Hell is Others, the tried and true of a 2D shooter set in a city where the day never falls
Hell is Others
Adam Smithson is a loner who lives in a strange city. In his apartment, located inside a large building accessed by a multitude of elevators, a large crack is forming, which the doorman of the building in which he lives just doesn't want to fix it. Whenever he talks to him about it he promises that he will do it "tomorrow", but that tomorrow never comes. Meanwhile, the hole widens and becomes more and more disturbing (if you've seen some footage of the game you might even know what will come out of it). Aside from the goalkeeper, Adam doesn't seem to have any friends. Someone left him a bonsai in front of the door, but he doesn't quite know who. He treats him as if he were his son, because after all he doesn't have much else to do in his free time.The only real occupation of his sad life is work which, as we experienced in the Hell is Others trial, can be really very hard.
Monsters
In Hell is Others everyone is monsters, in their own way The Italian development studio Yonder had reflected on the concept of playing together already with Red Rope: Don't Fall Behind and the apparently lighter Circle of Sumo. Hell is Others, however, seems to be the culmination of his creative vision, at least according to what we could see in the demo. As general indications, this is a 2D PVPVE survival horror with a twin stick shooter control system, viewed from above and set in a hell noir that looks too much like the real world.It is always night in the city where Smithson lives and works. Ours is a kind of private investigator who works on commission. In the introductory part, which serves as a tutorial and in which you play alone, ours knows who will be the characters who will accompany him throughout the game, namely the aforementioned goalkeeper and a collector who will ask him from time to time to recover certain objects, which must be looked for in the houses and other buildings of the city.
Basically the player is called to explore the environment and rummage through the various furniture or containers to try to accomplish his mission as soon as possible, thus unlocking one of the elevators that will take him back to his apartment. The ultimate goal of the game is never made explicit and we guess it's not too important either. That is, we accumulate money to improve the apartment, but in reality we have no real purpose, at least in appearance, other than to have a more beautiful house than that of others, in which to continue living in perfect solitude together. to that comes out of the crack and to the bonsai.
It is the monsters that populate the city that put a spoke in the wheel at Smithson: strange demonic creatures who do not look favorably on our presence. Notable is the fact that the other players also appear as monsters and that they somehow get confused with the CPU-driven creatures. Therefore, the only possible interactions are all related to the combat system. If we want, it is also thematically relevant that our character is definitely someone else's monster, in a process of dehumanization in which the only thing that matters at the end of the day is to be able to show off a more beautiful house than the previous day. .
Fighting or not?
Light sources are important so as not to be taken by surprise To defend against others, our Smithson has a firearm (at first only a gun, but you can improve your arsenal by spending money) and melee attacks, with the latter being kind of the last chance of survival. The city is generally very dark and to see the monsters moving among the shadows there are two systems: a flashlight, the operation of which is easy to understand (it generates a beam of light that illuminates in the direction in which the character is turned) and hearing. In fact, the movement produces noise, the direction of origin of which is displayed on the screen. Once you have discovered the relative position of your opponents, you can act in various ways (depending on your style, but also on the equipment you have). The main way is to try to eliminate them, trying to create some advantage, perhaps taking advantage of the covers provided by the apartments.Rummaging in the houses is a fundamental part of the gameplay If you want you can also have a more stealthy approach and you can try to go unnoticed, avoiding direct confrontations as much as possible. After all, killing others does not seem to be compulsory, but it seems that few people avoid doing it. Could it be due to the similarity of the players with monsters? Or for the simple fact that in a gun game you expect to have to shoot anything that looks hostile? In fact, distinguishing monsters from monsters is not easy, especially when the first thing they do when they see you is shoot at you. In short, the game dynamics of Hell is Others seem to raise some interesting questions, for a gameplay that appeared to us overall interesting and very original.
The Hell is Others demo, published on the occasion of the Autumn Steam Next Fest (still in progress at the time of writing these lines) has left us with a strange desire to continue playing, but for different reasons than those that usually accompany the interest in online games. The game told us more than many other similar titles and left us with a desire to delve deeper. We honestly didn't expect it. We will be able to tell you again, in case, with the final version.
