"All of us are cursed. Haunted, by things you can't see, can't escape, and can't kill...
But what if you could?"
But what if you could?"
HellSign is a thriller top-down shooter RPG made by Ballistic Interactive, about an amnesiac hunter of the supernatural cursed with the HellSign, a demonic brand that grants its bearer Resurrective Immortality at the cost of endless nightmares and a soul-eating demon strapped to their back.
Taking place in the late 20th century of Australia, the most supernaturally dangerous country on Earth, your job is simple: go to a murder scene, scan the house like a ghost hunter, shoot the hell out of anything that moves, and if you're ready for the big prize, summon a dangerous, soul-devouring beast haunting the house so you can kill it.
HellSign is unrelated with Hellsing beside both being horror-themed works. It's also unrelated to Hellsinger.
The game provide examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: Basic rounds are good, but when cryptids and supernatural entities are weak to specific elements, that's when you load your gun with incendiary tracer, silver nitrate, or ultraviolet rounds.
- Amnesiac Hero: The opening cutscene. After "dreaming" of being very messily killed by a demon, the player character awakens amnesiac and with a weird tattoo on the back. The bulk of the game is finding out what happened and how to fix it. While you do find out what happened, you never fix the amnesia.
- Anti-Frustration Features: When you leave the current mission, the game allows for a few seconds to cancel the action and remain onsite.
- Art Shift: During cutscenes, the art style shifts from the usual realistic-looking graphics of the game to very visually different comic book-style sequences.
- Asteroids Monster: Killing the massive Redhatch Spider will result in as many as a dozen Redhatch Spiderlings bursting out of it and gunning for you.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The M2 Rifle is the most expensive and powerful weapon in the game, hands down: it deals a whopping 120 damage per shot, when the second strongest weapon only deals 77 damage. However, the M2 has to be reloaded after every shot, and takes a significant amount of time to do so. If you're not putting whatever it is you're shooting at in the ground with that first shot, you likely won't get a second shot.
- The M249 light machine gun uses light ammunition and has a huge 90 round magazine, making it both effective at More Dakka and easy to spray and pray. But it does pitiful damage for a gun as expensive as it is, and it has the longest reload time in the game at almost 4 seconds. Enemies, especially bosses, will not give you 4 uninterrupted seconds to reload.
- Heavy Armor is much more protective than Light Armor, with the best armor in the game giving you 190 armor (compared to the best Light Armor at 110). However, unless you specialize in Heavy Armor, you will lose 40% of your dodge distance and dodge window, and even if you do specialize you still lose 20% of each. You can take ninja shoes to mitigate the dodge penalties, or even void out the penalties entirely, but that requires using another skill point of your limited pool. And for all of that, you get an extra 6% reduction in damage at high levels. Light Armor isn't flashy, but it is much more efficient.
- Traps are very effective when used against the enemies they are designed to counter (such as the doorway guillotine on centipedes), but they have to be set up in advance, as they can't be set up while in combat. This means that you need to identify the cryptids that you're going to encounter before you engage them, requiring the use of a blacklight on a corpse, and your battery is limited to doing so three times per hunt. You also have no way of knowing which of the cryptids you'll learn about when you scan a corpsenote . As a result, traps are either Awesome, but Impractical, or Difficult, but Awesome.
- Most of the artifacts fall into this category. Artifacts require a skill point to be able to use them, and crafting from existing items, clues and evidence, as well as buying the recipe. For doing that, you get items that are much more powerful than anything equivalent, but come with very hefty drawbacks. For example, the Pirate Eyepatch increases experience gain by 25% (the closest equivalent only increases it by %), but reduces accuracy by 50%. The Nock Volley Gun fires seven shotgun rounds simultaneously for an absolutely devastating amount of damage, but will knock you on your ass and is slow to reload (and can't be fired until all seven rounds are reloaded). An artifact that provides passive healing (at a rate of 0.025 points of health per second) also increases damage taken by 200%. Artifacts are very powerful, but also very dangerous.
