This time 10 years ago most of my PC Gamer colleagues were addicted to Devil Daggers, a lo-fi survival FPS whose grimy low-poly art style beat the current early 3D nostalgia wave by at least four years. It’s pretty simple: you stand in a flat and featureless arena and fend off increasingly nasty waves of eldritch foes with magical daggers. The object is to stay alive for as long as possible.
This description undersells how moreish Devil Daggers is. Let me turn to Chris Thursten, who declared it his favourite game of 2016. “It’s Pure Quake, basically,” he wrote. “It is to Quake what the blue meth in Breaking Bad is to regular meth, except it’s real.”
For Devil Daggers’ 10th birthday, creator Sorath has revealed that 1,472 people have survived 500 seconds in Devil Daggers without dying. More than 350,000 people have played the game in total, Sorath also confirms, so surviving that long is quite the achievement.
Sorath also confirmed that Devil Daggers 2 is currently in development. “Today seems like a good day to announce that we are working hard on Devil Daggers II,” they wrote.
Sorath has released one other game since Devil Daggers, in the form of Hyper Demon. It’s kinda similar to Devil Daggers except the art style seems more belonging to a lost generation between Quake and Quake 2. It’s nausea-inducing in an exciting way, and if you’re watching it being played it kinda looks like a psychedelic demoscene visual more than a game. Hyper Demon also got a free 1v1 version, if STRAFTAT is too uptight for you.
