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.