- Badass Bookworm: Any hunter worth his salt learns to hit the books; enemies have weaknesses to specific types of ammunition, traps, and for the most dangerous, weapon attachments and charms. While it is possible to brute force anything, learning about and preparing for your hunts will make things much easier.
- Boring, but Practical:
- Skills:
- The first Survival skill, which increases your maximum health by 20 and removes the penalty for use of medkits, is all but required: no matter how good you are at dodging, you will take damage during hunts, and being able to heal is essential.
- The Primary Weapon skill, available at level 6, lets you use primary weapons without a penalty. As the penalties are awful (generally increasing reload time by at least 75%) and primary weapons are so much more powerful and versatile than sidearms, this skill is basically required.
- Treasure Hunter: Increases the chances of finding higher value signs by 100%. Higher value signs sell for a lot more money, and since you need money to buy better gear, this one is a no-brainer.
- Weapons:
- The CZ Sharpshooter pistol is not the strongest pistol available at the start of the game, but it only costs $209, uses light ammo, has a generous 14 round magazine, reloads quickly and has a 20% chance to inflict a critical hit. As long as you're using the appropriate ammunition, it will easily get rid of smaller cryptids, and can even take down ghouls will a little careful dodging.
- The AOD Shotgun is one of the first shotguns available, and costs about $200. For that, you get a gun that does 6.25 damage per pellet (and fires 7 pellets), is reasonably accurate at mid-range and devastating at short range, and, if you have the Primary Weapon skill, reloads quickly. You can use this gun on anything up to Echrii. There are better weapons available, of course, but the ease of acquiring the AOD and its versatility make it very practical.
- Regular ammunition. It doesn't do extra damage to cryptids, but it does full damage no matter what it hitsnote . Given that you're not able to change ammunition while in combat, regular ammunition is a great catch-all for clearing out enemies when you're not sure what you'll be facing. However, it cannot be used on Phantoms, Echrii, or Poltergeists, as regular ammunition does not have the "deals damage to supernaturals" quality.
- Gear:
- The Dead Man's Map is surprisingly useful for any kind of hunt. For the low cost of $35, you get a map of the location showing you every corpse (which you can analyze to find cryptids), as well as special locations to find hints that lead to clues. This is extremely helpful for low level (Phantom) investigations, where your gear gets disrupted by the tendrils. Higher level (Echrii and Poltergeist) investigations require that you find additional hints before giving you the clue, but even then, you still have a fully functional map of the location, which is helpful all on its own.
- The Headlamp, and its better upgrade, the Military Headlamp. The only thing they do is increase the area for your flashlight, letting you see more at once. This is extremely effective when you run into fast moving enemies that you need to keep track of, particularly Shadow Beasts.
- Skills:
- Character Class System: Downplayed. You can pick a character class at the beginning of the game, which determines your starting skills and gear. The Detective, for example, starts with skills in deduction, a rusty revolver, and some bandages, while the Field Medic starts with skills in healing and a First Aid kit, but a terrible pistol. However, after starting the game, every class can do anything if you put the skill points into the right skills, and they all play the same.
- Chest Monster: There are two kinds of mimics in the game.
- The door mimic will look like an unassuming door, but will very quickly grab you with its tongue, chew on you a couple of times, and then spit you out, if you're not fast enough dodging it. It's invincible, but disappears permanently after making an attack, successful or not.
- The painting mimic (which can actually be almost anything wall-mounted) will sprout dozens of tentacles and attack you very quickly when you get close. They will disappear if you get too far away, but they won't leave until you kill them.
- Combat Pragmatist: You get to use a wide variety of traps against monsters, many of which are downright brutalnote .
- The Corruption: Locations with an active paranormal infestation have creepy tentacles all over the place, which go thoroughly unexplained. Everyone just accepts that they're part of the infestation. Frustratingly, they interfere with any kind of EMF detection (EMF reader, Geiger counter, Spirit box) but can still hide clues, meaning you'll need to use other methods to see what's hiding in them. Thermal detection is the best option.
