Helltaker (PC)

Helltaker is a free game seemingly made by its creator Vanripper for the purpose of sharing his love for sharply dressed demon girls, but the nice thing about the game is it isn’t just a simple throwaway delivery mechanism for a couple of cute demonesses. Plenty of visual novel games exist for the purpose of providing people art of attractive women, often not featuring much gameplay or even good writing to support this means of sharing their quality art. Helltaker, thankfully, has at least a bit going on underneath the surface level appeal of its characters by providing some puzzles to overcome, but it still doesn’t lose focus on its main purpose for existing.

Helltaker is not just the name of the game but that of its hero. The Helltaker is a well-built man with shades, a clean white suit, and a desire to go down into hell and build himself a harem out of the demon ladies he finds there. The game quickly begins as a fearsome looking demon called Beelzebub tells you the tale of how the Helltaker does just that, each of the game’s small selection of levels focusing on a little puzzle he needs to overcome to speak with the specific demoness lingering in the area. As he approaches them, he doesn’t drag them away by force thankfully, instead speaking briefly with them to try and convince them to come with him. This isn’t exactly a deep or complex conversation, most of the demon girls briefly giving the player an idea who they are before you’re asked to select a response that is often silly or direct. Usually there are only two options available, a correct one that will convince the girl to join the Helltaker and an incorrect one that will cause the demon girl to immediately kill him. That death can prove to be a little disheartening in some of the harder puzzle levels if you didn’t commit your solution to memory, but since the demon girls are the game’s focus, it’s not too strange that the creator wanted to emphasize their dangerous nature in some way.

Of course, since the cast of ladies is the main appeal of the title, their designs and personalities are fairly important. There is a bit of an issue prevalent across all of them, that being they are mostly ladies with white hair dressed in suits that rely on the colors black and red. If you don’t take the time to really look closely at the girls, they can feel somewhat interchangeable even if some effort was taken to give most of them both a unique visual component and a simple distinct personality type. Zdrada’s piercings and smoking make her easy to tell apart from the group, and Cerberus actually takes the form of three girls who travel together and have a few dog features. All of the demons have horns and pointed tails to remind you they’re supposed to be from Hell, but some like the grumpy gamer Malina and even the queen of Hell Lucifer could do with more standout features in this somewhat homogeneous group. Personality types help some rise up, the sunglasses wearing Justice being laid-back and cool while Pandemonica takes on the role of a sort of secretary type, but it’s definitely characters like the angel Azazel who dresses in white and the dark-skinned and underdressed Judgment that end up being the most striking designs for breaking the conventions others follow. Regardless of how the character looks though, they all have rather cute dancing sprites that appear in the actual levels before you talk to them, their bouncy energy just adding a bit more character to a game that, in general, does a good job with its color design and visual tone.

The unfortunate truth about all our lovely ladies is that they are for the most part pretty shallow. Vanripper was likely counting on their designs to inspire fan art and memetic character development similar to how the Touhou fandom has made more from its often basic female characters. In Helltaker, you get a designation like Sour Demon or Lustful Demon to give you the basics of the girl, a brief chat with her when you meet her, and the chance to talk to her again both near the end and usually only in one moment in the level following the one she’s introduced in. Even then, that conversation is technically you calling on her to give you tips on the current puzzle, and while it’s cute to have it filtered through her personality, you’re still left with a one-note cast save for a few exceptions. You get to spend a bit more time with the likes of Lucifer and Judgement due to how their levels are structured and they get more time to show who they are for it. While the cast is designed to appeal to different people, Judgement stood out to me because you get to spend more time speaking with her and learning about her instead of just quickly moving onto another lady. For a game that barely takes an hour to play through and less than two for doing everything possible in it it’s no surprise the girls only get brief moments to make an impression, but optional moments to get to know them or some other avenue to help these girls have more than bullet points for their personality would make them more memorable and appealing.

To get to these girls though involves you playing through the game’s puzzles… or skipping them if you wish, the game quite aware that some people will only want to see the demonesses and have the little chats with them. The game uses mature language but never shows any nudity, but the appealing designs and free nature of the game will likely draw a crowd that doesn’t want to take the time to think about the sometimes challenging puzzles on offer, so at least it’s trying to give certain types of players what they want.

