Hell Clock: Cursed War DLC screenshot
Image: Rogue Snail & Mad Mushroom

It's rare for an action-RPG (especially a fast-paced one openly inspired by Path of Exile) to use real, grim history as its backdrop, but last year, Hell Clock pulled it off. Just shy of the game's anniversary, indie studio Rogue Snail is back with a second helping with the Cursed War expansion today. For those unfamiliar, Hell Clock is a fast-paced action RPG with a more roguelite structure than most, based around short runs where your character starts mostly from scratch, unlocking permanent upgrades and new challenges as you dig deeper.

The Cursed War DLC adds a fourth act to Hell Clock's main story, featuring a new set of haunted environments, enemies, and loot to go hunting for. There are six new skills to work into your buildcrafting, and (in another nod to Path of Exile, which Rogue Snail cite as an open inspiration), you can now enable Journeys, equivalent to PoE's Leagues. Each adding a modifier to your next playthrough, and while more will come later, Cursed War adds the 'Nightmares' journey, spawning portals to corrupted versions of the next area on your run with higher risks and rewards to match.

The expansion also adds a new endgame mode—Endless Nightmares—which lets you pick your poison. In classic Roguelike pick-3 style, you choose an environment to go to, a reward, and some negative twist to increase the difficulty of your next dungeon delve. Every seven floors, you get to pick again. Rinse and repeat until you die horribly. Also, there's a new set of options to pick from when you level up, including a set of new unique modifiers for your existing skills, which the developers describe as 'powerful, but unreliable'. All in all, it sounds like more Hell Clock, which isn't bad at all, given how much I liked the base game.

As mentioned, Hell Clock has some surprisingly heavy subject matter, set after Brazil's 1896 War of Canudos. An almost entirely one-sided conflict when the government of the time chose to wipe out the impoverished, independent settlement of Canudos. Of the 25,000 inhabitants, there were an estimated 150 survivors. The expansion expands the scope of the tale, following protagonist Pajeu back to his early days fighting in the Paraguayan War. Another deep well of human suffering given a supernatural spin here.

Hell Clock is available on Steam for £16.75/$20, with the Cursed War expansion costing a further £9.09/$10. New players can pick up both together at a slight discount here. Oh, and for authenticity's sake, I highly recommend the Brazilian Portuguese voicework over the English dub.