• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Perfectly Paranormal
• Publisher: Yogscast Games
• Release Date: September 26, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Yogscast Games on behalf of Perfectly Paranormal. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: Rated T for “Crude humor, language, use of tobacco, violence.” Religious humor; jokes about Christianity and Biblical figures.

From the developers behind Manual Samuel and Helheim Hassle, The Holy Gosh Darn is a narrative adventure game with puzzles and “Metroidvania-style progression.” As the title would suggest, the story is about a mysterious artifact in Heaven called the Holy Gosh Darn.

You play as Cassiel, an angel tasked with stopping an army of “Phantoms” – souls that shouldn’t exist – from invading and destroying Heaven. The problem is that it’s already happened, so Azrael (Death) gives Cassiel the ability to time travel to find a way to prevent the end of the world. To do this, we need to get our hands on the Holy Gosh Darn artifact.

Completing the “Lord’s Work” main quest lines won’t be easy though. One major obstacle is that you only have 6 hours to do this because Cassiel woke up at noon, and Heaven blew up at six. We’ll have to be quick to get the job done.

Cassiel and Azrael are the only ones who remember each run through the time loop, so the people you talk to won’t realize that the longer they talk, the closer Heaven is to going “boom.” You need to hurry them along, but in a way that doesn’t upset them – otherwise they’ll refuse to help you any further in that timeline.

It’s important to choose the right moment in the conversation to interrupt someone (if you do it at all) and you need to choose the right dialogue choice to keep the conversation going. Once you’ve gotten what you need from a character, you can brush them off as rudely as you’d like in subsequent runs through the timeline. 😂

At first I didn’t love that the voiced dialogue would auto advance, but I had subtitles turned on and eventually got used to it. It makes sense to have it work this way due to the urgency of the situation.

Besides managing the dialogue, you need to arrive at a location at the right time for a person to be available, and sometimes you need the right item(s) to get through a situation in a timely manner. Need to get further inside of a building? Time to chat with the person blocking your way and have some coffee that takes 2 whole hours to brew! What’s your hurry to skip social niceties – don’t you know we have all the time in the world? ⏰

For the most part, your inventory resets when you travel back in time before you’d obtained an item. Eventually you unlock the ability to upgrade your “Time-Space-Logic” device to bring a small number of items back in time with you. (There are additional upgrades available if you find the right materials.)

Inventory management is a key part of the gameplay, and so is deciding which point in time you should return to. At first it’s only possible to travel back in time to points in 15 minute increments (1:00, 1:15, 1:30, etc.). But you can set a timestamp checkpoint that lets you go back to a more specific point.

If you go all the way back to the beginning of the time loop, you lose everything not in the saved item slot(s). But if you pick up a bunch of items, create a timestamp at 1:07, make a mistake, and rewind to the 1:07 timestamp, you keep everything you had obtained prior to 1:07.

The mechanics are fairly simple when you only have to deal with people, places, and objects in Heaven. Eventually you need to travel to Earth, Hell, and other realms, which starts to complicate matters more. (They provide players with convenient fast travel options to speed things up for later time rewinds.) Additionally, some areas in each realm are inaccessible until you’ve completed enough of the Lord’s Work quests.

Doing so unlocks new abilities for Cassiel as you progress through the story, such as dashing or double jumping. For the most part it’s just a matter of jumping straight up to a higher level. There are only a handful of real “platforming” sections, and they aren’t terribly difficult.

I sometimes have a little trouble with puzzles or platforming sections in games, but I found this to be pretty user-friendly. The one time I did get stuck (finding the pliers) it was because I overthought things. They offer UI and dialogue hints that “enable additional dialogue at certain points,” which seemed helpful.

There’s one extended side quest that’s rather entertaining, and I got about half of that done before I finished the game. The dictionary section documents new information about the characters and places you encounter – or that someone mentions – which was useful for when I forgot where to find someone.

The main character Cassiel interacts with is Azrael. He’s the one who teaches you how to use the time travel device, with an exasperated Cassiel exclaiming, “Wait, I could have done this before?!?” every time a new feature is introduced.

The Elders you have to track down for the side quest are some of my favorite characters because of the voice acting and general silliness. When it comes to actual characters from the Bible, we get to see characters talking smack about Adam and Eve, which is hilarious.

Then of course God is brought up more than once, as is the Holy Spirit. Curiously, Jesus never comes up. There are also what I consider more obscure figures such as Puriel, Cassiel’s best friend in the game. And the “Holy Events” section references some of the stories from the Bible.

I went to church for maybe 5 years as a kid (and watched some Veggie Tales, which is a fun watch even from a secular perspective). So I knew a decent amount of the references. But you do not need more than a passing familiarity with Christianity to play this game, in my opinion. The same could be said for any of the content that’s related to Norse mythology.

The Holy Gosh Darn is an irREVEREND irreverent take on what really happens in Heaven. It’s not without its flaws; the vomiting à la South Park is a bit gross but mostly goes away after the beginning of the game. Sometimes the game crashes, but thankfully there’s an auto-save feature.

I kind of wish we got to see more of Hell and Helheim, but I really enjoyed the borderline “blasphemous” jokes and interpretations of religion. With hilarious details like a guy who scoops the poop for all the dogs who have gone to Heaven, time traveling with Cassiel and Azrael is an incredibly entertaining way to spend your time. There’s even a New Game+ mode!

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, be sure to check out the demo! I hope it “has a prayer” at winning you over. 😉