A legendary SHMUP influential to the best makers in the genre, Hellsinker is now available on steam in its most advanced form! Gameplay, story, graphics, and even music all united into one cohesive and highly dimensional Shoot-em-up!
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Hellsinker isn’t only one of the most original games I can name, but it is also surprising in that its novelty comes from reinterpreting shoot’em up standards, from its own creation and from being able to tie everything in a very abstract yet absolutely defined concept.
The way of making its own some well known elements such as firepower, bombs or rank is not only renaming them into concepts of its own world, these three old acquaintances are now called Luna, Sol and Stella, but in challenging what they can or cannot be from their conception. In this sense, it is a game very aware of its meta-context, it knows its language well and therefore knows how to give it new twists. Thus, firepower goes down while shooting and up while not, bombs quickly regenerate over time, and rank can be lowered by picking dedicated objects, or even raised, why not. The interesting result is that both for those unfamiliar with the genre and those who know where all of this comes from will reach a common feeling: strangeness, discovering something new.
This half recontextualized half own novelty can be seen everywhere. Playable characters that are totally separate worlds (wouldn’t make any sense to differentiate them by shot type since shooting is just another arsenal resource). Levels that are not afraid to experiment with their rules: a normal autoscroller, a fixed arena, a maze full of walls and teleporters, a boss to “satisfy” instead of killing or surviving… The action itself asks to be played with your wit instead of your gut, relying more on strategy and less on reflex, including the not the exactly scarce light speed bullets sections.
Even the game structure is affected by its nerve. Apart from multiple secrets and ramifications, here they seem like minor details, there is no fear to experiment with the arcade structure. Like narrating through pure text sections from half the game onwards, sections that instead of clarifying anything make the whole ordeal even more abstract. Or its “bonus” level which appearance and challenge add yet another new layer of intricate unusual systems.
As said, Hellsinker is an abstract game and conscious about it, but this abstraction should not be confused with the common genre abstraction where the setting is usually an excuse to give way to the game action. There is sensorial intention, a significance (regardless if anything clear can be extracted from it), a meta-commentary, spirituality, religious rituals and who knows what else being known and unsaid without knowing how far any of it goes or not. Everything ends, and perhaps even starts, with a cat, somehow.
What makes Hellsinker exceptional is being able to build an abstract universe, a universe in which their elements matter both in their context and in their effect on the game. Similar to Adventure, which understood abstraction as a totally valid way to convey the sense of adventure, Hellsinker reaches a similar destination going through an opposite way, extracting the abstraction built over decades of niche development to construct its world.
The way of making its own some well known elements such as firepower, bombs or rank is not only renaming them into concepts of its own world, these three old acquaintances are now called Luna, Sol and Stella, but in challenging what they can or cannot be from their conception. In this sense, it is a game very aware of its meta-context, it knows its language well and therefore knows how to give it new twists. Thus, firepower goes down while shooting and up while not, bombs quickly regenerate over time, and rank can be lowered by picking dedicated objects, or even raised, why not. The interesting result is that both for those unfamiliar with the genre and those who know where all of this comes from will reach a common feeling: strangeness, discovering something new.
This half recontextualized half own novelty can be seen everywhere. Playable characters that are totally separate worlds (wouldn’t make any sense to differentiate them by shot type since shooting is just another arsenal resource). Levels that are not afraid to experiment with their rules: a normal autoscroller, a fixed arena, a maze full of walls and teleporters, a boss to “satisfy” instead of killing or surviving… The action itself asks to be played with your wit instead of your gut, relying more on strategy and less on reflex, including the not the exactly scarce light speed bullets sections.
Even the game structure is affected by its nerve. Apart from multiple secrets and ramifications, here they seem like minor details, there is no fear to experiment with the arcade structure. Like narrating through pure text sections from half the game onwards, sections that instead of clarifying anything make the whole ordeal even more abstract. Or its “bonus” level which appearance and challenge add yet another new layer of intricate unusual systems.
As said, Hellsinker is an abstract game and conscious about it, but this abstraction should not be confused with the common genre abstraction where the setting is usually an excuse to give way to the game action. There is sensorial intention, a significance (regardless if anything clear can be extracted from it), a meta-commentary, spirituality, religious rituals and who knows what else being known and unsaid without knowing how far any of it goes or not. Everything ends, and perhaps even starts, with a cat, somehow.
