Jupiter Hell Review (Waldseele)
This is a phantastic modern incarnation of a traditional Roguelike. It plays so well with a controller, which is a refreshing way to play such a game from a comfortable position further away from the screen. The size of the HUD elements and the adjustable map zoom accomodate this well. The aesthetics of the interface hits all the the right tastebuds for me, as a kid from of the 80's and 90's. I remember curved CRT screens and that very font from old textfiles. If you like old-school Quake and Doom, you will appreciate some content referencing those games, such as keycards, armor and health orbs. The gameplay heavily emphasizes tactics and positioning. The mechanic of cover is most important. Bits of lore is fed to the player via e-mail messages exchanged between staff members of the bases on Jupiter's moons. However the content of these messages are so vague, that I mostly can't make out much sense about what they are trying to tell me. From what I understand, they hint at good loot that can be found in branches, which can enable advanced players to aim for a certain exploration path and character build. The turn based nature allows for relaxing and cautious play. The animation of the turns is so fluid, allowing for faster play in less dangerous situations. You can get into a real rush of killing sprees! Gibbing the enemies feels so satisfying, as well as all the weapon sounds of shooting and reloading. The game is brutally hard, but the typical audience expects that and I like a real challenge. It took me over 30 hours to get my first win on Easy difficulty, even though I have many years of experience with Roguelikes. The game has no metaprogression system unlike several modern Roguelikes, but this adheres more to a traditional Roguelike. The graphics and the lighting are pure eyecandy with highest quality settings on a 4K monitor. Tough I am a passionate Metalhead, I play with the music muted, because the metal soundtrack is too repetitive and generic for my taste. Instead I use quiet playback of some Dark Ambient from outside the game, as this enables me to better hear the enemy noises and I also find it more atmospheric like that. The official Discord community is very friendly and helpful.