When demons surround you, the power of music is going to save the day. Hit demons with your guitar and make pacts with demons to gain the power to survive. As the enemies gradually become stronger, you must boost your power with special landmarks around the map. Survive as long as you can or until you defeat powerful bosses to end the level. Don’t worry about dying and try again as often as you like.
Devil Jam is an action roguelite that pits you against unrelenting waves of enemies. Your goal is to stay alive for as long as possible or defeat the bosses. It has a good foundation for an action roguelite with decent powerups and an interesting order mechanic. Right now it is still rough and its own premise doesn’t separate it from other roguelites. With more variety and improvements, Devil Jam could stand out from the crowd.
Devil Jam will be available on PC in the future.
Enemies want you dead and it’s your job to survive with your guitar.
Story – Music Deal Gone Wrong
The premise of Devil Jam is that you are a musician who is down on their luck. You sign a contract for a potentially lucrative concert but it’s a trap that drags you down to the underworld. With no easy way out, you must fight your way through scores of demons to take down powerful bosses. Someone must have a way to bring you back above ground and you will continue fighting until you find them.
Just like Cauldron, the story is simple and sets the stage. It isn’t touched upon in the game itself right now as it only serves as the backstory. You won’t see any sign of a musician thrown into the underworld other than the enemies they fight. If it wasn’t for the store page telling you what the game was about, you wouldn’t know anything. It feels like you are just thrown into the action and are expected to survive without any context.
You must survive to find whoever put you in this situation.
Gameplay – Survive Against Waves
Similar to Vampire Survivors, you are doing your best to survive against waves of enemies. You must direct your main attack against enemies instead of letting your weapons auto-attack for you. You eventually obtain new powers by signing contracts with various demons. Some of them are representations of the seven deadly sins while others are mythical beings. Regardless, they grant you new powers that boost your odds of survival.
The main aspect of the game is the musical timing and a new mechanic where you control the order of powerup activation. The musical timing isn’t as important now since there isn’t much to work with. However, controlling the order of powerup activation is a great mechanic to work with. You can control when powerups activate to avoid having them interfere with each other. Some powerups can also enhance others around it, giving you enhanced effects with the right setup.
Make contracts with certain beings to gain their powers.
In its current state it’s nothing more than a roguelite with more music as usual. But with more additions, gameplay could stand out. Right now you can’t vary your powers much since there’s only a few powerup choices. The musical theme also needs more work to truly stand out because it doesn’t seem important for anything other than timing. But with more refinement, something special can be made.
Audio & Visual – Rock Music Focus
The audio consists of rock music and is important to the gameplay since your attacks are timed to the beat. With only one soundtrack, that helps keep things constant though it does become repetitive later on. Considering the focus on music, other tracks or other powerups that may work with music in other ways would be interesting. As it is, the soundtrack just provides something to listen to while seeing your attacks occasionally connect.
The visuals capture the effects of the attacks and keep up with the growing number of enemies. Some visuals appear to be missing but this doesn’t impact the gameplay much. While you might not see many enemy details as you are constantly moving, it’s easy to tell them apart. The designs feel similar to what you would find in Greek mythology but there’s plenty of time for more enemies to appear.
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- Choosing your upgrades and patron makes a big impact in battles.
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- Setting the powerup activation order lets you synergize skills effectively.
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- Structures that you find around the map boost your overall stats.
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- Sometimes you can choose which bonuses you wish to take.
Devil Jam was previewed on Steam with a code provided by Jesús Fabre.
