Unholy Heights

Unholy Heights is a Japanese PC game developed by Petit Depotto and localized to English by Playism. It’s a mix of tower defense and apartment management, but with a twist. Here’s where things get strange:you get to play as Satan (yes, you read that right) who hasdecided to become a landlord, in order to dupe some monsters into moving in and take over the world.

The game starts small, providing you with a building complex of 4 apartments which you will rent to different creatures. These are divided into seven categories for a total of 28 different creatures. You start with just a few monsters who like your apartments, but as you please your tenants they will start liking you more and more which in turn will attract more powerful creatures from the same category. For instance, demons like when tenants die, so the more monsters you lose, the better the demons you unlock.

Pleasing your tenants can be done in two ways: upgrading their apartments or complying with the unique condition that each category of monsters has. Throughout the game, your creatures will ask for different items, from wallpapers to computers and even to special altars. These you can buy from the money you accumulate.

Money is gained by doing quests and collecting the rent from your tenants. The more pleased they are, the more money they will be willing to pay without getting upset. If you set the rent too high or your tenants lose their jobs they won’t be able to pay and will eventually get kicked out.

Quests are your main income source. Each quest has between one and four waves of enemies (mages, archers, knights, peasants, bandits and many more) and are given a certain difficulty(called grade). Higher grade quests are more risky, but almost always pay better.

From time to time you will get quests to defeat a boss, unlock new furniture or rescue a new type of creature. If you spend too much time without accepting a quest, the game will send random raiders from time to time. Whatever the case might be, if you fail to defend against the waves of enemies they will steal a certain amount of money from your treasury.

As the creatures’ happiness increases or decreases, so does their combat ability. Combat-wise, creatures can be classified as melee and range. Each has its unique stats that cover life, attack, walk speed, attack speed, physical defense and magic defense. The monster’s strength is also affected by the weather and the day-night cycle, so some of them will be stronger when it rains, while others will be stronger during day time.

Another way to strengthen your creatures is by having babies. Your tenants can find a lover that will move in with and help in the fights. Given enough time and enough pillow-talk as the game likes to call it, they will have a baby that, when fully grown, will be stronger than both parents.

Your apartment complex can be upgraded to accommodate even more tenants, but in order to unlock this, you first need to complete a specific quest. Once unlocked, you will have to pay a certain amount of money that will significantly increase after each upgrade.

Visually the game has a chibi design to it, so everything looks really cute and tiny and each gender has its own look, making it easy to distinguish between the two. Even Satan is designed in a really comical way, making him look more like a nerd with a balding head, than a blood-lustful depraved Lord of Hell. The vocaloid inspired music and sound assets in general suit the theme and looks of the game perfectly.They’realso really reactive to whatever is happening onthe screen at the time.

Though the game is really fun, it can be pretty infuriating too. The grade of the quest is sometimes misleading, so quite a few times it made me think I had what it took to complete said quest and ended up failing miserably. At times the game is also a bit too random since even after accepting a quest the tenants mind their own business leaving their homes, so sometimes the raiders come and you’re left poorly defended.

While it requires a lot of trial and error to get things right, which might annoy some people, overall, Unholy Heights is an amazing experience and a unique game that everyone should try at least once.The game is available right now on Playism for the small price of $4 which, for the amount of content and depth the game provides, is simply a steal.

Cirstoiu Alexandru Constantin, NoobFeed