The PlayStation’s ‘Hellnight’ incorporates demonic monsters, labyrinthine levels, and doomsday cults to deliver a unique, but unknown, experience. 

“You’re all alone now.”

The 1990s were a formative period for survival horror. Not only did the genre get to truly take its first real formative steps and turn out franchises that would help define it like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Clock Tower, but more experimental titles were also allowed to exist, many of which fell into the digital abyss and failed to have a lasting impact on the industry. Hellnight, or Dark Messiah as it’s known in Japan, takes some big swings. It’s set within a futuristic version of Tokyo, largely set underground, and it throws subterranean monsters and apocalypse cults at the audience. Yet in spite all of this craziness, Hellnight is largely a mixed bag.

One of the most interesting things about Hellnight is that it’s developed by Atlus, a company with a formidable reputation, but one that is more commonly known for lengthy RPGs. During the ‘90s it sometimes feels like everyone was trying to capitalize on the survival horror trend and Hellnight is Atlus’ quirky attempt. Konami handled the game’s European release in 1999, but there was no North American release for the title. This can largely explain why the game flew under the radar so much, but Hellnight is a title where there is bizarrely very little information available.

The game received barely any media attention and there aren’t even any official reviews from mainstream publications available for Hellnight. Additionally, details that should be readily available are incredibly scarce, like the game’s director. Hellnight is developed by Dennou Eizou Seisakusho, but details on the game’s production are almost non-existent (there’s basically just the game’s end credits and even those are sparse and do not list a director). Seisakusho would also work on deSPIRIA for the Dreamcast and some Game Gear titles, but nothing of considerable worth or of the same scope as Hellnight.

The introduction and “sizzle reel” that kick off Hellnight honestly feel like the opening cinematic of any survival horror game from he ’90s, but that’s oddly comforting in a way. This introduction also explains the game’s basic premise where not only does a subway accident take place that claims 56 lives (and you were on board during the crash), but most of the world has evidently fled underground to the subways and have found themselves in a war with the Dark Followers of a group called the Holy Ring who wish to bring forth a “Dark Messiah” with a plot that revolves around the impending Millennium (the game came out in 1998/1999). On top of that, the intro also not so elegantly explains that in this game you have no means of attacking and that you’re supposed to flee from your enemies (making this feel like a precursor to Outlast in many ways). “All you can do is run, and keep running,” Hellnight tells the player. The game makes it very clear that your survival largely depends on the help that you either utilize or ignore from others.

On that note, the game’s handful of characters and possible companions are all entertaining, albeit a touch stereotypical. On the other hand, monstrous characters like That Which Wanders or his slew of alien companions, That Which Sways, That Which Judges, That Which Whispers all skew to incredibly unique creations. There’s a real flavor and style to their look. The exchanges of dialogue with the people that Naomi encounters in The Mesh are freaky at times and effective, as well as help shade in details and build up the game’s atmosphere. Although when you beat the final threat it’s pretty amusing that you’re told, “Not bad…Not bad at all.”

Hellnight allows you to bring along one companion at a time through your progress who can assist Naomi on her journey and can also act as a shield of sorts from enemies. Some of these companions do have limited firepower, but it never fully eliminates an enemy and just buys you a few more seconds. You do switch characters throughout the game as you reach new areas and get new people in your party, but due to the first-person mechanic, this largely feels irrelevant and it’s not really clear that you’re no longer playing as Naomi until there’s a death animation and you see your character fall.

In terms of Hellnight’s gameplay, it offers a first-person explorative style of experience that feels akin to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or even Enemy Zero, except you’re in the sewers or the corridors of the infrastructure known as “The Mesh,” as opposed to ventilation ducts. A Resident Evil sheen is placed over all of this where there’s still a degree of looking for items, keys, and solving puzzles (and shutting down a whole lot of control panels), but these mechanics, when combined with the fact that you can’t fight your enemies and need to be on the defensive, makes it feel like a distinct enough entry that’s different from the other survival horror games of the time. It’s weirdly more of a dungeon-crawling adventure with horror aesthetics. You’re highly dependent on the game’s maps and without them it’s a much more difficult experience, whereas in some survival horror games they’re just a helpful tool.

