It's that time again for a new episode of Chichuki Views, the show where I go hands-on with upcoming games and show them off. Usually it's about an hour or so but I don't want to spoil too much of the game for you. Today, we're checking out The Holy Gosh Darn on Steam.
At the start Heaven is a very peaceful place and everyone is enjoying the mundane. Counting puppies sounds like the ideal life to me but that peace couldn't last forever right? Long story short, heaven is going to overrun with Phantom souls and it's up to us to set things right. Someone other than God sat on his throne and it's cause Heaven to go nuts. We play the role of Cassiel, one of the angels, and it's up to us get retrieve the Holy Gosh Darn from the Holy Vault and stop the Phantom Uprising. This sounds simple enough but trust me, it's far from simple. There will be all kinds of tasks that we have to do.
Things take a turn and we end up working with Azrael(DEATH) to try and fix the mess Heaven is in or what used to be of Heaven. If this story was crazy enough for you, Death gives us the ability to time travel to fix Heaven. It's an interesting idea but it will get very time consuming later.(Prob the last time travel joke) The goal is to stop the Phantoms from ever getting to Heaven but it will take a lot of work and a lot of trial and error.
You're given a special time traveling watch that allows you to manipulate the flow of time. The first cycle is for you to get the lay of the land and know when people do certain things. You also have the ability to set time breaks where you can rewind to a set piece of time in case something goes wrong or you miss something. For example, you need to go to the vault when the keeper is awake but he's out cold in the afternoon. He needs a cup of coffee but you have to brew it at home hours before the keeper wants it. Trial and error plays a huge role in this game because you will have to try several different ideas to figure out what the heck you are actually supposed to do. It reminds me so much of an old DOS-Windows point and click game where you have to try all kinds of solutions no matter how dumb they may be.
Using a keyboard, I found myself pushing the wrong button several times like going into a building I just left and setting the time break in the wrong spot. I think this would work better on Switch and I believe the game is out on Switch at time of publication. I found the constant going back and forth a little annoying but I understand that it was the premise of the game. It would have been nice to have checkpoints in certain spots where you didn't have to reset the whole cycle but that would probably ruin the whole game. I really liked in interaction between all the characters as they were written very well. It was interesting to see how the conversation between characters would change from the first time you speak to them to a time you tell them to shut it.
Overall, the Holy Gosh Darn is an interesting idea. Time traveling is always interesting but I think things could have been done a little better like a check point or certain places where I didn't need to rewind everything. The voice work is great and the writing for all the characters is well done. Check out The Holy Gosh Darn if you're into time travel or just want to save Heaven and want God to know.
Make sure you check out the hands-on/thoughts video below!