Rogue Snail put this important speck of Brazilian history on the spotlight with Hell Clock. A schizophrenic roguelite ARPG bullet-hell that works ok on Linux with Proton Experimental (10+).

A bit of history

Hell Clock takes place after the War of Canudos. And it draws inspirations from the involved people and locations of the event.

This is a piece of history every kid learns in school in Brazil. This view of Brazil being very diplomatic and welcoming is something from the past 40 years. Before, everything that the people in power did not like were treated with extreme prejudice and ultra-violence, be it Brazilians or our neighbours (just ask Paraguay).

War on Canudos would make more sense. While Brazil was crushing active revolutions - or anything they deem to be one. Canudos village sounded more like a refuge for people escaping misery than “active revolutionaries”. For some reason, they upset the power structure in Bahia, a Brazilian state that decided to involve the national army to murder Canudos’ population.

For a kid in history class, on one hand, Canudos seems cool because they managed to piss off the Church, powerful slavers landowners and corrupt government officials (and also survive several waves of army incursions). On the other hand, they were painted as a cult of ultra-conservative religious zealots pro-monarchy (for some weird long dead inbreed Portuguese king).

It is hard to believe on everything we read because there are not much reliable data around. Most of it was written by people that would benefit from it somehow. As in arguments about Monarchy vs Republic, Pro vs Abolition of slavery, Science vs Prejudice, justifications for the military campaign, and so on.

Canudos’ people also did not leave significant written history behind. The remote commune formed by poor people and former-slaves was only a respite from the severe droughts of sertão. The most famous writing is the preaching notes from their leader, Antonio Conselheiro.

The game story is driven by the protagonist wishes to free the souls of the people of Canudos from the devil, especially Consheleiro’s. Who were quartered at the end of the “War” and remains displayed across the land as deterrent for further “dissidents”.

Gameplay and Arts

You play as Pajeú, one of Canudos’ resistance that appears in the game. With your revolver and several skills at your disposal, you need to overcome 3 Acts to get to Antonio Conselheiro’s soul.

You also have a clock (some people call you Clockmaker at the beginning of the game without much explanation after). It might be an allusion to the time limit (also not explained) you have when exploring hell/purgatory (not sure about which of those either).

The game plays similar to other roguelite dungeon crawlers ARPG. Top view, you use your skills by pointing with the mouse, pick power ups during your run, the graphics are a bit more cartoon than realistic, and very well-made.

When you “enter” the area correspondent to the act, you have to explore many floors (you can only go down/or up, not sure) every so often you fight a boss… anyway, this is where the fun ends.

Remember earlier I called the game “… schizophenic roguelite ARPG …”. The game tries to be a bunch of things, mix them together incoherently, and when it picks a formula, it chooses the wrong one and hurts itself confused (or maybe it chooses the most malicious and addictive ones intentionally).

Let’s start with the worst sin a game can commit: removing player agency.

With Hell Clock, you will notice it first when you hit the first sponge level as a hard-block of progress.

For a while, I thought I did not like the rogue-lite genre. Thing is, for a while I had just tried the bad ones. And all of them have this same characteristic as Hell Clock.

With some experience, you can get to the second boss in your first run. After that, the scenery changes, a different set of levels, and you find your first zombie of the floor (the most common type of enemy in the whole game). But, at this moment, they are though as a boss and pretty much insta-kill you. You can try to kill one, at the cost of so much time. Each zombie now will be like that. You will run out of time trying to kill them, or you will die on that floor.

Proper rogue-based games, will give you the tools during a crawl-run to finish it. You might fail for lack of knowledge, poor decisions, or lack of skills. With Hell Clock, there is no need for skill, or acquiring knowledge, or making proper choices. Nothing you can do during a run will let you finish it.

As the game progresses, the change in difficulty is not about enemy skills and patterns, or picking the right powerups. It is about restarting the run when you are hit with a steep spike in stats that forces you to stop. Like enemy increased health pool, resistances and damage. And the only way to overcome it is by ending your run, spending resources and starting again. The spike bump becomes more often, every few floors, every other floor, then every floor.

