It finally dawned on me that the reason I’m drawn to Roguelikes is that they give me the thing that many games have taken away: the feeling of being overpowered. RPGs and their ilk were usually based on static designs of levels and progression which gave the players the opportunity to outpace it. Inevitably you’d find yourself at a point where your current power level grossly outmatched that of the stage of the game you were in and, for me at least, that was fun. Today such things seem to be lamented as bad game design but I see it as a removal of an aspect of gaming that was a kind of built in reward for those who chose to explore the game more. Nowadays, with souslikes and the git gud crew pusing their skill-based agenda, every increase in power is met with a new challenge to counter it. That’s still fun in its own way but there are times where I just want to have that overpowered hero fantasy fulfilled. Which brings me to Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel the latest in a long line of bullet hell/Roguelike hybrids that lets you live out that power fantasy in spades.
Jotunnslayer’s interpretation of this nascent but growing genre is an interesting one, mostly because it has a few additional layers of customisation that give you an incredible amount of opportunity to fully min/max a build. To start off with you have your class which comes with its own set of built in mechanics and skills. Then there’s the weapon which will give a small stat bonus but will also come with an active skill which can be a build defining aspect in itself. From there you’ve got the various boons from the different gods which you can mix and match with reckless abandon, many of which have direct interactions with each other. Then there’s the skill shop which allows you to enhance class/god skills, give yourself passive bonuses and unlock entirely new mechanics. Each “raid” you play through will also have a set of randomly created objectives, each of which need to be accomplished before you can summon the boss for that particular level. This kind of mechanical complexity is par for the course for Early Access titles but it certainly is a tad overwhelming for people like me coming in at the 1.0 stage.
With most of the games in this genre being 2D or simple on the graphics side Jotunnslayer stands out for the sheer level of detail that they’re cramming in. The aesthetic feels very Diablo inspired, trading the Gothic themes for more Nordic ones. Whilst each level will be procedurally generated on launch they’re diverse enough that it doesn’t feel like just a bunch of random tiles scattered on the ground. The colour palette is bright and diverse, something that is sorely needed given how quickly it can devolve into a whirlwind of conflicting particle effects when the enemy counts start to ramp up. This is all done without a whiff of any performance issues either which, honestly, I was surprised by. Similar games with much less demanding graphics have turned into slideshows when I’ve gotten to the end game so hats off to the devs on this one, it’s superbly optimised.
The core game loop is very straightforward: pick your class, choose your weapon, select a level, change the difficulty and pick some modifiers if you want. You’re then dropped into the level with 15 minutes to complete the objectives at which time you can then summon the Jotunn for the final battle. As you slay hordes of demons you’ll get XP to level you up and when you do you’ll get a choice between two gods (including your character’s skill tree). Skill selection isn’t just limited to what you’re shown though as you’ll also have the option of rerolling, banishing certain skills and later on even removing certain gods or locking particular skills for the next time the god shows up. It’s a well developed system that, whilst still RNG based at its heart, gives you a lot more control and influence on how you get to that perfect build.
I have to admit though that it didn’t really click for me during the first few hours. Whilst getting a good combo seemed relatively straightforward, helped by the fact that most gods are locked until you beat a level at least once, I didn’t really have a sense for what worked well with each other. To be sure it seems like most “evovled” abilities (I.E. those ones that you’ve spent skill points on in the shop) are a massive step up in terms of potency but you’ll usually get much more out of synergistic abilities. The barbarian for instance excels when you stack numerous effects that trigger and are triggered on entering his rage state. The other classes likely have a similar way of exploiting their abilities but I honestly didn’t spend much time figuring them out as the barbarian was just too much fun already.
The skill shop also takes a bit of time to really understand how it functions properly. The left hand side skills are effectively upgrades to current things that you already have access to, giving you a fourth evolved tier that can usually win levels on its own. The right hand side is the passive skills and are where you should be focusing most of your points unless you’re chasing a very specific kind of skill build. Most of the passive skills aren’t exactly gaming changing by themselves but those incremental effects quickly stack up to be very meaningful, especially when they’re paired with the right build.
My usual go-to build with the barbarian centers on frost nova and the aforementioned rage trigger stacking. The frost nova can be augmented with the HP regen talent that triggers on killing frozen enemies, something that is very much needed when you have 200+ enemies on you at any one time. Combining that with a number of god skill cooldown enhancers means that at level 4 frost nova is almost always going off, preventing most enemies from getting close and giving you constant regen as more and more of them explode by you simply walking at them. This build didn’t seem to work as well with the other classes though as I think that whilst the explosion regen was good it still needed further augmentation from other abilities to keep you alive.
The Early Access period for Jotunnslayer has been good for it as the experience I had while playing the 1.0 version was pretty seamless overall. I did have one rather frustrating experience where, at the very last boss fight on Helhim (I.E. the end of the game) everything but the UI turned black. It was clear the simulation was still running as damage/heal numbers and status effects kept popping up but I had no idea what was going on. Checking the Steam Community for this showed that I wasn’t the only one who’d hit this but given I only saw this once during my playthrough I won’t count it as a massive issue.
I did also give Endless mode a go and whilst it was pretty fun I have to say that the burden system, I.E. the stacking disabilities you’ll pick up as the time goes on, felt a little harsher than it needed to be. This is probably my fault for choosing the invulnerable slime burden which is honestly so goddamn terrible that it made most objectives just simply not achievable but I guess I was hoping for a more traditional endless mode; I.E. just increasing numbers of enemies until I couldn’t handle it anymore. Still it was a decently fine way to farm skill points, if you were looking to max out everything.
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel is a fantastic evolution of the bullet hell/Roguelike concept, bringing with it fresh ideas and an engaging core game loop. It’s also a great example of how Early Access can be done right with the game staying in it for under a year before going 1.0. That was time well spent as the resultant game is well polished save for a few rough edges that I’m sure will be addressed in future patches. Jotunnslayer also came at the right time for me as I didn’t really have my Roguelike itched scratched by the recent Prince of Persia title, leaving me wanting for something more. Here’s to seeing more innovation like Jotunnslayer in this genre!
Rating: 8.75/10
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel is available on PC right now for $21.95. Total playtime was 8.3 hours with 42% of the achievements unlocked.
