Hell Maiden promo shot
Image: AstralShift

Was some kind of Faustian bargain made requiring every studio to make a Vampire Survivors-inspired 'Bullet Heaven' game? Mixing mythologies, perhaps, but I cannot deny Hell Maiden stands out from the power-levelling crowd. Launching into early access today, it's the latest from Portuguese indies AstralShift, and posits itself as a direct continuation of Dante's Divine Comedy reimagined in the style of an old-school shoujo manga. Yes, of course the entire cast are pretty doe-eyed girls; what did you expect?

Doe-eyed girls who frequently pine fiercely for one another are AstralShift's bread and butter, of course, with their past titles including the excellent gothic horror adventures Pocket Mirror and Little Goody Two Shoes. And like their other games, there's more narrative focus than you'd expect in a game bout mowing through monsters like they're blades of grass. There's a Hades-like progression loop here, giving Dante (again, a girl) a chance to chat with the inhabitants of Limbo (the mostly-pleasant suburbs of Hell) before each dive into the abyss.

As mentioned, this is also Divine Comedy fanfic, picking up from the end of the original tale, give or take a few gender-swaps. After travelling through all of Hell, Dante has returned to Limbo without any memory of what transpired, but the other characters seem to remember. Another interesting twist is that AstralShift call this a 'horde-survival deck-building game', with less of a focus on building an absurd arsenal of screen-filling weapons, but rather building a stacked deck of perks that apply modifiers to your existing gear, with each of the poets you can befriend adding their own set of cards to the pool.

Hell Maiden is a fresh Early Access debut, and AstralShift reckon that it'll take at least another year until it's finished. The current version includes two (of nine) circles of hell, four Poets of Limbo to pal around with and four primary weapons with 40+ abilities to collect. Price increases are planned, but if you want to get in on the ground floor of Girl Hell, Hell Maiden is currently going for £10/$10, with a small discount available if you own other games in the genre like Nimrods, Jotunnslayer, Halls Of Torment, Rogue: Genesia and our recently-featured Ascend to ZERO.