Hell Is Other Demons double-jumps onto Steam

Released last month on Kongregate's new store Kartridge, Hell Is Other Demons makes the hop to Steam today. It's  a neat-looking platform shooter by Cuddle Monster Games, and a fast, twtichy (although not especially hardcore) arcade game about bouncing around arenas in hell, blatting waves of demons and spending your gathered hell-dollars on upgrades to do it all over again. Straightforward high-score-hunting stuff, although there is a campaign mode with bosses, plus a rather neat two-colour aesthetic and that modern arcade standby; a pulsing synthwave soundtrack.

Hell Is Other Demons seems most inspired by the excellent GoNNER and Downwell, especially the latter once you've picked up some powerups. Some character upgrades can give you spiked boots for better bouncing on enemy heads, and there's even one upgrade that fires lasers downwards on every double-jump. Enemies come from all directions, but controls are limited to simple left/right movement, jumping, shooting and a smart-bomb like Ultimate ability. A straightforward arcade shooter, then, but with a neat look, a good soundtrack and some beefy-feeling guns.

While there is an arcade mode where you pick a pre-assembled character, then collect power-ups and try to hold out as long as possible, the meat of the game appears to be in its campaign. While most of its stages are single-screen (with some vertical scrolling) arenas, enemy waves are scripted and money collected allows you to buy upgrades at shops between levels. Each world has its own colour pallette, set of enemies and is capped off by a big ugly boss monster, and they're a neat-looking bunch. Lots of gigantic skull-faced beasties lurking in the background. Not going to change the world, but it looks like simple, twitchy dumb fun.

Hell Is Other Demons is out now on Steam and Kartridge for £7.19/€8.19/$9.99. It's published by Kongregate.