A Match Made in Hell, whose first demo just now released, features you battling hordes of demons and demon pawns by playing an embedded and complex match-3 game. The twist is, instead of just swapping 2 adjacent tiles, you can drag a tile for however long you’d like, swapping everything in its path.

Different match-3 tiles represent different styles of attacks only certain party members can perform. Bigger matches mean more damage, and with the drag-as-much-as-you-want mechanic, it’s very simple (and in fact expected by the balancing) to make multiple matches every single turn!

If any of that sounded interesting, check out the downloads section here.

What Will the Final Game Look Like?

Mechanically, the final game (as per the current vision) will be a node exploration roguelite like FTL or Slay the Spire, tending more to the FTL side. Battles will happen in a very similar manner to the ones presented in the demo (which is why it’s called the “battle demo”). Between runs, you will go to a hub area where you can interact with all playable characters (more on that later) and some NPCs, as in Hades.

Multiple distinct zones will be connected by exit nodes, with many zones having multiple exits. This would allow for an interconnected world like in Dead Cells and, eventually, the true ending would be achieved through a convoluted sequence of changing zones, culminating in a separate, true form of the final boss.

Regarding other playable characters, the party you play with won’t be fixed. An element of party building will exist, with different characters providing different abilities and attack types to the party. The position of each character in the party already matters even in the demo, and it will become even more important as development continues.

OK, but what about the story?

The story of the game, so far, is that forces of hell have been invading and conquering most of the surface world. Your party, roster, and supporting cast are part of the resistance movement against the Hierophant, the demon monarch.

The story will unfold in a style similar to Hades, with each “death” (in lore, activating a return medallion) progressing the story between the characters you’ve unlocked and NPCs at home base. The cast will feature diverse characters, currently including one bisexual character and one nonbinary character, and will eventually contain a handful of non-white, non-cishet characters. Character writing is at its infancy and is not included in the demo at all.

What Does the Demo Provide?

The current state of development, represented by the first demo is thus: the match-3 mechanic and combat are fully implemented. With 18 battles total, the demo is fairly polished (by my playtesters’ standards, at least), with professional pixel art, animations, visual effects, and two distinct music tracks (one of which is boss music).

The demo also contains meaningful “run-like” upgrades as binary choices between armor and critical hit chance, for example, between some battles. Some rewards are also replaced with consumable items, with a limited inventory of 1 space.

What Is Missing From the Demo?

The demo focuses exclusively on the battle mechanic. The other central pillars, node based exploration and character-driven story, are missing entirely. Some special battle features, such as different shapes of match triggering special effects, are not yet implemented, and not planned for the next demo either.

The next demo will build upon this one, adding the missing exploration portion and giving a fuller picture of what the final gameplay loop will look like.

Interested?

You can grab a download for the current demo for both Microsoft Windows and Linux, as well as leave a rating and see what other people had to say. Maybe even share your own thoughts in the comments! I will start posting devlogs semi-regularly here, so follow me to stay up to date.