It's a Hexen/Strife gameplay through and through, almost to a fault. Hedon feels like a Build engine game with emphasis world interactivity and attention to environmental detail. On the surface it may be a typical FPS game but I'd invite you to go look around - it has the kind of hard-made attention to detail seldom seen in games nowadays. Bloodrite maps are massive, perhaps too large considering the amount of backtracking involved. Much like in Hexen there's switch hunting galore and having to figure out if an otherwise inconspicuous piece of level geometry is meant to be interacted with. A lot of secrets are easier to find than the switches mandatory to progress further. Not sure if the character design/artwork is purposefully amateurish but it sure does contrast with the rest of design. All dialogues are delivered through text, there are no voice overs, and if you don't pay attention you may miss crucial detail about your next objective, end up being stuck and finding solution by what may seem like a random chance (displayed text is usually logged in game console, press ~). Sound effects, particularly weapons, are well done. Perhaps having a bit more ambient sounds would have improved levels even further but what's in here is alright. Music is hit and miss. There are a few tracks from Alexander Brandon (of Tyrian, Unreal and Deus Ex fame) mostly from his tracker era, which are in high contrast with the rest of the score being mostly ambient drone. It's a step above total conversion, a solid effort with a somewhat skewed production. Past the surface level there is a lovingly made game with several hours of content and few surprises up its sleeve for those patient enough. Most retro shooter games nowadays would probably steer away from Hexen "puzzles" while Hedon embraces it instead - a bold move to be certain, and in my opinion a welcome one too.
It had a nice concept: combining rogue-like procedural elements with Descent 6dof gameplay in maze-like levels. Unfortunately the game is quite unstable and prone to random crashes resulting in all your progress lost. Crafting mechanics is random and unpredictable, in my opinion it hasn't added anything beneficial to the gameplay, quite the opposite as sometimes you end up with unusable weapons, combined with very limited inventory. Ammo is scarce and ammo/nanites drops are on short timer making difficult areas shorter on reward lest you suicide run into the middle. Enemies are of limited variety as do environments, the game merely slightly randomizes layouts of levels. The good bits that made Descent great are either missing or severely limited here, forcing you to fight with arbitrary gameplay constraints and crafting system as opposed to being challenged by levels and enemies populating it. In short this isn't Descent, it tries to mimic some elements, but isn't worthy 'spiritual successor' in any sense. It looks interesting and flashy, but crashes and unpolished mechanics such as crafting deter from what could have been a really fun game.
