Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 20, 2021

  This is an interesting one. I'm generally a big roguelike fan, and a HUGE XCOM fan. Somehow, though, this game got old fast. There are a LOT of builds that you can try and what seems like infinite different weapons. At 13 hours, I still feel like I haven't scratched the surface of what's possible in the game (and I haven't beaten it, although I started on hard mode.) But despite that, the core gameplay loop and the graphics just seem to create a boring game. Encounter enemies (or what you think are enemies, based on poor lighting conditions and retro graphics), run behind cover, wait for them to step into the open and shoot them. Overall, I think this game is probably good, but just not for me. There may be a lot of choices in terms of itemization and perks, but the combat feels so straightforward that it makes it much less enjoyable. If you know that going in, I say go for it, but if you're looking for a deep combat experience or good visuals, go elsewhere.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 1, 2021

  This game is an absolutely amazing tactical, atmospheric, heavy metal, 90s action movie roguelike! One of the complaints of roguelike haters is RNG. However, this game brilliantly balances probability with binary (yes/no) tactical decisions. For example, a shotgun that has 33% accuracy on an enemy will inflict 33% of its max damage on that enemy (guaranteed). On the other hand, a single projectile weapon like a sniper rifle will hit with the given accuracy. For automatic weapons, a 33% chance to hit is applied to EACH bullet in the burst, so if your gun shoots 3 bullets you will hit with 1 bullet. 200+ hours into the game and I keep coming back to it. There are so many variables for level branching, combined with a rich set of skills to customize and experiment with, add in mod-able proceduraly generated loot and weapons and baddies galore. In summary, this game has not reached a fraction of the popularity it deserves yet. I hope the developers keep working on it. That said, every game could be improved a bit. Some of my hopes for improvements follow: 1) More diverse set of skills that help to differentiate play-styles for each character type. 2) Better balancing and more testing to ensure that each build is viable all the way to the end boss. Currently, some builds make it near impossible to defeat the end boss. An example is Gun Kata master skill. It's super fun to shoot 2 pistols simultaneously with each move. However, you run out of ammo stupidly fast and it would not even be viable with the number of baddies on Hard difficulty. This is even true when getting skills that allow you to convert ammo types to equipped weapon. Also, Gun Kata will auto-shoot at the nearest enemy. In the final boss battle, minions are spawning every turn around the boss, but you cannot direct your fire to finish off the boss, so there is no hope of winning with this build. Additionally, a sniper build is not viable on Hard due to the shear number of enemies that are constantly rushing you and you cannot waste a turn aiming at a target to enhance damage. A lot of work can be done to test and improve balance. 3) More information on the enemies would be extremely helpful. After 200 hours, I still cannot understand in what scenario the Medusa can reduce my HP max. And I have no clue what the white HP overlay is on the enemies (armor??). You can also suddenly be reduced to a pile of ashes without any warning because several enemies were prepping a simultaneous attack on you, or one enemy is targeting you for a special attack. So, some UI information on the estimated damage you will take on a given round could be nice. Or, perhaps this is a mod option on a combat visor that gives you a prediction of damage received on the next turn! Best of luck to the developers, I hope your game receives the popularity and recognition it so deserves!
• gamedeal user

  Mar 23, 2022

  I played DoomRL religiously since I was 17. I'm 32 now. Same dev. Really just bought this to thank for all the fun I had on DoomRL. :)
• gamedeal user

  May 6, 2022

  One day as a turn-based games fan, you can find yourself too old for managing massive empires (yes, I am talking about you, civ) - it will be tedious. Thinking about relations and diversity in your X-COM team will also be excessively tiresome. If you like me, you even don't want to play "deck builders" anymore. Thank god there is a new generation of "pure" turn-based roguelikes (like this one). Care only about one hero. Improve him in Diablo-style (but here, decisions matter). Yes, pure turn-based fun! I want more modern games like this one.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 16, 2022

  Despite appearances, a very traditional rogue-like - turn based, grid movement, resource management and punishing difficulty - but with guns. Well executed, if you like that sort of thing. I've been pleased to see the developer has been regularly putting out substantial content updates, even though the game is 'complete' (no longer early access). Don't be baited by the difficulty settings into playing on 'hard'. 'Medium' is plenty hard enough to get your first win, even if you've played a fair amount of traditional rogue-likes before.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 22, 2022

  It's fun for a while - if you enjoy roguelikes it's worth picking up to see at least. But there isn't very much depth to it. The game feels like theres a lot of potential for fun choices in it, but all of that potential seems wasted by some very questionable design decisions. I'm sure the developers listen to their community, but I also get the impression the people they listen to might not understand what makes things fun to play. The cover mechanic is integral to the game - outside of cover you can expect to eat a lot of gunfire unless you have a build that lets you shoot while moving, maintaining a % dodge chance by doing so. What this results in though is most runs revolve around dancing out from a corner to get someone's attention by waggling your butt at them, then running giggling back to your corner to shoot at enemies one at a time. And while the cover mechanic seems to be what the game was built around, many of the recent updates have been introducing more and more content that specifically renders cover useless to the PLAYER. You can have a excellent spot of cover or dodge % and learn that the majority of lategame enemies simply... don't aim. Linear beams that penetrate walls, AOE blasts, and suicide bombers will be commonplace lategame. And even without them, expect almost every elemental enemy to leave a puddle of damage at your feet (acid, destroying armor, poison that stacks every turn, or fire that stacks every turn and causes you to leave a trail of fire... that also stacks on you) on the off chance one of them DOES hit you, forcing you to run either out of your cover or retreat down a hall - giving anyone within range free turns to deliver you a healthy lead supplement. Not to mention how many of their status effects are designed to stack insanely fast, and wear down by one per turn (poison deals its number then reduces by 1, can be removed with a medkit - and fire stacks, reducing down by one per turn... and cannot be removed anymore due to the fire pool mechanic they recently introduced). This isn't even including the pain and bleeding mechanic - taking damage causes pain, which reduces your accuracy by a sizeable amount. When bleeding, every few turns it ticks down by one, dealing its full damage and giving you pain equal to bleed stacks x 5 (and is often applied in stacks of 7-10, resulting in taking an enormous penalty to accuracy and around 30-40 damage over time if you do not happen to have a medkit handy). Most melee enemies apply an enormous amount of bleeding and pain on hit, rendering almost any melee build just completely useless instantly. As for builds, they seem interesting at face value but there is unfortunately less depth in the character skills than there could be - mostly focused around melee, boosting range/damage, allowing dual wielding or some form of ammo conservation. But also essentially forcing a player to decide within the first 5 player levels (or 3-4 stages) what build they must commit entirely to ahead of time. There is no room for improvisation, either you find a gun that works with what you are doing or it is garbage. The new unique weapons are fun but don't really add anything outside of being occaisionally an item that simply wins you a run with no additional effort. There exist a number of AOE options, mostly in the form of shotgun cones, grenades/launcher circular AOEs, but nothing else. for a scifi game there is very little weapon variation outside of unique/special variants of guns that usually only add things like "no pain penalty on aiming" or "+aim to crit chance", without adding any more interesting mechanics or effects. The majority of runs go as follows: collect a shotgun somewhere, wiggle your bum at enemies to draw them to your cover corner, stockpile as many medkits as you can (you will likely be spending most or all of them in IO or Dante to remove poison or attempt to mitigate fire), and grind through each level so you can put another level into whatever your chosen build for the run is. Most of the runs honestly have almost the exact same playstyle until around the third zone where you finally have enough gear and skills to have a more unique approach - hug corners, dance around looking for enemies to wiggle your butt at, run back to your corner, rinse and repeat until a level is cleared. Of course there can always be situations where you turn a corner and just ARE adjacent to a reaver - in most cases this is an instant loss due to the accuracy penalties from pain rendering you unable to hit anything in front of you, and their move speed being larger than yours rendering you unable to escape without the aid of smoke grenades or teleport kits, but outside of events like that gameplay mostly remains the exact same. Theres a lot of possible fun that could exist with the skill system and unique/rare weapons with possibly interesting effects, but as it stands the majority of design decisions for added content just keep adding new monsters (and bosses) that are specifically designed to render the tools given to the player useless. The new bosses for example: all of them have large AOEs that ignore cover, save for the ancient - when damage he simply teleports behind you to shoot you from a new spot, potentially one that has its own cover against you (he teleports fairly randomly, but more often than not negates your cover. Though if you made it far enough to get to him you will likely just delete him anyways - as far as bosses go he's considerably less threatening than the majority of hordes and enemies you faced to get to him) I've been following this since I heard it was in development after DoomRL, and while I had high hopes for it I am just... consistently disappointed by it. TL;DR - A unique roguelike with a cover mechanic, try it out but don't expect a lot of depth. stick to cover.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 24, 2022

