Let’s not beat around the bush; Jupiter Hell is a spiritual sequel to Doom: The Roguelike, aka DoomRL (aka DRL post-lawyering), and that’s plenty of reason to play it. You can try it out right now, though the gates of hell will snap shut again at 6pm BST on Monday, July 8th. If you want to shotgun some demons in tactical, turn-based fashion, there’s just one little hoop to jump through, but I promise it won’t take you more than two minutes. Just join the ChaosForge developer Discord here and say “!Hell4U” (minus quotes) to the “CRI Command” bot for a Steam demo key.

If you never played the original, then Jupiter Hell is — simply put — turn-based Doom. You’ve got multiple floors full of demons, weapons and exploding barrels, several weapon slots, big guns and a paper-thin story about corporate malfeasance meeting demonic infestation. It also works surprisingly well. You already know what green and blue armour do, and what small and large medikits do. There’s a few more twists to it as you level up and gain more abilities, but the basics are intuitive. Splat zombies en-masse with the shotgun, don’t waste rockets on single small demons, etc etc.

And in case you’re not familiar: Jupiter Hell is a turn-based shooter set in the depths of cosmic hell, built on a classic roguelike framework updated for 2019. RPG Progression. Randomized levels. Permadeath. Turn-based combat with real-time responsiveness. Demons. pic.twitter.com/6oTajCxLEO — ChaosForge (@chaosforge_org) July 5, 2019

From what I’ve played of the demo so far, the biggest change between this and DRL is making cover more explicit. While movement is still limited to cardinal directions, standing near some hard (or even breakable) cover will highlight the edge in green, letting you know there’s a reduced chance of being hit. No longer being restricted to Doom enemies has helped too. There’s robotic gun-drones now and a few unfamiliar kinds of demon to meet. If KS updates are any indication, some later enemies are going to be a bit more angelic. Yep, Jupiter Hell did it before Doom Eternal.

Once again, you can grab the demo by joining the ChaosForge Discord channel, and saying “!Hell4U” (minus quotes) to the “CRI Command” bot that should be lurking in the top-right corner. If nothing breaks, it should immediately reply with a Steam key for the demo.

Jupiter Hell should be entering early access on Steam soonish, but if the demo left you hungry, the original DoomRL DRL is available free here.

Disclosure: I backed the Jupiter Hell Kickstarter, but not to a high enough degree to get me a copy until it officially enters early access, so this is my first time playing it too.