HELL GALAXY

# Hell Galaxy Review ## Introduction **Hell Galaxy** is a space action RPG developed by Italian Games Factory and currently available in Early Access on Steam. In terms of atmosphere and overall feel, it reminded me of a mix between *Air Rivals* and *DarkOrbit*, but with a much darker and more story-driven identity. --- ## Story The story follows **Raider**, a former prisoner accused of murder who awakens transformed into a living bio-ship, his consciousness trapped inside a mechanical vessel. With no memory of his past, he is exiled to the dangerous **Neterun Galaxy**, a place inhabited by other Raiders, ghostly creatures, and the ruins of an ancient alien civilization long since vanished. Throughout the journey, Raider tries to piece together his identity and uncover what truly happened to him. --- ## Gameplay ### Controls * **WASD** – Move * **Q / E** – Roll * **Space** – Turbo * **Ctrl** – Ascend / Descend * **F** – Interact and activate Turbo * **T** – Aim assist and enemy guidance * **Left / Right Mouse Button** – Primary and secondary weapons * **Mouse Wheel** – Switch primary weapon * **X** – Switch secondary weapons * **1–6** – Abilities, items, or ship loadouts ### Core Mechanics The gameplay revolves around piloting your bio-ship and completing missions that include: * Eliminating enemies * Collecting items * Surviving dangerous encounters The early difficulty is fairly approachable. Once you become familiar with the controls and start upgrading your ship, the experience becomes much more manageable. Ship customization and progression are among the game's strongest and most rewarding features. --- ## Tutorial & Onboarding One area that definitely needs improvement is the tutorial. At the beginning, several mechanics weren't explained clearly enough. For example: * I didn't realize that pressing **T** while targeting an enemy activates a guidance system that helps you understand how to defeat it. * The Turbo mechanic also confused me. I kept holding the button even after the UI indicated it was already active, which actually caused me to deactivate it. It took me a while to realize that you don't need to keep the button pressed. This caused several problems, especially during the early escape mission, where I died multiple times simply because I misunderstood how Turbo worked. Overall, the tutorial introduces the basic controls, but it doesn't do a great job explaining some of the game's core systems, including advanced combat mechanics, the shop, and ship customization. --- ## Issues Encountered The biggest issue I experienced involved the in-game shop, which felt unstable and occasionally buggy. Several times I purchased items or ships without actually receiving them, forcing me to reload previous saves in order to recover my credits. The most significant problem occurred during the mission **"What Remains of Colossus,"** where I had to destroy the Rehun's shield using **Sonic Matter**. Unfortunately, I couldn't obtain the required ammunition. The shop allowed me to purchase it, but the ammo never appeared in my inventory, preventing me from progressing. --- ## Activities & General Gameplay The game offers a nice variety of activities, including: * Ship-to-ship combat * Resource collection * Timed and survival missions Overall, the pacing feels engaging and there's enough variety to keep things interesting. The controls are responsive and the gameplay is smooth, although the **Q/E roll mechanic** can become slightly uncomfortable during longer play sessions. --- ## Graphics & Art Direction This is where Hell Galaxy truly shines. The art direction is one of the game's greatest strengths, creating a dark, mysterious atmosphere that perfectly fits the setting. It's not visually on the level of a AAA title, but the game has a distinctive style and a strong artistic identity that showcases its potential. There are occasional graphical glitches and performance drops, but these are understandable considering the game is still in Early Access. --- ## Audio The soundtrack and sound effects fit the game's atmosphere extremely well and do a great job enhancing immersion. The voice acting, however, feels somewhat inconsistent. The game introduces numerous races, factions, and lore elements, but often relies too heavily on exposition instead of visual storytelling. I found it difficult to connect with many of the characters because the game tends to explain who they are before giving players the opportunity to experience them naturally. A stronger "show, don't tell" approach would have made the narrative much more engaging. --- ## UI & Interface Another area that could use improvement is the user interface, which feels rather plain. The **Raider Log** contains a large amount of information presented all at once, with very little visual hierarchy, making it more difficult to read than it should be. I think it could be significantly improved by adding: * Red highlights for Kill missions * Yellow highlights for Collect missions * Better visual separation between different objective types I also would have appreciated icons or illustrations associated with missions instead of relying solely on text. This would make the interface easier to navigate while reinforcing the game's sense of exploration. --- ## Strengths * Excellent atmosphere and visual style * Immersive soundtrack * Fun and satisfying combat * Great ship customization system * Strong overall potential --- ## Weaknesses * Shop bugs affecting progression * Occasional crashes, even on high-end PCs * Tutorial could explain key mechanics more clearly * UI feels plain and lacks readability * Storytelling relies too much on exposition rather than showing events naturally --- ## Final Verdict For an Early Access title, **Hell Galaxy** shows a great deal of promise. I would especially recommend it to players who miss classic space games like *DarkOrbit* or *Air Rivals*, but are looking for a much darker and more narrative-focused experience. The game isn't fully polished yet, but its foundations are solid and genuinely interesting. If the developers address the current issues and continue refining the experience, Hell Galaxy has the potential to become a truly unique title in the genre.

