Storyline

The story is probably one of HellSign's weakest and most jarring aspects, along with general writing and dialogue. The story is told in cut scene snippets of comic book strips, which are actually really well produced. The strips are probably the best part of the story. Unfortunately, the story they tell is highly tenuous, random, and only made worse by what I can only describe as some of the worst dialogue writing I've seen since Raven's Cry. You wake up with no idea who you are and a large tattoo on your back known as a HellSign. Shortly after the tutorial, you're informed that this makes you a "paranormal magnet", which makes your job as an investigator all more dangerous since everything you uncover really wants to kill you. You're swiftly informed there is in fact a shadowrealm (yes, they called it that...) filled with shadow beasts after you nearly die to it in your first mission, which you incidentally automatically fail.

You can talk to numerous characters around the basic areas of the map, and they'll interact with your character in what I can only describe as the most parodied way ever seen since the 90's. Dialogue, to be quite frank, is trash. The various dialogue options are a small attempt at fulfilling the general writing requirements needed by an RPG, but they have zero impact on the game. Most of the time, they're just frustrating and cringeworthy to read through, and not at all indicative that any of the options you choose will actually get you anywhere. So, I certainly can't recommend the game if you're looking for a nuanced storyline and interesting character interaction, which is a shame because the rest of the game shows immense character and promise.

Gameplay

Let's start off with the most important aspect of any game's beginning—the tutorial. It took me half an hour. This tutorial contained no enemies, featured a tiny house, and next to no challenge. The reason it took half an hour is because the black light mechanic is a damn lottery at the moment. Numerous other users have complained that they're stuck on the tutorial mission, and most people, including myself, have completed it by simply interacting with every single object on the map in hopes one of them is the right one. Despite daily bug fixes, the developers still don't seem to be able to nail down the black light mechanic—the issue is that the rune or blood trails sometimes hug the wall too hard and end up disappearing into them, leaving you with no trail to follow. I'm confident the developers will resolve the issue, but it's a real turn off to a new player as it stands. It's a shame because the black light mechanic and all other investigative mechanics are really quite cool.

The general idea of the game is that you visit randomly generated houses and find out what happened there. Objectives are two, sometimes threefold. Scouting missions simply involve clearing out all the little creeps (spiders and such) and then using your equipment to find and uncover clues you need to help determine the monster that caused all the mess. Your three bits of equipment are an EMF scanner, a soundwave scanner (which you'll need to buy as your first priority!), and a black light. You also have a gun and a flash light, because it's permanently dark in HellSign town. A typical scouting mission goes like this:

Breach the front door, wander around the house killing any creeps you come across while breaching rooms, and then finally, when things feels safe, scan for clues. Pull out your EMF scanner and scrape rooms until your meter gets beyond the halfway point and then start rifling through all the debris around a room until you uncover a sign. Grab your black light every time you find a corpse and follow the blood or rune trails until they stop. To make things interesting, trails can get lost, stop randomly, disappear under carpets, and even cross over with others to lead you astray. Once the trail ends, inspect some stuff until you find another sign. You can then use your soundwave scanner to search for subtle audio cues, which will again reward you with signs. Throughout all of this, the house may or may not try to kill you. This can be guessed at through audio cues and artifacting on your screen, and once it starts, you need to get the hell out of dodge or risk having half your health wiped out. This is why we clear the creeps first, because you don't want to be attacked by a squad of spiders while there are tables being thrown across the room by latent poltergeists.

Oh, and if the TV turns on by itself, don't stop running. You don't want to deal with that.



Once you've collected all your signs, you open up the Cryptonomicon and place your signs in the corresponding slots, which is when the fun begins. You have to use all the journal pages available to you to decipher what specific kind of clues you have, such as blood splatter patterns and what kind of frequency a Geist is emitting. Guess correctly and you can leave a house with some extra cash and experience. Guess wrong and you lose out. However, if you guess wrong in the other mission type, it can mean death. During hunts, you'll actually have to kill or capture the monster you're trying to uncover. If you guess it wrong, you'll have kitted yourself out with the wrong kind of traps and gear, which will mess you up hard. It is the most beautiful and satisfying chained gameplay I have experienced in a long time. I couldn't help but find myself horribly addicted despite all the cosmetic flaws and arbitrarily difficult gameplay early on.