You can try to make a run for the end of the floor, and avoid enemies, as the time freezes in the boss levels. But then prepare yourself for a half-hour fight, just to get insta-killed by some bread-and-butter zombie on the next floor. All-in-all, a waste of time as you would get more resources by playing the easies parts o

To rub salt on the wound, after the first run, you get a revolver that makes you 8 times stronger, and the first enemies you fought before are now banal, nothing more than an annoyance. And, at the same time, the sweet spot where it is fun and challenging to play becomes shorter and shorter: first is several floors, then just a few, then a couple…

That is why my mantra for this type of game is:

Dungeon crawl roguelike runs should be about player skills and/or good decisions

Decisions are the core of giving the player agency, and skills is something you can get with some practice. This is nothing new for gaming.

It is ok to have hard-to-kill enemies. They can help with your game message. Throw in the big bad guy early on to show your players what the challenge will be, for example. Some, are usually avoidable when you don’t have means to defeat, or some other smart way to overcome.

You may have noticed that I mentioned a couple of times how the gratification window gets smaller and smaller. And the lack of agency just make this sort of design similar to addictive gambling games, like a slot machines. This kind of casino formulaic balance is usually enough for me to not recommend a game, but wait, there is more.

It is sad because I started liking the game from the opening screen (after you select a proton version that works for you). The music feels proper, from the melody to the selection of instruments. The voice acting is good, Pajeú and Nina actors did a great job (If a villain makes you hate them just from the way they speak, that is a great work in my book). I also replayed the first two bosses with English voice over and it was superb, some lines gave me shivers, and they did a good job saying some hard to speak words like “João”.

From the start, you save an old woman from two zombies, and the shooting is very satisfactory, from the click of your mouse button to the monsters dying. The animation, visual and sound effects feels nice.

I would say that almost half of the skills you can choose are very satisfactory to use. Early game when the enemies are a good match for your level (that sweet spot of fun and challenge) and you use the skills with some thought behind them are chefs kiss.

Later game all of that is flushed down the toilet when either the enemies are too weak to withstand a fart, or they are strong but you just have to spam skills to kill the mobs, with no concern with what the enemies are doing or bosses patterns.

I was casting things to keep my defence high, refilling my life, crowd controlling the enemy, and damaging them. It would sound great if what I was doing had some thought behind, but at that point I was just smashing buttons and trying to move to the exit.

I cannot describe much of the last Act level design because I finished the game with so many skills populating the screen that it was all a blur of golden effects. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of an enemy health bar slowly grinding down, or noticed my gold increasing. I could not click on a single thing, and I was moving mostly with help from the minimap. But if you ask me to describe the monsters, I would bet on it being more zombies.

About clicking on things, what a nightmare. I am not sure if it is pixel perfect or what, but it took some time to open chests, interact with shrine and other elements. Because of the mouse button to open them were the same of one of your skills, quite often I would cast 2 or 3 times before opening a chest. Quite annoying when you are in a time crunch and fighting a horde. It is better with controller, I talk more about it in the Steam Deck session. Later I saw an option to map a button to “interact nearby”, I recommend mapping those (that for some reason was unmapped for me).

I was quite happy that some bosses are elements of the history of Canudos, like corrupt officials or people that profit from its inhabitants. One of my favourite enemies was a cannon. A nice addition since one of the army’s tactics was to point cannons at Canudos and shoot until they run out of ammo, another cruelty those refugees suffered. But in the end the enemy variety lacks, including bosses, it was mostly zombies and variations of the same asset.

The writing was ok, I enjoyed hearing some idioms and folk knowledge phrases I grew up with. The villain is pompous and hides behind pseudo-science to justify his prejudice, still relevant to this day. And the items you collect have quotes of Brazilian writers and musicians.

Talking about the items you collect, most of the items you equip have generic art and random stats, there is not much logic on it besides the title, “Lightning” might give you some boost on that kind of attack or defence. You will probably destroy all of them.

