We’ve reached the point in the Vampire Survivors fuelled auto-shooter craze where developers are imagining how the genre would have looked and played decades ago. It’s the original Diablo that provides the bulk of inspiration here, sporting similar detailed 2D sprites and a quasi-isometric viewpoint. It isn’t difficult at all to imagine somebody playing Halls of Torment on a chunky CRT screen while hunched over a computer desk, being very authentic to the era.
It’s immediately clear that this is a slow burner of an experience, commencing with a sole selectable warrior, a single stage (hall) to tackle, and a featureless hub. After starting to make progress, more warriors join your cause, while the hub eventually becomes populated after saving folk found within the halls, each offering a service such as the ability to purchase armour. Gold can also be spent within the hub to permanently increase stats, incrementally increasing chances of survival. In theory, at least. Even best laid plans can go awry when faced with a boss for the first time.
Your goal is to survive for thirty minutes within each hall – which vary from hellish fiery landscapes to frozen realms – with mini-bosses summoned periodically before a stage specific boss appears at the thirty-minute mark, at which point all other enemies skedaddle. Bosses can be tricky to defeat, spawning minions and bullet-hell style projectile waves. Boss designs aren’t wildly original, save perhaps from the viaduct’s wall clinging hydra mini boss. This battle proved to be tense, as the viaduct also features ghost soldiers marching on your position.
The levelling up system works how you’d expect. Every minute or so you’re able to choose a minor boost, gradually increasing attack strength, health regains, movement speed, defences and more. Movement speed is important, as many characters are sluggish when starting out. Defeating mini-boss bestows either a magic ability or a chest containing armour that’ll significantly increase stats, such as raising criticals by 50% – making you delightfully overpowered temporarily. After unlocking the well keeper, items can be sent back to the hub to be purchased before starting future runs. Magic meanwhile doesn’t vary a great deal between classes, being a mixture of spinning metal orbs, a damaging radius around the character’s feet, floating swords and shurikens, and good old lightning. These can be augmented, although not to a huge degree, such as adding more projectiles with each attack.
The pacing here is slow, in the sense that it isn’t too tricky to survive the full thirty minutes – and so in the space of an hour, you may only be able to complete two runs, or perhaps complete one and have a fair crack at another. There is plenty to experiment with though, as the later character classes are creative, including an exterminator armed with a flamethrower – who comes into his own on within the ice world – and a warlock who can summon spirits. Upon unlocking these characters, it becomes possible to permanently increase a few new stats, such as burning damage.
Visually it’s quite attractive, sporting detailed sprites – and lots of ‘em – and subtle lighting, although stage backdrops lack set-pieces and merely scroll endlessly. Things become hectic as the timer reaches the thirty-minute mark, but death never feels unfair as enemy attacks are clearly indicated. Even upon being suddenly surrounded by foes there’s always a small gap to slip through. Increase movement speed massively and you’ll be able to run rings around the hordes, herding them into the centre of the screen. Being able to kill even stronger adversaries with a single hit is quite satisfying. Loosing half your health after a minor blunder, not so much.
I was quite surprised to learn of Halls of Torment’s £5 price tag as there’s a lot of content here (six halls to beat and explore, countless quests, plus the new Boglands DLC) and the presentation is extremely polished, even having a stab at voice acting. You’ll have to grind a bit to overcome its later challenges, and it does take 2-3 hours to unlock the better character classes, but this is partly why it’s able to offer dozens of hours of playtime, being part of the experience. It would have benefitted from another defining feature to match its ‘90s style visuals, but there’s no denying it doesn’t make other auto-shooters in the same price point look sloppy in comparison.
Chasing Carrots Halls of Torment is out 28th Oct on PS5 and Xbox Series. It first launched on PC in 2024.