Jose Zagal's Home Page - Games & Game Studies

Home	Talks and Slides	My GameLog	Research and Projects	Publications	Resume	Teaching
Back // GameBreadth Project // Game Ontology Project // GameLog

Devilish (DS) Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along I started playing this game on Sunday 21 December, 2014 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 22 December, 2014
Current opinion of this game
Interesting arkanoid/breakout experiment, but needs some polish to really shine.
December 22, 2014 09:51:25 AM
I had never heard of this game and I'm not even sure if it's been released in the US. Picked up for very little money, so it was a gamble of sorts. I was also intrigued by a back-of-the-box line that stated "a new holy war has begun"! The game has cute japanese manga-style characters on the cover (with sinister red eyes in the background). So...I was curious. The game is an iteration on breakout/arkanoid. You break blocks and kill monsters (and collect powerups) BUT rather than playing static fixed-size environments, each level is an environment you have to navigate. If the ball moves far enough up/left/right, and if the environment is the right size, then the whole background scrolls along and you're moving along. Each level has an end goal/portal you need to get the ball into in order to move on to the next. It's an interesting experiment and the game has several worlds you can travel across. I only got so far as the 3 world (area 2?) or was it the 4th? The first one was a sort of medieval castle/urban environment, the second was "ice world", the third was a dark forest place and I don't remember or know what the 4th one is. I think there are only 5 in all. The story makes no sense and the artwork is pretty...hmmm.. let's just say mediocre. But the game has some interesting ideas (that could use a lot of polish). a) The typical arkanoid/breakout paddle is made up of two layers: top and bottom. They move left/right together BUT you can move the top layer up/down AND also rotate it in 45 degree increments. I only realized the top layer could move vertically by accident when I, on a lark, tried to see if I could move forward when the ball got stuck in a bounce-loop between to walls pretty high up. And whoah! This bit alone really changes the dynamic of the game, helps make it faster and more "responsive". Generally speaking the ball moves slowly, but being able to move the top paddle around to help make certain shots is a really neat addition. AND, completely necessary for navigating the levels - otherwise you'd just sit around bored most of the time as you miss shots and so on. b) There's a powerup/leveling system that could probably also do with some extra thought. The ball changes by powering up (doing more damage) and gaining speed. You can pick up powerups to reduce it's speed (helpful) as well as a bunch of other things. I didn't really use the powerups all that much except for the speed downgrade. Also, it seems like some enemies drop powerups as well (they're usually inside treasure chests). I don't think there's a lot more to this game, a few modes and things? Anyways, it's going back on the shelf for now...

Devilish (DS)