[Click here to start from the first progress log]

I’ve now beaten Hellmut a whole bunch of times, seemingly unlocking everyone as a starting character (including a special “original body professor” character) in the process. It seems about time to call this one done, then, though here’s a fun little wrinkle that most people won’t be aware of: while Steam achievements can be unlocked and the short library view of your unlocked achievements viewed in pre-release games, it’s not possible to check the full list until release. I always worry that there’s going to be a giant neon sign of an achievement hinting at some special ending I failed to discover hidden away deep on the list. But hey, I’ve torn my way through Hellmut these past few days and tried everything that I could think of, so if there’s anything more, it’s far too hidden to take into consideration for a review.

I started to speedrun Hellmut

Since I wasn’t comfortable calling it quits before going through all of the levels again (and again and again) until all characters were unlocked, things started to get quite a bit more repetitive. To make things more interesting, I started to imagine that I was speedrunning and trying to get some absurd time. One of the few achievements I was able to see was one for beating the game in under 20 minutes, so that was my arbitrary goal, and getting to that point revealed one or two minor flaws.

I already brought this one up, but it really does become a hassle when trying to play fast. Basically, certain enemies can get stuck in their invincible states and sit around wasting your time, and this has a habit of happening when defeating them is a prerequisite for opening the portal to the next level. I’ve noticed that setting the Demon Spawn form’s secondary attack skull right on top of them often fixes this, but not having access to that form can leave you wandering around aimlessly. That happens at the end of my attempt above, and I wander around until something kills me (which is entirely my fault) because there’s no obvious way of fixing the stuck enemy (which isn’t my fault). I’ve noticed that this happens with the enemy in the video when two or more collide with each other in their invulnerable form.

Then there’s the fact that enemies/obstacles can hit you in the short time between when you enter a portal and the game loads the next area. This can be incredibly frustrating since you have no way of defending yourself, and while taking care of all nearby enemies is an easy way of avoiding this problem, going fast means that you’re often running past enemies instead of wasting a bunch of time beating them.

Some successful speedrun attempts

The path to an under-20-minute playthrough was littered with so many failures, but I finally managed to get close in the video above. I might have gotten it if not for a shot ricocheting into an explosive and insta-killing my Demon Spawn form in the very last level. That left me wandering around as a weak skull for awhile, and buying a resurrection orb from the store to bring back my Demon Spawn form at 19:07 led to a comical sequence where I lost it again almost immediately. Store items are only restocked between levels, so getting my good form back required using the weapons picked up along the way to get through a challenge as the skull. It wasn’t as pretty as it could have been, but a personal best is still a personal best.

The Demon Spawn is a useful form, but the Professor form is god-tier. He’s slow, but he has a giant laser beam of death as his default weapon, and his secondary attack calls down more beams from the sky to hit everything around him. Sure, his beam obscures enemy projectiles (which renders the limited-ammo and special-attack versions of this weapon almost unusable), but the Professor form also regenerates health. The only downside is that he’s slow, but the floating skull form is incredibly fast. Switching between the two allowed me to shatter 20 minutes. It was a bit under 16 minutes in real time, and 12:45 in-game—presumably because the timer stops during between-stage animations and stuff like that. Not too shabby.

I softlocked the game, though

Both speedruns have some bugginess toward the end when it came time to talk to the tentacle/beholder enemy guy. In the first one, I received the wrong text box and the game got stuck for awhile (though weirdly, I could still aim) until I paused and unpaused to fix it. At the end of another playthrough, I went to talk to this guy instead of choosing a form to fight for and the game properly softlocked in a similar way, with pausing and unpausing not working to fix it. Sadly, I wasn’t recording for that one. Then there’s my 12:45 speedrun, where talking to the guy at the end causes the room and boss intro to reset. That was ultimately harmless, but it’s still a bit stressful knowing that you can get stuck at the very end and lose everything.

[Click here to go to Hellmut: The Badass from Hell log #2]

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