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.

Reviewed on Nov 19, 2022


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