Halls of Torment

The “bullet heaven” genre—or survivor-like, if you prefer—has become a digital landfill of low-effort clones since Vampire Survivors set the world on fire in 2022. Most developers seem content to slap colorful anime sprites onto a basic math-scaling engine, add some flashing lights, and call it a day. It’s a formula that works for a quick dopamine hit, but it’s often devoid of soul or genuine artistic intent. Chasing Carrots, the developer behind Halls of Torment, took a significantly different, more labor-intensive path. They looked back at the late 1990s, specifically the era of pre-rendered sprites and isometric gloom, to build a game that feels like a long-lost Blizzard North prototype. This is a fundamental commitment to an era of gaming defined by heavy atmosphere, low-fidelity voice acting, and a specific kind of visual “crunch” that modern high-definition graphics often lack.

By leaning into this aesthetic, Halls of Torment carves out a unique space in a crowded market. It’s a game that understands the power of nostalgia without being a slave to it. The underworld you descend into is designed to feel genuinely hostile, a place where the darkness works as a mechanical presence that heightens the tension of every encounter. It sits in a unique market position: it’s accessible enough for the casual crowd that enjoys the “one-stick” simplicity of modern roguelites, yet it’s steeped in the mechanical depth of traditional ARPGs. By introducing a complex gear system and a persistent quest-based progression model, it moves the needle away from pure RNG and toward meaningful, intentional builds. It’s a game that respects the history of the PC gaming landscape while remaining light enough on hardware to push thousands of enemies onto the screen. In a sea of bright, poppy survivors, Halls of Torment is a dark, welcome anomaly that proves there is still room for growth and artistic expression in the “horde survival” space. It doesn’t just ask you to survive; it asks you to conquer a world that looks and feels like it belongs on a CRT monitor in a dimly lit basement circa 1998.

• 11+ Unique Character Classes: From the tanky Warrior to the glass-cannon Archer and the crowd-clearing Exterminator, each class is built to feel distinct and demands a specific approach to positioning and upgrade priority.
• The Well Mechanic: Unlike its peers, this game allows you to retrieve equipment found during a run. By dropping items into a well, you store them for future attempts, adding a layer of permanent loot-hunting similar to Diablo.
• Deep Progression System: With over 500 quests, the game avoids the “wall” many roguelites hit. Every run offers progress, unlocking new traits, items, or stages.
• Blessings and Marks: A meta-progression system that lets you buy permanent stat boosts with gold, allowing you to fine-tune your power level to overcome the increasing difficulty of later stages.
• Tormented Lords: Epic boss encounters that close out each 30-minute run. These bosses require pattern recognition and tactical movement to defeat, not just raw damage output.

The core of Halls of Torment is the 30-minute countdown. It’s a familiar timer, but here it carries a weight that feels more oppressive than its contemporaries. Where other survivor games lean into flashy, neon-soaked chaos, Halls of Torment opts for a slow-burn escalation of dread. You start as a fragile survivor in a murky dungeon, and by the 25-minute mark, the screen is a shifting mass of skeletons, demons, and eldritch horrors. The transition from survival to dominance is earned through a series of micro-decisions that feel weightier because the stakes are higher. One wrong move doesn’t just end a run; it costs you the gear you were hoping to send back to the surface. This creates a tension that is often missing from the genre’s more arcade-leaning entries.

The Gear and The Well

The “Well” mechanic is the smartest innovation in the game. In most survivor-likes, the items you find are transient—gone the moment you die or win. Halls of Torment introduces a sense of permanence that mirrors the loot-chase of a classic ARPG. When you find a rare set of boots or a powerful ring, you have to make a choice: do you keep it for the current run’s power boost, or do you fight your way to the Well to secure it for your permanent stash? This creates a secondary objective within the primary survival loop. You are a courier in a hostile land, dodging projectiles while protecting the loot you carry. Once items are secured, you can equip them at the start of future runs, allowing for “build-around” strategies that are far more reliable than the luck of the draw. This system adds a layer of strategic depth that rewards long-term planning over short-term survival.

