If you don’t know the headline, Orpheus was a mythical Greek musician who famously descended into the underworld to save his snake-bitten lover, Eurydice. The rulers of the underworld, Hades and Persephone, were greatly surprised by Orpheus’s playing on the emo lyre and quickly agreed to allow him to lead Eurydice’s soul up into the waking world, with the extremely straightforward stipulation that he would not look at her until Both outwardly.
However, being a madman in love, Orpheus couldn’t assist but glance quickly at Eurydice once he crossed the threshold – the result was a timeless moral about human weakness and the specific truism that you should absolutely never date musicians, which Australian developers Oppolyon Studios completely ignored their otherwise a stinking game about digging your brother’s soul out of hell.
I’m writing this partly because the press release actually called this game “Foddian” and I love that there’s a lot of buzz about it now. I love that Bennett Foddy’s game-long fist-to-hand drill has become a genre. I love that developers are doing this for us Players – it’s definitely coming. Honestly, the Rising Hell seems relatively tame for a Foddlike. It’s a more conventional 2.5D platformer, with striking voxel and pixel graphics and level-specific mechanics. That said, it relies entirely on ball physics.
Again, I don’t think it’s as tasty as some feeds I’ve encountered. It doesn’t look as soul-crushing as Pushing It! With Sisyphus and there is no multiplayer like in Chained Together, so it won’t even ruin all your real friendships.
I also really like the obvious fun the creators had with the afterlife realms, each of which was stolen from Dante’s Inferno and given its own visual direction. The trailer gives us a few glimpses: Gluttony is a shabby restaurant, Lust is a bustling nightclub, Fraud is like a rundown Castlevania theme park. It makes me want to play a Sonic The Hedgehog game set in Hell. That’s where a lot of Sonic games belong, honestly.
Ascending Inferno will be released today. I guess, given the reference to the headline, I should end with a discussion of the music. Seems quite passable to my unsophisticated ears, similar to Vangelis but more rock. I probably wouldn’t give someone my loved one’s soul if they played it to me, but I could offer a consolation prize, like, I don’t know, the soul of a budgerigar, or maybe an eHarmony coupon.