#JUPITER HELL ROGUELIKE FULL#
Jupiter Hell follows the standard roguelike formula: your little marine explores a series of randomised level layouts full of monsters and loot chests, looking for the door that will take them to the next level.
This is all the more impressive considering it’s a turn-based roguelike rather than an FPS. It is quite remarkable how little Jupiter Hell has actually had to change, and how faithful it therefore feels to the core Doom concept - and feeling - of gunning down hordes of demons in overrun space bases.
It has zombie soldiers, imps, chainsaws, chainguns, rocket launchers, a thing that looks very much like a Mancubus, and a suspiciously familiar set of green armour that’s very fortunate you can’t see it in detail otherwise it probably would get sued into oblivion - I understand there’s even a BFG in here somewhere, although I’ve never managed to find it. Aside from these comparatively minor changes, though, Jupiter Hell is Doom. As the title implies, the action has moved to Jupiter’s moons of Callisto, Europa and Io instead of Doom’s jaunt across Mars, Phobos and Deimos, and a few of the more obviously copyright-infringing monsters such as Cyberdemons and Spider Demons are conspicuous by their absence, having been replaced with more generic alternatives. If this concept already sounds familiar to you, you’re probably thinking of the extremely-venerable Doom RL, and for good reason: Jupiter Hell is by the same developers, and represents their effort to take the idea commercial without incurring the wrath of id Software’s lawyers.
#JUPITER HELL ROGUELIKE SERIAL NUMBERS#
Jupiter Hell is a largely-successful attempt to make a Doom roguelike with the serial numbers filed off. And after experiencing the brutally refined gameplay formula and fast iteration loops of the better roguelites over the last few years, I find that a traditional roguelike like Jupiter Hell feels rather bloated and ponderous by comparison. As good as Jupiter Hell is, as accessible and frictionless and presentable as it has tried to make itself, it still can’t hold a candle to the roguelike genre’s modern successor: the rogue lite. It does have a few wonky bits that I’ll talk about later on in the review, but it is, on the whole, a perfectly fine game.īut in a way, that’s precisely the problem. Its take on a roguelike that’s overwhelmingly focused around ranged combat is a reasonably interesting one, too, and it’s spent a significant amount of time in Early Access to work out most of the kinks. This polish goes beyond the 3D visuals, which I think are actually something of a weak point despite being a turn-based game that’s controlled solely via keyboard commands it’s actually put a hell of a lot of thought into usability and accessibility, ruthlessly chopping down on button bloat, automating away common actions and even integrating one or two UI tricks from modern ARPGs. Far from it, in fact, since it’s the most polished example of a classic roguelike I’ve ever played. This is not particularly the fault of Jupiter Hell. Jupiter Hell is the game that has convinced me the conventional, “classic”, roguelike genre is dead to me.
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