Devil Jam is an action bullet heaven game themed around hell and the seven deadly sins. Read our full review to see what the game does well, what it doesn’t do well, and if it’s worth your money.
Devil Jam Review Overview
What is Devil Jam?
Devil Jam is a sci-fi action RPG by Obsidian Entertainment and the direct follow-up to the 2019 game of the same name. Set in a universe years after the events of the first game, Devil Jam follows the story of an Earth Directorate officer coming to terms with the current state of the galaxy and the major players within it.
Devil Jam features:
⚫︎ 3 unlockable characters
⚫︎ Rock and Roll-themed soundtrack and NPCs
⚫︎ Branching quest track and unlocks
⚫︎ Bullet-heaven gameplay
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $9.99 |
Devil Jam Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 A Few Good Ideas Great Character Design Addicting Bullet Heaven (or Hell?) Gameplay |
Poorly Presented Story, If it Even Has One Meh-tagame Progression Very Few Unlocks that are Confusing to Boot |
Devil Jam Story - 4/10
Devil Jam’s story is mostly left unsaid, and I don’t mean that in a good way. While bullet heavens rarely have stories anyway, that usually goes hand-in-hand with having no characters. But this game does have characters, and Death Must Die has proven that they CAN have stories anyway, so I’m just left with my head scratching for this one.
Devil Jam Gameplay - 7/10
Gameplay for Devil Jam is repetitive and simple, as bullet heaven games usually are. That’s not what docks points from it. No, that’s due to the unclear progression of unlocks, relatively small roster of characters and NPCs, and mostly minor metagame upgrades. The beat mechanics for your attacks and adjacency-centric boons do provide some innovation for the genre, though.
Devil Jam Visuals - 7/10
Devil Jam looks the part for the hellish, punk rock persona it’s trying to project with its music and premise. I wouldn’t go around lauding its level design because it’s mostly just blank space, rocks, and fire, but the character designs are at least evocative and visually interesting.
Devil Jam Audio - 8/10
I wouldn’t put it above a game all about punk, metal, and rock aesthetics to have such catchy tunes. Devil Jam’s music is easily its best facet, which makes me sad it wasn’t some other kind of game instead. Killing demons to the beat can get infectious, and you’ll be enthralled before long. I just wish it had more variety, even if the few tracks are absolute bangers.
Devil Jam Value for Money - 5/10
The comes in at a decent $9.99, which is completely fine, but also at the limit of what I'm willing to pay for this game. Any cent more, and I'd rather just watch a garage band play me a worse rendition of Wonderwall.
Devil Jam Overall Score - 62/100
Devil Jam is an off-beat yet electrifying bullet heaven bursting with rockstar flair. Its rhythm-based mechanics and chaotic synergy are addictive, and its hellish visuals strike the right chord between dread and thrill.
Unfortunately, clunky progression, a weak metagame, and a limited roster keep it from hitting those high notes just right, mostly ending up as noise on an otherwise decent track. It’ll have to be exceedingly cheap to not be a crashout in the making.
A solid B-side banger at best—fun for fans, maybe, but not a chart-topper by any means.
Devil Jam Review: B-side Banger at Best
Vampire Survivors really did invent, or at least popularize, a whole new genre, didn’t it? Once upon a time, it was the pixelated predecessor of all bullet heavens—and it still is. It’s far from the only one nowadays, though, since the formula’s so easy to work with and very amenable to new mechanics.
That said, just because it’s easy to copy and try, that doesn’t mean that every new bullet heaven’s gonna be just as good, though a few did manage. For every Brotato, Holocure, and DRG: Survivor, there are ten TemTem Swarms impressing nobody. And smack dab in the middle of that spectrum is Devil Jam, the okayest bullet heaven you’ll ever play, if you ever hear about it.
A Crossroads Deal to Hit the Top Charts
So, what story does Devil Jam have hidden between the lyrics? Well, see, that’s the thing…I’m not sure. I can see that it has one, since the game has characters with dialogue, a defined setting, and some modicum of implied motivations between the NPCs and playable characters, but if the game had a plot, then I certainly missed it.
From what I can glean, gathered from conversations between your boon-givers, the devil himself, and the character designs, you’re either someone who made a classic crossroads devil deal to become the best musician ever, and must fight your way out of hell as a result, or someone who’s already in hell trying to fight their way out.
Either way, you’re stuck here, using your music to quell waves of demons surging around you with the help of the Seven Deadly Sins. No, I don’t mean Meliodas and the gang, I mean the personified, rockstar-ified versions of the deadly sins from Christian mythos. They’re your Olympians if this were Hades, and they’ve got something to say to you every time you get something from them.
It’s a solid concept as it is now, though the narrative side of things will certainly take a hit if they’re this inefficient with their storytelling. Visual storytelling should be an option, not a necessity for these kinds of games, and I’d appreciate if there was something—anything—to go on.
Bash to the Beat
Moving on to gameplay, Devil Jam is a bog-standard bullet heaven similar to the likes of Vampire Survivors, though it does add a few good ideas on there for some much-needed spice. Of course, the basics of the gameplay mostly have you walking around as literal swathes of enemies run into your attacks. You may be in hell, but this is, indeed, a bullet heaven.
Every now and then, you collect enough dropped EXP from fallen enemies to level up, allowing you to earn one boon from the Sins. These boons can come as one of three possible varieties: attacks, enchantments, and passives.
Attacks are, well, attacks. They let you deal damage one way or another, be it at range or close up, and usually have special properties to them. Passives, as you may have guessed, don’t give you new ways to attack, but provide passive qualities to your character, such as improved stats.
