Devil Jam is an auto-battling, roguelite, and it comes to us from Belgium-based devs, Rogueside (originally Crazy Monkey Studios, the team behind the Guns, Gore and Cannoli games).
This is the latest game to riff off the Vampire Survivors formula, with you playing as members of a band who have died and found themselves in Hell. However, the Devil himself has offered them a deal: defeat Death himself, and you can live out the rest of your natural lives.
The story itself isn’t all that compelling, but it does allow the game to bring in plenty of heavy metal references, lots of demons to fight and a fairly strong setting. Also, there is voice acting from all the characters, which always makes a game feel a little more premium.
Once you get playing, it’s definitely the formula that you’re used to, but with a twist. You’ll be running around with the left stick and auto-attacking enemies (you can enable manual aiming if you want), and those foes will drop experience gems, which will allow you to level up.
What’s interesting is that your attacks hit on the beat, giving it a bit of a connection with the generic heavy metal score. But, of course, levelling up gives you a choice of perks and weapons, and this part of the game is quite interesting because of how you place them. You’re given a 4×3 grid, with the four horizontal spaces corresponding to each beat of the bar. Place a weapon on there, and it’ll trigger on that beat each time. But you really need to consider your placement because of the buffs you can select. It’s all about having the most efficient mix of weapons and buffs, all placed in such a way that you get the most damage from your attacks.
Between runs, you can spend money and resources on new weapons, buffs and structures. The latter are objects that show up in the world and give you various stat boosts. Certainly, the winning tactic during a run is to visit as many of these as possible, hoovering up the boosts in order to be ready for the three boss battles that you’ll be facing during that turn.
These boss battles are okay, not necessarily the most epic, but reasonably fun to play with readable attacks to avoid, and they’re not too spongy. Try to get a few extra dodges going, though. You’ll need them.
It’s all quite good fun, and the upgrading feels reasonably strong and useful, which is always the crux of these sorts of games. The main downside, though, is that it is all pretty repetitive, and while you can unlock new levels, they all feel much the same, but usually with some sort of annoying limitation to make them a bit harder. Your playable characters all feel much the same to play.
The presentation is pretty good, though. The cartoony visuals are nicely drawn and animated, and all the demonic foes look interesting. The design of the hub world that you visit between runs is quite nice too (well, for literal Hell). And while the music was a bit ‘public domain’ and generic, there’s a good mix of classic New Wave of British Heavy Metal style twin guitar riffing and modern-day ‘Djent’ style sounds.
Overall, this is a pretty good example of the genre. It’s not up there with the best ones (Vampire Survivors, Brotato), but it’s one of the better also-rans for sure, and it has a bit more personality than most of them. Just don’t expect a ton of variation or any real surprises from it.
+ Combat system is quite interesting
+ Pretty decent upgrades and perks