- Country Matters: "Cunt" occasionally appears in dialogs, in its Australian meaning. The in-game help includes a lexicon, which translates the term as "good sir".
- Creepy Centipedes: The Blood Crawlers are 2-meters long centipedes. The Tasmanian Meglapedes are another sort of giant centipedes, and are much longer and larger.
- Cursed with Awesome: Sure, you're stuck with "the equivalent of a living nuclear bomb strapped to your back", but hey, this job is literally killing you, so at least you've got that going for you!
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Thanks to your Hellsign, you wake up in bed every time you die. If you're playing on normal difficulty, you get to keep everything you found before you died, and completed objectives are still awarded.
- Demonic Possession: The player character is possessed by a demon called the Invuche. It will speak whenever the player wakes up again after being killed, refusing to let them die. Ridding yourself of it is the final task of the game, requiring you to kill three Poltergeists.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- Traps, as mentioned in Awesome, but Impractical, are very effective when used in advance, but you generally don't get enough advance warning to make it worthwhile. With one exception: Bosses. You can summon a Phantom, Echrii, or Poltergeist without learning what it is, but generally speaking, you will at least learn what you're going to be fighting before you unleash a boss, if only for the money. Because you can summon a boss when and where you want, you can also set traps in the eventual arena to deal massive damage when you need it.
- Eats Babies: Shadow Poltergeists are noted to have an "odd craving for digesting infants".
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Rule of thumb: If it moves (and isn't a tree), it's going to kill you.
- Eyepatch of Power: You can craft and wear a pirate eyepatch. It reduces accuracy but increase rate of experience gain.
- Giant Spider: Giant spiders are among the most common enemies in the game and they come in various sizes. The smallest ones, Redhatch Spiderlings, are the size as small dogs like pomeranians, while the adult variant is as tall as an average human. The Redhatch Spider is absolutely massive, and will mess you up if you're not prepared.
- Hellish Horse: Kelpies are spirit horses made from the victims of animal cruelty, with one obsession: to maul you to death. They also wet the floor with cold oil, making it harder to dodge.
- Hunter of Monsters: There's an entire community in Australia that works to find, hunt and kill dangerous cryptids and supernatural entities. You're one of them. You start the game as a scout, but by the end of it, you're one of the best.
- Infinity +1 Sword: While there are a number of weapons in the game, some of them are simply better than others.
- The Italian for sidearms: a generous magazine (10 rounds), fast fire rate and blindingly fast reload, as well as damage on par with lower-level primary weapons. It doesn't do as much damage as the most powerful sidearms, but the big magazine and fast reload rate are much more effective than slower, stronger attacks.
- The VSS for primary weapons: not as strong as the most powerful primary weapons, a smaller magazine than other primary weapons, and slower to reload than some primary weapons, the VSS is still the king because it does an astounding amount of damage (77 per shot), reloads reasonably fast with a magazine instead of bullet-by-bullet like shotguns, and has a whopping 30% critical hit rate, which can go even higher with some weapon attachments. Critical hits do double damage, which means that 3 times out of 10, the VSS will do 154 points of damage, more than any other weapon in the game. It's doesn't do any one thing spectacularly well, but it does everything very well.
- Interface Screw: There's a wide variety of ways the things you're hunting will mess with you.
- Spectres will cause massive distortion, resulting in the screen becoming wavy and difficult to focus on. A gas mask will prevent the distortion.
- In houses, there is a chance that a light will suddenly overheat and explode. If you're standing too close, it will give you a concussion, which will result in double vision and tinnitus until it wears off after about 10 seconds. Wearing ear protectors will prevent the damage.
- Efreet emit a horrible smoke that blinds and disorients their victims, making it hard to see and dodge their attacks. A gas mask neutralizes the smoke.
