I’ve been fortunate enough to get an early look at Devolver Digital’s upcoming High Hell. Developed by Terri Vellmann and Doseone who between them have worked on a couple of personal favourites of mine; Enter the Gungeon, Gang Beats and Heavy Bullets.
High Hell quietly hides an extensive menu with a surprising amount of customisation. It’s very clear that the developers are PC gamers themselves. High Hell is being optimised and built with PC gamers in mind. Its fast paced, brutal twitch response shooting is heavily tailored toward the classic mouse and keyboard combo.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Fast paced brutal twitch response shooting[/perfectpullquote]
The handful of levels that I got to play were great. Fun, fast and usually containing multiple paths, High Hell is already full of replayability. After the second level, I was already in ‘explore mode.’ I was climbing buildings, balconies and railings, looking for that sweet and sneaky shot. Otherwise, I would simply surprise the enemy by kicking in the door and raining hell and bullets upon everything.
The narrative takes a clear backseat in High Hell and the developers are pretty tongue-in-cheek about it. Case in point, the below quote from the game’s Steam page.
High Hell is mechanically fast, artistically distinctive and most importantly, bound to leave you sweaty palmed. It has the white-knuckled fever that anybody who has played Hotline Miami or Binding of Isaac will be all too familiar with.
Releasing towards the end of this month, High Hell is the exact type of game that I could easily spend an entire evening playing. I all to easily get lost trying to perfect the ultimate run to make it on top of the leaderboards.
High Hell was played on PC with a code provided by the publisher.