Topic: Devil Daggers

[Quemaqua]

Like Quake? Like original Doom? This isn't either of those, really, but sort of a distilled, difficult, hyperspeed version condensed in a quick-restart format sort of like Super Meat Boy. It's rendered in software at low resolution and looks fucking fantastic, and the sound design is perfection.

You have one weapon that can be fired two ways, can run and jump, and have to battle endless waves of demonic things in the dark of a floating abyssal island. You don't have rockets, but you can essentially rocket-jump, and there's Quake 3-style bunnyhopping. You can get hit once. There is no story, there is no score, you just survive as long as you can. World record is 8 minutes. My record is 55 seconds.

It's AWESOME.

http://devildaggers.com
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/18/devil-daggers-review/

EDIT - 163 seconds! I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack.

EDIT x2 - 172. Getting there was a beautiful nightmare. This game is something else. I'm not alone in thinking so: http://www.destructoid.com/review-devil-daggers-343136.phtml

EDIT x3 - 205. I'm #61 in the world.

[Quemaqua]

So I'm bumping this because ... well, because I can. So there.

I wrote a review for PopOptiq (coincidentally, my first job as a freelancer):
http://www.popoptiq.com/devil-daggers-suffering-in-seconds/
I also streamed the game for 13 people on Twitch earlier and jabbered about it a while:
https://youtu.be/If-_dPz1xWg

[Quemaqua]

https://twitter.com/Quemaqua/status/707395021654269952

COME ON, YOU FUCKERS. SOMEONE CHALLENGE ME

[gpw11]

I would but I can already tell it's totally not my thing.

[Quemaqua]

Stop making me sad.

I got 339 seconds last night. Rank 298. I love this game.

EDIT - Another episode of me playing this bullshit. I love this game real hard. If you stick with it for the first 15-ish minutes, you'll see the best run I recorded in this session. I've since increased my score by 100 seconds, but haven't recorded anything for a while and haven't had a lot of time to play.

[Quemaqua]

New free update! Two, or maybe 3 new enemies! New progression and associated leaderboard! New self-loathing!

I love this game so much. It's like three bucks and change on sale right now, and also comes with a 4-track OST.

I believe my final best time in the first progression was 380 seconds (and he's added a beta track in case you still want to play that, which is cool). I've managed 310 in the new one. Rank 89 of 5,200. Come get on my friends leaderboard!

EDIT - Something written up by one of the new writers at GoombaStomp: http://www.goombastomp.com/indie-games-2/forgotten-indie-gem-devil-daggers/

[W7RE]

I knew when I first saw this game that it wouldn't be my thing, because it's got literally zero level design. Just a big open arena with a poor draw distance. I bought it during the Halloween sale, because it was $3 so why not? Instant regret. I actually thought about refunding it, but decided maybe I should give it another shot, and it was only $3 anyway. I jumped back on a couple of times over the next few days, but still was met with only frustration. I quickly forgot about it because I just wasn't having any fun at all.

Fast forward 3 months to now. A friend told me to check out Atomic 79, and it instantly felt like a poorly made version of Devil Daggers. So I thought I'd jump back on DD and get a taste of the real thing. Apparently in the last 3 months I'd forgotten about all that frustration, and now I see it again. I guess I'm supposed to be bunny hopping and/or rocket jumping, neither of which I've ever really gotten the hang of. No level design, almost no animation work at all, weak sounding weapon, invisible ledges for you to fall off of. If it had cool looking/sounding weapons and enemies it would be easier to get into I think, but it's just floating objects moving toward you and an really inaccurate gun with no crosshair. I'm not even sure what I'm shooting. Are they daggers? They look like shotgun shell casings. I guess I'm supposed to be going for high scores? I never really got that, what difference does it make if some guy lived 2 seconds longer than me?

[Quemaqua]

Jesus Christ is this not the game for you. This is one of the most precise and precisely developed games I've ever played. "No level design" couldn't be further from the truth. It may not be architectural, but every spawn is calculated to an exacting degree. This is lost on most people because they play it for 10 minutes and never look at it again. I've put over 100 hours into it.

[W7RE]

The level is a big square with no walls. Enemy timing and placement is what I would call encounter design, not level design. In Doom 2016 you enter a large arena, and enemies spawn. Once you've killed enough, or enough time has passed, more spawn. That's the same as Devil Daggers, but withing a more complicated arena, and as just a section of the level. If you want to boil everything down to just enemies in a room, that's fine, but I don't feel like the enemies and weapon are well done enough to keep slamming my head against the wall until I'm having fun.

I could also go on a whole rant about rocket jumping, strafe jumping, and bunny hopping and shit. I don't think I've ever been any to do any that right. I can rocket jump straight up to get more height, but I've never been able to use it to gain horizontal speed. This is probably why I spend so much more time in Unreal MP than Quake back in the day. Unreal didn't have rocket jumping, and I don't think it had strafe jumping either.

[Quemaqua]

Hence why I say this game is super duper not for you. I always found UT to be paper thin compared to Quake, despite the fact it was more robust from a design standpoint. But it lost because of character movement. I enjoyed later entries in the series, especially UT3, but back in the day movement was king (and later UT games tried to make up for it by adding some of their own nuances in that regard). If you've never been able to rocket jump, bunnyhop, strafe jump, etc., there's little chance you'll be able to appreciate any of Devil Daggers's design nuances, because at least some of that stuff (and certainly the ability to move well) is required to survive consistently enough to even notice them. I call it level design because the placement and movement of the spawners is important. They move in very specific ways, which constantly reimagines the layout of the arena. Once you've played for 30-40 hours and have begun to master gem farming, this becomes much more noticeable. I imagine you're still trying to kill spawners as fast as possible, which is what most people do for a good while until they understand the game better.

[W7RE]

I was prioritizing spawners for a while, but realized that it didn't keep me from being chased down by skulls. So I tried prioritizing skulls, but without killing the spawners there's a lot of them, and they move faster than me.  It looks like my best time is 73 seconds, but all my recent runs are 40-50 seconds.

The main issue I have with this game is that the aesthetic is interesting, so I want to play it. But I guess you're right in that it's just not for me. I've never enjoyed games that are hard just for the sake of challenge, and leaderboards mean very little to me.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, this is targeted squarely at people like me, who played old-school games in the Quake era, love difficult challenges, and consider skill to be king. My ranking has dropped significantly from its height, when fewer people were playing, but I'm still way up there percentage-wise. That is very gratifying to me. My high score on this version of the game is, I think, 314 seconds, which leaves me in the top 1.12%. I've still yet to reach the "final boss" and the end of the spawn progression.