- The Skolex bosses can use an attack that's pretty well telegraphed, but if you're hit by it, you'll be Blown Across the Room and end up with a concussion, resulting in distorted, blurry double vision for a significant period of time. Wearing a helmet reduces the concussion, ending the effect very quickly.
- Jerkass: Lucky Kenny is the kind of guy who would rip the arm from a homeless man because there was a 50% chance they 'may' have been infected with a soul-eating demon from hell.
- Kill It with Fire: Fire is one of the three primary methods of damaging supernatural creatures and cryptids, and you have incendiary tracer ammunition for your guns to exploit that weakness, as well as cans of petrol and pressurized gas canisters.
- Know When to Fold Them: Played horribly straight in Hardcore mode. If you die in Hardcore, you lose almost everything: you get zero payout for the job no matter what you accomplished, you lose almost everything you collected (the only exception is items you carved from defeated enemies), and anything used on the job is lost. You get to keep your experience points and that's pretty much it.
- Level Cap: The maximum level your character can reach is 20. This means there are not enough skill points to get every skill in the game.
- Limited Loadout: There's exactly two weapon slots: primary guns (assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns), and sidearms (pistols and revolvers). You can also only carry up to three investigation tools, one major trap, and two "auxiliary" items (extra ammo, minor traps, etc).
- Living Shadow: Shadow Poltergeists are giant shadow spiders while Shadow Beasts are shadowy bovines.
- Magikarp Power: The Drifter class starts with the least amount of gear: the starting EMF and blacklight, a single-use syringe for healing, and a nailgun with a lot of nailsnote . However, they're the only class that starts at level 1, which allows you to build your character any way you want.
- McNinja: The Ninja character class' starting gear includes Japanese sandalsnote and caltrops (and a small handgun). Each player character is supposed to be Australian, though there's an Asian-looking character portrait available. Note that each character can be played like this, but the Ninja class is the only one to start with the relevant skills and gear.
- Nail 'Em: A nailgun is the starting weapon of the Drifter class (it functionally counts as a sidearm). The nailgun itself and its ammo can be acquired for free at the store, regardless of the character class, so that you're never completely defenseless.
- Nothing Is Scarier: "Wait for it..." variant. Levels consists in scouting dark, abandoned buildings only lit with your flashlight, not knowing when a monster will appear.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: Banshees can scream loud enough to deal brain damage, summon tendrils of ectoplasm, or summon cute little ghosts that eat away at your health and are hard to hit. Ear protection is a must when hunting them.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Poltergeists have a wide variety of powers from simple telekinesis and teleportation to creating giant tendrils of ectoplasm and manifesting as an unkillable shadow beast. They also eat souls and can be killed by summoning them into the real world.
- Our Ghouls Are Different: Standard ghouls are tall, angry humanoids that will attempt to tackle your character and then run away to jump and latch on the wall for a few seconds before trying again. The best way to kill them is to use your bear traps, which clamp on just long enough to take a clip of lead.
- Paranormal Investigation: The premise of the game is basically a mix of paranormal investigation and Action RPG gameplay, where you must carefully prepare your missions, take the right gear onsite, explore places with various tools (an EMF meter, a blacklight, a microphone), and fight monsters.
- Plotline Death: after completing the scouting mission tutorial, you'll be hired to do a sweeping mission at an abandoned house to teach combat mechanics. Everything goes well until one door throws you into a shadow dimension and sets four shadow beasts on you. These are some of the most dangerous monsters in the game, and they are guaranteed to be strong against every kind of ammunition you havenote , and they're much more aggressive than is typical. You can't leave until you kill them or die, and you are not expected to kill them.
- Power Tattoo: The HellSign is a tattoo of demonic origin which allows the player character to reappear, alive, at his safehouse if killed during a contract.
- Recoiled Across the Room: The craftable Nock Volley Gun has 7 shotgun barrels, letting it dish out massive damage per shot, at the expense of having so much recoil you will be thrown to the floor about five feet back from where you fired, taking damage in the process.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Revolvers are one kind of sidearm, the other being pistols. Revolvers are more powerful, more accurate, and have a longer range, but are slower to reload and have a slow rate of fire.
