Hello and welcome to Steam 30 Minute Make Of… Er, a dubiously named column where I download something from Steam’s recommended tab, play it for 30 minutes and see what I make of it. They say first impressions are important, which is why I came up with such a catchy title and decided to judge games based on their opening 30 minutes.
Jupiter Hell is Doom with a bird’s-eye view. It’s a turn-based, grid-based dungeon crawling game with permadeath. You push on against demons, zombies, and corrupted machines. You die, and you try again. It’s another one of those games, but with the attitude of id Software’s demon-slaying series.
It opens with a cartoon-style intro where a man shoots a zombie in the head and calls him an “ugly motherfucker”. After that, you’re asked if you want the default sweary mode (yes), the clean mode (no), or the serious mode where your guy isn’t a dumb ‘80s action hero (abso-fucking-lutely not). Seriously, who wouldn’t want their character to quip “mama always told me to use protection” when they pick up armour? Idiots, that’s who.
Jupiter’s Hell is like that guy in your friend group who’s a bit of a prick, but you can’t help liking them (caveat: if you don’t have one of these in your friend group, it’s probably you). It’s a bit much, but in a good way. It has personality in spades. Unfortunately, I’m not as enamoured with how it plays. Maybe I would be after more than one run - this is a game that’s designed to be played over and over, after all - but I can’t see myself diving back in.
Before you cock your shotgun, you need to choose from one of three classes: Marine, Scout, or Technician. The Marine uses a resource called Fury, which regenerates with kills. You can use this to trigger Adrenaline, which converts pain to health. The Scout can turn invisible and do big crits, and the Tech can dismantle modded weapons, use smoke screens, and throw grenades faster.
If you’re expecting Doom via XCOM, though, that isn’t what this is. You don’t have a squad, it’s just you versus the hordes of Hell. It’s also less about flanking and more about killing as quickly and efficiently as possible. Using a keyboard (no mouse) or a gamepad, you move one square at a time - left, right, up, or down. When there are no enemies around, you can move as fast as you like, to the point where you feel like you’re freely running across levels. As soon as you see something, you’re forced to slow down because the enemy moves for every action you take. If you run when enemies are about, you’re basically asking to be shot repeatedly in the face.
Reloading a revolver? The enemies will move towards you and attack with every bullet you push into the cylinder. There’s also a rudimentary cover system that buffs you when you’re next to a wall, and you can wait out a turn to improve your aiming, but Jupiter Hell is a little light on tactical considerations outside of this and health management. Sure, there are classes, a levelling system, weapon behaviour, and you can blow up explosive barrels, but most of the time it feels like you’re just running and gunning. It made me wish I was playing an alternate reality version of the same game that’s a straight-up twin-stick shooter instead.
Obviously, there is a market for this sort of thing - it’s just not me. If you’re looking for a new roguelike with a heavy metal attitude, gloomy industrial corridors, and lashings of blood, give it a go.