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Jupiter hell review12/18/2023 This is one of Jupiter Hell’s core faults: too many of the details are hidden from the player, reducing options and dumbing down the “meaningful RPG progression” claimed on the store page. It’s a system that works quite well, but too much of the internal processing is hidden, making tactics and strategy more about guesswork and familiarity rather than logical or strategic thinking. On the surface the game appears to be strictly turn-based, but the rather sparse in-game help explains that actually it’s timeline-based each action takes a certain amount of time, meaning that the game time between turns is variable based on the actions performed. Each level is initially covered in darkness (“fog of war” style), and enemy movements and objects are only visible when in line of sight - even previously explored and revealed areas are not continuously visible if they’re behind a wall or a closed door. All characters can move only left, right, forwards, and backwards there’s no diagonal movement, and character facing is irrelevant. Though the game is displayed in 3D, the map is completely two-dimensional there’s no consideration of height or depth. Each of those levels is made up of rooms, formed from tiles. In traditional Rogue-like fashion, the game is divided into a series of procedurally generated levels. After playing for a few more hours, that hasn’t changed, but at least now I know why. I came away with mixed feelings, but my clearest thought about it was that it was more like a top-down turn-based version of Doom than it was like a traditional Rogue-like game. I haven’t got that far.īefore realising that Jupiter Hell had any relationship with Doom, I spent a few hours playing it. I don’t know what the goal of the game is, but my guess is that it’s to progress through the levels to a final boss and then kill it. ![]() The setting is not explained or described, but from the few little bits and pieces you can pick up, it seems that the protagonist has somehow found himself on a space station or moon base somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter, and that base has been overrun with Doom-style demons, aggressive AI-controlled robots, and somehow-corrupted military personnel. To me it will always be an adjective: “Rogue-like”. I grew up with Rogue, Moria, Nethack, and Angband. Note: while I acknowledge the world has changed and “Roguelike” (or “roguelike”) is now used as a noun by all the cool kids, I’m old and grumpy and refuse to bow to peer pressure. Jupiter Hell is their first title on Steam and, according to their home page (and not the Steam store page - perhaps they’re wary of treading on Bethesda’s toes), is the spiritual successor to DoomRL. Jupiter Hell is a top-down turn-based shooter from indie developers, ChaosForge, the team behind DoomRL and other “roguelike” game mods.
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