Video Game Review - The Holy Gosh Darn
Even Angels suffer with déjà vu …
The Holy Gosh Darn is one of those rare games that utilises its comedy elements to great effect. The laugh-out-loud comedy mixes well with its time-travel gameplay loop to create a game that’ll entertain you from start to finish. With The Holy Gosh Darn, developer Perfectly Paranormal continues their journey that started with Manual Samuel and Helheim Hassle - yet refines it in every way.
Religion is at the heart of The Holy Gosh Darn as we’re thrown into the role of the angel Cassiel of Celerity. Our introduction to Cassiel shows that this isn’t a game that’s going to take religion seriously as we see the wayward Angel playing a game of “guess the dog”. It turns out that the old saying “every dog goes to heaven” is true and heaven is overrun with deceased pooches. As such Cassiel and her fellow Angel Pureil have turned the mundane crossing of the pooch into a game - a game that’s taken place across thousands of years!
After a few rounds of guessing what pooch is next, Puriel gets a warning from her Soul Perificator that some less-than-pure souls are inbound to the pearly gates. Once these phantoms reach the gates they’ll cause heaven to explode in apocalyptic fashion, and it’s something that soon comes to pass. Waking up in her apartment, Cassiel is greeted by Azriel who’s not only behind heaven's destruction he asks Cassiel to help him stop it from happening. What comes next is a hilarious adventure that takes place over 6 hours. As such Cassiel will have to repeatedly live the same day over and over again until she can piece everything together and save the day.
The Holy Gosh Darn plays much like an old-school point-and-click adventure. While we have full control over Cassiel’s movement we’ll be clicking on environment prompts for Cassiel to interact with. Across the adventure, we’ll use this simple premise to travel to various locales, locating key items to stop the impending doom, to then rewind time and put them all in place. It’s not that easy as we’ll have to use our knowledge of the future, in the past to save time and ultimately save the future. This often leads to hilarious dialogue as Cassiel learns hidden secrets of her fellow angels (and demons) to then speed up their often meandering conversations in the past once she goes back in time.
While the time travel shenanigans sound confusing, they’re incredibly simple and offer a very intuitive way of solving the game's many puzzles. A lot of the game revolves around speaking to people who often go around the houses to get to their point. As such you’ll have to judge when to tell them to hurry up and get to the point, whilst simultaneously judging your prior knowledge of the conversation to move it forward. It’s also not that simple as the folks in heaven get offended quite easily and telling them to shut up at the wrong time will annoy them and end the conversation. However. With a simple click of the clock (and some time travel-induced puking) you’ll be back to try it all again.
Likewise, the game's many intricate puzzles rely on foreshadowing and you’ll often learn of a quicker way to complete the task once you’ve lived through it. A good example of this is when you need to visit hell. The first time around you’ll be tasked with visiting Earth to catch a bus that ferries the dead to Hell. This then leads to causing the death that summons the bus, to then steal the bus, and defuse a few bombs. Once complete and you arrive in Hell you soon learn that you can skip this by using Cassiel’s coffee machine to open a direct portal - just put the filter where the mug should be and draw a pentagram.
Considering The Holy Gosh Darn has a lot of talking as part of its gameplay, it never outstays its welcome. The writing is packed full of humour as Perfectly Paranormal gives Groundhog Day a lighthearted religious retelling. There’s plenty of in-jokes, and poking fun at God throughout with each one-liner and conversation being delivered with great conviction by the vocal cast. A few special mentions go to Rebecca Schweitzer whose portrayal of Cassiel is simply perfect. Schweitzer delivers a great range of emotions throughout that works wonders in bringing Cassiel’s dismay, frustrations, and eventual tribulations to life in a grand way.
Overall I’m so impressed with The Holy Gosh Darn it has jumped straight to the top of my indie GOTY list. It’s the perfect blend of satire and puzzle solving that’s been blended with a satisfying gameplay loop and entertaining narrative. Ultimately The Holy Gosh Darn is a prime example of a game done right, and it’s a journey that everyone should experience.
Rating: 10/10
A code was kindly provided for this review
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