Jupiter Hell

Game no longer runs on macOS after recent update.

Really fun blend of traditional roguelike with classic FPS, as much about tactics and long term plans as about ragdolling, exploding, and gibbing enemies. JG follows a straightforward structure for its main game mode. In early levels you try to defeat as many enemies as you can for experience and items, in midgame you complete the key parts of your skills and keep improving your stuff, and at the end you use everything you have for the final gauntlet to defeat the demon leader. Each of the stages has a main branch, where you can do an optional harder stage for more items, and side branches, with different enemies and rewards, along with a special mission. This is usually something you can go out of your way to do for the best rewards. After these, you get the stage's boss fight. In the short term, you try to gain advantage over enemies by using cover, being faster, exploiting their weaknesses to damage types, or using some special skill. Enemies are generally fragile and so are you, so you either win them quickly or there are too many of them and you need to use your contingency plan. It is possible to plan well ahead because an individual run is, to a rather large extent for this kind of game, predictable. Levels are generally consistent across runs in what kind of enemies they have, what kind of ranges their fights will happen at, and what kind of rewards you can expect at the end. The harder levels throw tough demons at you that cost a lot of ammo to go though and you need to be ready or avoid those levels. Many of the levels also have a fixed layout. I really like the levels in this game, they're really good at creating interesting situations even when procedurally generated (something DRL/JHC I feel wasn't as good as). All in all, the levels are consistent and you won't be unprepared or prepared for something that doesn't happen. Character progression works through skills and equipment/items. You gain skills from defeating enemies and gaining levels. Each of the character classes has their own skill options, each with 3 levels: basic ones, advanced ones unlocked by taking the required basic skills first, and master skills that may require advanced skills. Certain basic skills on one class are advanced skills of another. Most of them make big differences in your build: for example Grenadier, an advanced Technician skill that improves your grenades and gives you more when opening crates. As for equipment, there are rare and unique items, but most of them are not guaranteed and they are not required. You might find some unique that is exactly what you wanted or find two that you can't use and just rely on common equipment. There are enough chances in the game to find rare items, so you'll certainly go into the final battle having at least something special. A big problem for the new player is that it's hard to do it when much of the information is not actually explained ingame. There is a mod that replaces the ingame help menu with a reference sheet with most of the information, but it would be nice to have more things explained. For example, the item that teleports you away from enemies also makes them break their chase, making it a great countermeasure for the level event that makes all of them come for you directly. The fighting in this game is fun in that classic FPS sense, Weapons are generally not effective past the maximum vision range, so generally you have to fight and accept their counterattack if you fail to take them down before it's their turn. You can hear them by listening to the game and there are ways to detect where they are exactly before seeing them. It takes 1-3 attacks to take down a typical enemy and for a strong one to do the same to you. It looks really cool: great weapon sounds, the explosions look good, and most of all Mark Meer does great as the action movie hero, both in his cheesy and serious lines. The very small dev team did come with costs. The balance in this game is all over the shop. Some skills and branches are manifestly bad, the minor relics that are supposed to be equipped for minor bonuses are mostly bad (unless modded), by Kornel Kisielewicz' own admission Nightmare! mode respawning enemies wasn't a good thing to base the highest difficulty around (a problem not as bad in DRL, surprisingly), the game's framerate is set to the monitor's refresh rate and JH can't lower it, and there are some other inconveniences which are mostly fixed by the QoL mod. So Jupiter Hell is fun, it's just that after you enjoy it at a beginner level where you can just shoot demons you need mods and other outside resources to make up for some omissions.

Fun so far, and simple. Not as long or hard as other traditional roguelikes, and less mechanics. Good. I love some of those games but if you ripped out half the mechanics in ADOM or C:DDA I don't think anyone would even notice. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, opening a door and gibbing every enemy, table, and planter in sight with the shotgun feels great. That's another thing, this game actually has real feedback, and you can tell wtf is going on by the visuals. That's a foreign concept in this autistic ass genre.

This is a great game. This is a difficult game. I am very bad at it. I am a sucker for punishment

Since Steam isn't happy with a plain thumbs-up you get to read this.

This is a really fun little game! What if Doom played like Nethack? I like how easy it is to pick up and put down, and I've found myself quitting out and then resuming it at multiple points throughout my day when I've had free time. I'd call this an excellent lunch break game.

The game is junky af, randomly decides to corrupt player data, does benchmark amount of load on my hardware and desperately wants to look cool. Not bad, not awesome.

What if DOOM were an isometric turn-based tactical game? ...Now we know! Lovingly crafted & intensely atmospheric, you can leisurely slay demons in this rogue-like celebration of gibs, gore, and guns.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite games. It’s like Doom, but it requires more thinking. The devs recently released a new class, and it’s a great reason to spend another 40 hours smashing monsters with awesome music and gameplay.

It took awhile to get used to the controls, but once it clicked.. man, what a great game.