REVIEW#3 Helltaker

Samonx's Review Archieve - Sep 6 - - Dev Community

*Game Concept
*

Background Story: As a pancake chef, the player wakes up one day to find they've assembled a harem of demon girls. To realize this crazy dream, you summon Beelzebub and open the gates of hell. Despite the certain dangers of hell, the thought of countless girls there makes it worthwhile. With infinite respawns, you're willing to pay any price, including your life, to obtain these girls, build a harem, talk to them, and win them over!

Highlights: While the plot sounds unreasonable or even absurd, who can resist a harem of personified demon characters?! The in-game characters are personifications of the seven deadly sins, mostly with white hair and red eyes - irresistible to every otaku. The dialogue options with each demon girl are heart-racing. Will you choose to win them over, or receive their "punishments" that are actually rewards?

Image description
Gameplay

Flirting
To win over these cute girls with diverse personalities, dialogue is essential. When talking to them, you'll have two options. You need to choose the correct option based on your impression of them. If you choose wrong, you might face "punishment" from these girls. When you successfully win over these demons, they'll provide help and hints for conquering the next demon. Your dialogue options are rich - you can flirt with characters or act like a tough guy saying you're off to win over other girls. The resulting endings may vary. How would you approach winning over this tired, bespectacled demon girl?

Image description

Box-pushing Puzzles
Before meeting these demon girls, players need to realize they have their own rooms (either locked up or their personal rooms). Players need to solve puzzles to reach these rooms. To build your harem, you need to defeat guards within a set number of moves, avoid floor spikes on the map, push boxes blocking the path, obtain the key to open the room, and win the beauty. This mechanism isn't complex, mainly testing the player's speed and route planning ability. It's a relatively easy puzzle.

Image description

Rhythm-based Boss Avoidance
During the conquest process, a judge appears as a boss trying to judge you, putting you in a machine with chains and spikes. Avoiding chains requires following the music's rhythm. Players also need to destroy the chains serving as the boss's health bar. They appear and disappear, so players need to master the rhythm of the music and the timing of these chains to know when to attack. However, in my perspective, it's relatively easy.

Image description

Art and Music
The game's art style is very memorable and well-crafted, especially in depicting characters' faces and figures. It's a mix of Western and anime styles, with impressive facial features, especially the eyes. The character designs in terms of clothing and appearance are very appealing. The background music is also catchy, especially the BGM 'Vitality' during box-pushing, which is very dynamic as its name suggests. The game's background music is mainly electronic. Although not very melodic, each track is addictive with dense, energetic beats.

Image description

Overall Review

-Does anyone really dislike animation characters with white hair and red eyes?
The game's high rating on Steam is largely due to its art style. The characters look good, so even if the gameplay is simple and monotonous, it's still psychologically pleasing. You basically don't need to think to conquer girls and become a winner in life - who wouldn't give it a good review? Even hardcore gamers might succumb to the charm of white-haired, red-eyed demon beauties. It might not be a great game, but the author certainly captured players' psychology, and it's free.

-Somewhat Disappointing Gameplay
However, the gameplay is a bit disappointing compared to the art style and background music. The game isn't very engaging, and I finished it in about an hour. Although the box-pushing puzzles and chain-avoiding boss battles did take some time to solve, you can choose to skip the box-pushing and directly approach the demon girls, making the whole game process rather monotonous and thin. However, for a harem game, the focus isn't on gameplay but on character design, which we all understand. So the mildly stimulating puzzles and boss battles, while mediocre for ordinary games, are passable for this type of game, similar to visual novels. After all, some visual novels are purely CG.

-Seven Deadly Sin Demons, but CUTE
The character design in the game is interesting. The demons are titled after the seven deadly sins, like Lust Demon, Pride Demon, etc., but their personalities show difference- the Pride Demon joins your harem for a pancake, being tsundere. The Lust Demon actually gets shy when flirted with, seemingly naive about certain things. The acerbic Envy Demon actually loves playing games, maybe choosing to follow you because of games. Dialoguing with these characters and experiencing their gap moe personalities is a very interesting part. Perhaps this is why the game has many memes and fan comics despite its short length.

Ratings
Concept:8
Art&Music:9(Art 5 Music 5)
Gameplay:7
Overall:8/10

. . . . . .
Terabox Video Player