Precision platformers are a notoriously tricky genre to get just right. The weight and feel of the protagonist, the arc of their jump, the responsiveness of the button inputs, and how these, and many other, mechanics interact with the level design – each of these things can make or break a ragey platformer. And then there’s the subjective side of the equation: not all players have the same preferences in regard to the above elements. In short, you can’t please all platformer aficionados all of the time. This brings me to Hellbound Inc, a mechanically complex entry in the genre that, despite early promise, I never quite fell in love with.
Let me start by saying that I adore difficult 2D platformers – Celeste, Love Eternal, and TetherGeist – have become relatively adept at them (with the emphasis firmly on relatively), even rather enjoying their inbuilt need for repetition and the frustration that can come with persistent failure. However, I didn’t finish Hellbound Inc. As the game progressed, the platforming mechanics, level design and obstacles (both animate and inanimate) became increasingly exasperating, and I simply couldn’t find a way to traverse the world with joy. Unfortunately, the frustration gradually outweighed the fun. And it was fun, at first.
Drawing on a Dantean structure of Hell, you play as a courier who is unceremoniously killed in the first few seconds of the game and cast down into Limbo to work for a hellish delivery company whose logo – an inverted smiley face – is highly reminiscent of a certain online retailer from our own infernal world. It’s your job to deliver parcels in each circle of Hell – which double as departments of the exploitative corporation – in an attempt to climb your way out of this abysmal place of workaday torture.
The art is cartoony, and the tone is cheekily satirical, mocking corporate workplaces and the ‘inhuman resources’ that underpin them. (The ‘performance reviews’ at the end of each level, listing your completion time, death count and collectibles gathered is a lovely piece of workplace satire). I enjoyed all the jokes at the expense of faceless demonic corporations and the lampooning of the euphemistic rhetoric they use to conceal their devilish exploitation of workers.
Meanwhile, the second circle of Hell (Lust) is a decidedly bawdy place. It took me a moment to notice that the springy ledges I was gleefully bouncing off of – ledges which had drooped flaccidly down until I activated them, causing them to spring to attention – were actually dildoes. (I don’t think I’ve ever come across a sex toy in a video game before. Apologies for the unintended phrasing there.) In short, the humour is very much of an adult nature, especially in this department of Hell. Indeed, it put me in mind of the animated TV show Big Mouth, but without the core of sweetness at the heart of that ostensibly filthy programme.
But the real issue I had with Hellbound Inc was with the platforming itself. The static, charged jump (think Jump King) is all about button pressure. Once you let go of the jump button, you have absolutely no control of the character in the air – other than redirecting your jump by bouncing off of walls (there’s not a separate input for wall jumps) – so the perfect starting position and careful calibration of jump arcs are key. I found it frustrating not being able to express myself in the air, helplessly watching the protagonist fall into the fiery depths time and time again. Not even the instant respawns could completely soothe the hellishly harsh punishments for erring jumps.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of platforming. It’s clearly a deliberate design choice that just happens to be one that doesn’t appeal to my own personal sensibilities.
However, these jumps are often made even more complex by the need to throw parcels into mailroom trolleys at just the right point of your jump’s arc. This means charging both jump and throw perfectly and letting go of each button at exactly the right moment. Moreover, some of the parcels are heavier than others, meaning you can’t throw them as far, adding another variable into what is already a pretty complex control scheme.
All of this works well on the earlier levels, when it feels like the game is slightly rewiring your brain, forcing you to do two pretty dextrous button inputs in quick combination. In this sense, it put me in mind of Ambidextro. However, as the level design got more complex, it all started to fall apart for me.
Each level is essentially a kind of escape room, a puzzle to be solved via the available platforming moveset. Experimentation and planning are essential. You will die a lot in the process, as you’d expect of a game in this godforsaken genre. The rooms get busier and more chaotic as you progress through the corporate circles of Hell. Perhaps too busy and overcomplicated to work well with the tricky controls.
The environments become treacherously tight, meaning jumps need to be pixel perfect. Hitting your head off platforms and falling, or simply jumping clear over them, is all part of the calibration and recalibration process. However, there are nigglingly persistent annoyances. For example, you can’t just walk off an edge and drop onto a platform beneath you; there’s a weird little arc to this movement that sends you falling to your death. In a game built around jumping, this design choice is perhaps understandable, but I found it damned frustrating.
Other mechanical issues emerged as I progressed. On the Lust levels alone, I simply couldn’t get the hang of the little wind machines that propel you up, even getting trapped several times in their current on the underside of a platform and having to restart the level. (These treacherous currents of wind are a lovely reference to the infernal wind that forever blows Francesca and Paolo around the second circle of Dante’s Hell).
There are also some enemies whose behaviour I found very difficult to read, most notably a pair of sinful flying lips that latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. I eventually managed to brute force my way past them, having never quite worked out their movement and behaviour patterns.
Finally, it wasn’t always clear which ‘parcels’ needed to be delivered where (often I wasn’t sure what the parcels I had to deliver even were). Dealing with all this while trying to grapple with the complicated controls was often simply too much for me. In short, the level design, in conjunction with the complex moveset, became too punishing (even for a precision platformer set in hell) and overcomplicated for my old man’s eyes and reflexes. I’d been gradually ground down by this corporate version of Hell.