Class Identity and Synergy

Class diversity is another pillar of the experience. The Exterminator, for instance, uses a flamethrower that requires constant pivoting to keep the horde at bay, while the Shield Maiden encourages a more aggressive, “push-into-the-pack” style of play. As you level up during a run, you choose between traits that modify your attacks—increasing range, speed, or applying status effects like burn or frost. The synergy between these traits and your equipped gear is where the high-level play resides. The key is understanding the “damage buckets” and how to optimize your specific character’s strengths, not simply picking the highest percentage boost. You might find a ring that boosts fire damage, which suddenly makes a fire-based trait build significantly more viable. This interplay between meta-progression (gear) and in-run RNG (traits) is handled with a level of polish that few other games in the genre can match.

The Boss Encounters and Stage Design

Halls of Torment doesn’t just throw enemies at you; it throws challenges. Each stage has its own personality, from the claustrophobic halls of the Haunted Caverns to the open, desolate wastes of the Ember Grounds. The “Tormented Lords” that appear at the end of each run are genuine tests of skill. These bosses utilize complex attack patterns—area-of-effect slams, summoning circles, and projectile waves—that demand mastery of a character’s movement. Defeating a Lord is about execution, not just having high enough stats. The design builds toward a clear climax: a boss that has ended several previous runs becomes a satisfying final hurdle for the 30-minute struggle.

The Quest for Content

With over 500 quests, the game solves the genre’s biggest problem: the lack of a clear “why” after the first few wins. These quests range from simple kill counts to complex multi-run achievements. They serve as the primary unlock mechanism, gating new items and classes behind specific feats of skill. This turns every run into a checklist of potential accomplishments. Even if you fail to defeat the Tormented Lord at the end of the timer, you likely checked off three or four quests that provided a small boost to your future power. This feedback loop is incredibly tight and avoids the feeling of wasted time. It keeps you coming back for “one more run” because you know that even a failure is a step toward a greater success.

The aesthetic direction is a standout achievement in nostalgia. The pre-rendered visuals look exactly like a high-end PC game from 1997, complete with chunky animations and a color palette dominated by browns, grays, and deep reds. The UI design follows suit, with stone textures and gothic fonts that evoke a sense of grim importance. On the technical side, a 2D game of this scope is light on hardware, and the design of hordes built from simple sprites is well suited to maintaining smooth performance even in the most crowded moments. The sound design deserves special mention; the “crunch” of a skeleton shattering or the low-fi growl of a demon adds an auditory satisfaction that makes the combat feel visceral. It’s a strong example of how a limited aesthetic can be more impactful than chasing photorealism.

On Steam, the game is well suited to a controller, though the mouse and keyboard support is competent. The twin-stick nature of the combat (aiming and moving independently) maps naturally to an analog stick. For those who prefer the precision of a mouse, the game offers a “directional aim” mode, though it plays as a bit more clinical by design. The game is also a natural fit for the Steam Deck; its short-session nature and low hardware overhead make it an ideal “pick up and play” title for handheld enthusiasts. The Steam version also benefits from achievements and cloud saves, which are essential for a game with this much meta-progression.

Halls of Torment is a rare example of a game that knows exactly what it wants to be and executes that vision with discipline. It respects your time by providing constant progress through its quest system, and it respects your intelligence by offering a gear system that requires genuine thought. It is a refinement of a genre that many thought had already peaked. Chasing Carrots has managed to capture the lightning of the survivor-like craze and bottle it inside a container of classic ARPG design. If you have any affection for the dark fantasy aesthetics of the late 90s, or if you simply want a survivor-like that offers more than just flashing lights and numbers, we recommend it without hesitation. It’s dark, it’s difficult, and it’s built to be very hard to put down.