The CEO of Sin Inc.'s birthday is coming soon and for his birthday, he desires a pie. A pie made of some of the most foul and unappetizing ingredients in the known universe. The guy being assigned to make the pie would have to search for the ingredients and if the boss doesn't like it, expect that guy's head to be caved in, their horns ripped off and a severe pay cut.
Introducing Nate, the Demon of Bad Taste who was unlucky enough to be given this infernal task. With the help of his captive cherub-buddy Nugget, Nate must travel the overworld and gather the ingredients before the special day.
Hell Pie is a raunchy Genre Throwback to the Collect-a-Thon Platformers of the early aughts like Conker's Bad Fur Day and Whiplash. It was developed by German video game company Sluggerfly
(the makers of Ben and Ed), published by Headup Games, and released on July 21, 2022. The game can be played on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and GeForce Now.
Hell Pie contains examples of the following tropes:
- Animal Wrongs Group: The commune that moved into Sashimi Bay were the ones responsible for the snail-people's ceasing their whaling industry. While
they might have a point given the amount of Black Comedy Animal Cruelty we see the snail-people put a whale under, the commune's solution to protecting the environment from perceived threats is throwing bombs around. - Antagonist Title: The titular pie, turns out, is the the final boss. After the oven breaks, Nate puts it into the microwave which turns it into a giant monster.
- Bad Boss: Gluttony has a proclivity for eating the human employees in his own pizzeria, one half-digested delivery boy being an ingredient for the pie.
- Bait-and-Switch: The Hall of Sins has the main Seven represented, but there's one plain door that is locked. Since Nate, the Sin of Bad Taste, is trying to become equal to the Seven, it hints that he may succeed in his goal if he gets this Hell Pie made. Nope. The entire adventure is the result of Satan pranking Nate and the Chef, and Nate remains where he is.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: The Hand of God appears like the last boss of the game, complete with a life bar... but hitting Him once ends the fight and He lets Nate leave with the Clay of Creation. The actual final boss is the Hell Pie.
- Beelzebub: The boss of the second world — Gluttony — is a Big Red Devil (emphasis on big), but he mainly employs bug-people to run the slaughterhouse, wait on customers and work security.
- Bigger on the Inside: Nugget lampshades that the inside of the whale — appropriately called Inside Out — is much larger than the whale itself.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The snail-people of Sashimi Bay have converted the still-living body of a beached whale (beached on top of a mountain after a storm, no less) into a sushi restaurant. The snail-people are seen carving up its flesh for meat, and at several points giant harpoons spear through its body. By the time Nate blows the poor thing up to get out, it seems like a Mercy Kill.
- Bonus Level of Heaven: Pearly Gates is the fourth world you explore, populated by rather ugly angels and an ornery God.
- Cash Gate: Dr. Jell's Clinic is a long and dangerous level, but there's a single door early on that can skip all the obstacles and dump you right in front of the final room. You just have to pay the guard 10,000 Gems to walk through the VIP door (for context, you might have that much if you've spent nothing and have been religiously grabbing Gems).
- Caustic Critic: Jaques Huseau is a haughty food critic that, by simply being in Flavor Peaks, attracts a crowd.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: Hell is mainly an office building, called Sin Inc., run by Satan.
- Company Cross References:
- One of the costumes you can buy from the vendor in Flavor Peaks is based off of Ed the Zombie, the Player Character from Sluggerfly's earlier game Ben and Ed.
- One of the costumes you can unlock in the third room in Greed is based on the title character from Pumpkin Jack, another game published by Headup Games.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: The inside of the whale's body is infested with "ghoulies." Don't ask how the human corpses got there or how they came back to life. The game doesn't tell you.
- Fantastic Drug: The ingredient you get for helping Lil' Smoke is a "pink powder" that is obviously meant to be cocaine.
- The Hand Is God: The only part of God you see is his giant hand.
- I'm a Humanitarian: It's revealed in the Slaughterhouse that all the meat at Flavor Peaks comes from humans that had been rounded up and used as cattle.
- Instant Taste Addiction: It's implied that, despite the poor quality, the food in Flavor Peaks is made to be addictive. This would make a lot of sense, as the sin of gluttony is more concerned with quantity over quality, and its diners are apparently compelled to dig through the garbage for more.Jaques Huseau: I hope this place has a graveyard. Because I feel like my taste buds have died here. Yet... I cannot... stop... feasting... and feasting...
