Developer: Secret Base, Ratloop Asia
Publisher: Maple Whispering
Platform: PS4, Switch, PC
Tested on: PC
Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe – Review
Is there anything better than an evening at the arcade? The bright screens and loud noises mingling together into a cacophony of sensations while you play the night away on the various game machines on offer. Almost five years ago Secret Base, an indie developer from Singapore, tried to bring the arcade experience to your home with Devil’s Dare, a retro Beat ’em Up sprinkled full of 90s pop culture references. Today, we are looking at Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe, the remastered and updated version of this game, recently released.
Story
The story here is minimal, as there doesn’t need to be a whole lot of context to make for a fun game. Basically, it’s the end of the world. A deadly zombie virus has spread among the general population, turning most of them into mindless flesh-eaters intent on killing any remaining survivors. It is up to the player to choose one of the six available characters, none of which are given a backstory or anything like that, to try and fight their way through the horde and escape imminent demise.
And that’s pretty much it. A short cutscene at the start of the game, taking place at a convention center, is all we get. Clearly, the story isn’t the main focus of the game, though some short tidbits about the characters and their particular situation or motivations might have been interesting.
Graphics
True to its aspiration to emulate an arcade game, the style of Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe is very pixelated and retro in feel. The character designs are cool, both those of the player characters as well as the various enemies you encounter. The only downside is the rather limited color scheme. Mainly everything will be a darkish, muddy looking shade of grey-brown. Presumably this makes the only pops of color, mostly the red of the blood, stand out even more. Sadly however, with only a handful of locations to explore in the game, this leaves everything looking relatively more similar than is entirely desirable.
Sound
Just as mentioned above, the music in this game is clearly inspired by arcades, with simple upbeat tunes that are neither boring nor overly memorable. They serve their purpose well, and that’s the end of that. Your character will also often spout one-liners, when performing a special attack or picking up loot for example. The voice work is good, but since there are only a few lines per character and you’ll be doing the same action a bunch of times be prepared to hear these lines over and over, which can become a bit tedious.
Gameplay
Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe is a Beat ’em Up, working in a side-scrolling fashion and featuring a perma-
death mechanic. You start the game by picking a character. There are four characters available at the start, with two more secret characters to be unlocked later. While the controls of each character are the same, their special attacks differ, so it is worthwhile to try them all and see which fits your play-style best.
After a short tutorial, you have the choice of four levels or areas, which you can play in any order you like. However, each level gets longer as you progress, upping the difficulty slightly. You are dropped in your environment of choice, the screen is locked in place and you are immediately set upon by hungry zombies. It is your goal to kill all the enemies, allowing you to walk to the next screen, which once again is locked in place until you kill all undead foes. In doing so you can employ a basic attack, dodging rolls, as well as a few different special attacks. Performing those will use energy and using too many in a row will cause you to overheat, making it so you’ll have to wait a few seconds before using any more. At the end of an area, you’ll face a fearsome boss.
For every zombie you kill, expect to get some sweet loot, mostly in the form of coins. You will need these, not only to upgrade your character and get stronger, but more importantly to revive yourself after you inevitably die. And you better make sure you have that money when you do, because dying is a permanent condition in this game. Should it be that you don’t have the coins required to revive your character and keep playing, the game will unceremoniously destroy your save file, forcing you to start all over again next run. Your score will be displayed on the leaderboard, so it can be quite fun to try and rake up those points.
While there isn’t much more to the basic game, you can play on easy, normal or hard difficulty, so you can keep busy mastering all the characters. If you prefer to tackle the undead with a friend however, this is also a possibility, as the game comes with a fun local co-op mode allowing you to team up in your bid for survival with up to three friends. Furthermore, there is a survival mode where you can try and endure wave after wave of enemies, slowly increasing in difficulty each time.
Conclusion
Some might complain about the lack of story or substantial content to a simple game such as Streets of Red: Devil’s Dare Deluxe. While it won’t be the type of game you invest hours upon hours of your time into, it is certainly fun for short bursts of time, especially if you can rope a few friends into tagging along. And if you’re a fan of 90s pop culture, especially video games and horror movies, you will find countless Easter eggs that just add to the fun.
Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe - Review,
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