Damikira (Formerly Doomies) Review
PETA's wishes they could have made something this graphic.
[Note: Recently, the game got a name change so I updated this review to reflect upon that. Outside of that, there's been some major changes since the initial review. For example, the game now has an intro cutscene that explains the lore, a dedicated tutorial you can play through, and the addition of local multiplayer. The most important change is that it was recently announced that the game will soon be on all major gaming platforms, all thanks to Eastasiasoft Limited. The ports are linked at the bottom.
Introduction
On Wednesday, April 24th, 2024, Brain-dead Rabbit Games released Damikira out of early access. In this review, I’ll cover what I like about it and what I think the game could improve upon.
Inception
The Doomies series of games embarked on its journey in 2020 with the release of Doomies (Classic), followed by the sequel, Doomies: Reloaded. The year 2021 saw the arrival of Doomies: Reloaded+, and in 2022, fans were introduced to Doomies: Bloody Fur. Now, in 2024, the saga continues with the official release of Damikira, after spending time in early access since 2023.
Going In Mostly Blind
I only learned that it was an entire series when searching for this review. I found Bloody Fur and Reloaded+ on Tuesday while browsing through GX.Games. Bloody Fur has a button to wishlist the next game in the series in the main menu so I wishlisted it not thinking much would come out of it. Ironically, I got an email on Wednesday saying the game finally left early access and at a 25 percent discount on Steam. I was surprised to find out that I was familiar with the lead developer’s previous work via Jack The Racoon on Newgrounds, I beat that in two sittings.
Visuals
The character art found in the intro and menus is great. The visuals within the stages do a great job of being easy to read. This is especially important for a game where you can get blood everywhere in a short amount of time. The enemy death animations are pretty gorey but not detailed enough to be overkill. The use of human corpses decorating the levels shows that dummies (a mix between dumb and rabies?) aren’t to be reasoned with despite their cutesy demeanor. In turn, it feels much better to exterminate them.
Audio
It’s metal music and it goes hard; not much more I can say. If you don’t like that genre of music you can just turn it off and play the music you prefer. You can also turn off one-liners while you’re at it, in case you don’t like those either. The voice acting for the playable characters is fine but the voice work for the Announcer is a bit muffled. I know that it’s supposed to sound as if it’s from a walkie-talkie but I also know that the effect can be done without muffling the audio. This is just a minor nitpick since every voice line has captions anyway. The sound effects are great and get the point across for what they represent.
Story
You rip and tear through hordes of animals and occasionally save scientists. There’s voice acting in the game but it’s just used for giving objectives and one-liners. The characters have short bios that show up when they die. The story takes a backseat, at least currently.
Gameplay
The game is summarized as a “really frenetic arcade shooter... meant to waste your time (in a good way),” and the gameplay reflects that. There’s bullet time that activates randomly (combos don’t reset in this state)—well, I think it’s random since I don’t know what triggers it. You can jump down certain platforms, and the levels themselves are different every run. On right-click (or left trigger on a controller), you get a grappling hook that lets you speed through levels. Grappling on ceilings or walls can get you out of a sticky situation and towards the objective of a level.
So far, I’ve come across 4 main objectives: Kill 5 special enemies, save 2 hostages (scientists)—be careful, you can accidentally kill them; kill 80 enemies; and get a 30-kill combo. Despite how that sounds, there’s only one objective per level. However, there is a side objective. As of now, the only one is saving scientists so they can hand you a pickup. This can happen multiple times in a level. The levels don’t go by so fast that you can’t collect the pickups. There are about 4 I know of so far: Health heals you, Berserker raises the rate of fire for your gun and possibly the damage too, Upgrades give you a buff that lasts the entire run, and Striker gives you the Striker and it’s overpowered.