- The Man in the Moon: The moon at Flavor Peaks is full and has a face on it.
- Mundane Afterlife: Hell is portrayed like a giant office building, their access to the living world available through elevators.
- Mushroom Samba: When you help Lil' Smoke, it takes you an island where he does his drug-manufacturing. Since he deals in hallucinogenic drugs, the whole thing looks like it takes place in the clouds with rainbow bridges, Nugget's dialogue implying just how high he is.
- Naked Apron: The chef's character design is that of a crudely dressed demon who wears nothing but an apron and a chef's hat with the game emphasizing his nudity by showing Chef's butt first before properly introducing him.
- Our Imps Are Different: Nate (and many of the other smaller demons) qualify as these. While being a demon already qualifies you for a miserable time, imps seem to have it the worst, being lowest in Hell's pecking order. Just the fact that Nate has to be the one to make Satan's birthday pie probably qualifies.
- Pickup Hierarchy:
- Primary: The ingredients. They are all one of a kind and they have to be found scattered throughout the worlds.
- Secondary:
- Unigoats are a small animal species who, when sacrificed at altars, give Nate powerups in the form of horns.
- Cans of candymeat are used to give Nugget new abilities.
- Lucky Cat figurines are scattered throughout the worlds and, if all are collected, allow admission into Greed.
- Tertiary: Soul shards. They are everywhere and can be used to buy costumes. If Nate dies, he drops a handful of them.
- Port Town: Sashimi Bay. An island populated by snail people who used to base their economy around whaling before they were forced to quit by environmentalists.
- Putting on the Reich: The Turd Reich are a race of sentient turds that launch a genocide against the Munchers as an invading force with black gestapo hats for uniforms.
- Putto: Cherubs are fat, repulsive little angels that demons can purchase at the grocery store and are used as pets, beasts of burden, props, weapons, and snacks.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After you find all of the ingredients, battle the titular Hell Pie and throw Satan his birthday party, he reveals that it actually isn't his birthday. It was just a mean prank on both you and the Chef and calls you an idiot for falling for it. He then hangs up the phone and the credits roll.
- Shout-Out:
- The fly-cherub mutants are clearly based on the titular monster from The Fly (1958), with various teleporters that created them based on their design from the 1986 film.
- The last scene at Lil' Smoke's crib is an homage to the Signature Scene from Scarface.
- Jaques Huseau's fate — eating so much that he explodes, still alive but with his rib-cage exposed — is similar to Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
- Snipe Hunt: Satan doesn't actually care about the Hell Pie and his birthday isn't coming up. He just pranks Nate and the Chef for a laugh, mocking Nate for being fooled into a pointless adventure chasing ingredients.
- Straw Loser: "Bad Taste" is the 8th Sin and Nate is mocked incessantly for it, demons either acting like it isn't a "real" sin or mocking Nate for his aspirations of joining the Seven.
- Toilet Humour: The game has a lot of coprophagia in it. There are demons who buy feces at the supermarket, and a species of feces-eating humanoid blob people called munchers.
- Useless Without Cellphones: When a literal bug knocks-out the Wi-Fi in Sin Inc's I.T. Department, it doesn't take long for it to devolve into anarchy. Employees start turning on one another, the halls are full of booby-traps MacGyvered out of office supplies and one section even turns into a "real life creepy pasta."
- Villainous Glutton: Gluttony, one of the Seven Princes of Hell, is the boss of Flavor Peaks and Nate's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis.
- Womb Level: "Inside Out" takes place in the inside of a beached whale. As Nugget lampshades, it's much bigger on the inside than the outside.
- Workplace Horror: The game's hub world and first level is an office building in Hell — named Sin Inc. — and it's portrayed as a pretty hostile work environment. The halls are littered with pools of lava and mangled piles of meat, your coworkers could literally go insane and set up deathtraps out of office supplies should anything happen to the WiFi, and pissing off the Boss in any way can result in a bloody stump where your head used to be. All of this is Played for Laughs, as the game has a decidedly light hearted tone despite all the nasty stuff within.
