Hell is Other Demons is an adrenaline packed, high-score chasing thrill ride that’s in a similar vein to Devil Daggers in that you’re in a tight space fighting off hordes of demons looking to stomp your face into the ground.
Hell is Other Demons
Developer: Cuddle Monster Games
Platform: PC and Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review
The game opens up with a simple setup about two sides fighting or something. It doesn’t matter, you’re a demon and you’ve gotta kill other demons and you’ve got a lot of different guns to do it with. The game’s campaign mode puts you on a grid map where each spot is an arena to work through; some might have just three waves of enemies, others could have much more. Scattered throughout the map are various bosses you can tackle as well that provide a nice change of pace. Some stick to the game’s basic formula of duking it out in a confined arena, while others are actual side-scrolling levels you have to traverse through.
I’m really big on mobility in games. Give me the ability to move around quickly and you’ve got me immediately hooked; Hell is Other Demons delivers on this in spades. You’ve got a double jump, a dash, and a slam you can perform and chaining all of these together successfully just feels so damn good. To add on top of that, you can jump off the top of enemies, Mario style, granting you additional jumps to keep your momentum going. When you figure the system out, you can get into a really good zone where you’re dancing around enemies just completely tearing them apart, and this is before you’ve gotten the upgrades like longer dashes or higher jumps. The game also feels very tight in its controls, which is great because a game like this lives or dies by how it feels to play. Shooting feels great, your movement all feels very precise, and when you die it’s (for the most part) because you were playing badly.
As you work your way through the game, defeated enemies will drop these gems that can be used in various shops scattered around the map. In each shop you’ll be able to find a new weapon, ultimate ability, or perk to purchase with your hard earned gems. These can then be equipped when starting a new arena. However, you can’t just equip everything willy-nilly. Your demon has a max of twenty slots (you start with less and have to upgrade to reach that amount) and you can equip a weapon, an ultimate, and as many perks as you want so long as you have the slot space.
These add a fun layer of depth to the game where you’re swapping out weapons and perks to best suit not just your playstyle, but the current arena you’re on. One arena, for example, might flood the floor with acid which means you have to stay in the air the entire time; you might want to equip any perks that’ll keep you in the air longer such as the triple jump. Some weapons synergize very well with specific perks too, like adding the increased fire-rate and bullet distance perks to the wave gun turns it into a monster of a gun that swiftly pushes enemies away from you while dealing a concentrated amount of damage. Tinkering with various combinations is part of the fun here, aside from demon murder.
I do have one gripe with this system however, particularly the shop. Many of the weapons you’ll find can cost a pretty decent chunk of change. This forces you to have to replay older arenas to grind out some gems for something you might not even enjoy. The endless mode helps in this since you’re able to try out weapons freely in that mode so you’ll know what you like and what you don’t, but that’s assuming you can get a specific gun to drop and you last long enough to give it a good try.
Besides all that, you’ve also got the endless mode where you’ll likely be spending most of your time. Here you’ll go through wave after wave of enemies as you strive for that shiny new high-score. As you complete a wave the gems that you acquired will be used to level yourself up, allowing you to pick from a random set of four perks which are all the same ones from the campaign. On top of that, your gems are also counted towards a total global number that unlocks special things like new skin palettes or characters to use in endless mode. You start with the basic demon, but you can swap to other guys like the tank who starts with a different set of weapons and perks.
However, the one thing that does annoy me with this mode is how weapon drops work. Kill an enemy and they’ll sometimes drop a new gun for you to pick up, but the action is moving so quickly you rarely have a chance to even notice what gun you’re about to pick up, especially with all the visual carnage happening on-screen. Sometimes a gun will drop on top of a health or ultimate pick-up which makes matters worse since now you’re forced to grab whatever it is. Accidentally picking up a gun you don’t like can really ruin a good run you were having and I wish there was a way to recover what you previously had.
The Final Word
Fueled by an absolutely killer soundtrack, Hell is Other Demons is a frenetic action-packed game that’ll have you telling yourself “just one more run” as you chase that high-score.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 4 out of 5 – Good
