A Viciously Unique Take on the End of the World - Hell O City Review

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I love roguelites. I love deckbuilders. And I especially love roguelite deckbuilders! But even as someone with a lot of love for these types of games, I have to admit that sometimes I can get a little exhausted. No, it’s not the harsh roguelike penalties requiring me to start over from the beginning of a run when I die, and it’s not the endless quest for the perfect batch of cards. What sometimes pushes me to take a break from the genre is something I like to call “fantasy fatigue.”

As with the majority of role-playing games, an awful lot of roguelites and deckbuilding titles are firmly enmeshed in traditional fantasy archetypes. And that’s fine! I enjoy even generic fantasy settings. Heck, I collected Dragonlance novels as a kid. But sometimes I just need a taste of something different, whether that’s sci-fi, cyberpunk, or perhaps something...darker. If you’re also looking for a more sinister spin on one of gaming’s most addictive styles, Hell O City may scratch that itch for you just as well as it did for me.

Despite the vaguely goofy name, Hell O City begins from an instantly grimy, hopeless position. It takes place in a near-future urban setting where the world has been suddenly ripped to shreds by a series of apocalyptic events: nuclear war, rapid climate change, and an apparent biblical rapture. The human population has been decimated after all of this, and as if that weren’t bad enough, things that were seemingly once human have emerged from underground seeking to kill whatever untransformed people remain.

One of Hell O City’s greatest strengths isn’t just that it avoids the fantasy genre—though I appreciate that!—but that its aesthetic truly feels singular in a way that is extremely rare. It’s post-apocalyptic, but not in a sense that recalls the Fallout games, for example. Its antagonists are murderous once-human monsters, but they don’t look or act like zombies. And it has big, creepy tentacle creatures who seem to have played a part in the horrors that befell this world, but it doesn’t come across as a Lovecraft retread. The closest visual comparison I can think of is the Silent Hill games, but even then, this isn’t trying to be a psychological horror game at all.

As one member of a band of survivors trying to make it through this screwed up hellworld, you’ll enter a series of linear “dungeons” in the form of recognizable urban locales such as an apartment building, a hospital, a museum, and so on. I say recognizable, but of course these locations have been warped into run-down, dingy messes that also happen to be overrun with those inhumanly evil creatures from underground that I mentioned. Surviving a trip through a nearby elementary school is easier said than done.

Since Hell O City is set just a little over a decade from the current day, the weapons your party will use to fend off bad guys are mostly recognizable: pistols, assault rifles, police batons, and so on. Some allies also have the potential to learn magic spells, a power that has been introduced into this otherwise familiar Earth by whatever dark forces brought down society.

As for how you actually use said weapons, it’s as simple as tapping a card from your lineup and sliding it toward whichever enemy you want to attack. Combat is turn-based, and each weapon has a cooldown timer based on how powerful it is. So for example, you may be able to swing with a relatively weak knife every turn, but tossing a stun grenade at an enemy is only allowed once every five turns. It’s a simple but compelling system, as you work through the many encounters awaiting you in each area, your party members will level up, discover new cards, and earn upgrades to the cards they already have. Those additions to your arsenal are always offered as a choice between two or three options, which adds a delicious layer of strategizing to the progression of each run.

Rather than the traditional roguelike style where death means starting from the very beginning of the game, each of Hell O City’s “dungeons” operate as their own mini-roguelike. So when you clear the thirty encounters of the apartment building, for example, and head to the market next, all your party members will begin at level one again, with their original set of cards. While this setup was occasionally a little disheartening, especially when I’d put together a set of cards I really liked, it also gave me breathing room and ensured my long-term progress through the game’s grim storyline would be saved.

As is usual of roguelites, Hell O City also offers some persistent character growth in two forms. First, there are artifacts, items that provide small stat boosts and which can be dropped by enemies you defeat. Each character can equip two artifacts, and finding duplicates of the same artifact improves its overall power. On top of that, completing areas will reward you with souls, which can be spent between runs to increase each individual character’s stats. The cost of these stat boosts is tiny at first, but it quickly rockets into the hundreds and beyond, so you’ll need to do a ton of grinding if you want to really get your group overpowered.

Thankfully, said grinding wasn’t necessary at all in my experience. It’s nice to have as an option for less patient players, but I found Hell O City’s overall difficulty to be on the friendlier side of the roguelite genre—even if the overall look and feel of the game was much more oppressive. And while some advance roguelite players may be disappointed that this game isn’t more challenging, I’m happy that it’s approachable, because hopefully it means more people will give it the chance it deserves.

It’s also worth noting that Hell O City is extremely free-to-play. The only monetization the game has is in the form of entirely optional ads that you can choose to watch at the end of a dungeon run to double your souls or occasionally mid-run to gain a small bonus. If you’d like to get those extras without watching ads, you can pay a one-time fee of $5. For as lengthy, entertaining, and original as this game is, it’s shocking that it’s also this player-friendly. If you’ve ever bemoaned how every mobile game seems to be just another generic fantasy or zombie game, then you have no excuse not to give Hell O City a try.

SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• DarkBlood: Beyond the Darkness. While it avoids the traditional fantasy trappings of DarkBlood, Hell O City’s linear approach to dungeon crawling that’s mostly focused on combat encounters mixed with a handful of events is very similar to this also great and deeply underrated mobile gem.

• The horror genre. Hell O City has an aesthetic that’s all its own, but it’s also undeniably horror, up to and including the way it builds on common human anxieties about the state of the world and where things could be headed if we’re not careful.

💬 Have you tried Hell O City yet? If so, let me know what you thought. If not, tell me your favorite post-apocalyptic game, movie, or book. Share your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll be sure to respond!

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