Night at the Gates of Hell is a first-person retro-style Survival Horror game created by Black Eyed Priest (Jordan King) and Henry Hoare, and published by Puppet Combo under his Torture Star Video sub-brand for third-party games.
Similar to Puppet Combo's own games, as well as Jordan King and Henry Hoare's previous game, Bloodwash, the game uses a PS1/VHS era aesthetic. While Bloodwash was inspired by slasher films, Night at the Gates of Hell is inspired by old zombie films, particularly the various Italian and European zombie horror films which were localized as "Zombi 3". Players take the role of David, who must leave his apartment and survive after a Zombie Apocalypse brought about by a Satanic cult, in which the dead walk the Earth and feast on the flesh of the living.
Here are trailers
for the game and even a gameplay trailer narrated by Suzi The Sphere Hunter.
Night At The Gates Of Hell contains examples of:
- Actionized Sequel: While Bloodwash was mostly a slow-burning, story-driven horror experience, Night at the Gates of Hell is much more gameplay focused, with Survival Horror elements such as Resources Management Gameplay and the constant threat of death being much more prominent. Still, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, so the game is still approachable even to less action-oriented players.
- An Arm and a Leg: Skeeter dies during the second wave of the church defense. Getting his abdomen ripped open and his arm violently ripped off by a zombie for chow.
- Bag of Spilling: You lose all your collected resources between each chapter.
- Black Dude Dies First: Inverted; David and Stan are both dark-skinned and are the only survivors of their group, though the game ends with them ending up in Hell/The Nether and looking for a way out.
- Boom, Headshot!: The only way to kill a zombie. A few rare zombies complicate this by having dislocated heads that are bent backwards or hanging between their legs, making shooting them trickier. One rare zombie has no skull or flesh, just a brain swaying on top of a spinal cord, which is a much smaller target than a regular head.
- Brain in a Jar: Dr. Fleshenstein turns out to be a brain in a jar (complete with googly eye stickers). His zombified body moves independently and obeys his verbal commands.
- The Cameo: Survival horror youtuber Suzi the Sphere Hunter appears later in the game as a woman who's been locked inside a coffin for reasons which are never explained. It also becomes a Death by Cameo as by the time David returns to the coffin, she's zombified.
- Creepy Child: Charles, one of the survivors you encounter in the coastal town, is bald and wrinkled and looks more like a 4 foot tall old man than an actual child. He's also got the belligerent attitude to match. His mother, Belinda, also still breastfeeds him, which the rest of the group find understandably
Squicky. Towards the end of the game Skeeter even questions whether Charles is a kid at all. - Cult: A Satanic cult is shown to be responsible for the zombie apocalypse, and seem to have become widespread in the city and town where the game takes place.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Despite the fairly tight Survival Horror Resources Management Gameplay, dying doesn't set you back at all, and simply respawns you near where you died, with the game even giving you a small amount of supplies.
- Decoy Protagonist: The prologue has you playing as Liam, who seems to be Sara's lout boyfriend from Bloodwash. He doesn't last long.
- Denser and Wackier: The humor in this game far more crude and surreal compared to that of Bloodwash, who's comedic moments were fairly sparse and dry in tone.
- Dwindling Party: True to the genre, your group of survivors gets whittled down over the course of the game. Belinda gets eaten by a zombie shark, Stan pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to hold off said shark while everyone else escapes, Charles shoots himself in the head when he is armed with a gun, and the remaining survivors are killed one-by-one during the last stand against the unending hordes of the undead. Only David and Stan survive the events of the game after it's revealed that Stan made it out of his showdown with the shark and ends up saving David.
- Driven to Suicide: After Belinda is eaten by a zombified shark, Charles is left destitute and the moment he is armed with a revolver. He immediately pulls the gun on himself and shoots.
- Embedded Precursor: After beating the game, you can play The Booty Creek Cheek Freak, a short horror game by the devs which was released a few months before Night at the Gates of Hell, as well as Evil in the House of Dr. Fleshenstein, a horde mode game using the main game's mechanics, rather similar to Call of Duty: Zombies.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Big Bad, Father Friedstein, has an insanely deep demonic modulated voice.
- Eye Scream: Early on the game, David gets one of his eyes gouged out when a zombie arm bursts out of a wall and impales his head on a jagged piece of wood jutting out of the wall. Fortunately, it doesn't negatively affect your combat effectiveness in any way.
- Full-Frontal Assault: One of the survivors that David and his group meet is a naked prisoner, thankfully the polygonal graphics means he's got Barbie Doll Anatomy.
