Devil Jam

TLDR; Charming Survivors-like/Hades clone with a lot of good ideas, but most of them fall short. Needs work before being worth your time. Looking at Devil Jam, all the ingredients are there. Hades-style upgrades, interesting story about a band selling their souls to the Devil, unique gameplay, great designs on the Sins (they give you your upgrades), and lots to do with the challenges. But, you can use all the best ingredients and still have your dish come out messy. That's what happened here. Good stuff, the gamplay is unique as hell. You get up to three Sin types for weapons and upgrades, either adding a passive to your one of six empty slots or adding a weapon/buff to your grid. You have a 4x3 grid to fill, buffs often effecting other weapons on the grid. The characters reflect their sins very well and the Devil bounces off your player character in an entertaining way. Speaking of, you can unlock two other characters for a total of three. You can also unlock challenge maps and other maps to play as you advance through the game. And, well, that's all the nice things I found. Time for the criticism. For the builds, I never felt strong. Of the 50+ runs, maybe three or four …

Not sure why this currently has mixed reviews, as I think this is one of the better games in the Survivors/Bullet Heaven genre. Nice visuals, great music, a lot of fun to play.

The vibe (survivors game with Hades aesthetic and great rock music) along with a unique build system really appealed to me, and the main gameplay loop is fun for the first maybe 45 minutes... until you realize any power progression is PAINFULLY slow, because they give you no real clues on how you might organize a build. So you go to the forums, and of course some people give some guides on what you probably want to do, but I've never had to do that in a survivors game before. So 2 hours in, I am not even close to being able to clear a boss. Purchasable stat upgrades give no feeling of progression. It's just boring. Well, no amount of cool music or mechanics is going to get those two hours back. Great idea, poor balance. I'll come back and try again in a year and see if they've improved it, but as it is now, I cannot recommend this game.

I like the Hades-esque style and the attacks based on the Deadly Sins. The art style is great. I wish there was a bit more variety to each run. I'm currently getting really annoyed by a bug though. At the end of each run when you're returned to the Devil. I always check my quests to see if I've completed anything. Then you're supposed to Esc out. However, this instead always just opens the Pause menu overlaid over the quest menu and then seems to freeze the game? Can this be fixed please. Sick of having to exit the whole game!

I signed a contract with the devil. I get to play this awesome game but then I'm required to upvote it.

sdsngftyd