99 Levels To Hell got a lot of chatter on my gaming radar when it first came out, but I was put off by various screenshots and videos of the game. I don't mind simple graphics, bit this one always felt a little off to me.

Eventually it was put into a Bundle Stars bundle, giving me the option to try it out. And though I put a few hours into it, I'm honestly happy I did not pick it up at release.

The game is not terrible, just a bit average and a little frustrating. My main issue is once again hit detection and cool downs, marred further by the shear amount of bloody* in both senses corpses that get plastered around the level.

With floaty jumping and hard to see enemies, this is a game where you feel you have to move fast but really forces you to move slowly until you master each level set. Once you have it down and have a few unlocks, it is rather easy to blast through each set of 10 levels to the boss battle. Or just skip them and move into the next zone.

Any yet, spend too much time on a level and ghosts appear in the corners and the level starts smoking. HURRY UP!

But either way, it is far too easy to get into a situation where you are guaranteed to lose several HP, and getting it back by shooting chests and boxes is a rare event.

The basic game is a side on 2D shooter roguelite. With not too much rogue. Levels have some randomisation, but the basic layouts appear too frequently. Item drops are sadly rare and most come off as useless. Gold can be collected but the few shops you find are often overpriced until late in the game or require you to abuse 'elevators'. The game's equivalent of warp points which have a chance of moving up higher up and closer to the start of the game, with all cleared levels respawened with loot and enemies.

You start with 'The Magician'. A basic character with a shotgun and low health. Through out the game you unlock a 3 other characters with different health and starting weapons. There's enough variety in them to make it worth switching over to the latest unlock when you find them, but not enough to try each one over the game again unless you want the challenge.

Grenades can be dropped but after the first 30-40 levels or so they became rather useless. By then you'll of learnt to master shooting at steep angles or pit jumping to get rid of enemies you normally could not hit. It might be worth picking them up for the time you need to blow up a bolder to get a special item. But more likely, that special item will be frickin' useless.

Graphically it is a bit of a mess. Cartoonish style characters and some enemies clash with the gory and more detailed designs of some levels. It just causes the whole game to feel inconsistent.

As said, you can also plaster the map with blood. This does make it hard to see creeping monsters as they hide behind the sprite. If there's a lot of blood, remember to shoot into it just in case something has found the way into the mess.

Boss designs feel like they were going for something but just miss it. While I did enjoy the robotic monsters and boss, the rest are a total pain and not fun to combat against. You're best off to grind away and find a weapon damage mod to take them down fast before them spawn annoying monsters all around the map.

And lastly, audio. There's not much, ambient drones and midi sounding metal make up what little there is of a soundtrack and all weapons sound like there is no actual grunt to them. I've got a bloody*in one sense big shotgun that rips through the demon flesh. Let me feel the power of that thing!

99 Levels To Hell is a game that has an audience. But that audience is not me. I ended up spending 5 hours with this as it has a feeling that just a little further and it will get better.

But it does not.

Which is a shame really. There's fun here, once you get past the large number of flaws.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on sale (Bundle Stars)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 14 June 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
Processor: Intel Core i5 2410M 2.30Ghz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics Family
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 1130 MB available space
Additional Notes: Mouse, Keyboard or Controller