What makes Hellsinker exceptional is being able to build an abstract universe, a universe in which their elements matter both in their context and in their effect on the game. Similar to Adventure, which understood abstraction as a totally valid way to convey the sense of adventure, Hellsinker reaches a similar destination going through an opposite way, extracting the abstraction built over decades of niche development to construct its world.
Fucking insane game, i might try to beat it in the case that I become good at videogames (i might give it a good score anyways)
i can't pass the tutorial
100% achievements.
November 6th, 2023, marks the day I would begin my journey of playing Hellsinker. 5 months and a day to be exact. With interest spawning from a stray suggestion by a friend of mine, this would quickly result in an obsessive play-through which then graduated to an obsessive achievement hunt which would THEN go on infiltrate my personal life via absolutely wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, even hijacking my dreams.
And I couldn't be more thankful.
Quite honestly, I'm not sure where to take this review, I'll let my fingers glide along the keyboard and post whatever crops up.
At 89.1 hours, Hellsinker sits comfortably at my #5 most played game on Steam. Despite this, I've only gone on to engage with the game in its entirety through the lens of 1 character. The game features 4 characters, 1 of which has 4 "Ordinance Packages" which change up their loadout. Essentially, this 1 character is 4 though their endings remain the same between loadouts. This leaves me with a staggering 1/7 true completion. In addition to this, each character does have a unique ending depending on their TLB progression, not viewable within the game's text sequence viewer. Though I've already gone ahead and watched a video showing their contents (SPOILERS (DUH!)), I'd still love to play the game to experience them firsthand.
Alright, what more is there left for me do? Surely after that I would have completed EVERYTHING there is to this game... right?
WRONG! THERE'S SO MUCH! THERE'S QUITE FRANKLY TOO MUCH! AND I THINK THE FUNNIEST PART HAS TO BE HOW ABSOLUTELY UNINTENDED MOST OF THE EXTRA STUFF IS!
I'll start by introducing this game's older sibling, Radio Zonde. Yes, I have played the game before, but I haven't really completed in a manner I find acceptable, so there's still this entire game for me to play. Much of the ideas regarding design both graphics and gameplay are very much seen within Hellsinker. 1CC for Radio Zonde TBD.
Following this game would then come Hellsinker but in the form of a demo, kinda? Colloquially the build is known as Hellsinker 0.95. This build is quite.... special. There's a bajillion changes from this version of the game to the Doujin and Steam releases and although I'd like to talk about them all day I'll spare this "review" the word count and cut to the main thing. This game, although presenting itself as a demo, actually holds within itself the entire game but more importantly the final stage(SPOILERS(AGAIN(DUH!))) accessible through dropping in some files graciously provided by the original poster. In a non-patched version, only stages 1-4 are playable. The cut special stages also feature 2 versions from what I understand looking at the channel. One version would then go on to become the Shrine seen in the Doujin and Steam release. The other version cut from the final releases feature something adjacent to a dungeon crawler style level (not spoilers).
Okay so. That's it right? Nothing more? There couldn't possibly be more?
But there is! All of these are from the game's Doujin release era (so like 2007-2011?) I'll tally up everything here:
>Doujin release (PURCHASED)
>Completion of said Doujin release (unsure if I'll do all characters TLB but I'll cross that bridge when I get there)
>Buying the fanzines (warning the page probably has some Not Safe For Work Ads so please use an adblocker <3 ) and then reading said fanzines (currently studying Japanese primarily for that)
>A 3D Hellsinker Railshooter fangame (Completed)
>A Puyo Puyo styled Hellsinker puzzle game (Completed)
>Another Hellsinker fangame though I don't really know what to compare this one to, check the IGDB page for more info (Completed)
...and that's it. At that point, I'll have fully exhausted myself on every possible official and unofficial expression of love for this game. Have I made it obvious enough how much I love this game?
I'm currently in ownership of pretty much every version of the game out there with their fan-patches in addition to the fan-games so if you'd like any of that please contact my either on Twitter or Discord @strawhatcanti. Thank you for reading. Until the next "review" goes up,
Keep your dignity.