Some of them are relics that modify your skills, called “uniques”. I really liked them. You have a provocative art, like the Brazilian flag covered in blood, or a title that corrupts the image, like something in the sense of “empty promise” over an image of the document that abolished slavery in Brazil.
I also liked them because Skills are one of the few agencies the player have over a run (before starting it).

Nothing you do during the run will help you move forward. You farm a run to unlock things at base. Play until you find the sweet spot of fun again, enjoy a bit, hit the sponge wall of progress, end your run. Then spend resources on the base.

You spend resources in a multitude of things that are mandatory if you want to progress. You have different sorts of progression trees, one in a bell, another in some sort of constellations.

You can also buy some equipment that dropped during your run, but if they are better you are not allowed to equip until you end the run. And you will have to buy them back in the base.

Games are about the decisions you make, and how meaningful they are. And here, most of them are meaningless or not a decision at all.

In the base, you need to buy the progression that adds +50 to your damage, or you are not going to tickle your enemies. And during the run, anything that drops, even from the bosses sploshing gold and junk like in Diablo, nothing in there will be useful for you to go further away in this run.

Lastly, a minor thing that annoyed me lightly (not as much as the bullet sponge progression). During the whole game, you either have Pajeú in the third-person, or as in some cutscenes in the first-person, never in the first-person of someone else. You have that feeling that you are in the journey with him. Then, after hours wasted on the game, you are rewarded with a scenic view of Pajeú pointing his gun at you (the player). I guess they went for the “badass” look, but why make me feel like the bad guy at the end?

Technical problems.

As always, I imagine the problems I faced were because of Linux. Some were. Like the game not opening with the default Proton from Steam. Proton Experimental, or one of the most recent GE did the trick.

Other problems I noticed, more people are experiencing too, including with Windows, they are poor optimization and constant game freeze.

I am playing with a 2080 TI, and I had to put everything in the minimal settings to get playable FPS. Every time, before new enemies spawn, there would be a freeze. It does get better after a while.

What if … ? / Other kind of games

We talked about how rogue-based gives you the tools to finish the crawl during the run. The -lite suffix means that they will give you some boost to finish the game in subsequent runs (but you should still be able to finish it without them).

I forced my memory and could find an ARPG that fits the bill. As the term is a huge umbrella and if we focus only on dungeon crawlers, or deeper, isometric(ish) ones. Dungeon Siege, Torchlight, Record of Lodoss War, Diablo, or even Legend of Zelda if we go far enough. I don’t remember having to replay areas constantly in a mindless Sisyphean punishment.

That is when I realized there is a public for everything, and maybe I should evaluate Hell Clock as something else, not the two categories the devs put on the description of their games.

Thinking about repetitive games, the first that came to my mind, but it was also an acquired taste for me, is “Extraction” games. Usually associated with shooters, they are games where you play (and replay) areas to extract something valuable, either to make you stronger or to progress the story.

Usually associated with live service games, I would not bat an eye on them until recently, I played the demo for steam fest of Escape from Duckov.

You have a mostly unchanged area, with specific things here and there. Some kind of enemies spawns close to some sources, some items you might need can be found on another place. All working in some sort of sandbox mode.

The reason to revisit an area can be varied. A request from a NPC, or you want better equipment to overcome something. But why repeating it did not bore me to death?

First there was a plan phase, I would decide what I carry with me that would help me defeat the challenges but also leave room to bring things back. The skills and “uniques” selection on Hell Clock ticked that need a bit for me. The second part, not so much.

I did not have to go through the whole map every time, it would be unwise to do so with all the challenges and limits you have. I would beeline to my objectives, and come back (maybe explore and scavenger a bit if the situation permits).

After, I realized many games I liked in the past had enjoyable “extraction” elements. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is also an extraction game: You have a sandbox isle that you go to extract things.

Then I realized I was ignoring games I usually do not like, but it might be enjoyable to others.

