Space fighter combat is the ultimate video game escapist fantasy. No matter how exciting and extraordinary your real life may be, you’ll never pilot a fighter craft like Luke Skywalker. The technology and physics involved make this purely the realm of fiction.
Indie studio Italian Games Factory leans into the fantasy with Hell Galaxy, sending players to a world of cybernetic horror filled with exploration, dogfights, and alien encounters at every turn. The demo, available during February’s Steam Next Fest, shows a game that’s still rough around the edges but with the potential to stand alongside titles like Elite: Dangerous for its spaceborne combat.
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PostsThe game’s opening is like a ‘90s dark sci-fi fever dream in all the best ways. In the far future, convicted criminals have their consciousness transferred permanently into small starships called Raiders and are sent to gather rare resources in a faraway galaxy. You take the role of one of these unlucky souls, battling rogue drones and the remnants of a lost alien civilization on a quest for survival.
It’s unclear from the demo just how much of the setting will be deeply explored, but for the first few hours it gets by on cool factor alone. Whether you’re fleeing extraterrestrial ghosts that want to devour your electronic mind or facing down enormous robotic colossi, Hell Galaxy shows off its unsettling universe proudly.
Each area has planetary vistas visible outside a protective energy cage designed to keep out the aforementioned space ghosts. The stark beauty of the environments is a reminder that this galaxy is cold and lifeless; the only sentient beings are the Raiders, trapped in their metallic shells. Signal relays spout propaganda from back home and offer monetary incentives for Raiders to carry out specific objectives, but it’s clear that nobody here is seeing Earth ever again.
The flight controls are intuitive, but a bit less responsive than I would have liked. The protagonist’s metal body can move in all directions without needing forward momentum, which allows for neat tricks in combat, but it always feels like enemies are much more agile than the player. There’s an emergency boost for escaping engagements, but a short-burning combat boost would go a long way toward adding more strategy to battles and delivering on the high-octane feel that it’s going for.
Hell Galaxy’s ship customization will be the element that makes or breaks it. The demo allows a glimpse of the array of upgrades available, including engines, hulls, subsystems, and weapon mounts. I stuck with the standard Gatling gun loadout for my first time through, supported by a rocket launcher to track down smaller, quick enemies, and was delighted to find that adding additional barrels let me fire multiple guns at once; I’m excited to see just how much overwhelming firepower a late-game build is capable of.
While combat isn’t exactly forgiving, the starting ship is resilient enough to take a decent amount of fire, and if you’re really in a bind you can redirect more power to your shields until things cool down. Once your shields are gone, though, hits will trigger visual and audio cues that drive home the danger you’re in. It’s a reminder not only that you need to back off and repair, but that the ship’s hull is your character’s new body - the only one they’re getting.
Hell Galaxy hasn’t announced a release date, and there is still work to be done, but if you like space combat then it should be well worth the wait when the time comes to fully explore its monstrous reaches of the unknown.
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