Hell Loop Review

I hope you are ready to suffer in this 2D precision platformer set in a fiery underworld called Hellvoid. This place lives up to its name, and each of the stages is truly evil, sure to make you want to pull your hair out or smash a controller. Hell Loop was developed by one person, Tuncay Ayanoglu, who does a great job of punishing the player if they show even a moment of hesitation, with the heavy metal music done by Joel Steudler.

There are 48 stages to unlock and challenge here. Once you complete all the levels, a Hardcore Mode is unlocked if you are a sucker for punishment! When you start, you might be thinking that this game isn’t too hard; all you need to do is grab the key and get to the open door. Just wait, the difficulty escalates as you progress. Every 10 levels, there is a boss that you need to defeat to move on. The first boss you will encounter is Eyedra, a blob with multiple eyes who gets smaller and faster every time you jump on them. Taking down this foe is tricky enough as it is, but to add to the difficulty, smaller blobs will spawn and run around, too.

While traversing the stages, if you make one mistake and get hit once, you are dead. Fortunately, the game wastes no time in bringing you back to challenge the stage once again. There was one stage full of blades coming up from the floor, and it took no time at all for me to get the achievement for dying 100 times. Once I finally got to the key, I felt incredibly accomplished, that was until I realised that I had to go back through that first section again to get to the open door, while avoiding the additional hazard of throwing stars being launched at you. Once you die, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen, the key is back at its spot, waiting for you to grab it again.

Everything in the environment is a shade of red and full of deadly hazards and traps. Your character is black in colour with one big eye, making them really stand out against the hellish landscape. There is even steam that makes you feel as though you are deep within the Earth. The heavy metal music is aggressive and tense, which feels like a perfect fit for the torture you will endure in Hell Loop.

It isn’t a matter of if you die; it’s when, and how many times, and I can guarantee it will probably be a lot! Be prepared to play through stages multiple times as you try to get past all the hazards and retrieve the key to open the door to move on. I will warn you that if you pause the game to take a break, it doesn’t stop the action in the level, so you can still die if an enemy or hazard hits you. There are no breaks here; the game gives you no reprieve from the hell you are in.

Hell Loop supports both keyboard and controller controls, but I couldn’t get it to work properly on the Steam Deck. On PC, I used the mouse in the menus, and once I started playing, I was able to control the character using my Xbox controller. I find making precise jumps with the D-pad much easier than trying to use a keyboard.

If you are looking for an incredibly challenging game that will frustrate you, but at the same time feels incredibly rewarding when you successfully complete a stage, Hell Loop is one to check out. This game is not for the faint of heart and is only for those who really want to punish and test themselves, especially if you finish the normal mode and decide to move on to Hardcore Mode. I know I would get destroyed if I attempted that extreme difficulty!