Recent reviews by HubHikari

Another review likened this game to a cross between Doom and Rogue, with a splash of XCOM thrown in. I find nothing to argue with as far as that goes, and I feel it adequately captures the soul of Jupiter Hell.

Jupiter Hell, like DoomRL before it, is a turn-based roguelike in which you set the pace: the flow of action and reaction goes exactly and only as fast as you want it to go. Whether you want to meticulously plan your moves like George Clooney and Matt Damon in Ocean's Eleven, or go all-in like Doomguy himself, you can tailor Jupiter Hell to your preferred playstyle with an expansive perk tree and enough weapons to make a Kentucky gun nut blush.

Make no mistake, though: this is a rogue-like with a 'K.' There's no meta-progression, no chain of unlocks making the game easier as you go. You start the game from a clean slate every time, and it ends one of two ways: victory over your final enemy, or with your blood splattered across one of Jupiter's moons.

This game is playable with either keyboard or controller; in this writer's opinion, it feels right at home on the controller. The buttons are laid out very intelligently and are (almost) completely re-bindable using the in-game menu. (The dev has mentioned at some point adding mouse support as an accessibility option; however, it will not be the recommended playstyle.) The game should never surprise you with an input that doesn't work like it "ought to."

Graphically speaking, looking at JH you might immediately think that it was written in Unity or Unreal. Nope: Jupiter Hell uses an engine that was written from the ground up for this game. It includes dynamic lighting and shadow, partial ragdoll simulation and hard-body physics for you madmen who can't leave any bench unbroken. It supports both OpenGL and Vulkan rendering pipelines, and overall it looks as good as you'd expect to see from a commercial game engine.

On the sound front, this game features a bespoke soundtrack that evokes the thumping soundtrack of its namesake -- or, rather, what it could have been had it not been limited by the hardware of its day. The mood of the soundscape changes as you transition between levels, and is never inappropriate to the act, no matter what you're doing.

In perhaps an oddity for roguelikes, the main character has a voice: none other than Mark Meer. Taking a leaf out of the Duke's book, he is foul-mouthed, sarcastic, and incredibly 1990s. It isn't necessarily something you would notice as missing if it weren't present, but its inclusion serves the game exceptionally well.

In closing, I won't try to assign a numerical score to this game, as I feel it cheapens matters to do so. I hesitate to even assign a "value" or a "recommended price point," as even that can feel awfully subjective. Setting aside as much bias as is possible for a person to do, though, this game is absolutely worth the $25 it asks of you.