It's a game of few individual elements but of many moving parts. In fact, cues isn't the right word – the sounds are constant, shifting around the gamespace as the creatures flow through it in waves. You could almost play the game with your eyes closed (keep in mind, this is coming from someone who can barely play the game with his eyes open), tracking enemies by listening for their audio cues. Horned hunter-skull pursuing at the rear? Repetitive laughter like a crypt's cough on the back of your neck. Giant centipedal terrors approaching from the left? You'll hear a sound like a fingerbone tapping and scraping at the inside of your skull. Visually, it's a horrorshow of grotesque skittering nightmares, but the audio is the star of the show.Įverything that moves makes an appropriate sound. When I first saw that trailer, I wasn't convinced the aesthetic qualities would translate into an enjoyable or legible experience. It lasts about as long as I do when I jump into the infernal arena. You may have seen it already but watch it one more time. These are the things that I understand rather than the dark secrets that are my undoing.įirst of all, I need you to look at this video. I can't pick apart the more eldritch horrors of Devil Daggers but I can tell you about some of the things that are definitely 100% A+ good. Alice has topped two minutes, which leads me to believe she has sold her soul to the devil daggers. That's survival time for an entire playthrough, which is also the metric by which the game ranks players on its leaderboard. It's an arena of grinding bones and rattling insectoid limbs that I experience in 30-60 second bursts.

Devil daggers skull