- Homage: To both PS1-era Survival Horror games and classic zombie films. Particularly Italian-based films from directors such as Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei.
- Harmful to Minors: Quite a few children are shown as dying during the zombie apocalypse. Your neighbor's two children turn out to have become zombies and attack you, a number of zombie children ballerinas attack you at the town's dance school, and Charles is Driven to Suicide some time after the death of his mother (although whether or not he actually is a child is ambiguous).
- Hypocritical Humor: When the survivors take refuge in a church, Skeeter notes that it's "Quieter than a mute nun's pussy on christmas", the prisoner attempts to chastise Skeeter for his language in front of Charles, but Skeeter fires back that with the prisoner being completely nude in front of said "child", he doesn't have much room to say what's appropriate.
- Invincible Minor Minion: Since zombies can only be killed by headshots, zombies wearing helmets are functionally invincible. One chases you through a crawlspace in the apartment complex while cultists block your path forward, and one will start patrolling near the shack in the coastal village where the survivors are hiding once you start accomplishing some of your objectives.
- It Can Think: The cultist enemies are indicated to be zombified just like all the other zombies, but they're uniquely intelligent enough to use firearms, set up ambushes, take prisoners, etc.
- Last Stand: How the game ends, with you and your 3 surviving companions holding out against the zombie horde as you fall one by one.
- Legacy Boss Battle: Dr. Fleshenstein's body fights exactly like the Womb Ripper from Bloodwash, only he's a little slower, can only be damaged with headshots, and can only be beaten by finding and destroying his seperate brain.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: David has the corpse of "the love of his life", Violet, stashed in one of the rooms of his apartment, presumably killed by the zombies. When he's finally about to escape his apartment complex, David hears noises coming from Violet's room and goes to "rescue" her corpse, carrying her around as he leaves because she's "come back to him". Violet of course attacks him in the elevator, forcing him to stab her in the head and note to himself he needs to get it together.
- Off with His Head!: In the last stand, the Captain gets his head ripped off by one of the zombies.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: There's no health meter in the game, and being grabbed by an enemy is an instant death. However, you can find and collect kitchen knives laying around, which will automatically be used to stab a zombie in the head and escape from their grasp if they grab you.
- Raising the Steaks: One of the main threats to the survivors is a deadly zombie shark that eats Belinda, Stan decides to take the undead beast head on to give the rest of his survivor group a chance to survive and escape.
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Most zombies can take a body shot without a problem but shooting or stabbing them in the head is the only way to put them down. Certain zombies have some quirks that make this a bit harder however.
- Resources Management Gameplay: You have limited revolver ammo, shotgun ammo, and kitchen knives (which are essentially your lives), and must get through the zombie-infested environments without running out. At the same time, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, so this is somewhat downplayed.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Played with, while the revolver is one of David's primary weapons. It doesn't do much to the zombies when it comes to body shots however it can take them down with a single headshot. This is balanced as it takes longer to reload the more bullets it fires.
- Serial Killer: Turns out that your old man neighbor, from whose apartment you obtain your revolver, is actually a serial killer with a massive kill room in his apartment.
- Sex Signals Death: The prologue chapter has Liam being invited by his new girlfriend Razor to a cemetary for sex. When Liam leaves her to get a condom from his car, he comes back to find her being eaten by zombies and a few minutes later Liam himself is subject to an Uncertain Doom after being jumped by a zombie nun.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: In the coastal town you can acquire a shotgun, which doesn't need to be aimed as precisely as the revolver, and can kill some of the more difficult enemies more easily, such as the zombies whose dislocated heads are hanging down their back making them difficult to headshot from the front.
- Shout-Out:
- The game's title is a nod to both Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the US title for City of the Living Dead.
- The above mentioned eye gouging is a homage of the eye gouging scene from Zombi 2.
- The event that kicks off the plot (a person committing suicide by hanging and opening a gateway to hell and in turn starting the zombie outbreak as a result) is taken straight from City of the Living Dead
- Stealth Sequel: The Decoy Protagonist from the game's prologue is named Liam, and seems to be Sara's lout boyfriend from Bloodwash. Stan, Sara's Only Sane Man neighbor from Bloodwash, also appears later in the game as a member of your group of survivors, where he's once again the Only Sane Man.
- Threatening Shark: A giant zombie shark is fought as a boss battle about halfway through the game, while you're on a small boat in the middle of the ocean.
- Undead Child: A lot of them, from the David's neighbor's children to an entire dance school filled with undead ballerinas.g
- Zombie Apocalypse: Of the "the gates of Hell have been opened" variety.
