Lost in Hell Reviews

A distinctive 2D shooter with a compelling storyline and addictive gameplay!

You'll headhunt thousands of zombies leading to exciting breakthroughs, and the hordes became a real threat as the game advances, pretty challenging!

it's good but the puzzles are kind of confusing. i might just be stupid though

Is it a good game? No, absolutely not. Was it fun to play and do i think it was worth the money i paid for it? Yes, i haven't laughed so hard playing a game in some time. It's easy to see that there was a lot of passion put into it, and there are glimpses of a good game, but the state it is in right now feels like it needs quite a bit more dev time. I gave up on ranged enemies, i have no idea how you're supposed to beat them if they agro from far away and kill you so fast you can barely do anything. But before that i enjoyed atmosphere, puzzles, shooting zombies, although level design could've been a bit more creative. I recommend it if you want to experience something quite unique and bizzare. I knew it was a gem when half of steam reviews mention they got banned in devs discord server.

The combat system is horrible. The game is somewhat 2.5D where player can move up down left right but the combat is 2D where player can only face left or right. This makes it very difficult to align with enemy for shooting. Unable to move when attacking. Graphics-wise, the game has very outdated frame-by-frame style animation. Feels like a game made decades ago. The game literally says it has auto-save but 15 mins into the game, it hasn't even perform the first auto-save. Died at a horde of zombies and had to restart from the beginning with unskippable intro.

There was passion put into the game, which can clearly be seen, however controls feel unintuitive, your objective in levels is not clear at all, and some things that need to be done are just not explained. Typically investigation games at least show you a general location or objective, which this game lacks. Despite conserving ammo, I found it hard to have enough to take care of large waves of enemies. Possible fixes: - Keybind remapping - Objectives - General settings screen - Tooltips / consistent popups - More ammo - Better distribution of enemies I would love to try out this game again in a better state, but for now, it does not feel polished enough to be worth playing.

The game has a few really crucial problems, I meet the games minimum specs easily according to the store page, but there is no options menu to lower the default max settings that UE4 games often have. But it isn't just not being able to lower the graphics. The audio mixing is all over the place between SFX, Music and VO and there's no way to adjust this. Also after getting 10 minutes into the first mission I died from a swarm and had to restart the entire level. There doesn't appear to be any save menu either so I'm guessing we have to rely on checkpoints of some kind. The game seems very promising and I bought it because I thought it looked very interesting and well made but its actually lacking basic features. I will change this review if the dev fixes the aforementioned issues. A new save system isn't really needed, we just need more checkpoints especially if the game literally begins with an unguided 5-10 minute sequence where you have to figure out where you have to go before getting trapped in a hallway with a horde of monsters and have to repeat the entire ordeal all over again if they kill you because you didn't kill them all in time. I actually really want to play this but right now it's just too much to ask especially if the game is running very poorly because you don't meet the maximum specs.