The levels in Helltaker are a mix of limited movement challenges and Sokoban-style block pushing puzzles. When a stage starts you are given a set amount of actions you can make, the Helltaker instantly dying the moment he takes one extra step outside of them. To get to the demon girl, you need to manage your movement intelligently, and doing things like kicking a stone over a space, defeating a skeleton, or stepping on spikes ends up spending some of those allocated actions. Early levels can be figured out with ease, but as in many games that draw inspiration from box pusher games like Sokoban, later levels essentially have to be figured out before you’ve even made your first move. The design of the stages is kept small and most variables can either be mentally grouped together or written off to make some stages easier, but Helltaker won’t just give up the demon girls if you choose to ignore the penalty-free skip option. There aren’t enough stages that the game has the time to get old and it introduces little additional mechanics at a quick pace that makes stages feel different enough from each other. Some are satisfying to clear because of their tight design and others are easily forgotten after, but there’s not too much of either in the game to really portray the puzzle solving as a hook or detriment.

One portion of the game near the end though introduces an abrupt dose of action, the player no longer limited in how many actions they can take as they suddenly need to be very reactive and precise under pressure instead of precise after calmly figuring out the area. This segment can actually be quite thrilling and challenging, but it can’t be given full marks for its design because it was not built up to at all and stands at odds with almost everything you’ve learned so far. Besides sticking to the square-by-square movement, it’s a gameplay shift that will only entertain people who already gravitated towards that style of play and would frustrate people who expected only easygoing albeit challenging puzzles. It fits in the narrative and features some of the most effort in terms of building the plot, but perhaps a few levels flirting with action gameplay first would be able to ease players into this finale instead of making some resort to skipping after they thought the adventure would rely on smarts instead of reflexes.

THE VERDICT: Helltaker hopes to charm you with its well-dressed, white-haired demon girls, and in that regard, it can probably proclaim its mission has been accomplished. The designs are appealing even if some are fairly similar, and if players so wish, they can focus on the silly albeit shallow interactions with them rather than having to engage with the puzzle elements. The handful of stages do provide decent challenges even if they don’t stand out much on their own merits, but the strength of some of the more complex ones at least give you something to chew on if you stick with them. Abrupt action segment aside, Helltaker is here to provide quality art with a loose game framing, and while it could do better with its cast and gameplay, it did the job it set out to well enough.

And so, I give Helltaker for PC…

An OKAY rating. Not exactly compelling from a gameplay level save for the questionable presence of the reflex challenge and the small satisfaction of figuring out the puzzle rooms, Helltaker simply wants to provide the player with some cute demon girls to appreciate. The response to the game has already been quite passionate as people easily seized on the appealing art and simple character descriptions, but the substance of these ladies isn’t quite where it could be to make them enjoyable as characters. A few shine through because they get some more wiggle room to talk and interact with the Helltaker, but a lot has to be made out of a little with some of the girls, a few suffering from this being the angel Azazel who leans on her nervous fascination with the demons and little else and Cerberus’s straightforward “happy puppy” persona. Luckily very few have the room to make themselves unlikable for the same reason they can’t develop much of a personality. Some of the game’s secrets give a few girls more room to grow or show who they are, but for the crux of the game’s reason to play, they definitely needed more screen time to really sell not only their own appeal, but the appeal of the game as a whole. The skip option and a lack of a barrier to entry both try to make what can be consumed easier to get to, but a heartier package with more substantial puzzles or action plus more time to spend with each lady would be a superior game, but perhaps not the kind that would so easily appeal to such a wide audience.

Funny, cute, and with good art design that makes the cast appealing and stylish to boot, it does feel like putting a price tag on it could scare away much of its potential fan base despite there being enough quality in what’s featured to keep the game from becoming too dull. It shows plenty of potential despite being uneven in quite a few ways, and if things like the associated Malina comic are any indication, it could possibly find a life as a franchise larger than a free little game that only briefly touches on the appealing cast of demon girls. Either that or Vanripper could be more ambitious in his next delivery method for attractive ladies, but at least this attempt has enough going for it that it can still squeak by as something decent rather than just being a shallow means to an end for sharing sexy art of demon girls in suits.