Rising Hell by Toge Games is an indie rogue-light game about a man descending into the depths of Hades (not that Hades though). While rogue-light games have become increasingly more popular in recent years, particularly among the indie crowd, Hell Rising has certainly made a small yet poignant statement.

Its’ gorgeous pixel art oozes with atmosphere and combined with a killer metal soundtrack makes this admittedly short trip from Hell a memorable one. It certainly leaves an impression.

Into The Fire

The game starts with a simple cutscene. The fallen angel Lucifer sparks a great war to overthrow the throne of Heaven. Eventually, Heaven seals his body in the roots of a gigantic tree called the Zaqqoum. Now, Lucifer’s armies of fallen demons created a realm of Hell inside the trunk, waiting for their king’s revival. But that is nothing important to our main character, with their power, all they want is to climb their way up the tower and get out of Hell.

Most of the story only exists in the opening and ending, with the meat of the game existing in the gameplay. This isn’t a bad thing mind you as it’s obvious the game aims to be a more visual/gameplay experience.

Highway to Hell

The game makes use of retro-style pixel graphics similar to games like Celeste, and it makes full use of the palette to bring Hell to life. The graphics give the fiery depths a feeling of raw yet pristine detail. Like someone really took an album cover from Iron Maiden or Judas Priest and turned them into a whole game world. It is especially well done considering the game primarily begins with various shades of red, although it does branch out the other colors as the levels continue.

The attack and character animation are also noteworthy. The dark or red background really makes lighter colors strike with impact. The blue jolt of a lightning bolt really feels like a power surge through the darkness. If you’re a fan of what people can do with pixel art, this one will keep you watching for days.

Hells Bells

If there’s one place that Rising Hell excels in, it’s the music. The game is pumped with heavy metal beats that get your adrenaline red hot to careen up that tower as you decimate the hellspawn in your path. If that sounds like Doom, it should, and that’s not a bad thing. Like Doom, the game knows how to use heavy metal to have a high octane action game feel all the more empowering and intense and it succeeds in flying blood-soaked colors.

Toge Games have also been generous enough to put the entire game’s OST on their Youtube channel. If you don’t do anything else with this game, give some of those tracks a listen, you won’t regret it.

The Last in Line

Rising Hell is a vertical platformer, meaning you’ll need to climb your way up to reach the next level. There are diverging paths where you can take challenges to get extra bonuses, but eventually, you will still need to fight the boss demon at the end of each stage.

In Rising Hell, there are three characters available to play as, the melee fighter Arok, ranged shooter Zelos, and Sydna who has special explosives that stick to enemies before exploding and causing greater environmental damage. I’d personally recommend Arok and Sydna since Zelos’ projectiles can be difficult to aim accurately, although perhaps that’s preferable for those that want more of a challenge, kind of like an old-school Mega Man game.

Every character can also perform a special ability called ‘Hellbreak’, when you hit an enemy with this attack, it will perform a one-hit kill as well as a huge amount of damages on bosses. It’s very easy to trigger, as well, meaning that you can easily combo into it but best make sure to save it for when you need it the most.

The Dance of Death

Combat mechanics are simple to understand and perform. You can double jump, hold onto walls, and use a phase dash ability to avoid enemy attacks. Fighting feels snappy which creates a good feeling of momentum as you tear your way up the level. In the usual rogue-like fashion, Killing certain demons can also get you artifacts that grant the character additional weapons and spells to their basic attacks such as energy blades, lighting, and more. They add more versatility to your arsenal and because they’re dropped randomly that can lead to very different games on a second playthrough.

Demons will drop green or red orbs. The green orbs can restore your health, and collecting red orbs can be used to upgrade the character during the game. You can get different abilities upgrades like increasing green orb’s drop rate, resurrection chance, or improving the duration of artifacts. But all of these upgrades are quite straightforward.

But overall, the content here is well done but quite short, only about an hour long. There are only a few types of enemies, as well as not many bosses. The weapons and upgrades aren’t quite as complex as others in the genre either. The fact that the map is verticle also means that the game can feel somewhat linear. At the end of the day as long as your go up, your going in the right direction meaning that even with different weapons, the game can still feel repetitive and dull after a while.

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Rising Hell is a pretty short game, but with solid mechanics, amazing visuals, and a heaven-sent soundtrack, it still makes for a satisfying experience. At the cost of only RM23.50, it’s more than worth it.

If you’re a fan of rogue genre games like Hades or Binding of Isaac, this may offer a short but sweet distraction to satisfy your needs. It’s more than worth a dive into Hell.