Just make it out alive!
Blake Stone meets The Thing (1982).
Deathless Hyperion is an indie retro-style sci-fi / horror First-Person Shooter created by FrankieSmileShow, one that pays tribute to older games of it's kind - Blake Stone and Wolfenstein being it's most obvious inspirations.
Reaching a space station near Jupiter's orbit, you attempt contacting the station's personnel only to be greeted with complete silence. As you explore the station's deep, dark labyrinth-like corridors you discover an alien virus had wiped out everyone on board, besides spawning all sorts of grotesque, gigantic monsters.
The game is free to download on Itch.io, with a normal playtime of a little less than an hour.
This game contain examples of"
- Artificial Outdoors Display: One of the areas have the ceilings displaying the scenery of outer space, allowing you a clear view of Saturn while shooting away at enemies.
- Blackout Basement: More than one of the station's corridors are in total darkness, and your vision is limited to a circle illuminated by your flashlight. Even then you don't see very far into the dark...
- Body Horror: It goes without saying since the game is inspired by The Thing. You can come across infected ex-humans whose bodies have contorted and mutated to freakish proportions, notably having their mouths expanded into their chests and their hands contorting into gigantic claws and those ex-human mooks in spacesuits whose bodies are sprouting all kinds of tentacles.
- Book Ends: The game begins with a shot of outer space from inside the monster-infected station, lingering on Saturn as you land your ship. You spend the whole game searching for survivors (unsuccessfully) and battling monsters, before you make your escape, and as you flee the game then ends on another shot of outer space, once again focusing on Saturn.
- Container Maze: The Station Storage area has a Crate Maze you'll need to navigate across, while facing monsters left and right. Unlike other games of it's type, surprisingly the crates can't be destroyed to clear a path.
- Deflector Shield: There's a humanoid enemy (resembling The Greys) who has a spherical shield around them that activates when shot at. However it isn't very strong and can be penetrated easily by the Cryo Blaster.
- Eyepatch of Power: Selecting "Bounty Hunter", the highest difficulty, gives you an eyepatch, besides making you look a bit like a shorter-haired Snake Plissken.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- Your default character avatar shows you as a human. If you die at any point but have clones to spare, when you restart from your nearest checkpoint your avatar now shows you as a clone.
- All the non-mutated enemies appear to be clones (due to being bald with blue skin), suggesting that at some point after the original crew mutated, their clones were activated but have either succumbed to the early stages of the virus or did not activate properly and are all insane.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: You can collect food like sandwiches, toast, cheesecake and the like to replenish your health, never mind they've been left exposed for who knows how long in a virus-laden space station.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Paying homage to old-timey FPS games from the late 90s, the difficulty settings comes in a variety of flavours (your onscreen character's outfit even changes depending on the levels):
- Intruder
- Scout
- Explorer
- Scavenger
- Bounty Hunter
- Justified Extra Lives: The game's 1-Up are clones found in vats, which you activate after finding them (hence, the checkpoint). If you die, your clone takes over from where you last left it.
- Mooks, but no Bosses: The mutant monsters comes in a variety of designs, but oddly enough there isn't a "boss" mutant you need to fight. Your last stage simply ends with you reaching an exit.
- Muck Monster: One of the monster varieties, a gigantic humanoid pile of green slime with a face. Killing them results in half the area carpeted in green ooze.
- Our Clones Are Different: In the game, clones serve as Justified Extra Lives. You periodically come across clones in stasis tanks which you can activate, serving as a "checkpoint". If you die at any point of the game but have not used up all your clones, your clone revives itself and continues where it's left off.
- People Jars: The clones are found in stasis jars, and coming across each of them serves as a 1-Up.
- Sentry Gun: The base's security system will activate if you try accessing unexplored areas, leading to laser turrets dropping from the ceiling taking shots at you.
- Shows Damage: On your character's onscreen avatar. Losing more than half your health and your face starts showing cuts and bruises, and if your health is dangerously low you'll be bleeding heavily.
- Space Base: The whole game is set in one orbiting around Jupiter, which is devoid of life after an alien virus turns everybody onboard into rampaging monsters. In typical science-fiction manner, several areas even has gigantic windows offering a clear view of outer space.
- Spread Shot: The Cryo Blaster fires six shots at a time that spreads out in a wide arc.
- The Virus: An unnamed, unidentified alien virus of unknown origin is responsible for wiping out the ship's crew and turning everyone into deformede monsters. You're a human searching for survivors, but unfortunately it's too late.
- Launch Initiated!
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