Hell is Others is a top-down, Looter Shooter extraction game with elements of Surreal Horror. You play as a man named Adam, a resident of Century City, a dangerous and desolate city full of monsters where blood is a valuable resource. As a Fixer, Adam is tasked with performing Fetch Quests for the city's citizens, as well as destroying the Things and Others that prowl the streets.
The story begins with a bonsai tree being dropped off outside Adam's condo with a note promising a "reward" if it is kept watered for 10 days. Unfortunately, the plants in this world all feed on blood, forcing Adam to venture down into the dangerous city streets and gather blood by any means necessary. Alongside AI-controlled monsters called Things, creatures known as "Others", controlled by other players, hunt for blood of their own.
The main gameplay consists of descending from the safety of your condo into the city streets, fighting monsters and other players while scavenging for quest items, blood, or random junk to sell. You must also find an elevator to evacuate before the match's 12-minute timer has elapsed. In the vein of other extraction shooters such as Escape from Tarkov, death results in the loss of your whole inventory.
Between matches, you are able to furnish your condo gameplay boosts, water your bonsai tree and bullet plants with any collected blood, sell your junk, and talk to various NPCs. Just try to ignore the giant chasm with teeth in your bathroom wall.
Hell is Others was released on October 20, 2022.
Hell is Others contains examples of:
- A.K.A.-47: All of the guns have human names with honorifics, such as "Miss Rosebud" or "Sir Morris", but their icons are readily identifiable as iconic real-world weapons. Some of the guns obviously include a Luger, .45 Colt, AK-47, and Thompson.
- Arbitrary Gun Power: A single pistol or revolver bullet tends to do more damage than a single assault rifle bullet, making small arms more efficient at dealing with NPC monsters.
- Anti-Hoarding: Storage space is extremely limited and many items will rot if left overnight, forcing you to make use of them quickly until you can buy a fridge.
- Apathetic Citizens: The people of Century City are pretty nonchalant, all things considered. Alfred is unbothered by the sound of a distant explosion knocking out the power for a moment, Octave is single-mindedly interested in collecting trash, and Adam apparently doesn't find it strange that bullets literally grow out of the ground.
- As You Know: Lampshaded with Ermete during the tutorial level, where he briefs you on some basic gameplay as you're exiting the elevator...to Adam, who has gone out into the city dozens of times by that point.Adam: Why are you telling me this? It is not the first time that I've come to the city.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Several Things (Buzzing, Wedging, Crawling) have bright red weak points on their bodies. Shooting a weak point will deal twice the normal damage.
- Battle Trophy: All dead Others will drop their Miss Rosebud, which you may pick up for yourself. Although not very useful as a weapon (you always have one of your own), it is labeled as a trophy and sells for a pretty large amount if the Other was high level. It's basically the equivalent of dog tags from Escape from Tarkov.
- Breakable Weapons: All weapons have a condition given as a percentage, decreasing when fired (for guns) or striking a target (for melee weapons). At 0%, the weapon is permanently broken and can no longer be used.
- Catchphrase: "Nothing is done for nothing", the line Adam uses when accepting quests to indicate that he expects something in return.
- Central Theme: The central theme appears to be obsession. All of the NPCs are single-mindedly obsessed with one thing they cannot move away from. The Chasm is only ever concerned with Adam's well-being. Adam himself is obsessed with the Bonsai; he also misinterprets the Chasm's concern as criticism of his skills, causing him to push himself to ever greater lengths to prove his worth to someone who isn't asking him to. The Chasm even speaks pointedly about obsessions, although the lecture seems to be lost on Adam.Chasm: Obsessions are dangerous. It's not you who's looking for them, it's them that find you. And when they've found you, they begin to take over until you lose your grip on life. This city is full of lost spirits. Spirits torn by their obsessions.
- Composite Character: The Other Things combine the abilities of Others and Things into one package. They're essentially computer controlled Others.
- Continuing is Painful: Dying will cause you to lose all your held items and resets your stats, leaving you with nothing but the crappy starting gun. The only insurance you get is that your stored items remain, allowing you to store weapons, healing items and stat boosters for in case you die.
- Creepy Good: The Chasm, at first, seems to want to impede your progress, but it quickly turns out it's actually worried for you and loathes the bonsai for encouraging Adam to risk his life for blood.
- Death Cry Echo: If Adam or Others are killed, they make a scream that echoes twice and can be heard from quite some distance away. One death could lead to anyone within earshot running over to swipe the loot.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Every character has a subtitle that describes something about them, such as "Adam (You)", "Octave (Junk Dealer)", or "Chasm (Crack in the wall)". For the Notary, it's "Notary (Notary)".