- Resurrective Immortality: The player character is cursed to always rise from the dead, thanks to the demon possessing them.
- Run or Die: The Nephilim, a monster that spawns out of spontaneously formed blood pools and attacks by flailing at you with far too many arms, is described in the cryptonomicon as "invincible", and it's not lying: nothing you do will hurt it. Get away from it or die screaming.
- Schmuck Bait: After you collect two pieces of evidence, you can unleash the boss. If you're in a hurry, feel free to do it. But you won't know what you're about to fight and what its weaknesses are. Good luck!
- "The Scream" Parody: One of the graffiti that can be seen on buildings outside walls looks like The Scream.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: You generally have multiple objectives when you take on a job, and can leave at any time. If you identify a particularly dangerous cryptid that you can't fight, or if you don't have the traps or ammunition to take on a boss, you can always just leave. However, the game encourages putting yourself in danger by letting you keep any rewards you've earned even if you die.
- Played very straight in Hardcore mode: if you die, you lose everything from the job. There's no sense looking for that last sign when you're one hit from death: hit the road and keep what you can.
- Starter Equipment: Each character class starts with a gun (except the Mercenary, who starts with two), ammo, a flashlight, an EMF meter, and a syringe of drugs. The exact item in those slots, and the content of other slots (chest armor, footwear, headgear, various accessories, etc.) depends on the character class. The Drifter is the one with the least starting items.
- Title Drop: The "HellSign" is occasionally referred by name in some conversation.
- Tutorial Failure: Several times.
- The scouting tutorial will tell you to "match the clue to the sign in the cryptonomicon", but it won't tell you that what you're actually looking for is a picture in the book that exactly matches the picture on the clue. Specific blood splatters or cracked walls will match the image in the book, for example (but might be rotated). As there's also no penalty for messing up the scounting tutorial, there's no guarantee that you understand what you're supposed to do.
- The blacklight tutorial will tell you to follow the path of symbols to find a clue, and will also give you a clue at the end of the path. What it doesn't make clear is that the path of symbols points towards a clue, rather than ending where the clue is: you might still need to do additional investigation to find the clue itself.
- There's little to no information provided about learning weaknesses. Basic enemy descriptions will make it clear that, for example, you should use bear traps on ghouls, but once you progress to Echrii and Poltergeists, you may not even realize that the cryptonomicon entries for them have additional pages that give you more information on their specific nature (from the third and fourth level investigations), which allow you to maximize damage by using specific gun sights, gun barrels, trap modifications, and accessories.
- Skill descriptions are occasionally vague with no idea what they actually do. The investigation skills are particularly notorious for this: "+1 evidence will be related to cryptid" means very little when you don't know what that means.
- 20 Bear Asses: Most of your money comes from selling the evidence of supernatural attacks to a fixer, who then resells them to the case managers with an analysis.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: In the open maps and outside the house, you will sometimes stumble across trees with raven calls coming out of them. Shooting them will cause some ravens to fly out, which you can kill with your guns. Go out of your way to kill too many and you will summon Mother Bird's wrath, a gigantic bird that tramples you with her massive foot, killing you instantly.
Mother Bird: "LEAVE MY BABIES ALONE YOU MURDERER!"
- With This Herring: At character's creation, the Drifter class is the most blatant example of this (you only start with the tier-1 flashlight, a nailgun, the tier-1 EMF meter, and a syringe filled with some street drug), but several of the others start with guns described as rusty, and the player character in general is described as being not rich.
- Wormsign: The Skolex boss can be tracked using the dirt thrown up as it moves around, giving you a window to attack when it briefly leaps out.
- You All Meet in an Inn: The story mostly progresses by speaking with various NPCs in a bar named "The Shaggy Jackal".
- You Have Researched Breathing: You need to take a specific skill to be able to wear Protective Earwear and Hazmat Boots.
