Halls of Torment: a thematically questionable downtime game

December 25, 2024

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I hope everyone out there has a joyful and relaxing day, however you celebrate. During the downtime I got to play a game I’d been wanting to try for a while.

Last summer on The Besties podcast, Russ Frushtick mentioned that he was enjoying Halls of Torment. He described it as being similar to Vampire Survivors, but with a visual style similar to that of the oldschool Diablo games. Like many indie titles, it was Windows only, but I made a note to check it out some time later if I could.

Yesterday, I read Ars Technica’s top 20 video games of 2024, and was happy to see that Halls of Torment was now available on iOS and Android! I picked it up on the App Store and have been really enjoying it so far.

I love Vampire Survivors, which is the first “bullet heaven” game I played. I’m a sucker for the format, and Halls of Torment is a great example. The visual style is also a complete nostalgia trip, which doesn’t hurt. I’m playing it on my iPad Pro, and it supports keyboard input (both WASD and the arrow keys) which is my preferred way to play. If any of this sounds good to you, I highly recommend checking it out.