Devil Daggers Catch-All (probably just high scores)

This game is all sorts of fantastic. One part Quake (complete with bunny-hopping), one part Geometry Wars, and all the crunchy demon audio one could ever hope for. Basically I'm hooked. I can restart immediately, getting past sixty seconds is a challenge. It's been my turn-my-brain-off-so-I-can-relax twitch-based guilty pleasure this evening.

Steam Page

This is the video that turned me onto the game:

My current best time: 181.7996

Post your times. Talk strategies. 1-up each other and push each others' limits in good taste.

I had a 120-something second run yesterday but I made a really stupid mistake and failed at a moment I shouldn't have.

Also, the world best when I looked yesterday was some 500+ second run that was completely insane.

Cross-posting this from the Giant Bomb thread:

CptDomano wrote:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/nOAoUBi.png)

This is my new favorite time waster I may have spent too long playing this last night.

ProTips from what I've gathered:

Spoiler:

- The red gems are crucial. You need 10 to upgrade to the next weapon
- You get red gems from the spawn points (which I think only spawn once) and horned skulls
- If you don't shoot, you'll attract any red gems to you
- The giant spider bug things suck up any red gems on the board and then spit them out as the green things. This stops if the bug curls up and hides

So, basically my strategy has been to rush over to the spawn areas and take out the horned skull and spawn point as fast as possible. Then I stop shooting to grab the gems and start to circle to avoid the swarm. Once the bug shows up, I do everything I can to take out that bug so I can keep getting gems. Once you get the 10 gems and the first upgraded weapon, it makes things a *little* bit easier to clear the crowd.

The only real strategy I have to add to this is:

Spoiler:

Bunny-hopping to put some distance between you and the chasing skulls can be crucial to killing a spawner before it lets loose more enemies. It's super high-risk, but it keeps the enemy count to a manageable state.

I bought this last night and immediately made it my goal to beat Strangeblades' time.

Which I did.

Now to see if I can kill that spider.

This seems like another game tailor made for Strangeblades.

He's how I heard about it in the first place.

Skulls have some dodging logic on your daggers. I've been clearing the opening gauntlet pretty regularly by not attempting to kill them right as they emerge from the spawners. Instead I just put the dagger flow to one side of the spawner and force them to group all on one side and sweep kill the group as they hit the ground. If you shoot into the middle of the spawner the group will split apart as it spawns and you'll have to do more aiming to deal with them.

I'm at 88.6376 seconds and stuck on the spawners after the spider... I hate this game...

Also, my friends list is empty of people that are playing, I need to fix that.

*edit: I'm also playing in the windowed mode that can be accessed by ctrl-F.

so one touch = death right? and things can swoop at you from the side or behind without you seeing them... so?

krev82 wrote:

so one touch = death right? and things can swoop at you from the side or behind without you seeing them... so?

IMAGE(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/dodkak4kkicrrrdt0vx6.jpg)

krev82 wrote:

so one touch = death right? and things can swoop at you from the side or behind without you seeing them... so?

The best way to describe this game is to treat it like Geometry Wars--keep moving in kind of a circle in order to get the skulls following the same path. Yeah, you can't see everything that's around you and you might get surprised by stuff, but the movement is actually kind of predictable. Basically always be circling around your target, and then once you've taken out (or missed) what you were looking for, swing the view to your rear and clear out whatever mob is there while running backward.

But yes. One hit = dead. And you're not going to see everything all of the time.

Also directional sound is hugely important. Any time the big horned skulls or other things get close behind you they have very clearly identifiable sounds they constantly make.

Thin_J wrote:

Also directional sound is hugely important. Any time the big horned skulls or other things get close behind you they have very clearly identifiable sounds they constantly make.

Agreed. This is a game to play with headphones. The cues are extremely important in how I switch my movements and priorities.

I've had some luck just clicking LMB instead of holding it down. It sends a shotgun blast of daggers instead of the stream of them, which means clearing swarms of skulls as they spawn is easier.

Also good for the devil-horned skulls that drop upgrade gems.

IMAGE(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42732109/highscore.png)

Still didn't get those spawners cleared... But better time achieved.

So it seems like the upgrade gems will magnetize towards you more quickly when you're not firing, or is that my imagination?

My 90s Quake skills kicked back in a bit as I started rocket jumping today, with mixed results. Went off the edge of the arena once or twice. :p

This is a great lunch break game.

15 minutes logged into this so far and my best is just over 51 seconds.

Maclintok wrote:

So it seems like the upgrade gems will magnetize towards you more quickly when you're not firing, or is that my imagination?

They do roughly come towards you when you stop firing yes, except they can also end up flying right past you sometimes. Also I gather spiders can steal your gems so not sure if player magnetism over comes that or not.

krev82 wrote:
Maclintok wrote:

So it seems like the upgrade gems will magnetize towards you more quickly when you're not firing, or is that my imagination?

They do roughly come towards you when you stop firing yes, except they can also end up flying right past you sometimes. Also I gather spiders can steal your gems so not sure if player magnetism over comes that or not.

It does not, unless you're very close to the gem. The gems will be attracted to you as long as you're not shooting. When you start shooting again, they retain whatever momentum they had and can overshoot you.

