Software

The software driver for the Durgod x HK Venus keyboard is Durgod Hera Compiler, which sounds quite similar to the Gamdias' Hera software for their own peripherals and can be downloaded from the downloads page, or the HK-Gaming website. The latest version at the time of testing is still a beta, version 0.1.0.5, with the installer taking up 36.5 MB and the installed drivers needing ~71 MB on your system. Installation is a joke in terms of options as there is nothing other than giving it permission to go ahead. Hopefully, the full release will add options to choose the install directory, showcase any options and permissions needed, allow the user to have shortcuts, and so on. As a beta program, it is light on system resources when running.


Durgod's Hera Compiler is so clearly a work in progress that I am in two minds still about whether they should have even released it at this stage. The compiler in the name is quite fitting, with a user interface that can come off as intimidating to many no doubt. There is a user guide in the help menu, which has some typos, but comes in handy when navigating the software. For the purpose of this review and users of the Venus, all you have to really do is click on the Durgod Venus project on the right, which will take you to the keyboard-specific section of the driver.

Once you get past the initial hesitation of it not being as polished as competing software drivers for PC keyboards, the heart of the Hera Compiler is not hard to use. Indeed, the aforementioned manual is nice to have, as seen in the video above. The keyboard supports three onboard profiles, each with four layers of actions depending on the combination of Fn1 and Fn2 used. Each key on each layer of each profile is customizable to a variety of actions, including mouse strokes, opening a program, media and volume controls, and so on. Saving the changes involves downloading the build to the keyboard via USB, and here too some language barriers come up in the way of making this a more approachable process.

Up to five lighting effects can be toggled through for each profile, and the current beta software build allows for having none at all, if you so prefer, as well as changing which five (or fewer) lighting effects are toggled through. A drop down menu allows for a selection of some preset static, dynamic, and reactive effects, each with their own subset of configuration options. There is also a macro menu for, as you surely guessed, creating and editing macros that can then be assigned to a key in the customization section we saw before. It works well enough provided you get past the random occurrences of Mandarin and broken English here and there.

If I was hesitant at the beginning of this page, I no longer am in saying that an average end user will benefit from using this after all. It allows for fine-tuning of the 60% form factor to your typing needs, especially if you want to use a layout other than QWERTY.