I think one of the coolest knock-on effects of game development having a lower barrier to entry is the proliferation of Rhythm games. What it means to be a Rhythm game has been expanded over time, which has allowed developers to experiment with how music integrates into the gameplay side of their games. This, in turn, has increased the audience for Rhythm games, and led to the creation of several unique titles.

Heck, I remember back in 2014 when Crypt of the Necrodancer first launched into Steam Early Access. It was a huge novelty because your character moved, and attacked in-time with the game’s music. That simply wasn’t commonplace in 2014, which is crazy to think about in 2025 when we have games like Hi-Fi Rush, Metal: Hellsinger, Muse Dash, Beat Saber, Thumper, and Everhood. And that’s only scratching the surface of Rhythm titles that are available for folks to play right now.

That is all to say, I was totally unsurprised when I received an email (and code) for an upcoming Bullet Heaven game where the hook is that your character attacks in-time with the music. That’s proven to be a very effective formula for several other games, so why not explore that idea within this genre too?

But before we go any further, welcome back to Demo Dive where today we’ll be looking at Devil Jam.

As already stated, Devil Jam is a fairly typical Bullet Heaven game with a fairly atypical Rhythm hook. That is, you’ll use all of your different auto-attacks in-time with the music, instead of indiscriminately filling the screen with projectiles. This gives the moment-to-moment gameplay a rhythmic feel that I haven’t really experienced in other games within the subgenre. That gives Devil Jam a lot of unique flavour that distinguishes it in the ever crowded space of new Bullet Heaven games.

Just as an example of what I mean, here’s a brief bit of footage from one of my runs in the demo:

Notice how the different attacks oscillate, and weave around the player character? The whole thing has a very satisfying rhythmic quality to it. Especially when compared against Devil Jam’s contemporaries where the screen becomes visual diarrhea mid-way through your run, which can make parsing on-screen action nigh impossible.

Speaking of visuals, there’s been a lot of effort put into the visual design of Devil Jam. I don’t actually mind the chunky pixel art of other titles, but it’s quite refreshing to see hand-drawn enemies strewn about here. The bat speakers were definitely a highlight for me. Love that design. I hope there’s more fun character designs like that in the full release because seeing each new wave of baddies in the demo was a delight.

The final thing that I wanted to mention about Devil Jam is how it handles equipping new abilities. There’s almost an aspect of inventory management to it wherein you’ll need to slot new active abilities into a grid, which influences on which beats the attack is used. This allows the player to set up combos where each beat uses different attacks that can chain into one another for massive combinatorial damage that wouldn’t be possible using each of the constituent abilities separately.

There’s also what’s referred to as Sub-Weapons, which are like passive effects for your various auto-attacks. There’s a catch though: Sub-Weapons only apply their effects to specific tiles within your ability grid. This adds an additional layer of depth to placing your abilities as it isn’t just enough to combo them together in a harmonious string – you’ll also want to correctly position Sub-Weapons to increase the power of each of your different attacks.

Having said that, I did find myself thinking that it’d have been nice if I could have reorganized my abilities mid-run. There were a handful of runs where I had all of the pieces for a great build by about the 5 minute mark, but I hadn’t oriented everything in a way where I could actually take full advantage of those later acquired Sub-Weapons. The ability to move stuff around, even if it had an in-game cost (maybe spending some of your limited re-rolls?) would have been cool.

All said, I think Devil Jam was a fairly promising showing for a new Bullet Heaven game. The unique Rhythm, and inventory management aspects of the game help it to stand-out from its peers, and add layers of depth to a genre that otherwise feels quite bereft of it.

If you’d like to check out Devil Jam for yourself then you can download the demo (via Steam), and give it a whirl. At the time of writing, the demo features a single 10 minute level, but that should give you a good sense of what developer Rogueside is going for.

And, I know I say this every time, but don’t forget to wishlist the game if you enjoyed the demo. It’s an easy way to support developers ahead of their game’s launch, and doing so will send you a notification once the game releases onto Steam.

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