Recent reviews by Kaene

It's a great and short adventure. I had fun all steps of the way. The motion was very fluid, not stiff or floaty. The controls were very intuitive. I enjoyed all the little references to games or shows within the character's dialogue. I appreciate the tracker for all the collectibles even if some were a pain in the ass to get like the chips. Overall, I had a decent time with this game. All of this for free!

After the one year anniversary of this game, I feel that I have concrete thoughts on this game. Since it is free, you can play this game and create your own thoughts. Feel free to tell me your thoughts!

Let me start with this, Helltaker is a very stylized game. It bleeds into its character portraits, its dialogue, its story; so much that you can recognize the characters outside of the game. This is thanks to the creator and artist, vanripper, who has a great art style and an art book for both parts of the game, detailing the process for creating the unique characters of the game. However, music completes a game. Mittsies is the composer for the game, and their music fits thematically with this simplistic puzzle game; it fits so much that even the characters move to the beat of the songs within the game. The electronic drum and bass fits the rhythm. Overall, Helltaker is exceptionally illustrated and has an amazing soundtrack. Gameplay-wise, I loved the boss fights. Sure, they were Dante's Nine Circles of Hell hard sometimes. However, this level of difficulty is warranted (especially for Examtaker's Final Boss). I hope that vanripper develops on this further!

Although I loved the boss fights, I want to bring attention to the main course of the gameplay of Helltaker: the puzzles. Initially playing, I enjoyed the simplistic nature of the puzzles. It easily became something that could be solved easily with a bit of thinking and repetition. After playing through the anniversary update however, something became apparent. Every time I looked at the puzzles, I realized that at the end of the day, these puzzles are extremely linear. Besides an achievement that enables you to go an alternate path to avoid using a key and the ancient inscriptions, the puzzles are very formulaic and the way to get to the end always uses all the allocated moves. I hope that some more opportunities for different paths are added to this game. Hell, this could even add some speedrunning headroom for this game.

From the character design to boss design, Helltaker is a short and sweet puzzle game. Although I do have some suggestions in regards to puzzle design, I still think that people should play this game. After all, it is free. I hope to see more from vanripper and I hope to hear from others as well.

Don't forget to check the Mittsies's bandcamp page for the soundtrack and vanripper's Twitter for the Helltaker comics and their art!
vanripper's Twitter
Mittsies's bandcamp[mittsies.bandcamp.com]