First Game "Devil Daggers"
And the First game, I'll take a look is...
Drumroll please!
Devil Daggers from Sorath
https://devildaggers.com/
Playing the GOG Version
Playtime: 1 hour (played it years before, but will come to 2 hours)
(There is a TL;DR about the Game at the end)
The Devs
Sorath is/was an australian development team, who made the game 2016. As a testament for hardcore gamers, because this game is hard. It was well received and Sorath made another, it seems in the same vein, shooter named HYPER DEMON in 2022. Afterwards it's pretty silent about them.
The Game
The Atmosphere is the first thing you will notice, that is helping the game a lot (I'll add pictures, when I figure it out how).
The oppressing darkness with the graphic reminiscent of early 2000's FPS as the light dims when you walk across the arena. You hear the scattering of skeleton skulls and in the shadows you see the growing of a tentacle tree with a red crystal shining, while it spews skulls towards you.
This is great, I feel fear of the shadows and I feel how this magnificent sound design of Eugene Nesci aka Eugnosis want to make me vomit (in a good way) of loneliness, droning and oppression.
I start firing projectiles out my glowing hands in rapid fire mode if I hold the mouse button or in grape shots, if I click it every time. Adrenaline rushes through me, as the skulls getting nearer and I must flee from the ground where I stand, and fall towards my doom.
I re-awake and pushing through again. To the tree, killing the flying skulls and the horned skull, how follows me while I aiming for the red crystals. The tree falls apart, leaving only the red gem behind and I claimed my price. As I pick it up, the area around me lightens a little up, pushing darkness a little away from me. But on the edge of my view I see more trees growing, more skulls. I move and I move, shooting.\
Dying again.
This is fun, this is challenging, I die, I live, I fall to the darkness, I live, I kill skulls and trees and I die.
And then it starts getting tedious. If you forget to bash a skull it will circle around you and will bash you. And as there is no health bar, this is instant death. And you realise, this is a game about crowd control. More enemies spawn, spider things, where you see mostly their eyes glowing, are shooting from outside the arena, you have to shoot back. But the trees spawning and spewing, the skulls are flying and the horned skulls looking for you. And then you die, because you didn't saw a skull behind you, the spider behind you shot you in the back.
You get a new dagger, which I feel, didn't do much.
And then I stopped playing.
TL;DR
This game is a Bullet Hell in First Person with Instant Death. It is fun, it's atmosphere is great and I really appreciate the art style of low pixel 3D. But then again, you die. That is not a problem as a rogue-like fan, but it's getting silly, when it borders to unfair and tedious. It's the core design philosophy, which in this way works well, but it overstays it's welcome for this with my time.
The Album
Slayer's "Reign in Blood" works really well, as I also encircles this darkness with the cover and the music. But they knew, that 28 mins are enough.
Will probably make an extra post about it