Helltaker Review

A game about gathering up your own demon girl harem? Sign me up!

While I may be female, who hasn’t daydreamed about having their own harem at least once? Or played a game/watched a show that has the main character slowly, but surely, gain their own harem (even if it’s the rejected crew). Helltaker, a new free puzzle game, puts you in the shoes of someone that woke up one day with one goal in mind: gathering a harem. But not just any harem, a demon girl harem. Who doesn’t want their own demon girl harem? Especially when they’ll be sharply dressed. So, you burst your way into hell ready to kick anyone and anything that stands in your way.

To get your demon girl harem together, you have to bust them out of hell. Of course, they won’t just run to you so you’ll have to get to them. Through the 10 chapters available, you’ll be tasked with solving the puzzle the room presents. Only given a limited amount of actions you can do, you have to figure how you need to kick rocks and skeletons away as well as keeping traps (which gives you one less action if stepped on) in mind. If you don’t make it to the demon girl, you die. However, the demon girl is all yours if you do. Well, assuming that you answer her with the correct dialog option (otherwise, she’ll kill you instead).

You also have a kind-of hint system called Life Advice that becomes available after you get your first demon girl, but this acts more as another way to get more interactions between you and the demon girls (as well as between the demon girls themselves). Not to mention that there are some hidden endings hidden here.

On the note of hidden endings, in three levels there is a rock that hides an ancient inscription. If you gather all of them, and enter (aka move according to) the result at a specific spot in Chapter 10, you’ll get a secret ending, a secret addition to your harem, and access to the concept art and the pancake recipe (which you can also buy as DLC if you want to support the developer).

The only aspect I’ve really seen Helltaker players not entirely like is the boss battle you have to go through for the last demon girl. Instead of being in a room where you have limited moves, you can finally move freely on this small moving stage where you have to dodge chains that the demon girl is throwing at you. Personally, I didn’t see anything wrong with having this demon girl asking for a different play style. It is a nice change of pace and there are checkpoints on every stage so you’re not starting from square one every time you die as well as the chains keeping the same pattern. Though, I do understand if it goes too fast for some players (it certainly was for the last section).

Of course, a game about gathering up your sharply dressed, demon girl harem wouldn’t have worked just as well without some great artwork. Helltaker does, indeed, have gorgeous artwork (it also helps that I love the art style as well). All the demon girls are cute to the point where I can’t decide who I love more and the way they’re all written is great. The art used for the puzzle segments is also cute as everything take on a chibi-like aesthetic. I would absolutely love if these demon girls get another game featuring them (or just get more art of them in general).

Verdict

Helltaker is definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of puzzle games and demon girls. Considering that this game happens to be free, and can take less than an hour to complete, there’s really no excuses to not check it out.