Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists

Introduction

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists, developed by A Sharp and published by Kitfox Games, released on Steam on 8 September 2026 at NZ$34.64. It's a tactical narrative gamebook from the designers of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, sending a randomly-generated crew of four heisters into one of several hells on a job for a mysterious client called the Ambassador. Each run assembles a fresh protagonist and party with their own traits, then plays out through a series of narrative encounters where players choose an approach and draw on their crew's traits to resolve tense, often deadly skill checks. The game ships on Windows and macOS with partial controller support. As a launch from an established, well-regarded studio, it debuted with a substantial and clearly positive review base: 56 total reviews at the time of writing, 46 of them favourable, landing the game at Very Positive on Steam's own scale.

What's working: writing, art and a genuine tabletop feel

What comes through most clearly across Thousand Hells' review sample is how consistently reviewers credit its writing and art with real staying power. One reviewer sums up their first run plainly: "Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists has potential to be a strong candidate for a narrative game of the year for me. The challenges that you encounter during the journeys are tense and exciting." A separate reviewer with over 15 hours logged describes the sample's overall texture: "The creativity on display in both the writing and art of the hells is terrific. Individual scenes are captivating and, when strung together into a whole story, the impressions they made lingered in my thoughts well after I'd closed the game." Another reviewer puts it more bluntly: "This game is absolutely dripping with character & charm," describing a mission to smuggle a mass murderer into a demon prison as an example of the game's writing at its best.

Reviewers repeatedly single out how convincingly the game captures a genuine tabletop RPG feel. One writes that it "really nails the TTRPG feel: fail forward mechanics but still has penalties, able to use skills even with flimsy logic, and party banter," while another specifically praises the way "flashbacks" are used as a mechanic, "straight from our own gaming table," for justifying an in-the-moment save. More than one reviewer draws a positive comparison to Wildermyth and to the developer's own earlier catalogue, with one calling it "the events from Wildermyth crossed with the hero quests from King of Dragon Pass turned into a whole game." Reviewers also credit the game's brevity and replay structure directly, noting each heist runs about an hour and that the lack of a punishing meta-progression system, beyond unlocking which heist and hell to attempt next, keeps sessions easy to jump back into. Several reviewers embrace the randomness itself as a feature rather than a flaw, describing a genuine risk-reward tension in deciding when to press their luck.

The honest problems: heavy randomness, a vague trait system, and thin depth for some

Set against that praise, Thousand Hells' review sample carries a specific and recurring pushback, much of it from reviewers who came in as fans of A Sharp's earlier work. The most consistent complaint is that the game leans too heavily on randomness across nearly every layer. One reviewer, self-described as a huge fan of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, writes plainly: "the game is just way too random, with everything. You get a random story, with a random protagonist. You also get random party members with random traits... After losing three quests in a row, from constant bad rolls and not being sure what the random traits help with, I've given up." A separate detailed reviewer lays out the mechanical version of the same complaint: "the traits are vaguely worded, and there's no feedback as to what effect they had even after you use them. In order to pass a skill check you have to: be lucky enough to draw a relevant trait tile, figure out if the game thinks the very vaguely-worded trait is relevant to the challenge, [and] succeed at the die roll."

A second cluster of complaints questions whether the game delivers on its own billing. One detailed reviewer argues, "it's missing the core mechanic that any game needs to generate stories: trade-offs that feel meaningful," adding that it "feels eerily like a knock-off, as if someone new to game design was trying to make a mobile version of A Sharp's most beloved titles without understanding what made them successful." Another reviewer frames the same concern around narrative coherence rather than mechanics, writing that their objection "is not the lack of agency in the outcome, it's the lack of agency in creating something that makes sense" from the random choices on offer. A separate reviewer reports a cluster of technical friction at launch: "Framerate is oddly choppy during screens like game setup where it has no right to be, clicking to scroll text gets tedious fast... and for some reason there's a metaprogression system to unlock content bound to playing scenarios randomly," despite the game's marketing suggesting a lighter, more self-contained structure. More than one longtime fan of the developer's earlier games reports the experience feels repetitive and shallow after a handful of runs, with one writing plainly, "Go play King of Dragon Pass instead if you haven't," and a separate reviewer concluding it plays like "procedurally generated slop" rather than the strategic depth they expected.

Verdict

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists backs up a strong, clearly positive launch with real creative substance: reviewers repeatedly credit its writing, art and tabletop-flavoured structure with a level of charm and craft that lingers well after a session ends, and its short, replayable heists draw consistent, independent praise. Its honest problems are just as specific and worth weighing seriously, especially for fans of the developer's earlier work: a randomness-first design that a meaningful share of reviewers, including devoted King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages fans, found frustrating rather than tense, a trait and skill-check system that several detailed reviews report gives too little feedback to learn from, and a recurring argument that the game's narrative choices don't always cohere into a satisfying whole. None of that undoes what a clearly positive reception is responding to in the writing and atmosphere, but the randomness and depth concerns are worth going in aware of. This is a cautious recommendation for narrative gamebook fans specifically drawn to short, atmospheric, choice-driven sessions.

Wanderer callout

A reviewer who loved the developer's earlier games enough to buy this one on day one, only to write a detailed, specific account of exactly which mechanic broke the experience for them rather than a vague complaint, is exactly the kind of grounded, comparative evidence Wanderer treats as more valuable than a first impression: it shows precisely where a beloved studio's new direction didn't land for a returning fan.