2 Likes
Dawn of Ssorrows actually development of the Abyss into something more thematically appropriate than the copy-paste-recolor Aria depiction was nice, but in retrospect, the faded repetition and nonsensical layout of the GBA game was more genuinely nightmarish
â
the depiction of âhellâ in the Megaten series is sporadic and curious and inconsistent:
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Expanse (spoiler minefield)
Notably, itâs where the entirety of the original Megami Tensei and SMT if⊠take place, and appears as a significant mutli-section overworld area in SMT II, as well as the setting of one of the latter chapters in Majin Tensei II. You visit it to lesser degrees in other titles, and itâs weirdly interpreted in the spin-offs. It has a (deliberately) unclear relation to other mysterious demonic places such as the Diamond Realm and the Labyrinth of Amala.
the ios smt1 translation uses âthe expanseâ instead of âthe diamond realmâ which kinda fits in with my initial impression that all of those smt places are the same thing
Devil Daggers
Donât look back
Both of these are really cool
Half of (drunk edit) super columbine massacre RPG takes place in hell, right after the school shooting. Yes.
Barkley shut up and jam gaiden has hell as a secret area full of jokes and I understood exactly none of the jokes
Earthworm Jim.
1 Like
Given the title of the thread I must mention Danteâs Inferno - the video game.
1 Like
nethack
dungeon crawl: stone soup
spelunky
binding of isaac
hoplite (iirc)
there might be a trend here
1 Like
1 Like
- All of the Diablos
- Solium Infernum - A 4x game Iâve never played but always been intrigued by
- Bayonetta 2
annoyed that with the list thread format I probably shouldnât go on one of my trademark developer-perspective diatribes on the contexts of the hells in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
âŠ
the confusing realm of modern touhou afterlife cosmology⊠hues very close to but doesnât really directly feature any hellscapes, and uses the Buddhist narakas as cyclical temporary reincarnation locales anyway. still, probably worth comparing?
- Perfect Cherry Blossom has a Netherworld purgatory
- Phantasmagoria of Flower View has some Styx/Sanzu river of judgement directly to the realm of the judges of the dead
- Subterrean Animism has an exiles-filled underground âFormer Capital of Hellâ followed by a re-activated âRemains of Blazing Hellâ (a shift due to overcrowding, you see (???))
- Unidentified Fantastic Object visits that elusive Makai as the folkloric home of youkai used as sealed demon realm?
the PC-98 Highly Responsive to Prayers and Mystic Square also spend some time off in these hells, for whatever incidental theme-application and abstract those games had. meanwhile, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody has some formless realm of unperception and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom finds some cross-China/Japan Shinto/etc pantheon on a hidden moon, for some companion heavens thread.
2 Likes
Requiem: Avenging Angel
iâd be interested in reading this.
proposing alternate thread title: 
Disgaea is set in âThe Netherworldâ which is kind of maybe hell.
Do this!
2 Likes
I bought this because someone on SB hyped it up and then we kind of never wound up playing. I wonder if I can still activate that game if I find the installer.
Demonâs Crest.
Oboro Muramasa has a level making you jump into a well to hell.
Litil Devil
sigh.
okay, so, the basic premises. passing through Geryonâs vestibule of hell into the four hells: the fiery Gehenna ruled by Asmodeus, the icy Cocytus ruled by Antaeus, the draining Tartarus ruled by Ereshkigal, and the Iron City of Dis ruled by Dispater. All selectively crib from early D&D, which was mostly cribbing off Danteâs Inferno, all in the grand cultural tradition of Christian occultist demonology demonizing the pagan with inevitable mythological disconnects. Asmodeus was a trickster, Antaeus was much closer to the earth than the oceans, DÄ«s Pater was a celebrated fertility god even with Hades syncretic conflation, so on and so on thrown into archdemonhood.
(First row: Asmodeus, Antaeus, Ereshkigal, Dispater. Second row, top demons of their corresponding hells: brimstone fiend, ice fiend, shadow fiend, hell sentinel.)
Each hell is stuck with an element, a variety of demons and undead, a scattered bunch of layout work, six floors of mostly non-threatening chaff, and a nasty delicately-randomized fixed level as climax. The damned are presumably the many zombies and skeletons trapped in decayed, unthinking unlife; the list I made from which such undead are derived includes a rare slice of most player species, a variety of beasts representing some other branches of the dungeon, and most prominently a broad group of elemental dragons and giants (perhaps the antagonist serpent and ancestral titanomachia are the most sinful). Some elemental representatives are neither daimon nor draugr nor deildegast, which raises further questions (alongside non-undead dragons and giants are naturalized magic shrikes that spit and impale prey on icicles). The hells themselves are hostile to intruder presences, and torment is thus provided in constant interval drops of wild magical misfires and more fresh unholy company: raiders are obliged to rush through the floors before the very broad list of effects lucks out with the lethal. With success, one finds the obsidian, icy, bone, and iron runes of Zot, some of many optional keys for the sealed-off final branch, the macguffin-housing Realm of Zot.
âŠ
From my curious viewpoint the post-game is a design pit. The main game requires three runes each with their own different levels, and the third rune is a decent choice between perhaps three. The post-game gathers the rest of the runes from much nastier branches, including from these Hells, and tops out at fifteen.
For players, character growth stalls completely due to main game balances, so the dynamic of clear goals and changes / improvements in approaching and fighting monsters is gone. Avenues of compatible and optimized strength versus this post-game have much less variety compared to beforehand, too. Design-wise, the decade-old design artifacts of a focus on demons and undead has obliged years worth of new monster and level designs to distinguish each of them, splitting off those Hells from Pandemonium and the Tomb of the Ancients and the Abyss with much lingering thematic / encounter overlap. The sheer monotonous length â where a fixed, broad set of nasty mechanics are thrown at a character hoping for some player slip-up and that the innate random results of encounters and combat within Crawlâs roguelike structure gets lucky â means that with long degrees of experience the fearsome reputation becomes a boring and regularly-ignored slog.
Crawl in general has a sense of a lifespan for a roguelike so actively developed for, where immense amounts of deliberate and controlled variety dull out into impatience and distaste. Of course, plenty of other games have singular playthrough appeals, and plenty of other long-form games drain oneâs interest, but that active and transparent volunteer development process makes overall affairs kind of tragic. Of the uncountable games of Crawl that are played, of the relatively few that win, even fewer games will visit the Hells, and even less will be, should be interested in continuing to do so. They have design problems always ready to be addressed, and there seems to be very few good ways to approach so much collective work.
(Incarnations of three of the full floors I made for the hells.)
Since Iâve damned my horrible self into the development hell yet once more out of melting weakness, I might eventually address all this with some long-form development proposal containing thoughts like above to rotate out some chunks of the post-game.
8 Likes