The weirdest FPS of the decade just got a free, standalone PvP mode that's a blast if you can keep your lunch down

2022 wasn't exactly a banner year for first-person shooters, but it did bring us Hyper Demon. Like its predecessor Devil Daggers, Hyper Demon boasted a trippy art-style and emphasised fast-paced, high-challenge shooting, but its emphasis was less about survival and more about being an aggressive killing machine a-la Doom Eternal.

The result utterly entranced Sam Greer, who gave it a whopping score of 95 in her Hyper Demon Review. "The dizzying heights you reach with each powerup and each foe overcome are virtually, and visually, euphoric," she wrote. "The entire dark landscape of the world literally wraps around your vision, and as your field of view folds on itself you can funnel every creature into the sights of your wrath. One small misstep can still end you, but for a few, fleeting seconds you are unstoppable."

One other key difference between Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon is that the latter had a multiplayer mode, though you'd be forgiven for not knowing this since it was left as a secret for players to discover. Now though, developer Sorath has made the multiplayer mode not just public knowledge, but public full stop, releasing it as a free, standalone game on Steam.

Hyper Demon PvP pitches two players against each other—each resembling biblically accurate angels—on a silvery disc of energy surrounded by a fathomless void. Each player is equipped with a brace of purple daggers they can launch at one another and a projectile-deflecting energy shield that activates by pressing right-mouse. You can hold down the fire button to unleash a deadly charged shot that uses all your daggers at once, while doing the same with just one dagger remaining will release a piercing shot that shatters your opponent's shield.

While the basics are simple, there's a surprising amount of depth to Hyper Demon, as I quickly learned by having my…whatever biblically accurate angels have instead of an arse handed to me by the handful of (very pleasant) players online at the time. Mastering when to fire and when to block is tricky, and there's the added complication that time slows down when players approach one another, which bamboozled me more than once.

The good news is there are plenty of tools to help you learn how to play, including a step-by-step tutorial and the ability to play against a CPU opponent. Learning how to stomach Hyper Demon PvP's distinctive visual style is another matter though, and if you're sensitive to motion-sickness, I'd advise you to proceed with caution. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a small-scale competitive shooter to play and have somehow exhausted the many maps of Straftat, Hyper Demon PvP is well worth a shot.