Escape a mysterious temple in this top-down action-arcade! Find a way out as fast as you can, but beware - its defense systems will try to stop you from leaving alive by any means necessary...

Controls:

Arrow keys or WASD - move

Z - shoot (will fire in the direction that you move in)

X - strafe (when shooting while strafing, you will fire in the direction you are facing instead)

Escape - quit

Enter - restart

Gameplay and Features

- Procedural generation - maneuver your way through a map that changes every run

- Light mechanics - the darkness can be disturbed by both you and your enemies (take advantage of this)

- Hidden hazards - watch out for spikes! They're easy to miss in the dark, but they'll damage you if you touch them

- Sound cues - when you can't see, hearing is half the battle; listen carefully to prevent yourself from being caught off guard

Notes

- this game was made for the Retrograde Jam 3 (this is supposed to be like one of those arcade games where you put in a coin and see how far you can get)

- I recommend downloading the Windows or Linux version if you can; the web version works if you're not using any of those systems but it's a little slow

- the game is supposed to be somewhat Nintendo Hard, but also relatively short (beatable in under 30 minutes to  an hour)

Gameplay Tips (Recommend reading this if you're struggling)

Room part:

- your torch has a limited amount of light (~ 10 minutes), but in practice, you are unlikely to run out, so take some time to plan your moves

- enemies need to wait about two seconds before they can shoot again; if you know where they are, you can bait them into shooting before running

- you may use all your ammo here if you wish, as you will not need it for the boss

Boss:

- your gun is pretty much useless for this part since you cannot kill the boss, although it can be used as an emergency light source

- the boss will shoot faster the further you run, but its charging period will always be the same; when you hear the charging sound, try to get between the columns of spikes right when the boss shoots so that you will have room to dodge

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

black_hell_windows.zip 17 MB
black_hell_linux.zip 18 MB
jam_version_windows 16 MB
jam_version_linux 17 MB

Development log

Comments

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Really cool small game!
Quite difficult too! Well made.

Probably it was design decision, but I find it hard to see the traps while trying to avoid flying bullets :D 

(1 edit)

Thanks for playing!
Also, you're right - the spikes are supposed to be somewhat difficult to spot.

(EDIT: someone else just said on the jam page that they're a little too difficult to spot, so I might make them a bit more obvious)