9.5
The graphics will strike you as alluring or off-putting, but Hyper Demon is not as impenetrable as it seems in screenshots. When you're in control, that storm of colour and light is yours to wield. Once you've deciphered it all, you can scrutinize replays (a feature seamlessly baked in so you can watch any player on the leaderboard's best run) and see the beauty in the chaos. Each dazzling visual effect or grizzly audio cue is specific, an explosion only caused by one kind of pick-up or the wail only that of a particular enemy dying. Learn them and you can grasp control from the abyss.
