The singular design of Devil Daggers proves determinism is all you need

You’ll be sweating daggers

The second run at Devil Daggers will be a make or break moment for most folks. You'll have likely come off a death occurring within the first minute or so, which would've pushed you back to the main menu screen, and you’ll have nothing to show for it. The second attempt is where you'll realize it's the exact same experience. Devil Daggers could be described in some ways as run-based game, a style which has ballooned in popularity in recent years. It is played in (very) short bursts, your abilities don't carry over from run to run, and the game is ultimately very selective in its core mechanics. Where it eschews this popular style is that each run is nearly identical to each other in terms of content.

The first run at Devil Daggers will likely impress upon you that the game is built on incredible fundamentals. Its first person movement is most analogous to Quake and includes some neat tricks of the era such as bunny hopping and rocket jumping. The actual shooting you'll do in the game is likewise very solid. Your weapon, the eponymous Devil Dagger, is a rapidly firing projectile weapon, the projectile aspect being key for the rest of the game's balance. Enemies do not fire back, a fairly unique design choice, which means you'll be more focused on positioning and aiming and wont need to worry so much about dodging or finding cover from attacks. This also means the game can be played in a completely flat arena without disadvantaging the player. This plane makes it easier to have nearly complete visual information, depending on where you look, meaning there should be very little to surprise you. It adds up to an experience that feels incredibly balanced, fun, and one focused on making the player feel responsible for their failures.

In Devil Daggers, the deaths come quick. It should be telling the game is measured in seconds, not minutes. The game has a single achievement for surviving 500 seconds. As of this writing only 641 out of the 277,789 players on the leaderboards have earned this. When you start reliably surviving your first 60 seconds it'll feel like an accomplishment. The quickness of a run is complemented nicely by the instant restart. Slapping the 'R' key will place you back at the beginning and will even skip the opening moment when starting fresh from the main menu where you collect the Devil Dagger. It's a hard game, you're not meant to last long and the rapidness with which you can burn through runs means you'll quickly become familiar with your failure points. However, when combined with its fundamentals it's also incredibly addictive cycle of learning, quickly becoming a 'just one more round' experience.

That second run is where the experience will start to shift in your favor though. The runs in Devil Daggers are deterministic, they play almost identically and can thus be learned. The exact same enemies will spawn at the exact same time for every run. Placement may be varied, but it appears that enemies relative positions to one another are consistent (for instance: a spawn set of 3 enemies will always have the same 2 grouped close to one another across the arena from the 3rd type of enemy). While it would be easy to cry foul that the game is not repayable as the experience will be identical each run, that's also the point. The joy comes in mastering the single experience the game provides. You'll soon learn the exact timings of each set of enemies, you'll develop strategies on how to handle these sets, put them into practice, and them rapidly refine them to increase your chances of success. This loop, when repeated over a period of a couple of minutes, will prove to be pure cat-nip for some.

With the goal being to survive as long as possible you'll also eventually break out of your comfortable strategies. During a run a small notification will appear in the upper left notifying you that you've broken your previous record for survival time. In the space of a second the game flips from executing a plan to a desperate struggle to survive as long as furtherly possible. It's the lack of breathing room between these two states that makes the switch more impactful. From the second you click play the game is on, literally every second is valuable, every second is another couple hundred leaderboard positions. The deterministic design of Devil Daggers makes its leaderboard an actually compelling incentive. Everyone above you overcame the exact same obstacles you did and then some, there is no leaderboard filtering because there is nothing to filter on. Seeing your position move up is rewarding because it was purely down to planning and execution. You didn't get a lucky drop, you didn't use an easier character or play on an easier mode, it's the single record of truth for the entire player base.

There is more that could be said about Devil Daggers. Presentationally the game is sparse which allows it to be instantly readable. The lack of music means the diegetic sounds the enemies make also act as clear audible information about the current state of the arena. The enemy design forces you to constantly shift focus between near-field and far-field threats. And the pacing is excellent, a lesser game would have all these mechanics but bungle the timings and placement of difficulty spikes, killing the entire flow of the game in the process. A lot of small details add to the experience, but it's ultimately this single experience itself that is so remarkable. The restraint showed by the developer, Sorath, in not loading the game up with modern conventions is commendable. The game instead presents as singular of a experience as possible making it stand out in landscape dominated by random generation.

Chump change after an hour of play