Sometimes I’ll pick up a game and have it figured out within an hour or two. Hellmut isn’t one of those games. That’s really just a roundabout way of saying that this is a surprisingly hard twin-stick shooter that’s been repeatedly curb stomping me, but it’s worth mentioning that each failure has allowed me to do a little better the next time. This is important, because you don’t get anything for failing except kicked back to the start to try again. All of those upgrades and transformations and weapons picked up along the way disappear as you’re dropped in the beginning hub area and left to figure out how to do better. And I will do better. I just wish there was something like a dodge button with invincibility frames to make surviving ever so slightly less difficult.

Visual chaos and camera sway

These are the (butthurt) complaints of someone who has yet to “git gud,” but I feel that they have merit regardless. The most immediately obvious problem is that there’s so much happening at once that it’s difficult to tell where you are in relation to enemies, enemy projectiles, helpful pickups, and exploding barrels. Since confusing an enemy with an exploding barrel can lead to blowing yourself up, this can become a frustrating problem early on. I can’t even count the number of times I blew myself up looking for gold coins in destructible objects, not realizing the subtle visual differences between harmless barrels and the ones that explode and/or poison you.

The camera exacerbates things somewhat, swaying back and forth in whichever direction you’re aiming in. While this technically makes more of each room visible, most of them aren’t large enough to need it, and the constant swaying can make it harder to weave in and out of a barrage of projectiles since both your movement and aim direction can cause the room to feel like it’s zigging and zagging around you.

Some good old-fashioned violence

There look to be 12 levels, with 3 or 4 of those being boss fights. Areas and enemies (including bosses) are randomized each time, but there are enough repeated elements that dying repeatedly allows you to figure out which types of enemies usually show up in certain levels. That way, you can learn their attack patterns and piece together the safest/most efficient ways of dealing with them. The playable character in Hellmut is a floating skull with a pea shooter and a powerful laser secondary attack in his default form, but you’re also given a secondary form right off the bat that functions as a second life. Basically, you can transform back and forth into any forms that you’ve unlocked during your playthrough, and all of these forms have their own HP pools and can’t be used anymore if you die as them. The upside is that they all use unique weapons with infinite ammo in addition to having different special attacks, so figuring out a new character can be a lot of fun. And even if you don’t like their default attack, there are all kinds of powerful secondary weapons scattered throughout levels. These use up ammo and can be very situational, but at one point I found a giant laser beam of death that was comically fun to use.

I’d be remiss to not bring up a rare moment of cheapness; at 9:10 in the video above, I enter a portal that leads to a shop so that I can buy a health refill, which requires getting past some spiked balls that are rolling back and forth. These damage you if touched, obviously, but they move slowly enough that they’re not a problem. When I exit at 9:16, though, the ball is in a different position than when I entered and manages to hit me immediately. This brings my character’s health down to an even lower point than when I entered to find health in the first place, and since you have to pay for the items that restore your health (and can’t always afford them), this can be absolutely maddening. This has already happened to me twice, and the punishment for dying here is steep enough that cheap shots like this can’t happen.

The bosses in Hellmut all seem to be pretty good, though I wasn’t a fan of how much punishment the one in the video above could take. You can also see where a dodge button with invincibility frames could be useful at 3:44, as I was pinned between some enemies and the boss’ attack with no way of escaping without taking damage.

To sum up, I’m not good yet

I refused to start writing about Hellmut until I had beaten at least the first boss, and while I eventually managed to do so, it was definitely a clumsy effort. Pushing deeper into the game isn’t going to be pretty since you can die fast and be sent all the way back to the beginning, but it nevertheless feels possible with the requisite skill. Still, I’m not sure how you’re supposed to practice, say, the final boss to learn its patterns given the way the game is set up. Do you really have to play to the end repeatedly to figure it out? It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out.

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