There has been a lot of great art about Hell. There’s the song, of course. There’s the album about bats getting out of it. There’s the action game based on a classic work of literature which merited (fake, paid) protests. But have you ever wanted to take on…a management role in the finest underworld organization known to man?
That’s what Hell Architect offers: your shot at the Assistant Manager gig. And much like Assistant Managers in every fast food and retail chain, your job is doing all the grunt work to harvest suffering for the big boss. In Hell, Suffering is literally the currency. So exactly like capitalism.
The Prologue, currently available on Steam, shows off a game inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Oxygen Not Included, and Prison Architect, so there’s a theme (obviously) of torture and mayhem, but it’s light-hearted. The Hell of Prison Architect is a simple place: sinners arrive and you, as Assistant Manager, put them to work at various tasks like “being tortured,” then harvest their sweet, sweet Suffering and use it to build basic accommodations and facilities like flesh farms, shitters, and water squeezers that gather moisture from the shitter to provide something resembling drinking water. You know, exactly like capitalism.
But life isn’t all that simple for the Assistant Manager to the Star of the Morning. There are other currencies at play. To actually build things, your idiot sinners need to extract resources like dirt and coal. Yes, Hell runs on coal, and you think Elon Musk’s stupid cars are going to save you. Lmao just lmao.
And while your minions are basically competent, in that they can sort of do tasks you assign to them, they have a lot of needs. They need housing (cardboard boxes!), they need toilet facilities (and the shitter is always full in hell), they need machines to turn poop into awful drinking water, they need to be tortured. And they must be millennials because if you don’t give them what they need, they stand around and bitch, and if they can’t find their way to a job, they stand around and bitch. WHY BACK IN MY DAY WE DRANK FROM THE HOOOOOOOOSE.
*This part removed for Boomer content*
They also have preferences and interests, so they may be into torture and really like eating shit, in which case, they must have loved capitalism (got ‘em). But if you cater to those, they’ll be happier, and sinners that get too unhappy get banished to Limbo. Which, well, I have some questions about the theology of this particular iteration of Hell, but okay, we’ll go with that. They can be bought back, but it’s expensive, so better to cater to their every millennial need and make sure to tell them that the only good music was made between 1955 and 1975. They LOVE that!
As with most management games, there are a couple different cycles at play: the planning and building grind, where you’re gathering up resources and planning the use of space in Hell; the upgrade grind where you’re building more stuff to enhance the afterlife of your sinners so they’re productive and enjoy being forced to suffer for resources (like capitalism); and the management phase, where you optimize your sinners for maximum afterlife productivity and happiness/suffering (like capitalism).
There are missions and something resembling a story for those of you that need to be guided in your torture, but it’s pretty chill and forgiving, so it’s nice to kick back and relax and torture people. Most importantly, the Prologue is free (and the full game is in beta). Take THAT, capitalism!