I have to say, I can't play this game for more than 15 minutes at a time before I get seriously stressed out.

That's going to make it hard to improve. You can't learn when you're juiced up on cortisol.

I've got a pretty good strategy going, but it involves getting WAAAY aggressive. I'd say about 70% of the time I can at least get upgraded, but after that it's pretty much a crapshoot that involves getting lucky with the shots. I'm still just a few seconds behind Thin_J's time (I think I'm at 119? I'm on my work computer at the moment so I can't pull up the screenshot).

Basically what I do (and you can see the run on the leaderboards), is start of by listening for the first spawn then shooting the daggers right above where the skulls emerge. I take as many as I can take out in the initial wave, then start circling to the right (since the spawns rotate left), and take out the gem there. Then I do as much clean up as I can behind me as I make my way to the center of the level. Rinse repeat for the next few spawn points.

Things to remember:

1. The spawners, from what I've seen at least, only spawn once. After that they are obstacles you need to avoid. I would say that taking out the spawn points are MORE important that concentrating on the skulls as keeping them around will hinder your movement. Basically you'll have a greater chance of dying by these later on when these start popping up everywhere.

2. It's much easier to take out a group of skulls when they are on the way down. You can circle around them and the momentum from the daggers will take out a good chunk.

3. The horned skulls are sometimes easier to take out when you are moving in the opposite direction of where they are floating. I've noticed that the momentum from the daggers have a better chance of hitting that way.

3. The Spider - If you've done everything well, you should only have a few (or none) skulls behind you by the time the spider shows up. Again, an audio cue will tell you when you should start looking for it. Once you hear it, abandon everything else and run right toward it. Aim right above the red area at the face. If you're lucky, you can get in a BUNCH of hits before it starts to shift around. If you're REALLY lucky, you'll be able to kill it before it hides or before the giant horned skulls catch up to you.

4. After The Spider: I have not a f*cking clue. You should be able to get the gem from the spider and maybe one gem from a horned skull/spawn point. This should upgrade your weapon. Go. f*cking. Nuts. Do your best to clear out the skulls behind you, while trying to take pot shots at spawn points. Prioritize the giant horned skulls as they are nearly impossible to outmanuver.

5. Audio Cues - It was stated before, but you can definitely glean a lot about the environment simply by listening to the audio cues. That sickly, skin peeling sound? Means a spawn point just arrived, so expect a new group of skulls. That clickity-clickity-clickity? Spider is going to appear somewhere. You hear a growling/barking noise? Giant Horned Skull is pretty close.

6. Stay in the middle of the board as much as you can initially. The game uses shadows to hide things pretty well, but you should be able to see everything as it appears from the middle of the arena. It's the lightest area on the floor (nearly white). From there you can quickly asses and prioritize your targets. Granted, once everything starts really swarming it's hard to follow this, but initially (first 40-60 seconds) it works pretty effectively.

Keep in mind I'm not worrying about trying to shotgun jump or anything like that because I don't want to overcomplicate my strategy. I'm strictly using the basic attack for everything--keep it simple and work on aiming instead of trying to rocket jump or use the shotgun. I'm sure those things enhance it and make it easier, but so far my best runs have been just concentrating on one or two things and getting really good at that.

Add me to your leaderboard!

Woo 67 seconds before I left the office. I got overwhelmed by the giant spiders

Soooooooooooo many ~120 second runs that are doomed by earlier half-failures.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

He's how I heard about it in the first place.

I will destroy you. Wait, is this a game thread?

Good grief, I can't play this game for more than about 20 minutes at a time. After that it's too stressful and my times just get shorter and shorter.

OK. Shotgun blast? Effective range? I'm getting better at leading my machine gun stream though so I'm wondering when do I shotgun.

EDIT: Hmm. Using the shotgun allows the gems to travel closer to me. That's good.

And how come I can't see my Steam friends on the leaderboards?

The shotgun blast takes some getting used to, as one would expect it's most effective at short distance and a single well aimed shot is enough to take out a spawner. Another helpful trick is to shoot the ground under a swarm of skulls (typically as they land) and let the ricochet clean up a bunch of them.

The downside is there's a forced delay so no matter how fast you click you'll never exceed the game's max blasts/second and those blasts are not quite frequent enough to clear the mass swarms that quickly build up.

I've begun to really loathe the Horned Skulls. #1 pain in the ass right now.

Getting close, strafing perpendicular to their flight path seems to have worked best for me. They have just enough hit points to be annoying. Going to try some runs where I mercilessly target them and the spawners.

God, this game makes me feel physically exhausted and unwell after prolonged sessions.

I get some real nervous energy after playing and not in a good way.

The game seems to have a problem with showing Friends on the leaderboard. El-Productor, I've got you on my friends list plus a few other peeps that are clearly playing DD. None of you show up.

I know this might sound like a dumb question, but are you actually clicking the "Friends" tab on the leaderboards or just going by the default view that appears after you die? By default I think the game only shows the 3 people on your friends list (you and two friends nearest to you), unless you go specifically to the Friends tab, then it'll clear everything out and show you the list for everyone.

Hah, no worries. Yes I've clicked on the Friends tab in the leaderboard. Clicked on all the tabs. Something is preventing it from populating names. I'm sure I'll figure it out.