Ever wondered what it would be like to work as the manager of Hell? Well, Heretic’s Fork gamifies the whole process of punishing sinners in all nine circles of hell by making you a corporate desk jockey working alongside one of the several demon employees who will grant you varying special abilities. But before we get into all that, what even is the game?
DECKBUILDING IN HELL
Heretic’s Fork is what you get when you combine your typical roguelike deckbuilding system with what I can only describe as a “stationary” Vampire Survivors. The basic premise of the game is that you will be using a randomized set of cards to defend the tower in the middle of the screen.
Sure, I guess you could call it a tower defense game. Given the bullet heaven nature of the game and the fact that you don’t really “build” anything, well, let’s just say I kinda like my description better.
So, to start off, you have to pick a demon employee to work with. These folks have all sorts of special abilities, including different skins that can grant them bonus passives. At the beginning, though, you’re stuck with the plain intern named Ruby.
Once you actually hop into the game, there are a lot of cards to experiment with and even more to unlock through a couple of meta-progression systems outside of a run. What it does differently from stuff like Slay the Spire is that you can combine cards of the same rarity to upgrade them into a random one of the next tier.
You also never run out of cards in a run, because the game will keep throwing generic “rocks” at you that can give very small buffs. There are also ways to take advantage of the card upgrading and banishing mechanic depending on which employee you picked, but I’ll leave those for you to discover on your own if you ever decide to pick up the game.
BECOME OVERPOWERED
Just like the many other games under the same genre, the ability to ramp up to absurd levels of power is present in Heretic’s Fork. While it doesn’t get as ridiculous as others, it can still get to the point where enemies don’t even show up in the actual arena anymore as they get obliterated off-screen. Just look at this mess of particle effects below:
I don’t even think the picture does it any justice, but it won’t make any sense when animated either, and man do I love it for that. Stuff like this is always fun to see in roguelikes. That’s not to say that the game is inherently “easy”, though, especially once you unlock the “Torment” game mode that increases difficulty.
As of writing this, I’ve yet to explore that mode yet, but I’ve already sunk hours of my time into the game and am having fun experimenting with all kinds of silly builds. On that note…
BANG FOR THE BUCK
With such an affordable price tag (at least with my regional pricing) and a decent amount of replayability, Heretic’s Fork is a fantastic entry to a heavily saturated genre. It does just enough to stand out from the crowd, and all the silly side content that you can interact with as you navigate your work computer in hell is a nice bonus.
The game also has a soundtrack full of metal and synthwave bangers, though admittedly it might not match the energy of the actual gameplay. That won’t stop me from headbanging while I throw cards around though.
Overall, it’s a great time killer that I would definitely highly recommend to roguelike fans like myself. The only thing to watch out for is the fact that a run will typically last up to around 50 minutes, assuming you make it all the way to the ninth circle of hell. You can also continue the run by activating the optional endless mode, but that doesn’t give any bonus rewards.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go start my next shift in the underworld. I mean this in the politest way possible, but uhh, see you in hell!