I have to unpack a few things right off the bat, here.

So, this is an example where Steam's review system is utterly failing this review.

In short, what I want to submit is a positive review, but not exactly a recommendation - I don't think this game is for everybody, and by a long stretch. More on that in a minute. For now, take this line for my score instead of the big ugly, unclear thumbs down.

Key to the problem, here, the aggregate "Overwhelmingly Positive" score could be misleading in a way. I'd wager that the average score of reviews here would deduce to about 7.5, where "Overwhelmingly Positive", in many review contexts, implies a 9 or 10 score. I couldn't say it's that good. 7.5 or 8 is about what I'd honor the game. People are just forced, in this situation, to choose in a binary of yea or nay, and they're correctly displaying their approval, given that.
I wouldn't choose a "neutral" option if I could, as I don't think that's really the answer I'm looking for, here, either.

Now, let's discuss the game.

Devil Daggers is an extremely simple and straightforward first person shooter. Straightforward to the point that they correctly didn't bother with any kind of tutorial. Simple in mostly very welcome and refreshing ways.

You are not playing for any measure of permanent progress. You die, you start over cold from the beginning enemy, nothing to ever be gained or lost. The only return the game gives you is your best run's position in a global leaderboard, whatever that may be worth to you. The game is entirely balanced on your level of skill in playing it, and it definitely requires some skill to get anywhere. Thus, the large majority of players will likely never even get to see all of the 13 enemy types in the game. I will readily admit that I'm not good enough to be great at this game. Oh, well, yeah?

You play in an arena whose only features are a floor and darkness beyond the radius of your vision. This is the only area of any sort in the game - you'll be playing every run in the same place. To my knowledge, it never even changes in look. To note, the floor does have an edge that you can fall off of, thus another source of possible death.
You will die a lot, and frequently. It's a one-hit-death arcade style game with a constant horde of enemies, no way of augmenting for more health or deflecting taken damage. Do or die, unwaveringly, always.

You start by picking up a dagger, which sets the game in motion. There is no story, backdrop, or framework of any sort. You just shoot everything that isn't your hand. I was perfectly happy with this.

Regarding shooting, the game keeps everything blissfully simple. No ammo, and no switching weapons. To have included either of those things would compromise players way too much in what is essentially bullet-hell style gameplay. You have a rapid stream fire that you operate by holding down your left mouse button, and a shotgun type blast shot that you use by just tapping the same button. This scheme works perfectly, allowing you to change shots on the fly. This little dynamic is my favorite thing about the game. You gather diamond things dropped by certain enemies and occasionally your shots heighten into a more powerful, tint-the-screen-neon-nutbars-mode.

The game has flawless control. You know where everything is on the keyboard right now. You don't need to do any thinking about controls, and the bare necessities of running, shooting, and jumping are the only necessities. This is easily one of the most responsive games I've ever played, and critically well that it is - the game would be an indefensible disaster if it played any less smoothly.
The game also runs buttery smooth, extremely light on the system. I never encountered any bugs or even the slightest hiccup in performance. I think you could run the game on a Commodore on its last legs.

The game has the right sense of challenge. It's difficult - in fact, it gets very difficult, rather quickly in the sequence, and it's practically unforgiving to new players. But, it's never cheap. Any frustration won't come from unclear mechanics or wonkiness with the mechanics. It'll be your fault, every time, even with the deck clearly stacked horribly against you. This kind of challenge either hits your tastebuds like chocolate or athlete's foot.

As for that stacked deck, the enemies spawn in the exact same sequence every run played. Some reviews have claimed that they even spawn in the same locations, but I didn't try to track that, myself. All of the enemies that I've seen display extremely simple AI and rudimentary behavior patterns, and the challenge comes not from dealing with any one of them, but with so very many at once, in unrelenting waves. I suppose this all works in one way, making the game something like a shmup to play, which conventionally have set patterns of mobs. You definitely memorize the sequence of enemies for your benefit, as any distance you can gain ahead of the game's programmed timetable of enemies is a huge help. I'm not sure that I cared for this aspect, and it was the first that gave me a feeling that this game is perhaps kind of empty. Fun, to be absolutely sure, but perhaps empty.

Edit: A comment drew my attention to a very valid point about the consistent sequence of enemies - having a set pattern to the spawns in the game does make every run perfectly fair and even for score, and thus leaderboard, concerns. You get the same exact challenge as everyone else, every time. This is a valid point, and I think it also further helps you to decide if this leaderboard focus makes it a game for you or not.

I could have rated this game a solid letter grade better had the enemies been fewer, but more dynamically challenging, or if there'd been a game mode beyond the simple survival.

Do I need to say anything about the visuals? I absolutely love the somewhat antiquated Quake/gothic hell look.

The audio is nearly on par with the visuals, and actually provide gameplay help as you'll follow the eerie groans of enemies to find them in the dark. I love all the sounds and the sound design. Oddly, there's no music to speak of in the game, but I suppose music could've swallowed the enemy spawn signal sounds. Not a major loss, in any event.

And, that's all there is to it. What it is is mostly very good. It's just not enough, in my take. I found myself absolutely in love with the way it plays and runs under the hood, just not the game in front of that. I just didn't care about repeating the exact same sequence of many, many, many shallow enemies to break the leaderboard, just to see all the things the game even has to show me. I'd love for the developers to take the user end of this game and put it to use in a more involved and involving experience. You know if you're in the same boat.

Hell? Naaaah, I've been in hell on many games at this point.

This is DevilDaggers, boy.

