Devil Daggers

Fridg3

CAG Veteran
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Developer: Sorath
Publisher: Sorath
Rrp: £3.99 (Steam) and £3.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 18th February 2016
Available on Steam and Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard

The room is dark, no light anywhere bar one spot which highlights a dagger, gently bobbing up and down its point never quite touching the floor. 'Touch it' a voice in your head whispers, you would resist but what else is there, either you do as the voice says or you can stay here just watching it spin on its point... forever. You touch the blade and suddenly its gone, the room lights up slightly and all is silent. Seconds pass and suddenly a organic sound appears as some ghastly apparition comes into view. It's time to fight!

Devil Daggers is an FPS. A wonderful, fast paced, claustrophobic, difficult and a little bit habit forming FPS. You play, well... you. A hand is in the centre of the screen and that is your weapon, that's about it. Kill the monsters, collect the gems and try to survive.

https://youtu.be/nE63e6AHE1A

The controls will be familiar to anyone who has played a FPS before, holding the [Left Mouse Button] fires a stead stream of projectiles, [W,A,S,D] to move and [Space] jumps. All standard fare, the only minor difference is that hammering the [Left Mouse Button] will act as a shotgun blast and that the [Right Mouse Button] fires a homing shot which will only be activated once you've collected ten gems.

This is a game where your play times between deaths aren't measured in hours or minutes but seconds. If you manage to breach the two mintue mark then you, my friend, are among an elite few.

The strange thing about Devil Daggers is that it's completely scripted. The enemies will spawn at exactly the same time regardless of how many times you play. Not always in the same place, mind you, but at the same time definitely. This means you may be able to claw out an extra few seconds just by making note of when the next monster will appear, if you can keep track.

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It's addicitive. You die, respawn, die respawn, die, respawn, again, again, again... Eventually it all becomes a blur, you barely remember pressing the retry button. The load times are near to none existant so all your little sessions begin to merge into one and keep you in that moment of excitement and fear.

If I have an issue with the game its that very little is actually explained. You never get told why getting the gems is good, its only through several playthroughs and a little guess work that you work out what they do (unless you read a wiki about it, of course).

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Graphically this game isn't much to speak of, but then it isn't designed to be pretty, you aren't going to spending long looking at the enemies attacking you, not if you want to live long.

What really makes the game for me is the sound design, the meaty chewing sounds you hear when you die, the organic sickly sounds of creatures appearing and attacking, all of it designed to put you on edge.

Its clear that this game is inspired by the FPS's of the nineties such as Quake, this game succeeds in emulating some of the thrill and adrenaline that many 'retro inspired' games fail to grasp. But I know this game isn't going to be many peoples cup of tea. If you like a difficult game that requires pure skill, then this may just be the right choice for you.

If this appeals to you perhaps try;

Tower of Guns

Unreal Tournament

Quake

 
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