The bones and building blocks of a good game are here. Only played a little bit to see how it felt, vibes, controls, etc. But I think I'll wait for the full release to play, definitely plenty of bugs right now both gameplay and visuals. What I hope for: Refine camera and movement controls, the ability to look around the ship, especially nice if you're stuck flying towards/through very bright lights. Also moving without boost is intolerably slow, make boost the default speed, make boost faster. A better HUD, where you're supposed to go next isn't conveyed well visually. Speaking of, A MAP (maybe that's later, I admit I didn't play much). Better ship customization, I like the idea they have here with building on, but it seems very buggy right now (tried adding on, somehow that made my weapons not work anymore?). Optimization, my system isn't "high end" anymore, but it was just a few years ago, and boy does this game struggle, not necessarily w/raw framerate, but pop ins, glitches, stutters, wonky lighting and vfx etc. Also, my liitle soapbox, the name Hell Galaxy is just dumb, the prior tile Haunted Space was way better. Overall, if you want to support EA games and try what they have now I think for under $20 it's worthwhile to pickup if you're a fan of Freelancer, Chorvus, Everspace type games on the hope that 1.0 is good. But, with how it is now I also recommend waiting for it to be finished, right now I don't see me playing much of it until it's cleaned up more and the fact that the current reviews pretty much are all in the 4-5 hr gameplay range speaks to that, this isn't a "basically done" EA game. I really want this game to be good, and I'm recommending it on the potential it has, not as it is now.

Hell Galaxy managed to hook me right away. The mix of exploration, atmosphere and combat gives the feeling of being truly lost in deep space, with that constant tension of not knowing what’s around the corner. The visual style and audio do a great job at setting the mood, and the ship controls are intuitive enough to let you focus on the action instead of fighting the inputs. What I liked most is how the game balances calm moments of navigation with sudden encounters. It keeps you on edge and makes every fight memorable. There’s definitely potential here for a very unique experience once the content expands. Performance-wise, the game runs decently, but in some situations I noticed drops and stutters that slightly broke the immersion. It’s not a dealbreaker, and given that this is still Early Access, I’m confident the devs will smooth it out. In short: a promising space action title with atmosphere and personality. If you’re into sci-fi shooters with a darker tone, it’s already worth checking out.

Il gioco presenta molti problemi a livelli di Performance, Bug di UI e softlock. Ma nonostante questi problemi che sicuramente verranno sistemati in patch prossime, si presenta molto divertente e ottimo per chi vuole fare due spari su una navicella. Approcciare questa tipologia di genere è molto difficile, ma Hell Galaxy nonostante i problemi elencati prima, ci riesce alla grande nonostante sia solamente un Early Access! gli SFX hanno il problema di essere molto ripetitivi senza una vera e propria differenza, la OST del menu principale è molto chill e orecchiabile. Il bilanciamento è un altro problema presente, perché a volte i nemici sono incredibilmente forti e altre volte no. I dialoghi sono estremamente veloci e un po' incomprensibili. Ma nonostante ciò consigliato!

The ambience is pretty solid and I love the premise. In some sections the gameplay fells kinda short, like the very lengthy distance to take in order to start a mission, and some mandatory sections are a little bit annoying. I like the spaceship modding system, pretty simple and easy to understand. Sometimes is annoying to interact to some elements of the game world, since it's a big giant space world where I'm navigating a space ship and I still need to precisely aim at a certain spot to trigger game events. Combat is fun, a little bit hard to understand and the spaceships controls are a bit "soapy" to my taste, but nothing too horrible. And now for the elephant in the room. The optimization still requires some work, it's not good. Something that I'm pretty confident that they are going to fix before the release. Overall, good game. Is still an early access game but it really shows some promising potential. And for that price is not that bad. If you like spaceship games, check this one out.

This game is a hidden gem for space game fans. I really loved the mood, the music, and the SFX, and I see the developers pushing updates very frequently. Moreover, I think the crafting system for the spaceships, with all its different configurations, is something I've never seen before. I mean, yeah, we all know crafting, but not like this! Story: Very nice, but the secondary missions are what keep me glued to my chair. This is a game made with heart and it really shows. I’m looking forward to more updates in the future

AI generated slop.

Hell Galaxy comes in with a genuinely interesting premise. You play as an assassin whose consciousness the empire has stuffed into a cage shaped like a spaceship, sending you zipping around one of the deadliest sectors in the galaxy as expendable labor. After a tutorial that's honestly a bit dull in teaching you how to fly your ship, the game opens up into a confined area where you can roam freely, Far Cry-style, activating towers/outposts that act as your gameplay hubs. There you can repair your ship from combat damage, restock ammo, and access the game's standout feature: ship modularity. Your ship has a limited number of slots where you can install different modules — weapons, engines for extra thrust, and so on. On top of that, you can find new "hulls" for your ship, each with its own distinct characteristics. Beyond that, Hell Galaxy doesn't stray too far from other games in the genre, aside from a handful of small shortcomings that end up hurting the overall experience. In particular, I found the UI way too small and downright unfriendly to the player. For instance, it took me a long time to even realize I had a limited number of missiles, because the counter for them is genuinely tiny and gets pushed to the background compared to the central reticle (which doubles as the cursor for interactions), which itself is busy showing how much heat your machine guns have built up. My suggestion would be to put the missile counter right under the reticle where it's actually visible. Another UI issue is the mission markers — also too small and nearly invisible when they're far from the player's position, which had me wasting a good chunk of playtime just trying to figure out where to go. This is especially annoying because when you're not looking directly at the objective, its icon shows up like a compass indicator pointing you in the right direction. The problem is that once you actually turn to look where the marker should be, it's not there — it either vanishes or is so small you don't notice it right away. All things considered, I wouldn't recommend picking up the game right now, and I'd suggest waiting for updates from the devs to iron out the rough edges the game currently has.

Game is crashy and REVERTS YOUR SAVES WHEN IT CRASHES?!?!? As in, after it crashed none of the saves I made during the session existed but the ones I overwrote somehow came back? If you like the thematic idea I'd suggest playing Underspace instead.

The game itself is beautiful and has a lot of potential. The introduction and tutorial quickly teach you how to play and immerse you in the gameplay. On a small negative note, I found it a bit slow when moving around, but that might be because I'm at the beginning of the game and my ship needs some upgrades.