This is much worse.

Much more cruel.

What a Amazing different game ! Man this game is real cool and can be hard as nails lol The game looks as if its something out of the early 90s or even late 80s. But the game pulls this look off in a Doom inspired way and feel . Just goes to show that you don't need eye poping visuals to make a real good game, though i love the way this game looks.

The controls are basic FPS so they are Jump , Left , Right , Up and Down. So if you play any FPS games you will pick them up fast. The neat thing is the so called gun is the stuff shooting out your fingers ! They have 2 modes Spray and Shot Gun witch is controled by the Mouse 1 button witch is pretty neat. Hold for Spray and Tap for shot gun !

The koolest thing is if you look at the scoreboard and you see that eye ( 0 ) icon next to the score you can watch other people's or friend's Replay's that the score came from! So you can watch how they achieved the score. They also added in a recent patch a Over the Top View also by hitting M when watching a replay , Witch to me looks neat as all heck !

If you love or like FPS games Devil Daggers should without a doubt be in your collection ! Bigtime if you are a DOOM fan ! I give this one 2 Thumbs up with red crap coming out my fingers lol Check it out !!!!

El infierno nunca fue tan divertido hasta que llego Devil Daggers

Este es uno de esos juegos que moris moris y moris intentando masacrar bichos, el unico objetivo
es tratar de sobrevivir lo mas que puedas para medirte el pito con tus amigos para ver
quien tiene mas puntaje.

10/10

I've been contemplating getting my hands on Devil Daggers for quite some time now, but due to the fact I am a person with too many games on my plate, I've been constantly delaying that purchase. That's where Humble Bundle comes in. Devil Daggers is included in the new bundle in 1$ tier, so this is one of those premature reviews to warn you about good games on sale.

The concept of the game is simple - survive for as long as possible in circle arena with no walls, ability to fall of the ledge and swarms of enemies coming at you relentlessly from the get-go. There are no fancy meters, no various multimode weapons. You kill different beasts, gather gems, your shooting dagger gets upgraded.

Esentially, Devil Daggers is a game of skill which guarantees you will get better the more you play it, but it will mercilessly kill you two seconds in the game if you don't move your ♥♥♥. It's not forgiving any mistakes at all. Call it a bullethell/90's shooter crossover, it feels like someone fitted you with Quake's nail gun in world of Contra. Everything about the gameplay is over the top, but I like how developers integrated strategy into a chaos. At first you will shoot at everything as fast as possible, but later you'll learn it's much more important to move precisely if you want to beat your and Steam's players hi-scores.

The game's been created using a custom engine with 90's inspired sprites that fit the theme perfectly. Hellish creatures are work of nightmares, a good mixture of different horror cliches and are always fun to blast. Physics are somewhat awkward to newcomers, but after only half an hour, you'll understand how to become even better at aiming without wasting (unlimited) ammo. Sound design follows the ideas of video prett close and the noise is fitting.

As far as it goes for replayability, Devil Daggers is simple, addictive, I dare calling it an ultimate FPS arcade game. It's beyond simple actually, and while I appreciate that, I would certainly love some kind of mutators, different maps, mods or challenges. Nothing fancy, just a spin on a basic idea of empty arena.

You don't need more than an hour to see everything in game that's meant to be seen mechanics-wise. It's fun little game that will see me returning to it whenever I'm in need of some brainless fun. Top score for a buck.

***

Hey, you've liked this review? Hated it? It made you buy the game / abandon the idea of buying this game? Super awesome! Share the love and join the group here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/libereviews Follow the curator's page here: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10953338/

First off, extra kudos for the Linux build that works out of the box!

There are so many details about this game that keep me playing over and over, I'll do my best to list some of them.

The visuals are reminiscent of Quake 1, polygons seem to twitch around as if they can’t be contained, textures shift slightly as if it’s hiding something else. These minor details of 90’s 3D simply add to the vague details where you’re not quite fully sure of what exactly is in front of you. Your brain fills in the details with nightmarish extras where you don’t want to know what it is, but natural human curiosity demands that you must know, no matter the cost.

On the gameplay side of things it’s straight forward and simple.
Moving/jumping around is smooth and there isn’t any time where I get skull’ed and feel like it was the controls fault, everything you do is on you.
Shooting is a mixture of rapid and burst fire. While I don’t have it fully nailed down yet, there is a learning curve on how to use both effectively in whatever situation is before you.

Sounds, oh my the sounds. I find every sound that is in the game is in there for a reason to inform you about some horror coming your way. At no point do I feel my ears are getting overloaded and I’m always able to keep track of whats coming from where.
There isn’t any music and I’m very ok with that, music might over do it and then make it hard to keep track of whats going on. If I’m ever in the mood I’ll que up my own music.

This is AWESOME !!!!

Like a super-concentrated shot of the best moments of quake 1 singleplayer, reduced to just a couple of minutes of play.

One of the best examples of how a game doesn't have to be extremely long or complex to be good. Controls and presentation are well polished while keeping with the 90s FPS style. I recommend it for fans of classic FPS games who don't have time to be on the lookout for new maps and already played all the missions of doom and quake; here you'll have enough replayability due to the variations in enemy spawning and behavior even if the level is always the same.

I will never, ever get the achievement for this game. I will try and try and try, though.

For those of us who grew up with the earlier games - when core game play mechanics were about doing only a handful of things but doing them very, very well - this is a great homage to yesteryear. It is not for everyone, and the point of the game is to play until the game beats you, as you cannot beat it.

Welcome to hell.

Good cardio.