I am going to be completely honest here; I don’t think I am properly utilizing all of the mechanics of this game, but hot damn, it has me hooked. Horripilant please don’t ask me to pronounce this title (it will be butchered), is developed by Alexandre Declos and published by Black Lantern Collective. This game has been a horrifyingly pixelated dungeon-crawling, resource-management, and idler experience so far. I have over 12 hours in this eerie dungeon crawler, and it is definitely worth picking up; for sure it’s worth checking out the demo.
This will be a new series of game coverage where I spend at least 5 hours with a game to see if the game is playable, if I had fun playing it, and what type of gamer I think will have fun playing it.
First 5 Hours
This is not the first idle game I have played, but what makes this one stand out is the mysterious world and resource management. You wake up in an unknown dungeon that is in an unknown location. Some eerie, vague messages let you know that “This is where all paths stop pretending they can lead elsewhere.” The dungeon has some crates in a corner, a bonfire that asks if you want to put some meat on the fire, two doors, and what looks like caskets in another corner. The caskets and crates probably can be moved or destroyed, but I have not figured out what to do with them yet.
Horripilant has multiple areas you can interact with, and they are accessible through the map. You will be clicking that map a whole lot outside of the seemingly infinite dungeon. Within my playtime, I have access to the dungeon, the camp (basically home base), the hole, the resource gathering area, the gear upgrading area, and the backroom.
From what I have gathered so far, the point of the game is to get stronger. You are being guided towards greatness by slaying increasingly grotesque monsters. Starting from rats, I have advanced to killing skeletons, and it seems every so many floors the creatures change. I have only made it to floor 25 so far, but not because I could not advance, but because I decided to be reborn through the rebirth mechanic.
There is a guiding entity that dwells in “the hole”; it gives you an opportunity to sacrifice your current life/run in order to access “Hemalith.” This is the resource needed to improve your future growth and abilities. Everything from increased resource gathering speeds to increased buffs.
Speaking of resources, there are a few that will be everything you care about while playing. Meat, yes I said meat, Hemalith, wood, rock, and iron—these resources were what I found myself grinding the endless dungeons for. The way to obtain meat is to simply kill creatures in the dungeon. It is used to increase the wood, rock, and iron inventories. Wood is the first resource you have access to harvest, and it allows you to increase the power of your gear. Rock does the same, but it enhances different aspects of your gear. For example, wood will increase your damage output, while rock will increase another aspect of your combat or defensive abilities. I have not unlocked iron yet, so I do not know what it does.
Once again, this game at its core is an idler, but it has a roguelike element to it where you choose your boons after each boss battle. The boons will increase things such as defense, attack speed, health regeneration, and even how much meat you gather per kill. These boons, mixed with the way you spend your resources on improving your gear and how you spend your Hemaliths, will improve how far you go in the dungeon.
Is it Playable?
Absolutely Horripilant is playable; I have been running it on my PC and ROG Ally Z1. One issue I ran into while using my handheld is the text would sometimes overlap while in the gear upgrading screen. Another was that the hemalith attribute screen was difficult to navigate while using my handheld; accidental selections and the screen shifting before finalizing my choices made it much easier to play the desktop version of the game. But to be clear, most of my playtime has been on handheld, so the issues I am bringing up are not deal breakers for handheld-focused gamers.
Did I Have Fun Playing Horripilant?
Horripilant has an addictive gameplay loop that has me playing it as I am typing this (the image above shows the current screen). The game has multiple ways for you to constantly play the game. If you want to simply farm meat on a dungeon floor you know is not a problem for you, simply press the box that allows you to loop the current floor. There are features in the game that can automate a lot of your experiences, so you are not having to stare at the screen as you grind for 5 million units of meat to increase the amount of rock you can hold so that you can unlock the iron resource to better improve your gear. Even though this is an idler game, I found myself planning how to spend my resources and strategizing my reincarnations. All of this to say, I am having a surprising amount of fun playing a game that does not require much of me to play it.
Who Would Enjoy Horripilant?
The busy gamer, who likely has numerous games installed on their phone, may not open these apps frequently enough to fully enjoy them. An RPG fan who is looking for the elements of the genre but does not want to invest too much thought into it. There are also mysteries within Horripilant that I have not been able to solve, and the biggest one of all is the thing in “the hole.” The game is a solid, well-fleshed-out idle autobattler with horror and resource management mechanics. Highly recommend this Horripilant, especially if any of those descriptions resonate with you; the game’s low cost makes it worth checking out.
Overall, with at least 5 hours in Horripilant, I had fun watching my nameless knight battle pixelated creatures in a creepy dungeon for meat and levels, all for an entity in a hole. For $7.99 on Steam, you are going to get hours of resource collecting and 1000+ floors of idle dungeon diving. I will definitely be playing this game on and off for a while, especially since it continues to harvest resources when you are not playing, like a mobile game.
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