There’s some impressive sound design that’s also fundamental in this respect, where the footsteps and roars of monsters can be heard in the distance, alerting you to which routes are dangerous or safe and it amounts to a much more intimidating, anxious experience. It makes you be careful in your exploration in a way that you might not necessarily otherwise be in a different survival horror game. This exceptional sound design continues onwards into the game’s unnerving soundtrack, which is definitely one of its biggest selling points. The score greatly immerses you into the game and it’s also the only survival horror game you’ll encounter that incorporates sitar music into its score.

The game’s music is credited to Ryouhei Tomoeda, Rick Tillman, Kinso, Minehiko Tanaka, Naoki Wato, Harumi Fujita, and Masataka Kitaura. The composers strangely receive the largest attention in the game’s credits, but it’s honestly well deserved. The frantic music during the Hive’s final stages (that is also filled with the harrowing screams of victims) is so good and tense. It’s more upsetting than any sort of Halloween SFX soundtrack. It makes playing the game alone, in the dark, even more stressful, which is exactly the energy that Hellnight wants to create.

The graphics in the game may not be anything special, but all of Hellnight’s cut scenes deliver. They’re not only highly gory, but they’re actually surprisingly frightening in some cases, as opposed to the typically hokey nature of the presentation that many of these games have. These even embrace a certain cosmic horror energy that really works for it, too. The monsters themselves all have this very marionette-like artist’s dummy kind of appearance that isn’t really that scary, but it still is creepy in the right context. There are also no bosses to speak of in Hellnight, due to the game’s lack of combat, which is unfortunate.

The game’s story eventually builds to the “Ceremony of the Awakening” where people from Tokyo are kidnapped by the dark cult to be used in their sacrifices to awake their Dark Messiah. There’s a rather seismic reveal when it turn out that Naomi is in fact the second coming of the Dark Messiah and she must decide if she succumbs to these dark forces and gets reborn, or vanquishes them for good. That’s actually not a bad story and it plays with some solid, disturbing ideas that typically aren’t in video games. Things do become considerably stranger once you enter the Great Hall and are surrounded by eerie religious iconography and deformed priest figures. This and the alien-like psychedelic Hive (you could honestly swear that you’re working your way through a secret level in Doom or Hexen) provides a strong final act that becomes increasingly foreign and surreal.

Hellnight does conclude with six different possible endings available, depending on how well you perform, which companion you have with you, the decisions you make, and if Naomi can be kept alive through the whole game. These endings vary from the worst one, where a serial killer gets his way and ascends to become the Dark Messiah, to a moderate success where the Hive is destroyed, to the game’s best ending where not only is the mission accomplished, but Naomi survives the Hive’s destruction and goes on to tell the story. These are a nice attempt at replayability and do make the short game become longer and more challenging in a way.

Overall Hellnight does provide some very sterile, drab, locations that can make for a detached experience. They certainly verge on becoming boring and repetitive, but never quite reach that place. Even still, it does feel like a duller System Shock in many respects. That being said, the game’s main objective is to create the feeling that you are truly alone and lost and these isolating environments do do that. If the setup works for you, it’s easy to lose yourself in this game. At the same time, Resident Evil: Nemesis was also around at the same time, which is a game that does so much, not just with basic combat and level design in a survival horror title, but its additions like real-time decisions and branching paths were proof of what could be done in a game, whereas Hellnight is decidedly more linear, but still creates a memorable experience in some ways.

Hellnight is, unfortunately, a surprisingly short game and it’s easy to breeze through it in a little over two hours without even trying. This definitely holds the title back some, but its strangeness still shines through, despite its flawed nature. There are genuinely some good, creative ideas here, so the fact that there’s almost zero information on the title is a severe shame. It’s got enough charm that it doesn’t deserve to be swallowed into oblivion and forgotten. Throwing it up on Steam, or Microsoft and Sony’s online stores so some people can at least be aware of it would be nice, especially when less impressive titles have gotten such a treatment. Hellnight is a more than worthwhile way to fill up an evening or a weekend in a weird horror universe and get thrown back into the late ‘90s for a little bit. It’s also impressive to see how much Atlus has evolved as a developer and that they figured out that their skills are perhaps not best suited to this genre, but if they made a Hellnight 2 or attempted a few more survival horror games, they maybe could have come up with something really addictive and different.