The game is very challenging and walks a very fine line between deliberate and inelegant unfairness against the player, and genuinely complex and exciting tasks with a grand sense of achievement. The developers themselves have said they don't intend on making an easy game, but there are instances that raised my frustration levels from "Ho boy, this is hard!" to "There is no way for me to avoid this deliberate attempt at making my job harder". After completing the tutorial, I waded my way through the atrocious dialogue and still had no idea how to progress through the main story campaign—if you can even call it that. Again, Steam discussions bring to light that there is indeed an extra tab where you can find what you're looking for, which is in no way explained anywhere else and brings me to my next gripe.



The UI is fairly basic, but lacks basic features at the same time. Fonts are definitely those generic default open source ones you see in all alpha/beta titles, and because there's almost zero formatting across text in the whole game, it's incredibly difficult to differentiate something that is clickable from something that isn't. Small things like double clicking on an item to buy or sell it are missing, there's no decent way to compare items, and item stats are fairly terribly laid out. Fortunately, most of what is wrong with the game is cosmetic stuff that can be resolved further into development, and my issues with the game almost stop there.

I mentioned that maps are randomly generated. Large, they feature similar setups and piece of content you'll become familiar with, which I think of as a key thing to implement so that the game doesn't become needlessly hard for the sake of bragging rights. The audio is also what makes the game absolutely gloriously tense. The sound is incredibly subtle, and the random static on screen during normal events only adds to the atmosphere. It's not the scariest game in the world, but by God, the developers know how to create and abuse the atmosphere for the game's benefit. It does a damned fine job of instilling panic into your brain when you're desperately trying to go about your peaceful investigation into the paranormal. It also highlights one of the most important tips I can state, and which the game states during its very lengthy loading screens.

Know when to cut your losses and leave a level.



If you've collected a bunch of signs, used up all your med kits and stim packs and still haven't cleared a level, you need to man up and leave. One false move beyond that point and you'll lose signs, money, and any extras you might have gained during your prance among the spirits. Scouting missions award money for collecting all signs and killing all critters, but if you simply kill some critters and collect a few signs, you can escape with your life and empty pockets. You can then sell the signs to the dodgy dealer in the bar to make at least a bit of profit. Just repeat this process to build up some cash reserves to buy better guns and gear. A lot of the early game is tremendously difficult simply because you suck to start with. The guns do no damage, you have no health or armor, and you don't have a chance in hell of killing an actual monster. You need to grind out those easy levels in order to explore the actual meat of the game, which unfortunately can take hours and hours of farming in terms of gameplay and might put a fair few of you off. Once you capture your first monster, you get a shed load of money, and at this point, the game becomes fairly easy. It's one of the few games I've played where the start of the game feels nearly impossible, while the end is quite amicable.

There's a ton of gear and upgrades from the shop, including a crafting system to make yourself even more ridiculously strong, and there's a full RPG level-up system on the back end, which needs investment in order to use new guns and equipment. While the game lacks a coherent and branching story to follow alongside the grindy missions, it definitely has the legs behind it to support the weight of such a thing. It's very easy to get buried in all the sub systems the game has to offer. If you set yourself short-term goals, you very quickly find yourself naturally expanding into the more complex areas of the game without feeling swamped in the unknown and getting yourself munched on by a Ghast.

Video Options

This is definitely what I'd call a middle of the road offering. Not absolutely dripping with customization, but pleasingly filled with enough options to tweak away to get your target framerate. The one issue I take is that there is one key thing missing, and that's a VSync option with a refresh rate/FPS limit. Neither are anywhere to be seen, which means the game is sadly locked. This lock however, is tied to your refresh rate, not 60FPS, which is a small saving grace if there is one. Game Developers: VSync causes input lag, a lack of it can cause tearing, let me be the judge of what I get.