Rogue Factor introduces a fresh RPG action game and their first original game: Hell Is Us. Much like its name, it gives the player a hell of a time, in good ways and difficult ways. CGMagazine was also able to sit down with some of Hell Is Us’ important team members: creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, founder and head of Rogue Factor Yves Bordeleau, and audio director Antoine Vachon. Belletête, Bordeleau, and Vachon were able to expand on the game’s development, with some witty personal notes around the production.
Hell Is Us is an action-adventure video game played from a third-person perspective, with Rogue Factor emphasizing this is not a souls-like game. In the game, the player assumes control of a soldier named Rémi who returns back to his hometown Hadea, where his mother sneaked him out of the warzone as a child. When Rémi returns to Hadea, two warring factions—the Sabinians and Palomists—are fighting over territories.
As Rémi, players also fight against supernatural beings named “Hollow Walkers.” These are creepy, white mannequin-esque faceless enemies that come in all shapes and sizes, giving abstract, creepy character designs like FromSoftware games. As the player progresses, they will encounter enhanced Hollow Walkers containing a separate supernatural host entity called “Hazes.” Hazes add another level of combat difficulty because you have to kill the Haze before killing the Hollow Walker.
If you wear headphones like I did, the sounds of the Hollow Walkers and Hazes in Hell Is Us gave me even more goosebumps. Vachon pointed out how players should “listen and try to figure out why [the Haze] are making these sounds.” From what I gathered, there are four main colours of Hazes. Each of the Hazes’ colours represents an emotion: red is rage, yellow is ecstasy, blue is grief, and green is terror.
Rémi’s weapons can also be attuned and upgraded to match the emotions, but it was not explained if certain emotion weapons are weaknesses for other emotion Hazes. For example, I was not sure if I should be using my greatsword of rage to fight red Hazes if they represent rage as well.
Based on what I played, the emotions were not explained yet. However, they seem to be the emotions experienced throughout wartime—but the game hints that the emotions coincide with the overarching story too.
Players fight these creatures using a variety of melee weapons such as swords, polearms and axes—with each having distinct attack styles and speeds. Rémi is also equipped with a drone that can be used to distract hostile creatures. I named it Droney during my playtime. The drone can be used to distract or combo Hollow Walkers and Hazes with Rémi’s attacks. It can also act as a flashlight when exploring dungeons and dark places, making the realistic immersion element even better.
“…the sounds of the Hollow Walkers and Hazes in Hell Is Us gave me even more goosebumps.”
Players need to manage both the health and stamina of Rémi. Stamina will gradually regenerate, but health will not. Rémi’s maximum stamina at any given moment is limited by his current health level. Fighting in an exhausted state means that the player character attacks more weakly and is more vulnerable.
For those who played Team Ninja’s Nioh 2 or Rise of the Ronin will remember the gameplay mechanic known as “Ki Pulse.” This allows players to recover stamina if they hit the right button, kind of like a parry, the player recovers some or all spent stamina. In a game like Hell Is Us, regaining stamina is crucial because health and stamina are intertwined.
For Hell Is Us, it is called the Lymbic Pulse. Rather than pressing the right button at the time the short instinctive prompt comes up to recover stamina, the devs thought it would be a great feature for players to recover health. When I was not managing my health and healing items correctly, my combat suffered greatly. But the Lymbic Pulse came in clutch.
At a certain point, I did not need to use as many healing items because I could just take advantage of the Lymbic Pulse to gain health back. But like parrying in many Souls-like games, mis-timing the Lymbic Pulse means taking some damage you could have avoided from simply dodging or blocking.
This is all to say the Lymbic Pulse can be a very forgiving mechanic to regain health, especially since finding health items felt sparse. Although trying to Lymbic Pulse every hit is for the true action RPG players, whereas I struggled to hit one every so often because my timing is terrible—but still more forgiving compared to Elden Ring or Lies of P.
