Devil's Dare 悪魔の挑戦

Pro: Combo system / finishing system is interesting Characters have good ability sets Good crowd control abilities Good art design but color is muted Con: Game is unreasonably difficult even in co op and mocks you for playing casual -Like in a classic beat em up attacks are hard to avoid so death is inevitable -Lives cost a large amount of in game money -Running out of lives is a full game reset Easy to activate the wrong ability in combat due to control scheme Game is short with small levels

Genre - Retro Side Scrolling Beat 'em up When I saw this game advertised I had high hopes. I grew up playing games like Double Dragon and Golden Axe with friends. This appeared to replicate the feel of these game and add in-jokes to films and retro game characters. I purchased it at £7.99 thinking I was bound to get my monies worth and I love supporting Indie games. However, when I loaded the game up everything seemed far from polished. My Xbox controller would not work even though this is clearly an arcade game. I had to go into settings and map the keys. Okay not the end of the world but still a bit of a pain, Then I chose my first character playing solo (Golden Axe) on the sewer level he seemed okay once I got used to the moves via the tutorial and my adventure began. Having the screen set to full screen I wandered around killing mobs. This was quite fun and I found I could get food by doing certain moves at the right time. A few traps got in the way but nothing that couldn't be ...

This game is a nice idea with a lot of charm, and I'd been looking forward to trying it for a while, but Devil's Dare has too many problems for me to recommend it. First off, money is extremely important in the game but the only reliable way to get a lot of it is killing monsters with special moves, meaning combat is all about spamming them constantly. Feels restrictive, not to mention that some of them just aren't worth using, or can even miss, since two of them are used by holding a direction and pressing the button. If you die in a stage you can only come back if you spend money, and the cost goes up every time. Don't have enough or an item to save you, and your whole run is gone. Compounding this is that everything about the game seems designed to punish you if you make any mistake. Get hit by an enemy, and you're stunlocked for a bunch of damage unless you use a move that drains your special bar, keeps you from using them until it completely recharges, and is pretty unresponsiv...

The game is well-designed, as far as humor goes, and its one of those brawlers that does not require an xInput controller (a rarity those days for some reason). But good things end right there. Being a pixel-art game, it has a limited resolution and does not seem to scale well to a modern widescreen monitor, stretching instead. Why is that, I have no idea. And the most frustrating part is the difficulty spikes in the game. Get to the first boss and prepare to die A LOT. Every death will set you back to the very friggin' beginning of the whole game. Turbo-mode gamepad fixes that a bit, but you will still die. Don't smash it in frustration. It's a nostalgia trip all right - you get all those bad design decisions from the arcade era, like lives and limited "continues", impossible difficulties and sometimes unresponsive controls. I never finished TMNT on my NES when I was younger. Years later I found out that the game was not impossible to beat, but it had a form of anti-piracy protecti...

Devil's Dare is a love letter to the 80's and 90's kids who grew up playing classic beat-em-ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon and Turtles in Time. The main twist to the formula is roguelike elements, but it doesn't feel as refined as other games in that genre. Players must acquire money from monsters, objects and kill bonuses, and said currency is used to purchase continues upon death, as well as upgrades at the end of a level. There are four stages to choose from, and the order they are completed in determines both their overall length and the boss fought at the end of the run. The combat is standard beat-em-up fare with some modern additions. Each character has three special attacks that can be used as long as the SP meter is full, and the standard combo breaker move at the expense of a full SP bar. Dash attacks round out the moveset, and each special attack can be upgraded via post-level purchases. There is also a unique kill bonus mechanic where killing several enemies at once ...

Interesting concept for a game, nerd convention get's ravaged by a zombie apocalypse, somewhat original... the retro references are aplenty in this one. The graphics are nice but the game play is a bit clunky. It seems like every attack you make leaves you open and requires a bit of presicion timing to master. The hit box system can be a bit unforgiving at times, if you get juggled by enemies, kiss your ass goodbye. It's a bit infuriating that you only have a single life to complete an entire stage and if you run out of cash or didn't take the proper upgrades, you're basically in a stalemate and need to start all over again. :/ On the other hand if you hack your money via cheat engine the entire game becomes trivial and it's where the real fun is to be had.... Infinite continues, no consequence and just button mashing mayhem... so it's a bit of a design flaw, but I'm not really complaining as it made the game a lot more playable. The gameplay is a bit too simple for my liking as we...

This game starts off as a really fun beat-em-up, but gets ridiculously difficult towards the end. Deaths feel cheap and unfair, and most of the time there is nothing you can do about it. Very limited moveset, imbalanced characters, etc. What is more, while playing with a xb360 controller i found it hard to pull off a specific special attack, as the game mixes up up/down sp with left/right sp frequently. Lining up your attacks with enemies is also hard, since you have to be EXTREMELY precise, unnecessarily so. This game might be better with friends, but solo play is highly NOT recommended. At least the music and graphics are nice. If you want a good brawler, just go play a far superior game - Castle Crashers.

Super fun, side-scrolling, beat'em-up! The nods to video games and horror are fantastic. The perma-death system is unique and really pushes you to play smart and not just rush in to the fight. Definitely recommend this little gem!

The game kinda feels like a beta, but not. It's enjoyable maybe the first couple of playthroughs but it does get repetitive enough that you probably won't try and get all the 4 different epic boss fights. The game is somewhat too easy for single player but as more players join the game it becomes less easy because of a budget now for upgrades and the fact that not everyone is on the same skill level. Things the game needs: Bigger zombie variety More traps/environmental hazards Secret level? Higher Diffculty settings Another SP attack or two. (Standard controller comes with 6+ buttons, needs more love.) Typical secret code to unlock stuff. (Disables achievements of course until the game is reset.) For what it's worth it gets you some enjoyment for a few hours.

Great beat 'em up that's very difficult and very fun. Due to it's mechanics it is very replayable and worth many play throughs. Easily one of the best modern-retro beat 'em ups I've played. Oh and it's filled to the brim with parodies and cameos if you're into that kind of thing.