Hell is Others is Free to Keep on Epic Games Store until February 2, 2023.
It was only a matter of time before Battle Royales would birth their own subgenre, most notably the Extraction Shooter. You dive into a world full of loot, objectives, hostile NPCs and other players, forcing you carefully navigate the environs to live to fight another day. In essence, it’s a semi-competitive multiplayer rogue-lite, right down to the brutal learning curve and passive upgrades over time. There are countless iterations on the formula already, but few have actually improved things quite like Hell Is Others.
For one, there’s a dedicated story to Hell Is Others, with a customizable apartment and ominous, otherworldly horrors playing with your head. It takes a full half-hour before you dive into a multiplayer match, instead seeing you navigate hallways straight out of Twin Peaks as you converse with demons and rabbit men. You’re given a bonsai plant by a mysterious benefactor promising some sort of payoff if you can manage to go 10 in-game days consistently watering the plant… with blood. Doesn’t matter if it’s your blood or someone else’s.
At the same time, you’re trying to supply a junk dealer with whatever garbage he needs, with the priority items changing each day of the real-world week. You’ll also receive sidequests from NPCs out in the city - a riskier prospect than meeting them in your ever-decaying apartment building. The attention to detail and worldbuilding is astounding, especially for a game that might otherwise leave you lowering your expectations. I mean, really - a top-down 2D survival game hasn't looked, sounded, or controlled this well since Darkwood. Sure, it’s a mechanically simple affair, but that works in its favor.
While you can only see players and monsters walking inside your cone of vision - which vanishes when looting boxes - there’s always a sound indicator visible on screen. Overall, the presentation is outstanding, clearly communicating everything you need to know. Forget what a quest item was? No worries, they’ll be specifically branded by an icon when you find them amid the heaps of far less valuable loot. Enemies are an inky, stark contrast against the vivid, noirish colors of Hell - all wandering about like feral dogs and overgrown hamsters. Other players, meanwhile, appear as giant black furred men with a single eye, conveniently explaining away everyone being ‘Adam’.
It’s this duet of brilliant presentation and meaningful hooks beyond grinding experience for the sake of experience that make it worth trying out. Even as someone typically skeptical of the subgenre, Hell Is Others manages to carve out a dark little place in my heart. It’s also a rare instance where most of the other human players I ran across were just as afraid of me as I was of them. You can’t really blame them - bullets literally grow like weeds in this world, and everyone spawns packing heat no matter if they succeeded or failed on their last run.
Stealth is distinctly encouraged in a way I haven't seen since The Cycle's first iteration almost half a decade ago. While not the wild west of that game, what's here is a fascinating world brimming with potential far beyond multiplayer survival. In a hostile world brimming with mystery, Adam's descent into Hell is a fascinating tale of survival in a blood soaked underworld you can't miss.