Hell Clock veers far away from your typical action RPG premise and replaces demons and monsters with a story based on a massacre in Brazilian history. It's a Diablo-like roguelike steeped in a bloody history and it's coming to Steam on June 18.
From 1896 to 1897, the people of the settlement of Canudos were killed by the Brazilian state army and in Hell Clock you're trying to save the lost soul of its leader. Developer Mad Mushroom isn't subtle about the historical influences for a game that on first glance might look like yet another Diablo-style action RPG. While that's definitely part of it, it's also trying to frame the violence that is inherent to the genre as a cathartic act.
It's an ambitious setup for a game with clear inspirations from the juggernauts of the genre, like Diablo 2 and Path of Exile. Your build will change every run as you augment your attacks with Hades-like buffs and relics to slot into your inventory. The trailer that just debuted during the PC Gaming Show 2025 has main character Pajeú carving through enemies with spinning blades and fireballs that orbit around him. And judging by the brief looks at some of the buffs you can combine, there will be a lot of different ways to rip through a run.
Hell Clock's campaign has three acts and will transition to an endgame mode when it's added "shortly after launch," according to the Steam page. This mode will let you adjust the difficulty and rewards of each run with a massive skill tree, sorta like the Atlas passive tree in Path of Exile. That alone has my attention because after playing with Path of Exile 2's version of it, I want every action RPG to steal the idea.
On top of all of this is a very striking, hyper-saturated artstyle that keeps the game from getting lost in the heaps of medieval fantasy action RPGs out there. Developer Mad Mushroom has something that looks really special here and I'm very excited to check it out when it drops on June 18.
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