Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is a roguelite beat ’em up with an original story, built in partnership with Dark Horse Comics and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. British studio Upstream Arcade developed it. Good Shepherd Entertainment published it on 18 October 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
It lands at 5.5 of 10.
Trailer, via thegameawards.
The Butterfly House
The setup is the strongest thing here. Occultist Pasquale Deneveaux built the Butterfly House in 1962, and it is not really a house. Its perverse angles and non-Euclidean geometries were designed to open doorways into a dimension called the Wyrd.
Twenty years later, a B.P.R.D. agent goes to the mansion on a reconnaissance mission and disappears. Hellboy and a team of Bureau agents follow. The Butterfly House is the hub. The levels beyond it are procedurally generated, which is where the trouble starts.
Hellboy, Lance Reddick and the Toughness Bar
Hellboy is voiced by Lance Reddick and Amuche Chukudebelu. Combat is third-person and built on mixing physical attacks with ranged attacks into combos.
Both Hellboy and his enemies carry “Toughness,” a recharging buffer that shields them from permanent damage until it breaks. Take too much punishment and Hellboy can fire off “Payback,” a special attack that does heavy damage to everything close to him.
The Wyrd holds powerful monsters, forgotten godforms, treasures and secrets. Ancient evil sits in its furthest reaches, eager to be let out. That is the promise the game makes. The brawling is what it delivers, and the brawling is thin.
What the Wyrd Actually Contains
Here is the shape of a run, and the shape of the problem:
- Enter a procedurally generated level from the Butterfly House hub.
- Break Toughness on whatever is in front of you.
- Land combos until it dies.
- Repeat in a room that looks like the last room.
That loop is the whole game. Roguelikes live on variety and on the sting of losing something worth losing. Hellboy: Web of Wyrd has neither. The Wyrd is sold as a dimension of wonders. It plays as corridors with a palette swap.
Where Hellboy: Web of Wyrd Stands
| Element | What the source promises | What the game does with it |
|---|---|---|
| The Wyrd | Strange planes, godforms, treasures, secrets | Procedurally generated levels off a hub |
| Combat | Physical and ranged attacks, combos | Toughness buffers, Payback finisher |
| Story | Original tale with Dark Horse and Mignola | A missing agent, a rescue, a mansion gateway |
The table is the review. The premise column is richer than the execution column, every time. Upstream Arcade had Mignola’s blessing and a genuinely good hook in the Butterfly House, and spent both on a combat system whose one idea is a regenerating shield bar.
Reddick’s casting is the sharpest piece of business in the game. It is also the piece the game does least with, because Hellboy: Web of Wyrd gives him a rescue mission and not much else to say about it. An original story created with Dark Horse Comics should mean something on screen. Here it mostly means a cutscene before the punching.
The mixed reception is fair, and it is not a case of a good game misread. Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is a licensed roguelite that understands its own premise better than it understands its own combat. The Butterfly House is a great room. There is not enough game behind the door.
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