Hedon, not the boomer shooter I expected

Here Comes Hedon!

So the reason I don't have abs is a combination of food being abundant and delicious contrasted by the unappealing struggle of finding motivation push, pull, or sit my way "upwards" a place I seldom travel without desire for locomotion to said foodstuffs. Sure, I could spend my time doing other productive things to aid in funding my yearlong habit face-stuffing and videogame playing, but that, alongside my loathing for all things effort, leads me to the revelation that is not of the Resident Evil kind; doing stuff can be hard, especially long term projects and any-year resolutions. Being a self-starter, self-employed, or generally self-motivated are all superpowers that even some X-Men mutants lack. What videogames don't lack is a host of moving parts and systems that often take entire development teams, oftentimes leading down the path of missed deadlines, crunch time, and day one patches. It's a rough business that rife with early access scams and financial ruin. Solo videogame projects are all the more impressive, they hit close to home for anyone who has a creative project that's gathering dust, or maybe just want's to leave the 40hour grind to do their dream job. Enter Hedon developer Zan.

How Hedon Came to Be

One man dev team, Zan, who is confusingly also the name of Hedon's protagonist, is a story of modder turned developer. I won't write about this particular Zan's story, but the story of Hedon instead. According to the Hedon Wiki the game was originally a Doom total conversion that couldn't be monetized due to Gzdoom licensing and the fact that it required the original Doom wad file. Both of these things changed 2019 and led to the commercial release of Hedon on Steam. Now there's a bit of controversy that would have people calling Hedon a "paid Doom mod" but a its a total conversion mod that doesn't require the Doom wad. Not to mention, all Hedon's assets are original works made by Zan himself. If Hedon is a paid Doom mod, then there's a whole lot of paid Crytek and Unity mods cluttering the Store pages of our favorite vendors. My own opinion is that Hedon is it's own game. 

Departure From Doom

The only things that Hedon has in common with the Doom-verse are Hell and demons, the rest would be like comparing apples to horses. The fantasy setting of Zans adventure first appears like the kind of Tolkein-like fantasy setting that lacks originality, but deeper into the levels of Hedon and things really start to show the unique lore and fantasy tech at work. There's guns, machines and science that can't really be described as steampunk, as they're often powered by crystals or magical spells. I'll have to invent a new term to describe it, so I maybe just the first to coin the term "Zan-tech". It's a fantasy setting that relies heavily on crystals and ores buried deep beneath the earth, so naturally a lot of the game takes place there, but it's not a fantasy universe without some fantasy races, so you'll see elves, dwarves, minotaur, demons, orcs and demon-orc hybrids, atleast one of them. Zan is the player-character in Hedon, but she's not alone, there's an entire Iron Division. It's an all female orc and goblin military force that has enough thick thighs to crush an army of watermelons, and they're all out of watermelons. 

Women's Olympic Ax event

Zan, not the game dev but the character, is the black blue sheep of the Iron division, she's half demon and the focal point of the story. While she never got any demon powers to go along with her pretty horns and blueberry skin-tone, she does have the physical strength yeet a battle-ax through a dozen cultists. I don't know if that's unnatural demon strength, or female hysteria, likely both. If melee isn't your thing, there's handful of guns that fit well into the fantasy setting and deviate pretty far from Doom. There's an all-star cast of fantasy guns that fill the classic fps weapon roles, this time all with alt-fire modes that make the most of each gun. The Fragfire cannon is an instant classic that stands in place of a shotgun and spews flame on the alternate fire. The crossbow offers the choice of HE and AP bolts for killing different types of enemies, though I'm sure it would work fine in light armored vehicles. Other weapons include but are not limited to a spike gun, potion launcher, great ax and cry-lance. I never felt under-armed playing through the game on Hedonistic difficulty, though looking through the weapon list online I noticed I'd missed a few. 

