Devil Daggers

BLAST MUSIC TO THIS BLAST MUSIC

hell yeah.

I'm going to hedge this Not Recommended with this: I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who enjoys grinding/improving and being a completionist (within reason). If you don't care about getting the achievement, you will likely like this game if you want an arena survival shooter. This game does that, on a game play level, very well. Likely one of the best on the market on a game play level. If you don't care about the achievement but enjoy improving in games, this game also provides a rewarding feeling of progression and accomplishment. It's kinda like feeling yourself improve while playing the new DOOM games. It's very rewarding, but unfortunately addictive. If you do care about the achievement though, get ready for quite the grind, and one that loses a lot of enjoyment after the first 25 hours. Once you consistently start reaching the 200 second mark, having to restart just to grind back to that mark to get meaningful practice is incredibly draining. I'm really feeling that, especially in the post 400 second territory. Each run is long, and dying to something that feels unfair 5 minutes in feels so insulting. This issue would be mitigated if there was a save state system, but there is not unfortunately (there's supposedly one you can download from GitHub that's community made, but that's a community fix to a problem the game has, so I'm not including that for this review).

Here's my biggest issues:
1. I have so many questions for whoever decided to put the fire modes on the same button with an input delay to delineate between the firing modes. Why? Just put the fire modes on left and right and click and homing daggers on mouse 3 or Q and make the firing instant. I've died countless times while turning to shoot a laughing skull, clicking, getting dead air because the game was needing to decide what my input was (ie, no daggers were shot), and then dying because no projectiles came out to kill the target even though I clicked. That just feels awful every time it happens, and while the answer is don't wind up in situations like that, in a game meant to make you feel like you're barely alive the entire time, those situations will arise and responsive controls should be paramount.
2. Enemies can go through each other. It's rare due to pathing, but getting blindsided pull a skull through a pillar feels awful when it does happen.
3. Sound is good, but not perfect. Especially with laughing skulls, sometimes they sound right behind me and aren't, but more egregiously, sometimes they sound across the arena but are actually in striking distance, or make no noise all together. Really frustrating.
4. No training/checkpoint mode. Maybe I've been made much more soft thanks to modern training modes in other games, but this game lacking one sucks for long term improvement and practice. I wish I could train the different waves and then try a real run to unlock the next set of training waves and the achievement.
5. Spiders being able to attract stuff while ducked is really dumb (happens periodically if the initial volley fails to kill). Feels incredibly unfair.

I'm planning to keep going to get the achievement, and may update when I get it. Mechanically, this game is solid and I'm sure many will enjoy it. I still do, although play sessions are turning more into rage fests than actually enjoyment sadly. The reverse spreed running feel it has is really cool. The lack of respect for the player's time though hurts (and games don't have to respect a player's time. I personally prefer one's that at least pretend to). If you want a high skill game that'll likely take a 100-200 hours to "beat" and provides an essentially endless grind with a leader board system to challenge one to improve beyond "beating the game", this will definitely fulfill that. The game is certainly solid on a game play level, but if you're wired for achievements like me, I wouldn't recommend this unless you like games that require a huge amount of time and repetition. I'm definitely resenting a fair amount of my time investment at this point.

harder than johnny sins on viagra

Clean, simple, and fun

It is mindless fun

the higher my score gets, the higher my bloodpressure and pulse gets

The only reason I'm not suggesting this game is because of the retro 8 bit graphics aesthetic and distorted sound aesthetic, both of these aesthetic choices are very annoying as they used to be the limitations of humanity. Now if you have one arm and other people thinks it's cool and not painful to work with only one arm, not my problem. But yes everything is as advertised and my eyes definitely hurt.

Edit: BTW I will play this game whenever I feel like a masochist.

Simple but very immersive. Can't imagine the effort it must have taken to make such a tight and fun game. it's frustrating but every time I die I find new ways to get better. And beating my high score is just that much more fun.

An amazing game. It's challenging, I would enjoy it more as an RPG. Imagine Devil Daggers as UT2K4 Invasion... There's no chance I can get the achievement.

Very simple yet extremely hard, but enjoyable

Ah yes, time to suffer

bussin'

Not my kind of game, but I understand how this would be awesome for some.

Yeah pretty pawsome game =￣ω￣=

That perfect scrape is like heroin. 10/10, would throw my mouse out the window again

great fps with basically infinite replayability

Kid named Finger

worst game ever

sucks ass

this game is hard as fuck

Boing boing boing boing.

Everytime I get obliterated, I do 10 crunches.

Fun and straightforward... I suck at this game so bad

consider my dagger devilled

Delightfully Devilish.

Overwhelmingly positive reviews? I don't get it. This is a simple arena shooter that is extremely dark/hard to see anything and overly difficult to the point where getting further than a few minutes into a run is a feat. Maybe it's one of those games that once you put in 100+ hours and become advanced/expert it gets a lot more fun? I'm an expert gamer and Devil Daggers is still extremely difficult for me. I got it on sale for 99 cents and recommend that you wait for a sale as well... only buy this game if you want an extreme challenge and enjoy arena shooters.

I hope that someday this idea will be taken as the foundation for an open-world game. It would be a great celebration for me. I really enjoy this atmosphere.

Dope

10/10
The characters' premise fits my needs of perspective.
This might not mean anything, and I apologize if this isn't misleading.
I don't leave bad reviews, all efforts are a perfect score.

Exhilarating

Looks like a simple game but not. Lots of things need to be explored to be good at this game. You'll get addicted.

Best shooter.

too many cheaters in this game
I whatched demo of " Real Deaf Gamer " and its totaly AI playing .
And i googleD "cheats for devil daggers" and found at least 3 trainers.
I whatched another demo of " Josh Backer from Ohio " and on ~502sec he went throw the Centipede.
only 1306 players could pass 500sec achivment and ~40% of them cheaters or smurfs.

Don't let my playtime fool you, I've only seen the first 8 minutes of this game.

the design is very human

Bite-sized but brilliant.

It's perfect. Pattern memory, skill, and coping with failure. Fun to chase up the leaderboards. And it starts up quick and shuts down quick so you're never doing anything but the game. perfect.

honestly one of the best games ive ever played.
did i mention zort yet?

this is where they're putting my ass after i die

funky lil game that shows you something you will never accomplish and then doesn't let you leave until you do

Good game

You HAVE to be on some kind of stimulants to be good at this

good

this game is about 8 minutes long

Unique art style, just like Ps2 games, a bit hard but still worth it.

GOATED

good

It's pretty good, but...
Hyper Demon is better

Easy to pick up, insanely difficult to master. Simple concept, lots of fun + depth, massive skill ceiling. But becomes more painful the better you get.

10/10 worth buying if you like a challenge!