edit: i finally got the hammer in the dev's server despite wanting the best for him, dev is now trying to get people to review bombing this game so it gets out of the negative zone (which, so far hasnt worked yet), which makes this whole thing a fraud, beware of this. i will be honest here, this game took a huge dive. when i first saw it in development, it had its unique spin on survival horror atmosphere, and i did look forward to it until i fell out of touch for a couple of years. when i saw the release, i was congratulating the dev for his hard work, hoping that the game would succeed. but, my expectation was immediately shattered when the first thing i saw when i launched the game, was lack of accessibility. hell, even a simply audio slider would've kept me on the line, but there was absolutely nothing. no ways to tinker around with the audio in a game where the premise is that you will be interacting with npcs a whole bunch to make up the story, and since its a survival horror game, your best friend are the sound clues i tried to stomach it, the overabundance of bloom did give me a fairly hard time due to my weakened eyes but the presentation was great, the visuals were gritty and crisps, worked damn well with each other. its one of my favorite aspect of this game, the gameplay was fairly alright, although the controls felt really heavy at times. this being a 2.5D side scrolling game, the aiming took a bit to get used to since its hard to align your character with the enemy, which could be somewhat compensate by having a wider spread area for the revolver, or slight aim assists this section will be my thoughts about the mechanics: so how did this game manage resources? well, its really plentiful for a supposed survival horror game (maybe im wrong you can tell me), having dynamites conveniently placed where the game starts throwing hordes at you which ruined the whole "scavenging to prepare for the worst". games like left 4 dead works well with this, but lost in hell has you walking around with pure nothingness until the game throws bundles of enemies at you, which usually takes 30 minutes or more (not to mention the lack of visual guidance throughout the game can really make you stumble around up to an hour) the weapons: i find it weird that i just couldn't bring out the weapon and wield it, they all acted like a quick execution method that would USUALLY works in a metroidvania game, but not this what about combats? well, aside from using the dynamites, you only have two options, melee and shoot, and you wont get any more than that. it wouldn't be a problem if combat happens once in a while (which does happen if you get stuck in an area for an hour straight), but the enemies are all clumped together which results in just you spamming the revolver until the threat is gone. this can easily become repetitive in a game which (apparently) has a HUNDRED AND SEVEN WORLDS to explore in interactions with objects and enviroments: first of all, and maybe im just nitpicking, your character can easily cover the text for the GRAB prompt, therefore not letting you know that you can actually pick up boxes and other things. second, theres no visual clues on what you can interact with, you'd have to constantly spam e (or wasting your ammo and dynamites) on stuff like doors in hoping that it will either help you progress or giving you supplies. it does NOT help when a lot of interactable lockers seem to blend in with the surroundings, im not asking for them to have a damn glow or something, just make them pop out enough for you to go "hm, i could open these" i get not wanting to ruin immersion, but do you want to turn an "investigation game" into a frustrating chore of you sliding your face accross the props until you get something? i don't think so, that's more for a point and click adventure game lastly, i want to talk about the attitude of the dev and his followers towards the genuine criticisms for this game. i really havent seen this much denial towards the fact that this game lacks a lot of important things thats SUPPOSED to be the bare minimum (audio control, resolution options). based on what i have talked to other beta testers (and viewing the development progress myself), the dev cared more about the visuals than working on the accessibility and gameplay. maybe im overreacting here, but being told that "everyone will be playing the game equally" meaning that whoever has epilepsy, sensitive hearing and/or seeing will have a BAD time playing this. i dont have them myself, but when you develope a game which this much assets, you do have to start thinking ahead on how other people will react, especially ones with disability. overall, im disappointed, dev is a great guy, he just needs to get his head out of his ass and LISTEN to what people who wanted him to succeed to say. stop showering yourself with sugar coated compliments

EDIT (07/17/2023): The recent update improved some things. It added settings and keybinds which is nice, but for some reason it doesn't include volume sliders. The combat mechanics feel better for sure, but the game in general is still janky. There is also no interactable popups or hints on how to progress on most areas of the game yet. I raise my score from 4 to 5/10. EDIT: Since posting this review, multiple people including me have been banned from the developers discord server, although we are only trying to aid this game's development. Being a game developer myself, I know the developer, but I do not recommend this game in it's current state. I was an early tester of this game and many of the reported bugs and missing features were never fixed and implemented into the full release. Let's look at the negatives. The game is clunky, uninformative, slow, and has missing features: [list] [*] There are no settings menus at all, so you cannot change video, audio or control settings. Anything of that sort has to be done through windows or third party apps. Heck, you can't even see the controls except for when the game prompts them or in the loading screen. [*] The game does not have prompts of any kind for when you are near interactable items such as doors and items. [*] The game has dodgy hitboxes for when you interact with items, such as unlocking doors or picking-up items. [*] Worst of all, the gameplay is lacking heavily. It's a walking simulator. Every now and then there's enemies in front of you, but the combat is quite clunky and not fun. [/list] But I don't want to be overly negative. Let's focus on some positive things: [list] [*] The graphics are pretty cool and environments are pretty detailed. It's like if flash games and PS1 resident evil had a love-child. The only problem is that the game is too dark 90% of the time and the flashlight doesn't help. [*] The soundtrack is relatively good. [*] The story seems like it's probably interesting, but it's not delivered in a very intuitive way. [/list] Overall, the game is a solid 4/10. The game needs a LOT of work but I do believe it can be improved. I'm surprised a lot of these problems weren't fixed earlier, especially because the game was in development for 3 years. I'll be updating this review upon further updates. For now, I don't want to play more as I don't find it very fun.

