HELLEVATOR by pickens-inc
Hellevator is a wave-based shoot-em up where you must descend the ever-maddening depths of hell and slay everything that moves with your dash attack and a whole lotta bullets. Harvest their (really cute) souls to keep yourself topped up on health and ammo, then hit the button and keep descending. Be mindful, because even the weakest of enemies pose a threat to the careless, and a poorly aimed dash can leave you surrounded.


Post your high scores below!
The left machine costs 1 soul and heals you a small amount. The right machine costs 3 souls and will overload your ammo to 10.
| Windows | https://polyrogue.itch.io/hellevator |
| Android | Coming Soon! |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hellevator-4 |
Ratings
| Overall | 433th | 3.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 145th | 4⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1351th | 2.881⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 877th | 3.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 929th | 3.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 824th | 3.3⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 854th | 2.735⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1139th | 3.325⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
like survival shooter vibe
hate dash towards cursor)
Awesome game overall though, I love the initial elevator starting effect. I got to like 1500m~
as said above, some sound effects are quite loud.
I think the game would work better in full screen: I lost many games cuz my mouse went out of the game and opened my internet browser. Sure that's on me not managing to keep my mouse within game screen but it can be easily avoided by putting the game fs.
Other than that, the game is really cool: nice graphics and background music, different type of enemies, ... I love it
It would be nice to sttack bullet upgrades though
The music and sound effects are also on point, everything feels very polished!
I managed to get to around 2450m, but will try to beat that record later.
I managed to get 2258M down :muscle: which must make me the world's most average player :sweat: Still, fun was had and monsters died. Solid entry :thumbsup:
@danga Thank you for playing! I think the gun's cooldown or max mag size might need a look at in general! The sound effect idea is a really good, easy piece of feedback, thanks!
@vivien-fargette Some lovely praise! Like most apps, Alt+Enter toggles full screen, but we should have added a button for it. :sweat_smile: Thanks so much for playing!
@niterich That's super weird! Were you using a controller? I'm glad you still had fun, I certainly wouldn't have without being able to shoot! I've not heard of any bug like that at all so I'm very curious.
@staquet-sylvain Thanks for giving it a go!
@thiago-nascimento We thought of that too! I'd like to make the gun powerup machine a bit more interesting in general, and stackable. :)
@simon-rahnasto Thank you so much for playing Simon! Good to see you about again, your feedback is always super lovely. Really glad you got the exact feeling we wanted to evoke! Badass satisfying combat with your little Bean Marine! That's a pretty good score, but I know you've broken it by now!
@langotriel "The only way is down" is *such* a good slogan for the game. Yoink. Thank you for playing! Glad you had fun. Any score above 2000m is pretty decent!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007422901
The mechanics are simple but well done and easy to understand. The currency system is well balanced and never made me felt overpowered. The challenge escales smoothly.
Nice entry and game.
I played with a touch screen, which was actually pretty swell.
Really fun to play, liked the clay models, liked the enemy varieties, liked the temporary upgrades but it would be even better with some permanent upgrades. Also maybe increase the size of hellevator as you go deeper to allow space for player movement as enemies fill up most of the space.
https://youtu.be/aHUsWQeZHns?t=1875
The arcade feel to this game was great: fire rate felt balanced, dash cooldowns feel short enough to make the attack useful without being over-powered, and hitting/defeating enemies were really satisfying. I also really like the variety of enemies in the game that realy forces the player to change their strategy over time. Not much to complain about for the gameplay side of things.
I did think there were still a few improvements the game could have made, though. Primarily, having the camera focus where the cursor is, rather than where the player is, would have really helped get a better view of the arena. Typically, these twin-stick shooter games averages the location of the character and the cursor, and has the camera focus at that point. I also felt like the monsters that could take multiple hits were a bit of a bullet sponge, and either reducing their health, or adding some mechanics to help mitigate their sponginess (e.g. making the enemy stagger on each hit, and/or increasing duration of player invulnerability after losing health) would have made the fight feel more fair.
Still, the game's strong focus really halps make it quick and easy to play. Well done!