Go To Hell (1.8Mb)
What better title for Halloween day itself, for this little flash (and downloadable) game with a distinct horror element. I’m not being rude, this actually is the game’s title! There’s a nice mix of Earth, Air, Fire and Water in this game with dangerous (especially the mean-eyed bats!) creatures to contend with in the underground caverns. The game has a good element of Dig-Dug in it with a small element of Boulderdash thrown in for good measure. Dig your way down into hell, with enough coins collected to be let in!
You start off in a Churchyard (in the cemetery!) and you have to dig down into the ground through earth rock and bones in search of 50 gold coins. You can only dig either down or to the side from places you can stand on. There’s a lot of water underground, and also torches that can harm you. You can’t dig through boulders though you can push them into spaces from standing on solid ground, and they fall into holes you dig beneath them, though don’t get in their way when they fall. They will kill enemies if dropped onto them, and water will thankfully put out torches and kill some other baddies.
But there’s an awful lot of water underground, and you run out of air if submerged for too long. You can swim though, and can even jump up out of the water, and jump or walk along the water surface (clever you!). As well as coins there are medi-kits to help restore your health and joints of meat to eat as food. All this digging makes you mighty hungry! You have three meters to measure your health, your hunger and your air supply. If any of these reach zero, before long you’ll lose a life. Sometimes you have to make good use of air pockets, or surface at regular intervals to get more air, and wait until your air supply is fully replenished. There is sometimes not nearly enough food or medi-kits about to meet your needs.
The water flows when released which adds a new element to this Dig Dug/Mr Driller type of game. Deeper down there are lava pools to avoid. Other hazards include worms and spikes.
Although you can jump quite high, and swim up through deep water, because you have to have your feet on the floor to dig, you’ll find that there’s often no way to retrace your steps or reach some other items. So it’s ever sideways and ever on downwards in your quest for coins and survival! You can go off one side of the screen and appear off the other, and in fact are shown on both sides of the screen when at the edge of the screen.
Each game is different as the caverns and item locations are procedurally generated at random, so luck can play a fair part in your success, as does choosing a suitable digging strategy. You start off with 4 lives and can get extra lives (hearts)at random locations further down. When you lose a life, all the meters are reset to full and you spawn or re-incarnate at the location where you lost a life.
My best attempt so far is 43 coins collected by a depth of 386 metres! If you reach sufficient depth with enough coins you succeed in the game and arrive at the gate into hell! And adoring hoards at your ‘success’! It’s a good bit harder than Dig Dug, and one game you might get a few extra lives while in another you might struggle to make it half-way down!
The graphics and music are decidedly retro with your player being well pixelated! It’s an excellent game that’s entertaining and a lot of fun to play; if you don’t mind occasional waits while you catch your breath out of the water!
It plays offline in a media/flash/shockwave player, though not in a web browser. There are a fair number of sites where you can play the game online. Happy Halloween!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeAZOcBONio
Download HERE ----- (look for Download Go to Hell! to your desktop, lower down the page) -----