November 6th, 2023, marks the day I would begin my journey of playing Hellsinker. 5 months and a day to be exact. With interest spawning from a stray suggestion by a friend of mine, this would quickly result in an obsessive play-through which then graduated to an obsessive achievement hunt which would THEN go on infiltrate my personal life via absolutely wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, even hijacking my dreams.
And I couldn't be more thankful.
Quite honestly, I'm not sure where to take this review, I'll let my fingers glide along the keyboard and post whatever crops up.
At 89.1 hours, Hellsinker sits comfortably at my #5 most played game on Steam. Despite this, I've only gone on to engage with the game in its entirety through the lens of 1 character. The game features 4 characters, 1 of which has 4 "Ordinance Packages" which change up their loadout. Essentially, this 1 character is 4 though their endings remain the same between loadouts. This leaves me with a staggering 1/7 true completion. In addition to this, each character does have a unique ending depending on their TLB progression, not viewable within the game's text sequence viewer. Though I've already gone ahead and watched a video showing their contents (SPOILERS (DUH!)), I'd still love to play the game to experience them firsthand.
Alright, what more is there left for me do? Surely after that I would have completed EVERYTHING there is to this game... right?
WRONG! THERE'S SO MUCH! THERE'S QUITE FRANKLY TOO MUCH! AND I THINK THE FUNNIEST PART HAS TO BE HOW ABSOLUTELY UNINTENDED MOST OF THE EXTRA STUFF IS!
I'll start by introducing this game's older sibling, Radio Zonde. Yes, I have played the game before, but I haven't really completed in a manner I find acceptable, so there's still this entire game for me to play. Much of the ideas regarding design both graphics and gameplay are very much seen within Hellsinker. 1CC for Radio Zonde TBD.
Following this game would then come Hellsinker but in the form of a demo, kinda? Colloquially the build is known as Hellsinker 0.95. This build is quite.... special. There's a bajillion changes from this version of the game to the Doujin and Steam releases and although I'd like to talk about them all day I'll spare this "review" the word count and cut to the main thing. This game, although presenting itself as a demo, actually holds within itself the entire game but more importantly the final stage(SPOILERS(AGAIN(DUH!))) accessible through dropping in some files graciously provided by the original poster. In a non-patched version, only stages 1-4 are playable. The cut special stages also feature 2 versions from what I understand looking at the channel. One version would then go on to become the Shrine seen in the Doujin and Steam release. The other version cut from the final releases feature something adjacent to a dungeon crawler style level (not spoilers).
Okay so. That's it right? Nothing more? There couldn't possibly be more?
But there is! All of these are from the game's Doujin release era (so like 2007-2011?) I'll tally up everything here:
>Doujin release (PURCHASED)
>Completion of said Doujin release (unsure if I'll do all characters TLB but I'll cross that bridge when I get there)
>Buying the fanzines (warning the page probably has some Not Safe For Work Ads so please use an adblocker <3 ) and then reading said fanzines (currently studying Japanese primarily for that)
>A 3D Hellsinker Railshooter fangame (Completed)
>A Puyo Puyo styled Hellsinker puzzle game (Completed)
>Another Hellsinker fangame though I don't really know what to compare this one to, check the IGDB page for more info (Completed)
...and that's it. At that point, I'll have fully exhausted myself on every possible official and unofficial expression of love for this game. Have I made it obvious enough how much I love this game?
I'm currently in ownership of pretty much every version of the game out there with their fan-patches in addition to the fan-games so if you'd like any of that please contact my either on Twitter or Discord @strawhatcanti. Thank you for reading. Until the next "review" goes up,
Keep your dignity.
This might be one of the best games ever made and I'm not kidding.
Meu novo shmup favorito, de inicio parecia a coisa mais louca do mundo e extremamente difícil, mas com o tempo se tornou extremamente satisfatório de se jogar, fazer a run completa desse jogo é como efetuar uma dança, de forma graciosa e bela depois de muito tempo treinando seus movimentos ate conseguir bons resultados e dominar aquilo. A OST nem se fala, simplesmente divina uma das melhores do gênero, além do jogo inteiro ser sincronizado com a música, todos os ataques, fica ainda mais aparente no Final Boss. Simplesmente uma obra prima, com várias e várias maneiras de se zerar, é um jogo desafiador mas que fisga o coração de qualquer um que se disponha a mergulhar na gameplay de HellSinker.
Keep your Dignity...
Keep your Dignity...