- Early Game Hell: The first days of this game will undoubtedly be the hardest. You have few resources, a crappy gun (Alfred even calls it a toy) and baseline stats. At this stage it's usually better to run from combat, especially against The Others, rather than risk losing what precious few items you have. Once you survive a few nights, level up and have more items stockpiled, you'll be able to make riskier confrontations more easily. The Chasm even lampshades this, noting that you should watch the behavior of The Others to see if they are "prey" (those who run away) or "predators" (those who can fight back).
- Emergency Weapon: The Miss Rosebud pistol is not too strong, but it can never be broken or lost. If you run out of bullets, you can still use bare fists.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: Your Smell stat act as this, allowing you to detect directional noises from Things or Others.
- Evil Counterpart: While the player's character is Adam, every other player's character is shown to you as an Other, a Thing-like creature that thirsts for blood, weapons and creeds. Since they are literally Adam, just in a more vile appearance, their behavior is an exact match with Adam's, sole exception being how their players control them and spec out their builds. That being said however, some players might be friendly and leave you alone, zigzagging this trope.
- Fantastic Flora: The ground of Century City is apparently so "fertile" that it causes plants which grow functional bullets to sprout up anywhere there's grass.
- Game Lobby: Your condo.
- Here We Go Again!: Upon starting a new game, all you know is that you've received the Bonsai alongside a mysterious note, followed by a mysterious power outage. Upon choosing to prestige, Adam decides to give the Bonsai to a random Other, then attempts to sabotage the Notary by causing a power overload. You then take control of that Other (who sees himself as Adam, of course), restarting the story again.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Eating food will instantly restore health, and taking drugs (pills, mushrooms) will instantly grant the stat effects.
- In-Game Banking Services: You can deposit your Creeds into the bank after unlocking it, and can withdraw from any ATM in the city.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: The Notary, a computer, only ever says "Beep", yet Isolde holds detailed conversations with him. The gist of what the Notary says is helped along by Isolde doing Parrot Exposition or translating.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Your condo space can be redecorated to your liking with whatever furniture and wallpaper you can buy, and each piece actually contributes to special gameplay bonuses called "Imagos".
- Jump Scare:
- Hiding Things are completely invisible until you step within range and they attempt to bite you. It's worse if they inflict a Slow effect on you, because this plays a loud Scare Chord as well.
- Each time you progress the story to certain points and select to sleep. The game shows Adam quietly relaxing for a few seconds, then suddenly plays a Scare Chord alongside the Chasm asking you to come over and talk.
- Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Some of the game's logos prominently feature a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat. That's Dorothy, the proprietor of the fertilizer shop, and she is not particularly more important than the other 30 NPCs in the game.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Adam commonly claims to be very similar to the Others. Of course he is; the Others are just other players' Adams.
- Moving the Goalposts:
- When Adam asks Alfred to take a look at the tear in his wall, Alfred tells him to wait until tomorrow to see if it gets bigger. When it does, Alfred says the same thing he did yesterday. Once the tear turns into a Chasm, he still tells you that they'll do something about it tomorrow. Adam has enough of this and tells him to do something now. This goes on for a long while more.
- After turning in 1 million creeds to purchase the Bonsai, the Notary increases the price to 100 quadrillion creeds. At least you get a refund.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Adam pulls this on himself, as the Chasm keeps trying to illustrate the danger of Others, only for Adam to claim that he and the Others are more alike than the Chasm thinks.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Several iterations of the "A display of power" trials are played this way, with the Chasm expressing general concern for Adam's safety, while Adam interprets the concern as a direct criticism of his skills.
- On-Site Procurement: Pretty much everything useful needs to be found out in the city streets, and woe betide you if you die, as your loot is lost with you.
- Organ Drops: All Things and Others have a lootable heart, one of your primary sources of blood. Monsters also drop various other body parts (teeth, claws, organs), which can be used as fertilizer for bullet plants.
- Perception Filter: Adam is the player's character and your character only. Every other player is an Other, a humanoid creature resembling a Thing. Strangely enough, Adam states to the Chasm that he's an Other, despite looking like a human to both the player and NPCs. Adam will briefly flash into an Other in the round start animation, though. The Other Adam ends up sending the Bonsai to after prestige also ends up being another Adam, since that Other is now your player character. Ultimately, this is because of how the multi-player works; Adam, quite literally, is an Other, at least to the other players in a round.
- Recurring Riff:
- The main theme is remixed different ways in several locations, such as in the shops and during the epilogue.
- The lullaby-like tune hummed by the Chasm while inactive is also hummed by Mia, one of the NPCs in the city.
- Shop Fodder: Octave the Junk Dealer will pay a good amount of Creeds for specific bits and bobs you can find out in the city, and it's your primary way of making money.
- Universal Ammunition: The same bullets fit inside guns of any caliber, which is helpful given the limited inventory space. Averted as of the February 24th update, where calibers do exist.
- We Buy Anything: Averted with Octave, who only buys specific kinds of junk each day.
