The best way I can explain the difference between Devil Daggers and its unexpected sequel compared to another pair of goth-o-ramas: Devil Daggers are Dark Souls to Super Devilby Bloodborne. Both first-person score attack shooters sport the same beautiful skullcaps and gurgling industrial sound scenes, but while Devil Daggers pushes you to survive cautiously , then Hyper Demon pushes you into aggression. In Hyper Demon, a long, cautious run will likely score lower than a short burst of violence. What a glorious violence that is!
When I first saw the Hyper Demon trailer, I felt excited, surprised, and scared. Here’s the important thing to realize: the confusing and confusing violence you see in that trailer is really what the game looks like. That’s how it feels to play.
I’m glad 2016’s best game has been followed by 2022’s best. Many of its skulls have crystal makeup, sparkle like citrine, and break the spectrum into rainbow highlights. Devil Daggers meet Skating story. And when the action kicks in and the screen becomes a fish-eye view of unpredictable violence navigated by sound and intuition rather than sight, my goodness! Screenshot could not be taken.
Hyper Demon has the same setting as Our favorite game of 2016: you’re standing on a barren plane in a void where floating skulls and other horrifying skeletons will appear to retrieve ghosts, a variety of spirits with different behaviors. Bone pillars littered with swarm of tiny skulls, bony snakes twisted and charged at you before retreating into defensive coils, horses drifting across the sky, giant monsters greedy lam attract power-up gems towards their many parrots, etc. You will die if even one person touches you but luckily your hand shoots evil knives. In both, you dodge, shoot, get gems to gain more powerful attacks and just try to score a good point.
In Devil Daggers you are there to survive as long as possible, the timer acts as your score. In Hyper Demon, the timer works against you, your score dwindling with each passing millisecond (even down to negative). Murder is what gets you points here. Lots of kills, and fast, fast enough to beat the clock. Hyper Demon puts you on the offensive. The faster you kill people, the faster enemies appear, the harder it gets — but the greater your potential output of violence.
You are encouraged to immediately jump into action with new possibilities and opportunities. An evasive move works much like Bayonetta’s Witch Time, providing a burst of slow motion if you hit the void when a nearby enemy’s eye glows. You can now follow the ‘dagger jump’ (look down and shoot to launch upwards, like a rocket jump) with a stomp down leaving enemies more vulnerable to damage. An annoying teleported enemy can be lured down to its small legs and chase you. You can also glide in the air, glide and slide to close distances. Power-ups and skill-filled kills also put the game in slow motion. Hyper Demon always wants you to lie deep in the bone zone.
In Devil Daggers, there’s a point in a run where I, as a mid-range player (my best time is 283 seconds), know that a run is lost. All I could do after that was run and dodge in hopes of surviving a few more seconds. At the most stressful time, I focused on running away. Hyper Demon forces me to fight against it. With the clock eating into my score, it’s better to fight than run out of time. Who knows, maybe I’ll survive! At the most stressful time, when hope is slim, I put all my energy into the game and push back. It was a good turning point.
The game even offers a rearview mirror to increase spatial awareness. Enemies close behind will appear on screen in front of you as a translucent crimson reflection. I was amazed how quickly this felt natural, not to mention priceless. Of course, I still recommend using headphones to understand the reflected sound of the battlefield, not to mention to enjoy the horrible noise.
The Hyper Demon sounds great again. It has a few (good) composed pieces but mostly it fills your ears with a striking soundtrack of weird ambient industry formed from dagger sputters and groans, rumblings and screams and wails of the enemy. It all sounded so good that after dying in intense runs, while I took a breather to strengthen my constitution, I happily changed my cards and continued to listen to the creatures around my body. It’s a real mood. I mean, the mood is mostly fear. But it’s scary!
Here’s the problem: I’m pretty bad with Hyper Demon and the improvement isn’t intuitive. It’s guided, offering 13 short playable bits that introduce key aspects of movement, monsters, and murder in a controlled environment. But there’s a huge gap between learning the tutorial’s lessons and learning the process of a truly successful run. Practicing movements, tricks, and often aggression is a process of throwing yourself against the wall of reality over and over again. While I’ll never improve without testing, audacity can get tiresome when failure leads to a reboot. It’s just that kind of game.
Even more so than Devil Daggers, playing Hyper Demon is having to pass a murder trial full of failure. I understand many people will find that extremely effective, and I understand that. I’m persevering because I already understand what Hyper Demon can be, and I want to achieve it even more.
In my best runs, I got to the point where near-permanent slow motion started, the field of view was pulled out, the audio was muffled, and the screen filled with wild effects when I turned it on. up and explode, dash and dodge. I stopped looking and thought no more, and became the conduit for instinctive murder. It’s the game I’m fighting to see more of.
It has an ending, you know. You can defeat a final boss and finish this game. It’s an achievement for that. I suspect that most players will never reach the end. I doubt I will. But the satisfaction comes in pushing myself to do better, commit wild and outrageous acts of violence, and beat my Steam friends on the leaderboards.
Speaking of leaderboards, Hyper Demon brings a great Devil Daggers feature: watch replays of other players’ runs directly from the leaderboard. I really enjoy seeing what the best managers do, although I can barely understand their moves even with the playback speed down. Hyper Demon also allows players to record runs, like Twitch clips, that people can watch in-game or as a video on its website. So great.
Even though I’m inferior to Hyper Demon now, but I want to become okay with time. Or at least, I want to go back to the best of former RPS youth resident Matt Cox. I can hardly wait for him to grow old and wither like me. He will see. Memento mori, Matthew. Admire the skulls.
Back to that questionable opening comparison. Like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon may look similar at a glance but the differences are enough to make it an exciting new experience.
