HELLTH
A downloadable roguelike for Windows and Linux
"You are the latest in a long line of acolytes sent to venture into the Ruins of the World in the hopes of slaying the Healer. Let not yourself be fooled by that name -- this person brought ruin; he remade the world by collapsing the Spiritual Divide. Going down doesn't require only time, but sacrifice...
Staircases going down don't exist. Consume. Grow. Sacrifice. Find a way."
HOW TO PLAY
HELLTH /no pain, no gain/ is a roguelike in which thaumaturgically consuming your enemies changes your build.
You can go down to the next level at any time (Make sacrifice) but at a cost to your life and your stats. To journey somewhat safely, you need to either get at least one stat to 9, or instead permanently lose some amount of health.
Spells are infused into your health bar! If you consume the bones of your enemies, they will give you stat changes that might benefit you, but these are literally in your health points: lose those and the stats change back. Mage enemies will use the same logic to curse you. Spells override each other on the same health point, so don't go consuming bones one after the other!
To influence deeper health points (more to the left), use your actions to focus. Each point of focus (yellow bar beneath health) means that spells will land deeper, which makes them harder to lose, either in combat and over time.
Equip weapons for additional, more conventional bonuses, or throw them for ranged damage. Your stats influence everything you do, so take good care to explore how it feels to play different builds, there's many ways to go down and win.
Make your way to level five and take your swing at the Healer, killing him will grant you victory.
- ASDWQEZC/Numpad: movement
- Space/Comma: pickup
- Numbers 1-9: inventory item actions
- T: throw
- D: drop
- C: consume
- E: toggle equip
- F: focus
- M: make sacrifice (descend to next level)
- F: focus thaumaturgy (affects where in your health bar you cast spells)
- +/-: volume controls
- Escape: cancel/exit
Made as a part of the 7drl 2024 challenge using Rust and Bevy, and the very nice assets from the wonderful Kenney's 1bit Pack.
Version 1.1 is the officially submitted 7drl version.
Version 1.666 is a post-jam update with crash fixes, bugfixes and some quality-of-life improvements, including focus UI, indicators for depth and turn count, help reminder, curse users with different move sets, music, sfx, boss mechanics, scrolls and lore-bits, and numpad support!
Download
Install instructions
Unzip and run `hellth.exe`. In case anything goes wrong, write to me right away!
Development log
- Linux Release!Mar 26, 2024
- HELLTH 1.666 is out now!Mar 20, 2024
- HELLTH post-jam 1.5 version is out!Mar 13, 2024
- HELLTH post-jam 1.4 version is out!Mar 12, 2024
- HELLTH post-jam 1.3 version is out!Mar 11, 2024
Comments
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HELLth! this was fun and I was good at chucking staffs! Quad equip OP
Thank you Tiger! I didn't see this until now, but thank you so much! I'd love to see you have a go at the new 1.666 version at some point in the future, as I've learned a lot from watching you play the last one :)
Sounds great I will check it out tomorrow at 12:00 noon eastern during my stream for sure!
The quality on this entry is just off the charts! Gorgeous environment, great color design. UI is really crisp and interesting. The world is so evocative in terms of the sprites and tileset. Everything works so damn well.
I admit I don't fullllly get the core consuming mechanic yet. I see my stats going up and down as I equip things, consume bones, etc. And how to move down. But how my stats influence combat, or what goals I should have about my stats (other than "get one to 9") is less clear to me. I need to play more to work that out. Do I want to linger on levels as long as possible before the "losing health" leech pushes me forward? Can I regain health somehow? Why do health ticks have arrows up and down, and colors matching the stat colors? I can tell it all fits together in a neat way but I need a few more runs to work it out for myself. But that's part of the fun in games like this!
Thank you so much! I tried to balance simple base mechanics with a somewhat complex stat+curse system, and all the while kept thinking back to my first roguelike experiences and the feeling of not understanding their worlds but sensing that there IS something there to understand. I know it sounds like a cop out for not making better mechanics, but not having everything explained was very much part of the design. The initial idea was much worse and I had to grind it down to this level, and I'm still not quite sure I'm there!
Moving down was probably the largest change from typical roguelike fashion, as it's an action you can do from the get-go, even as your first action, but it's punishing and I made sure you can't win this way (you'd actually certainly die before level 4, I think). The balancing of what to do around the sacrifice opens up some nice avenues for different builds, it looks like :)
Oh yeah don’t read this as “better mechanics” – I think it’s really inventive and it’s just a matter of style. Some games want to lay it all out and the challenge is in applying it. That’s more the style I made and play more myself.
IDK if you have played cogmind, but I’m the sort of player who instantly looks up what the artifacts do on the wiki rather than using them and finding out. Because I don’t enjoy losing a run to learning about a later game mechanic. So I have less of that experimental instinct in my DNA than many players do, I think.
Cool core loop and a promising main mechanic, great prototype for 7DRL, I'd love more! Also, I love the aesthetic.
HELLTH 2: more pain, more gain -- soon, in cinemas near you!
Seriously, though, thank you! I'm going to slowly add some more stuff in, including better names and more item types, multi-turn move animations (so that you can actually SEE thrown things fly!) and the magic system that I've cut out last moment. Also some bugfixes that I think I might even land today!