  Jupiter Hell is an interesting combination between turn-based roguelikes and frenzied twitch-shooters. By "twitch shooter," of course, I mean Doom, because this game is Doom with "Mars" CTRL+F'd with "Jupiter." It's so unashamed about being Doom that it wears the fact that it is Doom on its sleeve, along with a funny hat that says "I <3 DOOM." However, Jupiter Hell doesn't just rip off Doom and leave it at that. It rips Doom off, rearranges the bits, and assembles them into a new pretty skin suit to wear instead, forging a strange identity of its own. Turn-based combat allows for gameplay that's less like a vicious ballet of torn limbs and gunshots, and more like a frenzied, extremely violent chess match. This is not slow, clunky, cautious tactical advancement. You can take cover, but enemies can too, and they aren't stupid enough to just rush into the meat grinder. They're fast, smart enough to flank you, and investigate the sounds of pitched gunfights nearby, meaning you might get flanked by enemies you didn't discover yet. These factors force you to match your enemies in violence and aggressiveness, but temper these factors by carefully considering your gear, the area you're fighting in, where enemy reinforcements might pop out of, and where your cover is. Like Doom, understanding the tools at your disposal and how they counter threats you can't just gun down with impunity is critical, and mastering combat is very satisfying. Also like Doom, if you don't get it, the game will kill you very fast until you do. Most importantly, Jupiter Hell understands that a huge part of Doom's appeal came from satisfying guns, and it more than has you covered there. The basic 9mm has a solid, satisfactory thud; .44 semi-automatic rifles and revolvers boom, 7.62mm and 9mm assault rifles chatter like an angry lathe, grenade and rocket launchers erupt and shake the screen. All of these factors mean that, while Jupiter Hell is a Doom clone, it's a Doom clone in the best sense of the word. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while Jupiter Hell is a flattering game, it's still a mighty fine one. If, like me, you've ever wanted to play a bizarre mash-up between Chess, Doom, Doom 2016/Eternal, and XCOM, you need to play this game. If you're looking for a satisfying shoot-em-up and can tolerate some turn-based combat that comes at you rapid-fire, I still strongly recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 19, 2023

  I usually don't care enough to review games, but this one holds a special place in my heart- Its been very satisfying to watch it develop from a free indie ASCii rogue-like (DoomRL), from an obscure corner of the internet, into a fully developed game on steam. I used to keep a thumb drive with the original, so i could plug and play it anywhere (I think I played it freak'n Haiti a few times, when i was trying to de-stress). For those who played the original, this will be a satisfying successor, will all the mechanics and play strategies refined/diversified. I think the only major difference is that you can only apply mods to weapons, but not construct specific 'named' weapons with mod combinations. But this is an actively developed game and the creators are adding content and re-balancing with some regularity. Fans of the Rogue-like genre in general should enjoy this game: it is DOOM re-imagined as a rogue-like, what more is there to say?
• gamedeal user

  Feb 28, 2023

  Bought for Steam Deck, mostly play on desktop. It plays very nicely on Steam Deck but when saving, the screen goes grey. Sometimes it will become unplayable if the screen gets turned off/back on or goes to sleep. So, if you play on Steam Deck, save and exit often. You'll have to force quit the game and reload save, but its better than losing progress. If this issue gets resolved, I'd be ecstatic, because its truly a great Steam Deck title and I'd rather play this in bed vs at my desktop.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 4, 2023

  Many moons ago there was a free fan made game called Doom RL, it was the perfect blend of the Doom universe and the genre that has come to be known as "rogue" or "rogue like" it was a passion project made by a single developer and the combination of the Doom universe and the rogue like game play meant it was an amazing game that I personally sank over 200 hours into. With many different strategies to try and a sadistically beautiful quality of game play that lead to that "one more go" mentality, it was truly a gem of an indie game... however, the developer was brought low by a cease and desist forcing them to remove the game from their website, a true tragedy for the indie game scene as it became lost to the ether. When I updated my computer, sadly it was one of the files that slipped through the cracks in the process and alas I was unable to track it down again, even though memories of playing it stuck with me for many years. Jupiter Hell is the spiritual successor to that long lost game, a lot of the same game play mechanics are there from Doom RL, the game plays exactly how I remember Doom RL playing, even down to the weapons and armour upgrades, the class system, the special harder levels with bigger rewards, and the character development system. If you like Rogue likes and you like SciFi demon killing, then this is the game for you. TL:DR It's Doom RL remade without the Doom branding due to copy right, and it has been given a lot of love. Buy it. NOW