Penny Blood: Hellbound Preview

Roguelikes, at their core, are a pretty simple concept. The idea is to have constant variety and challenge by adding in random factors. The trick is to make this sense of both randomness and progression fun. We got a chance to try NatsumeAtari and STUDIO WILDROSE’s new game, Penny Blood: Hellbound, to see if these hounds could be worth adopting.

Penny Blood: Hellbound follows the Hellhounds, a group of anarchists that get sent to a mysterious dimension to answer for their crimes. This group is joined by Clara, a young woman with no memory and a strange power based on Malice. Essentially, Malice is a force that can be condensed and injected into people to generate powers and abilities, but Clara can do the same naturally.  The plot, in the brief section we were able to play, started pretty by the basics. It was easy to follow, if a bit text-heavy, and set what the stakes were and what needed to be done. If anything, it felt a bit shallow, but there is potential here.

The Hellhound’s characterizations all appear quite flat at first. There’s the doctor with no morals or the woman who is a jealous sadist, a kindly axeman, a coward, and a captain who doesn’t care about anything other than getting the job done. However, there are hints that these are all facades and there’s something deeper at work here. For instance, the kindly axeman who treats Clara like a long-lost daughter is also a serial killer. It might be nothing, but might also be a hint at more complexity.

Then again, the plot isn’t everything, and good gameplay can certainly prop it up. This is an area where the parts I played certainly delivered. Penny Blood: Hellbound uses a grid-like system for the main map. These grids each have a symbol that either denotes a reward for completion or a benefit. The grids with rewards are usually either a fight against normal enemies or a miniboss. At the end of each map is the main boss of the area, but the challenge isn’t so much reaching them as it's being prepared to reach them.

Like any roguelike, you can earn new abilities on each run, usually by completing stages and getting rewards in the form of either Malice (for upgrades) or coins (for using the store and bar). These stages are small self-contained levels that will spawn waves of enemies. There isn’t a huge amount of variety in each map, but it is more about moving fast and hitting hard than it is about looking at the décor. As I said, you have two ability slots, although you’ll need to unlock one of them and one weapon ability slot that also needs unlocking. You can’t unlock these on the map; you’ll need to die and go back to the main base to do that, and you will die…a lot. 

Health doesn’t fill up at the end of each fight, and there are a fair few to get through to get to the boss, and your characters can't take a punch at the beginning of the game. This means you can have a bad run in the beginning and just be screwed, but that’s a common theme in roguelikes. The actual fighting is fast-paced and enjoyable, with a focus on dodging and blood surfing. 

Finally, the game is beautiful to look at, from the art style to the animations and level designs. The in-game sprites are charming, and their character portraits are interesting to look at, although this game is supposedly set in the 1920s, and none of these people look like people from that period. However, that can be forgiven, considering the period is pretty inconsequential. Yet, there are a few issues that I noticed and want to point out.

Firstly, there is very little difference between the characters outside of if they use ranged attacks or not. Sure, they’re visually different, but it never feels like you’re playing two different people. There’s also the issue of there being no voice acting in the game. I understand it, what with it being a small studio and all, but considering the music tracks repeat a fair amount, it gets tedious. Penny Blood: Hellbound is also really bad at explaining how to upgrade certain things and where to do this. These are all minor issues, however, and may be fixed in the full release, but only time will tell. 

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Penny Blood: Hellbound, and I can’t wait to see what the full release does differently. I should also note that the current version of the game requires a controller, but there are keyboard-focused controls in the menu, so it may be added later.