Hell Clock

Esta bien, pero sigue dando la sensacion que algo le falta

Hell Clock is a Diablo-like ARPG that takes influence from rogue-lites†. It feels very tightly designed, with every mechanic going towards one unified goal: recreating the experience of playing Path of Exile in a much much shorter amount of time. The feeling of playing PoE is the important part here. Hell Clock has a timer which encourages going fast and optimizing movement, much like high-level farming in PoE. The crafting system is similarly based on singular items that change an item slightly, and has a lot of room for god crafts. The itemization is very good, with affixes/prefixes and unique abilities that you would expect. However, it doesn't include some pain points from PoE, like inventory management and the sheer complexity. The inventory is entirely irrelevant while in a run, only mattering when constructing a build; the game is still deep but a lot easier to understand from the get go. One downside I would say is that the game can be really repetitive and grindy early on IF your build sucks. Being exponentially scaling like any other Diablo-like, you can hit some walls. Often, if you are doing run after run for incremental improvements early-on, your build sucks. Reconsider it. The repetition and grindiness comes back late-game but that's basically what defines the genre, as the game becomes more and more difficult and you need to squeeze every single percentage point out of your build. If you've bounced off of games like PoE due to complexity and grind, but like the gameplay itself, play this game. If you've played a simpler game like Diablo, this game should feel like a simplified and streamlined alternative. †Diablo invented roguelites, so this is redundant. But not everyone is as enlightened as me, the roguelike knower. Fight me.

10/10 من زمان ما استمعت بلعبه كذا

All the pomp and circumstance without the speed or finesse of better games.

Made 2 runs, almost to floor 7, the clock runs out and my computer blacks out. Nice guys, you fried my GPU, stupid game

A very fun hidden gem so far! Wish I knew about it sooner. Only looked into it due getting a copy via Humble Bundle. Plays great on controller & seems to be running fine too, probably be perfect for something like the Steam Deck. Whole package seems solid. The only thing that bugs me is that there's no English dub available. There's nothing wrong with having it in Spanish considering the story subject, but having to read subtitles while playing a high paced ARPG can be cumbersome at times. Overall around a 7 or 8 out of 10 for me.

It's alright. - The game has a unique visual style that (combined with some odd UI choices) causes legibility issues sometimes, but is otherwise striking and capable of setting an oppressive tone. - The items / passives you choose for your build feel impactful, but narrow in their scope and interactions, so once you pick "Build X" your subsequent choices are basically made for you and all else falls to the wayside. - Outside of "beeline" upgrades like increased meta-currency rates or inventory space, a majority of your upgrades feel boring, unimpactful, or uninspired (like 5% resistance to a specific element). There are multiple meta-progression systems that feel incongruous with each other, tonally and / or mechanically, but do offer a feeling of progression between multiple playthroughs if you so choose. - The titular hellclock doesn't add much to the experience. Sometimes you feel frustrated that you've run out of time (possibly due to bad luck with +30 second item drops) and have to end a run prematurely, but oftentimes I'd forget it existed, with runs either ending from boss encounters or narrative stops. On paper, it's a clever idea for preventing overpowered runs from going further than intended, and it hypothetically keeps you engaged and focused on efficiency, but in practice it's either annoying or forgettable. - The narrative focus on Brazil's Massacre of Canudos is novel, if not a bit dark, but the game kinda drops you into the story without much explanation, and by the end I felt like I only had the bullet points to work from. There are times when characters, enemies, or settings will be introduced that will lack impact without the background knowledge of Canudos - which Hellclock does not always provide. - The campaign is decent and enjoyably short. Your mileage may vary depending on your skill level though, as the levels all contain the same exact layouts and content, so if you get "stuck" in your progression, the repetition can become intense. This also means that any "new game+" / "Ascension" runs you do will become increasingly dire, which is at odds with how desperately the game wants you to play through multiple subsequent runs. I don't think Hellclock is good enough to warrant the 200 hours of repeated playthroughs it wants from you, but I do think it's worth playing through the 8-ish hour campaign once, for those already curious.