The scoring system is a great improvement form devil daggers. It increases when you kill, and decreases over time. The higher the score, the more enemies will appear. In DD, the waves of enemies were locked behind staying alive for some time, but in Hyper Demon you can ramp up the action very fast if you know what you're doing. There's a lot less grind. Likewise, the game will not throw everything at you if you're having trouble. It still has the small problem of games feeling the same at the beginning, but they're not as dragged out now.

It also adds tutorials, which is appreciated. Go through them once and you know everything there is to know, you have all the tools for beating the game. Whilst with DD I had to look up mechanics in order to know how you're expected to play.

Visuals and sound are aggressive and flashy but they seem more of a hindrance to playing than they actually are. It's not long until you are used to them. Plus, flashes and sound cues are used to warn about enemy attacks, always giving you a chance to dodge; and your dodge slows down time for a bit so you can focus. Usually for me deaths were from being swarmed, by not being fully aware of what was around me, or by failing to kill enough stuff that it overwhelms you.

I wish they had added a bit more to the formula, this feels like a 2.0 of devil daggers which is fine as it does everything better, but I also feel it doesn't do much new.

watching gameplay makes hyper demon look insanely confusing. but once i actually played it, i could tell that it's a very carefully designed game. it's even kind of straightforward, actually. understanding enemy behavior is essentially all you need to be able to parse what's going on in your screen

but this game is still hard as hell, though. it's EXTREMELY fast and an assault on all of your senses. it's also mechanically delicate and complex, despite only having like two bindings that cover everything other than walking.

since you gotta move the mouse literally all the time, i basically can't play this because it makes my fucked up wrist hurt badly. it's a shame though, this game is right up my alley and the eternal arcade high-score grind seems fun to me

Conjuring verbal descriptors of HYPER DEMON's audio/visual design feels wholly inadequate and is more an exercise in indulgent wordsmithing. The official gameplay trailer accurately depicts the video game and it's the best compliment I can give on that front.

HYPER DEMON demands the player execute the coolest way of killing enemies to become measurably better at the video game. The cool way is always quicker and you will need that quickness if you want to see your name hurdle violently up the leaderboard and crash in place one more time.

"Tech" is a neat side-effect of underdeveloped or open-ended video game systems and the best tech is frequently by accident. A video game with sick tech On Purpose necessitating only movement keys and basic mouse inputs? That's one of those cool made up games that I keep in my head when I armchair game-design. The fake games in my head never looked/sounded like the official gameplay trailer for HYPER DEMON though. Thank you to the literal geniuses at Sorath for having the best ideas and the best execution.

The Steam store page for HYPER DEMON contains an advisory for video game addiction and it's well earned.

DEVIL DAGGERS is an insurmountably incredible name however and while I wish HYPER DEMON was half as cool sounding I'll be grateful for what I have.