Normally, games allow you to level up and get better weaponry or skills to tackle harder challenges. That's usually how things work; you complete a challenge, you get a reward that will help you with a harder challenge, and you feel pretty good about yourself in the process. But not Hellspire; as the game goes on, you get weaker, making things much more difficult and requiring you to have the patience of a saint.
This new Game Boy game created by crabbethefirst as part of the GBJam13 competition is a pseudo-3D dungeon crawler where each new floor of the hellish tower you climb gives you a new curse that makes you weaker. You must climb the Hellspire to save your sister, battling the weight of the curses thrown upon you as you progress.
I've been playing the game in my browser this morning and thoroughly enjoying this 8-bit adventure, feeling the blood of St Matthew flowing through my veins as stipulated by the opening cutscene. Despite the fact that the game is made for Windows and Linux platforms, it's been designed as a Game Boy game with the iconic colour palette of the original DMG.
The difficulty curve is hard, but it makes you think more about your actions. Sometimes in life, avoiding is better than confronting, and that's exactly the stance that you'll need to take here as you take on hell itself.
The game was only published around an hour ago at the time of writing, so you could say that it's hot off the press. I really like the simplistic Doom/Quake vibe twinned with the type of difficulty that only the old-school Shinobi games could replicate. The gameplay is solid and incredibly addictive too - that first skeleton gave me such a hard time!
Head to the official Hellspire Itch.io page to try it out for yourself!