Underground University 

Immolating, eviscerating and dominating the cultists and demons of Hedon isn't just about weapons, there's a bunch of useable items that can be activated at opportune times to turn the tides in Zans favor. It's like the inventory system in Duke Nukem 3D, though there's no need for anabolic enhancement in Hedon. Instead, I found a host of potions and items that granted time-freeze, invulnerability, night-vision, and even a deployable sentry gun. The 13 or so items that offer various buffs and benefits complicate things a little, I didn't use many of them other than health vials, but I think playing again on a harder difficulty would afford me the foresight needed to fully capitalize on these goodies. Cycling through a dozen or so items during combat just mirrors the old fps problem of having too many guns though, so activating pre-emptively may have served me better. There are huge spawns of enemies throughout the Hedon campaign, but if you expected a Doom reskin or fantasy action title you'd be pretty disappointed.

Yes, that's a magical choker necklace.

Stop to Smell the Crystals

Hedons developer obviously didn't set out to make the next horde shooter. From the outset there is a purposefully slowed pace that was unexpected, but did a lot in terms of worldbuilding. Entire sections of the game that feature little or no combat and instead focus on high levels of environment interaction and puzzle solving. It's beyond something you'd see in a Doom or Build Engine game and more like  the Resident Evil games I've played. Collecting keys is far too simple, how about vines to make purple ink that's needed to make a spellbook, then use the spell to disable a door locking ward. I even had to make an iron key from scratch, from beginning to end of the process. It would have been easier to kick the door down, but Zan isn't that kind of orc. A minor issue I had were telling the readable from the decorative notes and scrolls in the game, they both looked the same to me, so mashing the use-key had Zan becoming audibly frustrated alongside me. If frustration is your thing, then consider that difficulties beyond medium (hedonistic) will be less intuitive puzzle-wise. Hedon has a lot of lore and worldbuilding, I'll go as far as to say I enjoyed it more than the puzzles, but I wouldn't be in those environments so long if it weren't for those puzzles. 

It Warped my Fragile Little Mind

The whole game of Hedon is packed into nine huge levels, this is likely a reference to the nine circles of hell considering "hedon" is the name for hell in-universe. Some of these levels make me glad there's an automap. Things can and will feel like a slog, especially considering the bulk of the game is set underground, its not until the seventh map, Parapet, that I even got to see daylight. This is due mainly to the games plot and setting, though I still wanted to see more of that skybox. I'm no modder, but from what I can tell, Gzdoom doesn't require a lot of coding, but this comes at a cost. It's not a great game engine for platforming and Hedon does have a fair share of it. Another thing that stuck out to me was the warping of 2d sprites depending on proximity, another hallmark of Doom and it's sourceports. There may be a way to fix it the labyrinth of visual settings, but I'm not that experienced with the sourceport. Minor complaint: but I found the corpses of most enemies looked absolutely tiny compared to their living state. 

The Games Climax...Not That Kind, Perv

Towards the end of Hedon the action gets turned up from 2 to an 11 on the action scale. The shift from slow, plodding puzzle solving to blistering action and team based combat was jarring. It' really felt like there was more action in the final map than all the previous maps combined, though I maybe spent too much time looking for wooden planks and am still bitter about it. It turns out that Zan is also a sergeant in the iron division and can command a few companions. Sure she had amnesia and forgot, though it was a huge missed opportunity to have a few survivors in tow during the underground segments. I didn't even know it was possible to have AI followers in the games engine until then. Speaking of late game, I did finish Hedon on Hedonistic difficulty and found it fairly consistent with it's difficulty. It slowly rolls out more and more kinds of enemies and hazards to contend with. Things wrap up with a boss battle, but I won't spoil it. The fact that it does have a middle, beginning and end is the point, Hedon is a finished game that's not a broken mess or asset flip. It's an original title put together by one person not counting the music, which he bought with Patreon donations. It's a real show of fortitude and creative vision. 

Final Verdict

I found Hedon to be something different, novel. On one hand I found the puzzle solving and item hunting frustrating, but it helped strengthen the fantasy setting. Gunplay was satisfying enough that I never got tired of it and I liked throwing an ax like a frisbee. Everything came to a conclusion after 10 hours of solid gameplay and there's a sequel in the works. Overall good stuff, not the boomer shooter I expected, but a welcome surprise. The only question left is whether or not I ship Zan/Doomguy, but that's a story for another day. Stay on that backlog, Comrades.