Welcome to heaven, where the angels are bored, all dogs go there and the coffee takes hours to brew. Everything seems to be running quite smoothly, but not for much longer.
What Is The Holy Gosh Darn?
The Holy Gosh Darn sees you playing as Cassiel Of Celerity, an angel in Heaven who along with her friend and fellow angel Puriel are sitting outside the golden gates trying to guess which breed of dog will arrive next.
All is pretty standard and pretty boring for our angels, that is until Heaven is rocked by the arrival of spirits that don’t belong there causing Heaven to explode. It is here where we meet Death in his classic black hoodie and red cap combo. Death uses his power to give you a special watch that lets you time travel between the moment you wake up and the moment that Heaven goes boom. So you have 6 hours to figure out how to save the day.
The Holy Gosh Darn is actually a follow-up to studio Perfectly Paranormal’s previous games Helheim Hassle and Manual Samuel. With parts of the story directly crossing over with their previous games in the funniest ways imaginable, and with the ever hilarious Death on hand to help out once again, there’s plenty of fun to be had.
Gameplay
The Holy Gosh Darn is a side scrolling narrative based adventure game that sees you exploring the realms of heaven and earth and other locations. You will need to find out as much as you can about The Holy Gosh Darn and its location before you run out of time, this is achieved by talking to various quirky characters, helping them with tasks and learning more about Heaven and its residents.
Some items need to be collected to complete tasks elsewhere, but be careful how far you rewind time as you will lose what you have picked up if you go back too far.
Parts of the game will see you doing some platforming and puzzling, but a lot of what you need to do is have conversations with various characters and try to get the answers you need without annoying them and having to rewind time to try again. Luckily the game does not make you replay convos too much and will often give you the option to skip them if you have already found the best route with a handy skip to the end option which leaves most characters rather confused.
The Holy Gosh Darn also introduces part way through a rather unique collectable idea which I won’t spoil here, know that it’s pretty different from what you would expect for collectables and it’s very funny as well.
Graphics
The Holy Gosh Darn features a 2D cartoon style reminiscent of classic point-and-click games like Day Of The Tentacle or the Monkey Island series. The characters are all highly detailed 2D animations on top of 2D cartoon backgrounds that often feature a foreground and background, the latter of which you can at times move into to explore.
Characters feature well animated faces with large eyes that help to convey their expressions especially when Cassiel loses patience with one of the NPCs, which will happen often.
Each realm that Cassiel visits has a distinctive look and stands out from the last one with plenty of fun background details to find as you explore.
What’s Great About The Holy Gosh Darn
The Holy Gosh Darn delivers a fun story with great characters, framed within a well executed time travel mechanic. Cassiel is an easily relatable character and her interactions with what may be the greatest depiction of Death in any medium are worth the admission price alone.
Once again Perfectly Paranormal has crafted a great narrative based video game within their shared world and even though the central mechanic may not be as unique as in its previous games, it works so well that you will be happy to repeat certain areas and conversations in order to make progress through the story. As mentioned before the developers included a great way of letting you skip to the end of conversations you have already completed but have had to go back to if you’ve had to rewind time, which is a heaven sent feature.
What Could Be Better
The Holy Gosh Darn has very few negatives, some may see the short run time as one, as the main story can be completed in around 6 hours depending on how easily you work out where you need to go. But with its unique collectables, you’ll get some more time out of the game.
The only other risk is that the humour and the character dialogue may not work for you, comedy is a very personal thing and what one person finds funny others won’t, however it’s pretty safe to say that if you enjoy the writing of the studios’ previous titles you should have no trouble with their latest.
Conclusion
The Holy Gosh Darn takes well known ideas of the afterlife and presents them in a fun and colourful way framed within a fun and easy to use time travel mechanic. The gameplay is simple enough that you shouldn’t find yourself getting stuck too often, and it is interesting enough to keep you engaged and wanting to progress further.
Whether you have played either of the previous games in the series, The Holy Gosh Darn is a fun ride with what may be the best depiction of The Grim Reaper that any game series has featured.
If you like to try fun indies or in need a break from AAA blockbuster titles then The Holy Gosh Darn could be the game that you need in your collection.
The Holy Gosh Darn is out now on PlayStation 4 & 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One & PC.