To discuss enchantments, we need to discuss how you attack in this game, because the two go hand in hand. While attacking is still automatic, you don’t do so on a set cooldown that can be reduced. Instead, your attacks fire to the beat of the music. Consisting of a 3-rowed, 4-beat measure, each attack and enchantment you gain can be assigned to one cell and have their effects take place on that beat only.
This means you can stack multiple attacks onto one beat and hit someone really hard with three attacks every 4 beats, or spread them out evenly so something’s always going off. Enchantments work on a different principle, mostly caring about adjacency and proximity within the beat itself. These enchantments provide all-around buffs to certain cells within the measure. If an attack is in the enchanted cell, it gets that enchantment.
So the usual optimal way to go about things is to stack attacks and enchantments properly to maximize the buff. Passives have limited slots, so those are limited in time, but as long as your measure has room, you can keep piling them on.
You can level up all boons you get by picking them again after a level up, increasing their stats. Insofar, the game hasn’t shown an evolution system similar to Vampire Survivors’ accessible through certain boon combinations, but basic level-ups do accomplish similar improvements to each boon once sufficiently leveled.
Now this sounds like a banger, and it is to some extent, but this concludes the good things this game has going for it. It’s all stinkers from here on out.
Small Band, Smaller Metagame Impact
The first thing you’ll notice after your first wipeout is how this game handles its metagame progression. It’s somewhat similar to how other games of its kind do it, just much slower and with more hoops than necessary.
You fulfill various quests to gain Hellions, this game’s currency, and unlock even more quests. You can use your Hellions to buy metagame progress currencies, of which there are four, and can finally use those to unlock base stat upgrades and new boons from a vendor.
That sounds fine, but why the extra step of having to use the Hellions to buy metagame progression? They’re not used for anything else, since new characters and sins are unlocked through quests. Removing the other currencies would be a great step in that direction since literally nothing else interacts with them, and they can’t be used for anything else.
Hades already had this system down pat, so I don’t know why they chose to be different and inferior when they can be the same and effective. This isn’t even a major draw for the game; they could’ve just done what works.
As for what else doesn’t work, the metagame progress you get from these currencies isn’t even all that worth it. Stat bonuses in the single-digit percentages don’t really add up that much in the long run. You can also unlock new interactibles for when you’re out and about, mashing demons. I haven’t mentioned them until now because they’re mostly inconsequential, save for a couple.
These are just temporary buffs while on a run, also in the single digits, usually, so just as unimpressive, if not less. To make matters worse, there are only three characters. Vampire Survivors had so many to start with, so did Brotato. DRG: Survivors only had 4, but each had 2 other specializations to branch out into. Here, you get three. That’s it.
More are coming, according to the game’s devs, but I’m not holding my breath for them, considering how basic the current ones are. I won’t even name them, because there’s no story for these identities to matter. Just called them the melee one, the ranged one, and the AoE one, because I do, and it doesn’t diminish the experience.
Generally Unpolished Performance Closer to an Indie Band’s
Devil Jam in general still needs a lot more polish to come out the star it intends to be. The weirdly unimportant metagame progression buffs can be tweaked by moving numbers around, but overall quality is hard to pin down.
Take Hellions, for example. I only know these gold coins are called that due to a boon description. They are otherwise not mentioned or highlighted as such. The complete lack of tooltips for what each stat does furthers the insignificance of the meta game buffs, which is just completely unacceptable.
The game overall feels empty, even if the gameplay is addictive in its repetition. There’s no meaningful progression to be had, and everything is as desolate as the hell it’s set in.
Music’s Worth Listening To, At Least
To throw this game a bone, somewhat, its music and visuals are quite good. It’s not going to win an award for either, but it plays up the heavy metal/punk/infernal look well. It even does the Percy Jackson thing and recontextualizes the Seven Deadly Sins as various employees of a band, like Lust being a talent acquisition specialist and Greed being the one in charge of merch.
These personas show in their character designs very well, and the fact that they’re voiced is just icing on the cake. I wish there were more of them, though, and that they had more things to say. Those can be added in the future, as it is now, this game at least looks like a rockstar, even if it doesn’t play like one.
I Wouldn’t Get Front Row Tickets for This Concert
All in all, Devil Jam is akin to a B-side banger on a vinyl. It’s good, with some experimental additions to the genre’s usual sound that make it distinct. It has its moments and can be something genuinely buying the whole track for some fans. Unfortunately, its general appeal is lacking in many areas, and you can tell this isn’t the band’s best work.
There’s a reason it isn’t being promoted as much as the headliners, but it has its own merit in some respects. Whether or not you’ll add it to your playlist (or Steam library, for that matter), will entirely be up to your expectations. Either way, you’ll get to rock out in hell.
Is Devil Jam Worth It?
Anything More Than $10 is a Bad Deal with the Devil
$10 is a the perfect price for Devil Jam. Not so cheap that it would betray the game's middling content, not so high that it's no longer worth the price for admission. I'd call it the exact limit of what I'm willing to play for such a game, though I wouldn't mind paying for less, all things considered.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
|||||||
| $9.99 |
Devil Jam FAQ
Will Devil Jam Release New Characters?
Yes. According to the game’s developers, new characters will be included in the game’s 1.0 release.
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Devil Jam Product Information
 |
|
| Title | DEVIL JAM |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 3, 2025 (Steam) |
| Developer | Rogueside |
| Publisher | Rogueside |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Action, Roguelite |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Devil Jam Website |
