Helltaker is a short free-to-play puzzle game. You play as a man who goes to hell to recruit cute demon girls for his harem.
The gameplay is very simple – this is a block pushing puzzle game. The “twist”, such as it were, is that you have a limited number of moves on each level, and if you use them up, you have to start over. There are environmental hazards that cost you an additional move to move over, but you have to do so in many levels in order to complete them.
As such, this is a game with pretty bog-standard gameplay. And indeed, there’s only ten levels in the entire game. But the levels are all pretty decently designed, and there’s even a few of them that have tricks so you can solve them in multiple ways.
I will note that one level in the game takes a different gameplay slant and rather than limiting your moves, instead turns the game into an action-puzzle game – quite the fun little challenge, and a nice change of pace relative to the rest of the game.
Once you complete a level, you talk to a demon girl, and try to recruit her for your harem. You have a couple of dialogue choices, and if you choose the wrong one, the demon girl will kill you and you have to start the level over again.
The art in this game is actually quite nice; the actual “game” art has a good aesthetic to it, and the demon girls are cute but not overly perverted in their appearances. Note that, despite the sexual content tag, this is not a porn game; it plays the idea of going to hell to gather a harem of demon girls for laughs, not eroticism.
The dialogue is brief, but humorous, and it serves the purpose of making the player laugh a little at the sheer absurdity of it all.
Overall, this is a short and amusing little gem. It will take you about an hour to complete fully, and there’s a few optional achievements should you choose to gun for them.
Given that it is free, short, and has a small install size, if you are at all interested in puzzle games and think the premise sounds amusing, you should give it a whirl.
3.0