Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a roguelite action game announced in December 2022 that we thought looked pretty badass, although that was presumably at least in part because it stood in contrast to the horrid Hellboy game from 2000 that we called, among other things, a "sucking abyss." But now we've got a look at some actual gameplay and I have to admit that, yeah, it does indeed look pretty badass—and importantly, it also confirms that Lance Reddick, who died suddenly in March, remains in the game as the voice of the lead character.
I'm not really a Hellboy fan, but one of the things I find most intriguing about Web of Wyrd is the way it promises to emulate the original comics in both its visual style and storytelling. "The game sends Hellboy on a series of vastly different and wholly unique adventures," the Steam page says. "And while each story stands on its own, they are all tied to the mysterious legacy of The Butterfly House."
(Lore time: The Butterfly House was built in 1962 by occultist Pasquale Deneveaux, and takes advantage of ley energies, strange angles, and non-Euclidean geometry "to open doorways into a terrible and fascinating dimension called The Wyrd.")
Promises of "wholly unique adventures" notwithstanding, it's fair to say that Hellboy—the titular demon, that is—has a fairly standard, straightforward approach to his problems, which is to say, oversized fists and infernal gunplay. But the game will hopefully tell a good Hellboy story, too: Series creator Mike Mignola is working on Web of Wyrd in partnership with developer Upstream Arcade and Dark Horse Comics.
What I find particularly pleasing is that actor Lance Reddick, who died from heart disease earlier this year, will still provide the voice of Hellboy in the new game. Reddick's Hellboy voice was first heard in the December 2022 reveal trailer, but seemed to go largely unnoticed until Mignola tweeted about meeting Reddick while he was working on the game. The voice is much more prominent in the new gameplay trailer, and in case there was any doubt that it might be a sound-alike, the developers confirmed on Twitter that it is indeed still him.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd doesn't yet have a release date but is listed as "coming soon" on Steam.
