I believe in the event you had been to journey again in time to across the 14th century to wherever Dante Alighieri was on the time, and confirmed him Hell Maiden, a roguelike, bullet hell, deckbuilding, ’90s anime-esque, basically fan fiction sequel to his Divine Comedy, he’d most likely say one thing like “Mama mia” and die on the spot in concern of what his personal creation spawn a whole lot of years later. But as ridiculous an idea as it’s – and it’s ridiculous – the demo for it’s fairly good.
To match it to different video games, Hell Maiden is sort of a mash-up of Hades and Vampire Survivors, the latter main the cost in moment-to-moment gameplay. You play as Dante himself, or on this case, herself, who’s again in hell after having reached Paradiso, with amnesia. And so she begins the ascension to heaven as soon as extra!
If you begin off, you are armed with Dante’s quill, which sends out fiery blasts each second or so akin to Vampire Survivor’s whip. You may have as much as 4 weapons (a minimum of that seems to be the restrict within the demo), mentioned weapons represented as playing cards. Leveling up offers you the chance to select from three new playing cards, which more often than not can be weapon modifiers, doing issues like including extra projectiles, rising harm, that kind of factor, however you will sometimes get new weapons to make use of.
In case you pull a replica modifier card, you possibly can fuse them with one other to enhance it, or place it on a unique weapon in the event you so select. There are even some playing cards that may have an effect on a number of weapons relying on the place you place them.
Like in different Vampire Survivor clones you do not have a lot management over your assaults, although you possibly can level them in a single route whereas shifting in one other, so that you do have some management. This feels strong too, at no level did I really feel annoyed or overwhelmed by what was on display screen, I do know every of my deaths was my very own fault. It is all fairly tightly woven collectively, particularly spectacular contemplating that each time the sport does launch it will achieve this in early entry.
The Hades aspect crops up within the type of narrative construction greater than something. Upon dying you are dropped at The Discussion board, a hub space the place you possibly can hang around and chat with varied Poets of Limbo, similar to Homer, Virgil, and Horace. Plainly befriending them permits you to unlock different starter weapons, and so they all mean you can decide up totally different weapon and modifier playing cards too.
All of that is wrapped up in an extremely nicely rendered vaguely ’90s anime artwork fashion, a minimum of with regards to the dialogue scenes. The remainder of the sport is generally pixel artwork, however there are particular strikes you should utilize that do screen-wide harm following some stellar, totally animated cutscenes displaying off these anime girlified variations of, I want to remind you, very actual poets.
For probably the most half simply mashing up genres, even when it is performed nicely, would not inherently color me thinking about a sport, however with its extraordinarily nicely realised idea, I’m at the moment offered on Hell Maiden. I simply hope nobody invents time journey so Dante would not die before he was meant to.
Hell Maiden would not have a launch date simply but, however when it will get one, it will launch in early entry. You may wishlist it on Steam now.
