Hell Architect

 PC
  • Publisher: PlayWay
  • Release Date: Aug 18, 2021
User Score
5.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 5 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 5
  3. Negative: 1 out of 5

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  1. AllNewSuperfake
    Aug 20, 2021
    1
    This one is a liar. Every trailer, every promise, and of course the whole kickstarter. It's sad since they had the resources to make a good game, especially thanks to the artist. And it makes me angry how they they had all those resources and instead made yet another typical mobile game after lying to their kickstarter supporters. It is solely designed to put you through hour-long grindingThis one is a liar. Every trailer, every promise, and of course the whole kickstarter. It's sad since they had the resources to make a good game, especially thanks to the artist. And it makes me angry how they they had all those resources and instead made yet another typical mobile game after lying to their kickstarter supporters. It is solely designed to put you through hour-long grinding to get a bunch of numbers through insane micromanagement so that you give up and get them in the online shop.

    Except that you, Masterrace consumer, don’t even get to buy your way out of playing this after you paid for it now.

    In the end, the presentation is the only thing that doesn’t deserve damnation here, and only if you exclude the not scalable, extremely small text and the UI that seems to have exploded and nobody cleaned it up.

    Imagine “Oxygen not included” or "Rimworld", but you have to do everything except building on your own (of course you place the buildings and tell them exactly where to dig so that there is no AI beyond pathfinding necessary). You have to put every colonist – excuse me, sinner! - to sleep, in the bathroom, and place them at the dinner table. You have to put them in a mine, then in a smelter, then in a forge and so on. By hand. If you don’t do that, they just stand around. And die. Not that it matters. Nothing matters.

    There are some goals that require you to get resources, which you gather to build stuff so that you can gather more resources. That’s not too unusual for a tycoon-style game, but you normally have an overarching goal. Like: Build a zoo so that animals can live there. Build a hospital so that your patients get healed. Here you build a hell to collect resources to build … hell. Sure, you are informed that Lucifer likes suffering, but what about the player? He can enjoy a 1 second animation of said suffering, but, you guessed it, he has to place people by hand, or hell doesn’t work.

    And in the end it’s all about the resource of “suffering”, not that you could do anything with that except build stuff that allows for more suffering. Demons can be bought like time-savers that will allow for for faster resource collection for five minutes or so, which gives you more resources to buy more demon time-savers. There isn’t any creativity or strategy, it’s working through a list of obligations so that you get the next list.

    I’ve had minimum wage jobs that made me feel less dead inside.

    There are some demons popping up with voiced text that try to explain why it is vital to collect resources this time and how the design flaws and lazy shortcuts of the developers are totally intentional and make sense. They are painfully unfunny, and I fear that’s unintentional. There just isn’t enough substance here to go meta, but if I had been able to collect my own suffering I’d had enough to buy out every ring of hell after the tutorial.

    So it’s not only a liar, it’s also a waste of everyone’s time and money. And you can’t even build that special place in hell that Woodland Games deserves for it.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
59

Mixed or average reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Hey Poor Player
    Oct 25, 2021
    70
    Hell Architect makes the macabre somehow a bit more palatable with its devilishly cute art style and relatively lighthearted dark humor. Although fans of similar titles like Oxygen Not Included will likely have their interest piqued, the selling point of Hell Architect isn’t in its gameplay, but in its theme. Players hoping to take their sadistic tendencies out on poor, unfortunate souls — and some deserving familiar faces — will have a gruesomely good time with this one; those looking for a deeper, complex layer of hell to call their own will have to wait for an update or two.
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  2. COGconnected
    Sep 13, 2021
    64
    Hell Architect shines in its narration, comedic dialogue, and dark humor along with its excellent graphics and design. Hell Architect is a cool concept and executed well. There are certainly fun times to be had while managing hell, however the biggest issue comes in the fact that there’s little purpose to playing the game in the long run. The processes can become stale quickly and outside the Scenarios, the Sandbox Mode may only entice the most enthusiastic of the colony sim fans. Outside of that scope, it’s a bit difficult to recommend Hell Architect, especially with its hefty price tag. It simply falls short. Hell Architect is perfect for those seeking a fresh twist on the genre, but for those not interested in a colony simulator you might want to stay away. I am hopeful, however, that Woodland Games can add some DLC to provide more content in the future.
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  3. GameSpew
    Aug 20, 2021
    50
    Stripped of its hellish veneer and of the illusion you’re actually calling the shots, Hell Architect is a relatively run-of-the-mill management game. It’s by no means torture to play, but it fails to live up to its wickedly intriguing premise – and the odd dashes of humour can’t fix that.
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