth the cost when it's on sale. With only 4 levels that you have to mix and match to defeat every last boss in, it gets kind of repetitive. That aside, I feel the game was well done and was enjoyable for the most part. I haven't 100% the game yet, but plan on to very soon. It's still fun to beat up all those zombies!

For those who like beat em' up games, this is a game surely for you!

So far this game is a pleasure to play. I bit of a learning curve in how to keep going with continues and I will say it would be even better with full controller support. It bugs out sometime during movement. But I can't say that I haven't had fun.

Devil's Dare is a love letter to the 80's and 90's kids who grew up playing classic beat-em-ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon and Turtles in Time. The main twist to the formula is roguelike elements, but it doesn't feel as refined as other games in that genre. Players must acquire money from monsters, objects and kill bonuses, and said currency is used to purchase continues upon death, as well as upgrades at the end of a level. There are four stages to choose from, and the order they are completed in determines both their overall length and the boss fought at the end of the run.

The combat is standard beat-em-up fare with some modern additions. Each character has three special attacks that can be used as long as the SP meter is full, and the standard combo breaker move at the expense of a full SP bar. Dash attacks round out the moveset, and each special attack can be upgraded via post-level purchases. There is also a unique kill bonus mechanic where killing several enemies at once with an SP attack yields money and/or healing items. Mastery of this mechanic is probably what causes the discrepancy on this review page in terms of players saying that the game is too easy or too hard. A player who mastered older beat-em-ups will be able to use those old tactics here to get an abundance of money and healing items, while someone newer to the genre will struggle to get a run past the first level. The combat is nothing innovative for the genre, but all the systems work in conjuction with each other.

Sadly, the roguelike element of this game needs some work. Unlike other games in the genre, there are no unlockable items in this game; everything is unlocked at the start and there isn't a large selection to choose from either. This indirectly means that the game doesn't have as much replay value as the games it will be compred to. Character builds will always end up quite similar regardless of how many times you play through the game, and there's simply not much to do after unlocking both endings aside from achievements. I played this game for three hours and was able to learn the game, unlock both endings and fight all but two of the ending bosses, and there's not much else to see. I feel that it's best purchased during a sale where one wouldn't feel pressured to get tons of hours out of the game, but it's good for a couple runs. Each run is a little over an hour long, so it would probably only take 8-10 hours for the average player to see everything the game has to offer. Multiplayer runs apparently make the game harder since money management comes into play, but your mileage may vary with that as it's local only.

Overall, I don't regret my purchase, but I do wish the game had more to offer. I have already seen 80% of the game's content, and I've also tried out the majority of the items in just two full playthroughs. Check it out during a sale for sure, but don't expect to dump dozens of hours into this game like other roguelikes.

The game kinda feels like a beta, but not. It's enjoyable maybe the first couple of playthroughs but it does get repetitive enough that you probably won't try and get all the 4 different epic boss fights.

The game is somewhat too easy for single player but as more players join the game it becomes less easy because of a budget now for upgrades and the fact that not everyone is on the same skill level.

Things the game needs:
Bigger zombie variety
More traps/environmental hazards
Secret level?
Higher Diffculty settings
Another SP attack or two. (Standard controller comes with 6+ buttons, needs more love.)
Typical secret code to unlock stuff. (Disables achievements of course until the game is reset.)

For what it's worth it gets you some enjoyment for a few hours.

Super fun, side-scrolling, beat'em-up! The nods to video games and horror are fantastic. The perma-death system is unique and really pushes you to play smart and not just rush in to the fight.

Definitely recommend this little gem!

A fun little game, especially for (former) children of the 80's and 90's.
The Pro's:
Great sense of humour
Simple control scheme
Well executed pixel art style
Tying a player's score to their ability to continue is an interesting and engaging mechanic.
Comes with a ticket for the nostalgia train. :D

The Con's:
Still some bugs. I fell off a non-existant ledge in the park level and bounced around for a bit before landing back in the middle of the screen.
No online multi-player, though I'm hoping that gets changed in the next update.