Tactics games have been a staple of my gaming diet for years now, and not just because they provide all the vitamins and minerals I need to grow into a healthy boy. Having to make strategic decisions in how to win battles of gamified chess is always so compelling, it’s just a shame that because the brain power needed is more intense the stories often take themselves so seriously. I’ve played way too many tactics games with stories of fantasy kingdoms in power struggles, and often now I end up zoning out whenever a knight makes an impassioned speech for justice. Sometimes I want tactics battles and silly stories, to grant a bit of relief between scraps. The Disgaea series always did this incredibly well, and it’s why I’ve enjoyed it for so many years. The creator of the series Sohei Niikawa is now branching out to create games with a new team too, which put Demon’s Night Fever firmly on my radar even before this preview.
Our protagonist in this evil take on the tactics genre is Killshiro, an everyday office worker who hates the world and everything it stands for. Corrupt CEOs and judgemental colleagues piss him off to no end, and he writes all their names down in his knockoff Deathnote. He’s had a bit of a shit life and is well on his way to becoming a full blown incel, and the game even says as much. On another boring day where he’s wishing suffering on humanity something amazing happens, Death herself comes to recruit him to the cause.
This isn’t just some skeleton in a cloak though, this is Giga Super Death. Death in this game is portrayed as a sort of adorable kitty, and she’s lost her powers to that pesky God fella. To win the war against God now she’ll need some backup, and that’s where my favourite incel virgin comes in. Even in the first two chapters of the game I feel like the story has me hooked, and a lot of that is down to all the ridiculous characters and less than serious dialogue.
Demon’s Night Fever is a tactics game though, so you probably want to know about the battles. They’re unlike anything I’ve ever played before, and that’s mainly because of the units. You actually only directly control one unit, and that’s Killshiro. The rest of your allies are known as Peons, and they refuse to play by your rules. Thankfully you’ve been granted powers to utilise them effectively, by using the Peon Exploitation System.
Killshiro can move and attack in battle like any good tactics game, but you’ll need to use Misdeeds to do any meaningful damage. One of these involves simply killing an ally, which will force them to explode and damage all nearby enemies. If you need healing then you can drain them of HP before blowing them up, and to get them in the right position to explode you can swap places with them using teleportation. You’ve got plenty of action points to chain these together too, so turns are often long and brutal. I’ve never played a tactics game where the only way to win fights is to blow up your own units, but when they revive they come back stronger so you’ve just got to do it (and they all deserve suffering anyway).
Outside of these fantastic and unusual battles, there are loads of ways you can make yourself stronger. Misdeeds out of battle raise your stats, and also grant you Perverse Points. These can be used in a skill tree to grant buffs to your powers in battle or even make your peons stronger, with plenty of nodes to unlock. You can also abduct more peons to bolster your ranks, or commit a cheeky bit of larceny for extra items to use in battle. It’s all deliciously evil flavoured, and endlessly satisfying.
You have to be a little careful when choosing what to do out of battle though, as each chapter has a day limit. Dedicating days to punishing peons may sound like fun, but if you don’t complete a chapter before you run out of time then it’s game over time. Time management and tactics combined is basically my idea of heaven, and it never felt so punishing that I was stressed in the early chapters.
Demon’s Night Fever feels like such a fun and unique take on the tactics genre, and I know that for this preview I was only able to scratch the surface of this pure evil experience. I can’t wait to blow up hundreds of peons and punish God more when the game releases next month, and if that sounds like fun you should probably see a therapist (and also keep an eye on this upcoming video game).
Demon’s Night Fever is coming to PC on October 22nd.
