Hellbrella

I have a soft spot for the small Brazilian studio that started with a game jam prototype and decided to push it all the way to a full Steam release, and Hellbrella is exactly that story. Icy Mountain Studios built this aerial roguelite hack-and-slash out of a October 2024 game jam entry, and the handcraft shows in every pixel. You play as Raincoat Cat, a feline dropped into Hell with nothing but an umbrella and a very bad attitude. The premise sounds like a joke, but the loop underneath it is sharper than it looks. The core action is airborne and relentless. You jump, dash, and swing your way through procedurally generated stages packed with demon hordes, and the game rewards staying aggressive rather than playing cautiously. Five distinct umbrella types give each run a different personality: the Boombrella leans into explosive crowd-clearing, while the Gunbrella trades melee chaos for a ranged angle that early players flagged as slightly underpowered compared to the others. Between runs you spend blood drops on a pool of over 60 run upgrades and 12 permanent upgrades that carry forward, so even a run where you die early nudges the next attempt forward. The wrap-around stages - exit the right edge and reappear on the left, same vertically - give the arenas a strange, elastic quality that takes one run to internalize and then feels completely natural. Visually, the pixel art punches well above the studio's size. Comparisons to Enter the Gungeon and Forager have circulated in the Brazilian gaming press, and while those are big reference points, the aesthetic holds up: vibrant despite the hellish palette, with enemy designs that read clearly during the thickest demon pileups. The soundtrack, composed by a collaborator named Gaspar, lands in that zone of propulsive, slightly ominous arcade energy that the best action roguelites use to pull you into one more run at midnight. The honest criticism worth flagging: the game arrives with a thin narrative frame. You are a cat, in Hell, with an umbrella. That is the whole context. For players who need a reason to care beyond the mechanics, Hellbrella offers almost nothing - no lore drips, no story beats between runs, no unlockable dialogue. Community feedback consistently praises the mechanics while pointing at the absence of a motivating hook beyond the combat itself. The content depth is also compact; this is not a 40-hour roguelite. What it is, though, is a tight, committed micro-game that knows its own rhythm and, crucially, knows what it is trying to feel like. The Steam user review score has climbed to Very Positive territory since launch, which for a tiny Brazilian indie with no marketing budget is a genuine signal worth trusting.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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