Some further dialogue reveals that something terrible has occurred, everyone is dead. With little idea of where or who you are, you’re given vague instructions by an omnipotent voice. In the beginning sequence, the player is plopped like a baby from a mechanical pod into a dingy abandoned space station. The game understands the genre appeal of fair but challenging gameplay, however, lacks the polish that other Souls-like games possess.
The title meets nearly all the gameplay elements one would expect from a Souls-like: slow and precise combat, punishing death mechanics, sparse save points, and challenging enemies foreshadowing an inevitable boss battle at the end of a short, but hellishly dense labyrinth of a map.
Game is still playable offline with the console/pc clock substituting the server for the Quantic System.Online multiplayer will still be included though. Split-screen seems to be difficult to get running well on the Switch and might not make it into the final release (they plan on being transparent about this beforehand if that’s the case).Physical release is not off the table now that Tinybuild has stepped in to publish Hellpoint.Some quick hits from talking to the developers. Note: while this demo for isn’t publicly available there is a different, earlier, PAX West demo that Cradle Games made public if you want to try it for yourself on PC. Here's hoping we get a more in-depth look at that sometime in the lead up to launch this year. Though it was a bit disappointing, but understandable with it being a demo for a public show, that the Quantic System wasn't on display (at least in an obvious sense) as that is the thing I'm the most curious about. I'm impressed at how things have improved (especially with the visuals) since the demo I played a couple years ago. Beating that creature will kick you back to the main page.
Moving through the area you eventually come to a portal that will load you into a boss room where, thanks to demo tuning, you can tackle a relatively easy fight. Turns out this will be tweaked in the final game to remove instant-kills. Not sure how prevalent that will be in the final game but it certainly took me by surprise. Having this max out will lead to an instant death so you have to keep that in mind since, at least on low-level “looking” creature was able to one-shot me with a charge attack I thought I could tank. In combat there was an interesting quirk with a heat system, similar to a status effect like poison in the Souls titles there is a bar that fills up as certain attacks hit you that generate “heat”.
I imagine this was just for the demo to get people moving through to the boss asap. The demo itself was pretty linear but had a good amount of side passageways leading to currency and other encounters. I didn’t see many cases of increased verticality to justify the jump button but apparently here are later areas that will make better use of it for traversal. The controls for the game are about what you’d expect with two alterations, instead of a shield-bash you sprint with the left trigger and you can jump with the “A” button.
Unfortunately there isn’t any footage out there for the demo but the trailer does include the location (the blue-tinted cityscape) seen in the build. Progress for the game has continued since then with Tinybuild stepping in to publish and, as of last month, Hellpoint is now content complete and in a polishing state until release. Figured it was still worth highlighting on it’s own along with details of the demo Cradle Games had at the PAX East Tinybuild booth and other tidbits of info I got from talking to the developers.Īs a quick refresher: Hellpoint was kickstarted back in April of 2017 as a “Dark Sci Fi RPG” with a major selling point for the game being it’s local co-op option and the “Quantic System” that will change parts of the world depending on a server. OK, so the trailer is a week old but I missed it at the time due to being busy with PAX East.