I bought this game in a fit of temporary insanity because it was cheap and because for some reason I thought it was a Diablo clone. If I had spent more than a few seconds perusing the Steam store page I would've realized Demonlisher is a Pacman clone, not a Diablo clone, and not a very good one at that.
So congratulations, if you're reading this review you've already shown yourself to have more savvy than me!
Like Pacman, in this game your character has to traverse a maze-like map and grab all the pellets (souls, in this game) by walking over them. Also like Pacman, there are bad guys that will try and stop you. You can temporarily defeat the bad guys, but this only buys you a few seconds of freedom before they respawn.
The Steam store page advertises "stunning 3D graphics" but for a game that was released in 2011 the graphics are pretty terrible. Even worse, the "stunning 3D graphics" are actually detrimental to gameplay!
Pacman takes place from a top-down perspective and it works. But because of Demonlisher's "stunning 3D graphics" the game is only [b]mostly[/b] top-down. This means some of the souls you need to collect will be partially hidden behind walls, pillars, or other objects. Likewise, your view of the bad guys can also be obstructed! And it's often unclear whether you can go behind a 3D object or whether it's solid; I found this led to my death more than a few times. At least in Pacman it's always clear which parts of the map are traversable!
But there is one significant difference from Pacman. In this game, you can shoot. And so can the bad guys. And while the bad guys are terrible shots they do like to shoot often, and you're always massively outnumbered. They can even shoot at you when they're off-screen! Add in the fact that many levels have "bullet redirectors" and you quickly have a recipe for a "bullet hell" game. There are some levels where there are so many damn projectiles flying across the screen it's impossible to tell which projectiles are yours and which are the enemy's.
Now in most "bullet hell" games you're given a highly maneuverable spaceship/aircraft and a large health pool to survive. But in Demonlisher you've got a small health pool, made all the more useless by the fact that there are enemies which can literally bring you from full health to zero health in a single shot. And forget maneuverabilty! Your character is a slow old wizard incapable of any real evasive action. In most maps your character will sluggishly meander across the battlefield, completely unconcerned as the legions of hell are shooting a bazillion fireballs at you, and you'll be shouting, "Pick up the pace you old geezer! They've almost got us!"
On the plus side, there's a large variety of power-ups and enemy types. There are even some enemies that you don't want to shoot because they will respawn as a more dangerous enemy type.
Level design is bad. For example at the end of every level you're supposed to exit via a gate. But some levels have more than one gate graphic so how are you supposed to know which one is the actual gate???
On level 44 blocks will randomly appear that will obstruct your path. Depending on where the blocks show up it can make the level unbeatable. It's a good idea to save at the beginning of every map after about level 10. Why wait until level 10? Because in this game you actually get charged points for saving your game! Otherwise your points would go towards extra lives. But trust me when I say extra lives don't matter; you die so constantly and easily the save-game is actually a better deal.
I played on Windows 7 64 bit and encountered a bug with the save games. Sometimes when loading a saved game your number of lives will increase or decrease by one at random, for no reason. You can reload the save to try and get the correct number of lives. Or, just ignore it and hope it will all balance out in the end, which is what I did!
The difficulty level is all over the place. Level 13 is an early level but it's also one of the hardest bullet hell levels in the game. Level 45 is near the end of the game and it's at a trivial difficulty level. Overall though, I would categorize this game's difficulty level as "ludicrous."
If you try and play the game as it's meant to be played, by earning points for extra lives and trying not to die, you're going to be wiped out around level 13 even if you're playing on the Easy difficulty level. It took me three hours to beat the game's 52 levels, and I could only do it by constant save-loading on the Easy difficulty level -- I saved my game at the start of every level, then every time I died I reloaded the save.
Why did I go to all the trouble of beating a game that's so poorly designed? Because I'm a masochist with a sense of community service; I play the bad games and then review them so you don't have to, dear reader!
What does the title of the game mean? Honestly I have no idea and it's never explained in-game. "Demonlisher" seems to be a portmanteau of "demon" and, um, "demolisher?" So I'm guessing Demonlisher means "demon demolisher." Or, more likely, this is a foreign-made game and the devs don't speak English.
Storyline and sound effects are minimal.
The price tag might be cheap, but this is one bullet-hell Pacman clone you can do without!