Additionally, Ammo pickups give you an unlocked gun. If you collect five ammo pickups during a run, you unlock a new gun to add to your arsenal for later runs. The counter doesn’t reset between levels, and once you unlock a new gun, you can start the process all over again. As of now, there are 28 guns to unlock, and I’m sure that number will rise with each major update.
You can obtain coins during a run to use in the shop to buy hats. The hats are pretty good, and so far there are 27 of them to buy, and I’m sure that number will rise with each major update. There’s something for everybody, even a Sonichu hat. I think the arsenal mechanic and coins add a nice layer of meta-progression that makes the game feel more complex.
Playable Characters
The poster girl and starting character upon first booting up the game is Emily Ames Anderson, she’s 19 and from Texas. Her starting weapon is a shotgun revolver. Since starting weapons are what you’ll be using most of the time in between ammo pickups and at the start of every level regardless if you had an unlocked weapon the level before, a good one is vital to your survival and the length of a run. With that being said, Emily is the worst character. Her one-liners are good but her weapon sucks, it’s low-range with low spread. In a game where enemies can kill you in seconds if you’re not paying attention, being any closer to them than you need to is a death sentence.
The second playable character is Henry (n. 1858) with a strength number of 85 and an IQ of 105. He’s also from the US but not anywhere specific. His starting weapon is a pistol. With its high range and firing rate, upgrades make it overpowered. Henry is unique within the current character roster because along with being an axolotl and not, human like the others, he also has the only ranged starting weapon. His one-liners use text-to-speech, not to cut corners, but rather in a stylistic way.
The poster boy and third playable character is Eric Edison Diaz, he’s 20 and from Buenos Aires. His starting weapon is a shotgun. With its medium-range and medium spread, it’s essentially the better equivalent of Emily’s starting weapon since the range and spread are higher. His one-liners are good.
Gripes
My biggest gripe with the game is the lack of a tutorial, even though there are tips at the start of levels; It’s just not enough. I think there are too many mechanics at play to keep track of without a dedicated guide. It doesn’t even need to be a dedicated level or anything. Just an image breaking down the game mechanics in the main menu. Another criticism I have is the lack of rebinding the controls, not that I dislike the default controls or anything. It’s just nice to have that option. Also, the gave needs cloud saves. It’s a pick-up-and-play type of game sure, but losing progress if you decide to play it on a different computer or if your hard drive dies, sucks.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In closing, though I have some issues with it, those issues can be improved upon; therefore, I am not counting them against the game overall. I can certainly say that Damikira is great. With an addicting gameplay loop and great art style, I recommend this. Coming from a small four-person team in Mexico, it's astounding how well-polished the game is right now. I believe that Brain-dead Rabbit Games has created something that will soar to the summit in due time, bearing the golden eagle upon their shoulders.
Sources:
Check out Damikira on Steam (It’s also on Itch.io but as of writing, Steam has the most recent build) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2446700/Doomies_Damikira/
Check out Damikira at Eastasiasoft https://www.eastasiasoft.com/games/Damikira
Microsoft Store (Xbox): https://www.xbox.com/es-MX/games/store/damikira/9N1T1Z98DTZ7/0010
Nintendo Switch (North America): https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/damikira-switch/
Nintendo Switch (Europe): https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Damikira-2642124.html
Nintendo Switch (Japan): https://store-jp.nintendo.com/item/software/D70010000084837
Playstation: https://store.playstation.com/es-mx/concept/10011779/
The Doomies series on Itch.io https://itch.io/c/2337289/doomies-games
The Brain-dead Rabbit Games website https://www.braindeadrabbit.com
The Brain-dead Rabbit Games Twitter/X https://twitter.com/bdr_games_
Check out GX.Games https://gx.games/
Jack The Racoon on Newgrounds https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/910814
This article goes over what meta progression is, in case you didn’t know https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-procession-of-progression-in-game-design
I used this to get the new character portraits because they aren’t in the presskit yet (they got added after I posted the review) https://github.com/UnderminersTeam/UndertaleModTool