Devilition

Devilition has an interesting IRL story behind it. So I’ve been talking about the in-universe characters who supposedly made these games, and are credited as such, but there’s a REAL actual team of actual people who made them, and they kinda split up the work, each person creating a few different games. I’m not sure who created what, exactly, except for a few of them where it’s obvious (Hello Velgress/Upwell). In this case, it’s obvious, because in 1999 Derek Wu created a game called Diabolika. That game was repurposed for UFO 50, with some touch ups and changes. Apparently in the original, the little devils had big swinging dongs. They don’t got that here. There’s a few other changes, too, I’ll get into those.

Devilition

Devilition is a puzzle game where you play an alchemist trying to keep a town of puritan-esque settlers alive from a horde of Demons. Each round, devils are placed randomly about the board, and then you can place your pieces anywhere on the grid. When these contraptions explode, they explode in different directions, signified by the colors emenating from them. So you’ve got ones that explode in a cross, an X shape, you’ve got ones that blast out further, ones that blast all around, ones that do 3 spaces in front of them, ones that only do side to side, aaaand the rocket, which will blast up then fall on a space, blasting all around. Your goal is to try to kill as many Devils as you can this way, while avoiding the settlers. At the end of a round, if the settlers outnumber the devils, you move on. If not, you lose, start over. If you get rid of ALL the demons, you get an extra settler. You can kill your settlers all you want, which is fucked up, all that matters is that they are equal or outnumber the demons. After ten rounds, you fight a boss, who’s actually extremely easy, and you’re given a score based on your time, pieces used, and settlers left.

Devilition

And that’s it! It’s not a very complex puzzle game, and while it seems okay at first, it falls a bit flat to me on repeat plays. I acknowledge I’m not very good at this game. It is not kind to those with ADHD. I get distracted and suddenly forget an entire third of the board is there, or think I planned out a way to deal with THAT ONE devil, and nope, I forgot about it again. But the real thing about this is that it’s a bit of an RNG fest. The game can absolutely give you unwinnable situations, especially if it clumps a bunch of the devils together that take two hits to kill, with no room to put anything near them. I had that once. It tends to spawn things away from your already set up contraptions, and I had one left over by accident, and whoops, giant clump in the corner :)

Devilition

It’s FINE, it’s a fine game, but the music, setting, idea of it, all of it just doesn’t really speak to me. It’s notable though that this setting of all settings will be re-used later, far, far down the line, and for MUCH better effect.

5.5/10