Almost a guilty pleasure, it kinda feels like a discount Alone in the Dark, but maybe I am being too generous. Perhaps I could enjoy it with a lot of updates, but it's almost unplayable in the later stages because of how poorly he balanced the ranged enemies, not to mention all kinds of gameplay and design issues. I will say the game is not a troll, I am sure the developer was trying to make a decent game, there are lots of cutscenes and locations, it's a bigger game than you might expect, not that you would want to play it for several hours. The first 4 hours or so I was trying to be very forgiving, I attempted to finish the game to the best of my ability, but I just can't do it, the way ranged enemies attack you makes it very unfair, I died like 40 times in the office boss fight, and I can't utilize the stealth attack because they get aggroed outside of the vision. The first thing you will notice is how bad the navigation is, very often you can't tell where to go, and the objectives can be somewhat cryptic because there is no confirmation for anything that is not in the vision. Sometimes the light effects in the game can make it hard to see the paths, for example at the start of the game, the fence does not look like something you should be jumping over. The combat feels pretty unreliable because you don't get much of that 'impact' feel, technically you can stagger enemies but it's so brief, enemies often feel like walking sponges, and you have to be perfectly aligned to hit them, so I think the hitbox should be a little wider, for melee and ranged attacks. For some reason the game discards the unused pistol ammo when you reload, like seriously, it's a video game with ammo conservation, can we just pretend that he keeps the bullets. As for the level design, I do think the developer tried, some locations look okay, but the consistency is just not there, like it's hard to enjoy this game for its aesthetic because you often get long corridors with nothing, followed by an occasionally okay looking room - I would prefer a shorter game with more condensed content than to have lots of empty space. I get that as an indie dev you have to cut corners on assets, but like you have some places in the game that don't look terrible, you would be better off making a smaller game with better exploration. I like the attempt at making some secretive navigation, but overall it's often unclear how to progress, maybe you could make hints with the highlights, and change the gamma for important spots. Even though the platforming is pretty annoying, I don't hate the idea of platforming-based navigation, I almost enjoyed the ship area because of the platforming, but overall, the levels feel very confusing. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) I don't have any good arguments in the defense of this game, that said, I do think the developer tried, it feels like the idea was good on paper, and maybe you just doing too many things. I can see the bigger picture and the effort you put in, but it's completely lost in all of the design issues coming at the player from all directions. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] (1) First of all, can you buff the run speed a little, I think doing that alone could make the game feel a bit less clunky. Maybe you could highlight hard-to-see areas, at the start of the game, it's not clear that you have to jump over the fence. For the doors that you can break, maybe lower their HP so it's clear that you can do it (I hit the door in the shaft 10 times and left, came back, and finished it with more hits). Whenever you unlock something with a switch, it should show it so you know where to go. (2) For the weapons. The shotgun feels super underpowered, sometimes ranged dudes tank several bullets in close range - maybe give in more damage and more penetration against hordes as well. You should try to give flying kick and shotgun some nice impact feel, maybe enemies could get bigger knockback. Trading with melee attacks also feels very goofy, it just feels like you fighting air, might have to look in into extending the stagger, just maybe so it does not lock them forever. (3) The ranged enemies are ****** to deal with, I can't finish the office boss fight, it does not feel even remotely fair, they often shoot you before you can even see them. Either add some healing items or buff my weapons so I can actually trade with them. I know you can sneak on some of them, but it does not work when they just run at me before I even see them, so I end up trading bullets no matter if I use a cover or not. (4) The checkpoints are not great. For example, you know new players could die to the first horde, why there is no checkpoint? (5) It feels like the game has a lot of optional exploration, but you are almost never rewarded with resources. For example, there is a train with a bunch of things in it, but nothing you can use. Is it RNG? Either way, populate the locations with more resources, and maybe add some healing items in optional areas. [b] Overall Thoughts: 4/10 [/b] I can almost see a decent game somewhere in there, but it's just a really frustrating experience all around, there are too many design problems that distract from the gameplay, and overall it feels punishing to play. Again, I don't think the developer intended to release a trashy game, it has some effort to it, but this was clearly too ambitious, make a smaller game, polish it, and make sure you test it more internally until people don't feel like leaving it right away. [code]For more niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]