Has the grind of completing dailies and constantly grinding loot gotten repetitive and boring? Has the routine of clearing dungeons in Path of Exile, Diablo, or Vampire Survivors become mundane? Do you crave a change of scenery but still love those gameplay loops from dungeon crawlers and loot grinders? Well, if you answered yes to any of these questions, then we have two games for you: Hell Clock and Conquest Dark.

At PAX East 2025, we met with Publisher Mad Mushroom to preview their two games, Hell Clock and Conquest Dark. At the booth, they were joined by Starforge, their sister company; each demo station showed off some of the different amazing designs that Starforge has for custom PC cases, including Frieren: Beyond the Journey and Kaiju #8. The red, green, and black atmosphere and design of the computer case added an additional element of darkness and fantasy to the overall experience. 

What do you get when you mix Diablo-style dungeon crawling with Brazilian lore? You get Hell Clock. Now, I don’t know how many people are actually asking for a game with Brazilian lore outside of Brazil, but Hell Clock takes gameplay elements that we know from other games and mixes them with Brazilian ethos.

With our Conquest Dark run finished, we then proceeded to move on to Hell Clock. Hell Clock takes a dungeon exploration approach to gameplay, think Diablo X roguelite. Before we started a run, we were given the option of what difficulty we’d like to play on and if we would like the Hell Clock to play a factor in each run. 

For our run, we decided to disable the Hell Clock so that we could explore the dungeons as much as possible. Just because the Hell Clock was off didn’t mean that it was a walk in the park.

If you proceed slowly, you could easily kill all enemies within the dungeon over time, but if you move at a normal pace, then you will have to face multiple enemies and can become overwhelmed.

Unless you are a god at dungeon crawling action RPGs, you will not clear an area in one run. Each run you successfully extract/leave, you will get resources that can be used to upgrade your equipment and abilities.

If you die on a run, you will not lose your equipment, but you will lose the resources that you’ve gathered. Each run is beneficial as long as you survive or escape. 

As someone who likes to be able to play games in a relaxed setting, having a wide variety of game settings makes it so that anyone can enjoy the game at any difficulty and adjust it when needed.

The combat will keep you on your toes, but it still feels balanced and fair. If you are a fan of either standard or hardcore runs on games like Diablo/POE, then Hell Clock will be right up your alley.

The graphics of the game looked well polished despite not yet being released. The game’s audio design felt like you were going into a dark crypt where anything could be lurking around the corner, ready to strike. 

Sadly, we did not get enough time to dive super deep into the game, but we still had a fun time with what we got to experience. The ability to experience some Brazilian lore in a dungeon crawl style made the history come to life, even if semi-fictionalized.

It will be interesting to see how much creative liberties the developers take with the game to make it fun, or if it sticks mainly to the key moments and just adds a small dark twist.

Hell Clock is set to launch for Windows PC (via Steam) sometime in June 2025. A playable demo for the game is also available.