Unholy Heights

released on Sep 05, 2013

Welcome to Unholy Heights, a mashup of Tower Defense and Apartment Management Simulation! The Devil has converted a tenement building into monsters-only housing, and has big plans for the future. Sucker monsters into moving into your building, charge them rent and keep them happy by buying them furniture. Unfortunately, heroes have caught wind of the Devil's plan, and will stop at nothing to wipe him out. Knock on residents' doors to call them to battle, trap heroes in devious pincer formations, and command your troops to victory. Monsters get jobs, fall in love, have children, and even skip out on their rent. Keep them happy or you might not have anyone to fight for you when heroes come knocking. But don't be too soft: there's always prospective baddies looking to move in, so kick out the freeloaders when the time is right! Being a landlord is a difficult job, but it can't be harder than running Hell...right? Every monster is different. Some are lazy. Some are strong. Some are perverts. Use an intuitive mouse-based control scheme to command your troops into battle. Encounter more than 20 different monster species, and take their money. Build a reputation with different monster families based on your performance and play style. Take on quests at your pace to unlock new monsters and furniture. Build a stronger army as residents have children far stronger than themselves. Get monsters in the mood for love with inappropriately shaped erotic cakes. Look on in horror as lovingly hand-drawn monsters and humans horribly slaughter each other over money. Monster occupations, hobbies and desires are all procedurally generated to keep you on your toes.


Reviews View More

This game is addictive and very number-goes-up and it's very very charming. I would love to continue this game past the 13 hour mark but I value my own sanity.

A really addictive time-sink of a game. It's a strategy, but also a creature management game. You play as the Devil who has set up a apartment block for monsters of all types. They live, eat and sleep in their homes, but when heroes come to loot the area, you get these neighbours to come out and beat down those troublesome heroes.

Every extension cannot be built until you have the appropriate money and do the right mission. All missions are activated through a board where you battle waves of heroes and receive loot which is generally money, but can also been new pieces of furniture to unlock.

All the monsters have their own tastes for what they'd like in furniture and what you can buy for them to heal them, improve stats and even make it possible for them to find a mate and start a family. Weather can alter things as certain creatures like Elementals, for example, enjoy the rain if they're water-dependent elementals.

I've had a lot of fun with this game and it's well worth a look for any strategy lover looking for a time-sink.

Game is cute af but the gameplay is insanely brutal. Really fun way to spend some time though.

Not my kind of genre. Yes, you do in fact have to think to play this game, which is why I lasted so short. But the game seems wholesome enough to grant to the opportunity to test out the mechanics, reel in so-called "monsters" to become your tenants and rack up rent to extremes so you truly deserve being called The Devil. Vocaloid intro song is pretty cool. I wouldn't spend much money on this though.

A Turret Defense game that has monstar catching mechanics too, there's nothing really unique in the gameplay, but it's not really complicated to get onto it either

If you tell people that there's a game where you play as Satan, they'll probably think of torturing innocent souls, razing cities, fighting against god... You know, wreaking havoc on an untold scale. That could work, but the folks behind Unholy Heights decided that Satan would do something even more evil, something so vile, only the worst of the worst would do: he'd become a landlord.

"The Devil's spent his savings on a place in the projects!" is the line that opens the game. Satan now owns an apartment building, and has to bring monsters in as tenants to not only raise some money, but also to protect the place from foolish adventurers looking to slay him. Yep, he won't even set up proper security, the cheapskate.

The entire game takes place in the apartment complex, of which you have a side view. Monsters will come to you seeking to rent a unit, and you can choose to accommodate them or turn them away. While they're living in the complex, you periodically collect rent from them, money with which you can either upgrade the individual apartments or expand the complex to accommodate more tenants.

All the while, adventurers who have it out for The Devil will assault the building. Their parties will climb floor by floor, attempting to reach The Devil's room, and you have to call on the tenants to prevent that from happening, knocking on their doors to ask them to fight. In these moments, the game plays something like an RTS plus tower defense: you micromanage tenants in and out of battle as their health goes low or as the situation calls for it: for instance, some foes are weak to magic or physical attacks, and so are your monsters, so the front lines have to account for that. More than that, since each monster has specific traits and attack patterns, the positioning of each tenant in the complex is in itself part of your battle strategy.

As the game progresses, you'll face more difficult enemies and become able to unlock higher tier monsters, as well as expand the complex to accommodate more tenants. It's here that I feel the game falters a bit: the quest-based progression feels too linear and rigid, often grinding the game to a halt as you shuffle to raise certain sums, and the mechanics surrounding each monster type -- their needs and intrinsic traits -- could have been explained better.

It's a lot easier to put up with that than it sounds, though, as a cute cartoon-ish presentation makes the intense management gameplay feel a lot softer and more carefree: as the complex grows and improves with time, and so will your monsters, who develop their careers, find love, and even have children. It's hard not to get attached to them, and feel saddened if they die or move away.

Unholy Heights is an underrated gem, and it was a blast to revisit it on console -- a transition done impressively seamlessly -- almost a decade after playing the original release on Steam. With an unique concept and an incredibly low asking price for its quality, it's worth at least giving it a shot.