There is this person part of one of the groups I play online sometimes. Their favourite games are games which you can exchange time played (or money) for power. And then use that power against low-level players or on easy areas.

Like being level 60 on World of Warcraft killing earlier boards (South Park Make Love, Not Warcraft, poke) because it is safe from the War, and not as strong as a level appropriate enemy. I think I only met one person like that, but there are games that target-audience are this type of player.

That would make some sense. As most of the time with Hell Clock you would be going against enemies that are too weak, and you just bulldoze them to until you reach level appropriate enemies. The part of the game that is most annoying for me could be a treasure for others.

I brushed it off because this kind of mechanics is associated with predatory heavily monetized live services, and Hell Clock is local single-player game. And the only other games I saw something similar did not have enough content and used this sort of economy balance to pad out game time. Something Hell Clock does not need to do.

Maybe that is the public Hell Clock aims for. Not avid dungeon crawl or ARPG fans. But players that prefer to satisfy a power-trip fantasy with low skill commitment (but high-time investment).

Steam Deck Experience

It is verified as “playable” by Steam, because of the small texts. If you played a bit in a computer, and because it is fully voiced in both English and Portuguese, you might not have a problem playing with those languages.

There is full controller support, with some targeting assists (the enemy you target will be outlined with red). It automatically targets the enemy you are facing, but you can use the right thumb to fine aim. I recommend switching the skill usage from the face buttons to the triggers because if you release the right thumb, the targeting resets to where you are facing. This is useful for kitting and rounding up enemies while attacking them.

Steam cloud saves syncs between devices so you can progress on both.

The pixel density of the OLED screen makes the game very nice on the eye. Performance is a bit better than the PC because of the small screen resolution of the Steam Deck. I could have the FPS between 50 and 60 with some huge drops during enemy spawns. The TDP would top at 18W with some 22W peaks. You can play around with the Deck upscaling for more juice, but there are still some problems intrinsic to the game.

I had some problems with selection during the initial tutorial, but after it, equipping relics and skills was a breeze.

Rogue Snail

I like to check the changelogs, and what is the company roadmap. I also try to share my findings before publishing a review. For my happiness, nothing that I described here in this review is new, and there are plenty of feedback everywhere, including on the Steam discussion forums from when the game was just a demo.

It appears that the company is putting a lot of effort to communicate its plans and gather feedback. Which is great. I am not sure for how long they plan to support the game or the long-term goal, but at least they are addressing the most severe issues with the public.

I also feel like they might need some media training. As the messages and replies often come as a LLM written nothingburger, or one of their devs goes out of his way to complain that people are not playing the game right, or not the right public for the game.

“You are not enjoying because you are not a fan of ARPG or Path of Exile like I am”, or “This game is not supposed to be Hades” as an answer to someone that did not like the progression and did not mention Hades. But at least they are improving, like this one, most recent, below.

As we said in State of the Game, the feedback about the campaign balance caught us a bit off-guard. In hindsight it is pretty obvious, but we got “tunnel vision” in the months leading up to release and ended up with a progression balance aimed to please only die-hard ARPG nerds such as myself, to the detriment of the wider audience.

• https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1782460/view/535482620603016508

There are some more on the Steam discussions. I am not sure what they think it is ARPG, but for some reason sounds like they only enjoy the casino predatory mechanics. Maybe it is childhood trauma, or some sort of Stockholm-syndrome.

Last remarks

I usually see this kind of balancing to mask other issues with a game, or to implement predatory monetization. And none of these reasons seems to fit with this game.

The game has 3 Acts, with plenty of floors for you to fight, and they are also adding some endgame challenges. There is not much reason for those design decisions if not to encher linguiça.

I am not sure in what direction they are going, but I do not like the current level of agency I have as a player.

When a game remove all your agency you still have a choice, to play it or stop. I guess at this point is very clear what to do.

Hell Clock is available on Steam.

Note: we received a key from the Publisher to review this game, while this has no bearing on how we assessed it.