Helltown Review – Neighbors From Hell
Helltown by WildArts Games
The indie game space has had no lack of spooky experiences for quite some time now. If anything, it was flying the flag for the horror genre while AAA developers largely abandoned it until only recently, when they suddenly decided that it could be profitable once again.
Case in point: WildArts Games‘ homage to the likes of Silent Hill and Amnesia just got a major update seven years after its original release. Is this improvement enough to make it an essential release for spooky season?
Hell Awaits
As a postman quite literally named John Doe living in 1959 America, you’re tasked with becoming the mailman for the newly-developed region of Little Vale. That’s when the nightmares start, and things only get weirder from there. The townspeople are friendly but unsettling. They’re also pretty eager about an upcoming ritual. Then your car breaks down…
Helltown‘s premise may be predictable, but the tropes it deals in are still pretty effective at creating an unsettling atmosphere. This is helped tremendously by its PS1-style visual aesthetics, which are distinctive but also uncanny. The Revival Update’s new soundtrack, courtesy of Crow Country composer Ockeroid, is also strong here.
In terms of actual gameplay, Helltown is a standard modern horror game. The initial section is spent exploring the town and allowing the atmosphere to build, revealing hidden secrets to those who look closely. Then, of course, the fan is hit, and it soon becomes a matter of investigating the impending ritual while avoiding monsters.
Helltown also has several endings to discover. Unlike some games that explore the concept, these actually (mostly) feel rewarding to find. Some of them require you to play through the game almost completely differently. Some even result in finding entirely new areas that you couldn’t before. It’s a genuinely nice feature that it executes well.
Hell’s Ambassador
Unfortunately, Helltown’s weakest aspect is one that all too many modern horror games fall prey to. Once the sun goes down and the monsters come out, the game becomes a light stealth game about avoiding monsters and finding key items.
It’s a gameplay style that was overdone back in 2017, and it feels even more so now. This isn’t helped by the stealth feeling very undercooked, ultimately resulting in you just spending half the game sprinting away from monsters.
It’s unfortunate because one of the ending paths (specifically the evil one) introduces a variation on this system that’s actually genuinely cool and inventive. By contrast, the supposed “true” ending is tedious to obtain and ultimately doesn’t feel worth it even though Helltown is a very short game.
The Verdict
Helltown shows that developer WildArts Games has plenty of potential. I could genuinely see the makings of a great game here, and I’m curious to see what they do next. For now, though, it remains a simply decent horror game whose stealth feels like pure Hell to play.
Helltown is available via Steam.
Watch the trailer for Helltown below: