Have you ever wondered what would happen if you fell into a black hole? Playing this game is like dancing on the edge of reality. Pushing the limits of traditional shooters and leaving corridors, cover, and combat in the dust, perspective, time, and space all collapse. The basis of the game is chasing high scores and defeating monsters, something that has been done since the game's inception, but like "Thumper" and "Tetris Effect" in their pursuit of the highest class high scores, this template is transformed into something that is a dream. If violence in 1994 shooters had felt as transcendent as in "Hyper Demon," Edge magazine might not have bothered to ask, "If only we could talk to this creature."

Hyper Demon's menu alone was enough to get me excited. The angelic electronic music and the oily, glossy colors swirling in the title, "HYPER DEMON," proclaimed the game's intensity. But the game begins with a small patch of light, where birds gather around a twisted dagger. I love this serene moment that precedes each run.

Sorath's previous title, Devil Daggers, distilled Doom and Quake into a pure, creepy shooter. No chasing key cards, no flimsy story ...... Just shoot and survive in the endless darkness, where the ghosts of the undead are crawling all over the place. Echoing growls and screams, bones crashing against stone. Firing streams of hot knives at skulls that emerge from the shadows.

How far can you go before that? The world record is 20 minutes.

Unlike the Devil Dagger, the hyper-demon is not about survival. The goal is to succeed. Scoring this time is based not on how long you can survive, but on how quickly you can defeat the ethereal beast. The more monsters you kill in a short time, the higher your score. The bigger the monster, the better. Some of my best runs took only a few seconds. While "Devil Daggers" felt like being trapped in a nightmare basement filled with endless horrors, the atmosphere in "Hyper Demon" is very nice: "I'm not trapped here with you, you're trapped here with me.

So while the weapons at your disposal are a bit more plentiful than in "Devil Daggers," the game is very similar. From a first-person perspective, you shoot daggers from ethereal hands in two firing modes, a machine gun and a shotgun, complemented by a special laser beam attack that sucks up gems and other power-ups and fires them (alternatively, you can absorb them for special effects). Movement is not limited to hopping, but can also be fired into the air to blast off the ground and dash to dodge enemies.

Mastering these skills is made much easier by a tutorial mode that explains each element separately. The hyper-demon may seem unruly and cacophonous at first, but once you get a grasp of it, it can be exquisitely controlled. Pointing and shooting alone will leave you with a negative score. For example, you can pull pickups to the front like a vacuum, delay pickups with continuous fire, or save lasers and bombs for when more enemies appear.

The best players conduct this kaleidoscope of demons like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but with a shotgun.

The ability is only half of it. Once you've done it enough times, you realize that controlling each monster is the key to taking control of the battle and turning your enemies into a step on the road to godlike prowess. Some can be used as launching pads for backstabbing and leaping into the air, while others spawn minions that can be farmed for ammunition.

With each power up and each enemy defeated, they reach dizzying heights. The entire dark landscape of the world literally envelops your vision, allowing every living thing to be in the crosshairs of your fury as your vision folds in on itself. One wrong step and you're done for, but for just a few seconds you're unstoppable.

While the graphics may be appealing or off-putting to some, the hyperdemons are not as baffling as they appear in the screenshots. Once you take control, you can manipulate the storms of color and light at will. Once you've deciphered it all, you can scrutinize the replays (a seamlessly integrated feature that allows you to see any player's best run on the leaderboard) and find the beauty in the chaos. Each dazzling visual effect and grizzly audio cue is special, explosions are only triggered by certain pickups, and wailing only occurs when certain enemies are dying. Once you learn them, you can control them from the abyss.

This is the challenge at the heart of the game: learn how to go from spinning helplessly in the dark to becoming the destroyer of worlds. The pursuit of ever-increasing power is the hook of so many action games, so much fantasy baked into them, that it is hardly even conscious anymore. That is to be expected. Hyper Demon makes it feel unexpected.

We don't collect better weapons or trade pistols for rocket launchers. You are simply learning. The only thing that makes you better is knowledge. You are a hyper-demon.

This difference from many other action games is what keeps me in the void. The moment I die, I click and instantly enter the next run. I am unstoppable. With each incremental step forward, I know there is still more to see. And that is to kick my friends off the leaderboard.