HTD

I went in expecting a lightweight indie action-RPG and came out with sweaty palms. HTD is a 2D party-based action game built around a deceptively simple premise: you control a healer, a tank, and a damage dealer simultaneously in real time, and the twist is that each role is pushed to its absolute extreme. The tank cannot attack at all. The DPS crumbles after a handful of hits. The healer can barely defend herself. None of them can carry a fight alone, which means the entire game is a coordination puzzle that you happen to be solving with your own fingers. The combat loop comes down to rapid party-switching. You read an enemy's attack window, shield up with the tank, swap to the DPS to land a punishing blow, then frantically cycle to the healer to patch up equipment durability and HP before the next onslaught. Over 15 fully animated enemies each have their own attack patterns and surprises, so you cannot just find one rhythm and coast. The encounter design is the clearest sign that this is a genuine solo passion project - it has the feel of someone who sat down and obsessively tuned each fight rather than padding a roster. That said, the small enemy count is also the ceiling; once you have internalized the patterns, the challenge curve flattens out, and there is not a deep build system to chase past that point. Where HTD earns genuine interest from an RPG angle is in the loot and narrative layers. Each defeated enemy hands you a choice between multiple pieces of loot, each with effects and drawbacks, so there is a light roguelite-adjacent decision loop running underneath the action. More intriguingly, the story involves uncovering the apocalyptic event called the Great Contortion, and the game hides a secret final boss and alternate endings behind exploration - one player noted it took a full second run to find the hidden boss and reach what seemed like the real ending. Multiple endings plus secret levels means completionists have a reason to replay, even if the main path is relatively short. The dark fantasy horror tone is committed and consistent. The 2D art leans into psychological horror and eldritch imagery, and the content warnings around drawn violence are not decorative. If you like your RPGs grim, this will not disappoint on atmosphere. The weak point is community visibility - HTD has almost no critical coverage and a tiny user review sample, which makes it genuinely hard to gauge how the experience holds up on different hardware or play styles. It is, by all evidence, almost entirely a one-person project, which both explains the focused design and the limited scope. For fans of tight, role-focused action with horror DNA, HTD is a curio worth the risk. It is not the 60-hour narrative epic that the RPG tag might imply, but it is a punchy, intentional design that respects your time and does not pad its runtime with filler. My reservation is that the low player footprint means you are largely on your own if you get stuck, and the absence of build depth will leave theorycrafters wanting more. Go in for the combat challenge and the atmosphere, not for sprawling character progression.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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