With some good, old-fashioned limb splitting puzzle-solving, help Bjørn get into Helheim. Check out our review for Helheim Hassle!

 

Helheim Hassle is a narrative adventure game with puzzle platforming elements. Play as Bjørn, a pacifist Viking that can detach and combine limbs at will to solve puzzles.
Helheim Hassle is a narrative adventure game that is as much about friendship as it is about body parts.

From the same universe (and set on the same Tuesday in fact) as previous hit Manual Samuel, comes this macabre adventure where you play as Bjørn, a pacifist Viking who hates the idea of dying and going to Valhalla… who then ends up dying and getting taken to Valhalla. When Bjørn is resurrected to assist with a task for the mysterious Pesto, he sees a way to negotiate his way out. Using Bjørn’s undying corpse with its ability to detach and combine limbs at will, players must solve challenging puzzles and navigate tricky levels in order to retrieve a certain magical item… In return, Pesto will try to grant Bjørn a permanent residence in Helheim – what a hassle!

14 levels

90+ puzzles

80+ interactable characters

3,700 lines of spoken dialogue performed by 24 professional actors

Helheim Hassle is the newest game from PerfectlyParanormal, the studio that created Manual Samuel. In fact, Helheim Hassle is set in the same universe as this one. Helheim Hassle is a 2D puzzle platformer that will take an arm and a leg to get through. It’s late coming to PlayStation 4 since it was released on all other platforms last year, but – better late than never! I tested the game on my PlayStation 5 as well – using the external storage option – to make sure everything ran properly, and I’m here to report there are no issues to report.

 

In Helheim Hassle, you play as Bjorn, a young pacifist Viking that wants nothing to with battle, avoiding it while everyone around him wants to go into battle to die a hero and end up in Valhalla. A major battle hits his village, and as Bjorn tends to do, he runs to a secret hiding spot to escape from it all. This time, unfortunately for him, he does meet his demise, but in a very humorous but heroic way, which allows him to go to Valhalla as a hero! Many years later, his corpse is reanimated by Pesto, who needs someone who can read Norse writing to get into Helheim – basically, hell – to complete an errand. Bjorn accompanies her on this journey.

Once you are awakened from your slumber, you realize that you can detach all of your body parts, and they can all act independently from each other, which is rather convenient as you’ll need tons of different combinations to solve the puzzles the game has to offer. It’s quite the menagerie of options available to you! For example, early on, you will need to talk to someone. However, there is no way for Bjorn to get his whole body up there. At that point, you will disconnect your head and toss it up there, allowing you to talk to the person. Need to pull a lever? Disconnect your arm and send it in there to pull the switch!

 

The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. Soon you will be using so many weird combinations that it can feel a bit overwhelming if you don’t pay attention. You might need your head to get somewhere high, but your whole body can’t get there, and throwing your head so high won’t be an option. But if you attach your arm and head together, this weird combination will allow you to make them climb higher, reaching new areas. Every time you remove limbs from your torso, the rest of your body will jump slightly higher, moving slightly faster as well.

Helheim Hassle does a great job of slowly teaching you the gameplay mechanics, with a series of clever puzzles to solve every step of the way. And to Helheim Hassle’s credit, the writing and narrative kept me invested in my journey. I didn’t expect full voice work from all of the characters, and it was a pleasant surprise. The voice acting does a great job of delivering the great scripts in the story. I laughed a lot while playing this one, which is not an easy thing for a game to accomplish. Helheim Hassle also breaks down the fourth wall regularly, which is something I always appreciate in games.

 

Helheim Hassle’s arty style is great as well, really bringing the different worlds together, creating a cohesive universe that somehow ties the real world, Valhalla and Helheim, into a single entity, making everything work. I loved the feel of all of the characters and how with the passage of time, the different locations have been updated to a new age, making everything feel fresh and unique.

Helheim Hassle is a fun game with a solid art style, great puzzle-solving gameplay mechanics, and a narrative, characters, and locations that make this one an easy one to recommend on PlayStation 4.

Disclaimer
This Helheim Hassle review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by
PerfectlyParanormal.