Overall, the third-person combat system felt natural for those akin to Souls-like games, despite the devs emphasizing how Hell Is Us is not a Souls-like game. They described the combat as being more midcore compared to similar genre games like Ghosts of Tsushima, Lies of P, or probably Rise of the Ronin. The branching skills to unlock and upgrade entice players to kill more Hollow Walkers. I enjoyed most fights, but the colourful attacks can be distracting and overstimulating at times.
“…the third-person combat system felt natural for those akin to Souls-like games, despite the devs emphasizing how Hell Is Us is not a Souls-like game.”
Belletête described Hadea as a “semi-open world” game, where players are given clues to find Rémi’s father and must mark down clues or take note of where to head next. Hell Is Us embraces a more classical playstyle, one predating modern helpful UI’s and game tools. In this game, there are no waypoints, quest logs, or map markers. Players must listen to Rémi’s conversations with non-playable characters in order to find out the locations of their objectives.
Hell Is Us’ natural exploration openness is enough for me to feel like I’m discovering things on my own, without losing sight of the main objective. I can happily say this experience was up my alley. The devs encourage players to get lost in the discovery characteristics of the game. The game also leans into old-school aesthetics, given that it takes place in the 1990s, so there are no cell phones. However, players can refer to information stored on their tablet; this is also where they can move equipment and perform skill upgrades. The tablet design was reminiscent of the green font and style like in Alien: Isolation.
Belletête described the unnatural exploration of locations and things in Hell Is Us as “player-plattering,” which this action RPG does not contain. I love this format of less UI and markers for this particular game, especially as someone who enjoys great storytelling in games versus the challenges. Hell Is Us is a fairly unforgiving game, but it has its perks.
The attention to sound cues for solving puzzles is also fascinating, making Hell Is Us a game that requires players to either play with headphones or surround sound. Again, this reiterates Vachon’s work on designing the audio cues throughout the game. It is cool when games like this invest in great sound design to serve an enhanced gameplay and story experience—even for the pursuit of finding easter eggs. In most Resident Evil games, there are always faint audio cues to find shootable or hittable collectibles.
Hell Is Us truly made me feel like I was the singular player in charge of finding Rémi’s family through the chaos. All the while, I took the time to appreciate the environmental art and design. I really hope the Rogue Factor devs can let us pet the stunning cows at some point, just to provide some positive vibes in this sad world!
In terms of movement, combat, and exploration, the one peeve I had was how the devs did not incorporate a jump button or jump action. Not having a jump in an action-RPG title felt weird. I was constantly looking for a button to jump to different ground levels, but could not while exploring. Yes, I could dodge enemies, but having the jump adds a dynamic verticality to the combat too, especially useful against enemies that shoot projectiles.
For the general storytelling components, Hell Is Us’ overarching aesthetics and story are very dark and grim. While I was exploring a town area, citizens talked about getting sexually assaulted multiple times and massacres. So, if you are highly sensitive to dark themes, this may be triggering for you. The devs talked about how they genuinely wanted to capture the horrors of war, and I felt every bit of dread playing and hearing about the war through countless NPC conversations.
From Hell Is Us’ opening sequences and cutscenes, this is a fantastic, cinematic game. For a game landing between AA and AAA status, this is an AA that looks and feels more than it’s selling for. This is something Bordeleau pointed out that he wanted the studio to strive for.
Even though the graphics are not photorealistic or have as high fidelity as AAA games, Rogue Factor has successfully shown me this world largely feels great to maneuver through and looks stunning—the cinematics and gameplay remind me of Remedy Entertainment’s Control. Even the creatures in Hell Is Us, the Haze, sound close to the Hiss in Control. Those who enjoy story-driven and action-packed RPG facets will thoroughly find Hell Is Us captivating, even from a gameplay mechanics perspective.
To hear and see more of Hell Is Us’ gameplay and development, check it out at the June Steam Next Fest. The game demo will be live ahead of time starting Monday, June 2nd at 4pm CEST / 7AM PDT /10AM EDT.
