The Holy Gosh Darn Review – A brilliantly designed time-travelling adventure game

Perfectly Paranomal are back with the third game in their Tuesday trilogy and this might just be the best one! The Holy Gosh darn is a sharply written adventure game with excellent time-traveling puzzles. Whether you’ve already played through Manual Samuel and Hellheim Hassle or if this is you’re first time in Perfectly Paranormal’s crazy world, The Holy Gosh Darn is gosh-darn good time.

Our unlikely Heavenly hero is Cassiel of Celerity, an foul-mouthed, snarky angel who spends her days hanging out with a friend at the Pearly Gates. God hasn’t been around much lately, so Cassiel is a little lost. She and her pal pass the time by playing Guess that Dawg since only canine souls seem to be meeting the criteria to get into Heaven. Humans are a rarity, much to dismay of Cassiel’s friend and to Peter who man’s Heaven’s entrance. But then 6pm rolls around and with it a horde of Phantoms hellbent on wrecking everything. Rushing to Peter, Cassiel finds out that she needs to get The Holy Gosh Darn, an important artefact capable of defending Heaven, so she sets off and….boom. The Phantoms annihilate Heaven in a glorious explosion that makes it look like a nuclear bomb somehow died and went to the afterlife.

That’s where Death comes into the picture, the very same hat-wearing, hoodie-loving one seen in 2016’s Manual Samuel. Yes, The Holy Gosh Darn not only takes place in the same universe as developer Perfectly Paranormal’s last two games, but also on the very same day. Fear not though, mortal, because while they tie together in a few ways, The Holy Gosh Darn works perfectly as its own standalone adventure.

Death is here to help save Heaven, which is ironic because it’s his humongous cock-up that causes its destruction in the first place. To be more specific, Death is here to make Cassiel save Heaven for him with the help of a handy-dandy time-piece that Cassiel can use to rewind and fast-forward time. Since she didn’t bother to get her Angelic ass up until noon that’s the earliest she can jump back to, but she can also rewind in fifteen-minute increments as well or jump back to a checkpoint you left. Armed with a magical clock, Cassiel needs to figure out how to stop the Phantoms, taking on her on a quest to locate the titular Holy Gosh Darn, find out what God is up to and insult a bunch of old people. It’s going to be the longest six hours of Cassiel’s life.

It’s Heaven, but not quite as you’d probably imagine it. In this universe, the afterlife isn’t all that much different from Earth, with people filling out paperwork, working jobs, living in apartments and generally just getting on with it. Hell has gotten a remodel, too, and honestly doesn’t look like a terrible place to live. Heck, there’s even a board-game cafe you can hang out in. Perfectly Paranormal’s idea of where we go when we die might not be the most glamorous, but it sure is interesting, mixing in elements from various religions around the world, including a pretty hefty dose of Norse mythology for good measure.

The writing style is likely going to be the most divisive aspect as it relies heavily on quirky characters and snarky dialogue, the kind where almost everyone comes off as being slightly dickish. In other words, it does have the overused writing tone so often associated these days with the MCU. Y’know, the one where everything has a sarcastic tinge, a sense that nobody is taking things seriously and everyone has a million and one witty comebacks? Even if you’re tiring of the style though, Perfectly Paranormal does handle it extremely well, and in fairness to the developer’s it’s in keeping with the style they used for Manual Samuel and Hellheim Hassle.

Whether you’re talking to a literal demonic asshole, insulting elders, conversing with Death or convincing someone they owe you money there’s never a dull moment! Sure, not every joke lands, but almost all of them do which is pretty impressive, and while the game uses religion as its story-telling foundation and as its joke-punchbag, the sharp writing never once ventures into anything that feels outright disrespectful. It’s a difficult balancing act to pull off, yet Perfectly Paranormal does it with aplomb.

But I did find myself wishing the game would dare to poke fun at other religions aside from Christianity, too. In almost every book, film or game it almost always seems to be Christianity that gets spoofed. Perhaps it’s just because it has some of the most commonly known and widely recognized imagery and concepts, but it is getting overplayed. There’s plenty of comedy material to be mined in Islam or Judism or Buddhism, for example, and yet we get so little. I can’t help but wonder if Christanity is viewed as the “safe” option to poke fun at without ruffling any feathers, Angelic or otherwise.

Cassiel and Death are the only two people who know what’s going to happen to Heaven, creating a fun juxtaposition: while you’re sprinting around, trying to figure out how to save Heaven, everyone else is going through another normal day. That means they tend to be rather chatty, eager to bore Cassiel with mundane nonsense that is 100% not helpful to an Angel on a time-limit. The game makes clever use of this, letting Cassiel interrupt conversations with an angry “Get to the point!”. You’ve got to be careful though, because while some people will put up with her rudeness, other characters won’t and will refuse to speak until you rewind time. The more you play the more you learn who you can push and who you can’t. You’ll also figure out conversational shortcuts that let you speed through a lengthy chat to get the information you need.

Since this is an adventure game, I’m sure you already know what you’re mostly going to be doing. Yep, solving puzzles, baby! Sure, there are a few other things thrown into the mix like some very light platforming or skydiving past the soul’s of dogs on their way to Heaven, but most of the time you’re going to be working through the stupendously designed puzzles. The Holy Gosh Darn never fails to make exceptional use of its time-traveling, while also carefully balancing the level of difficulty. Despite how obtuse time-travel as a concept can sometimes be, you’ll never be stuck for too long and the game is consistently excellent at pointing you in the right direction. Using the clock to bounce back and forth becomes second-nature.

On paper it sounds like the time-traveling should become boring because some puzzles might require you to loop three or four times before getting the sequence right, but the game always seems to find a way to tweak each loop just enough to keep it fun. You might have found a shortcut, or maybe unlocked a conversation option that let’s Cassiel cut to the chase, making this go-around smoother. Other times you’ll repeat loops because of your own mistakes, like forgetting to grab the Heaven money from your jeans in your pocket. Or you’ll jump back in time only to realize you never put the cup of coffee you needed into the clock. Of course, despite the thematic urgency of saving Heaven, you can repeat time as much as you like, so there’s never any chance of failing completely.

Getting into a gaming cafe’s VIP lounge is an excellent example of the game building layer upon layer of puzzle goodness. First, you need to use your knowledge of the future to politely cough whenever someone swears so that they don’t have to toss a coin to Sweary, Hell’s resident little imp who appears with a swear-jar whenever a denizen forgets to keep their tongue in check. Once in the cafe, you need to win a mobile phone by redeeming tokens, which means finding out how to get enough money to enter into a tabletop RPG where you can again use your clock to figure out how to come out on top.

Whenever the time-traveling novelty is starting to fade away the game adds new wrinkles to keep things interesting. A handy upgrade that lets you put a single item into the clock so that it travels back in time with you completely changes how puzzles are handled, for example. It’s especially fun when the game teaches how to use this new power to duplicate items. And then just when that new power seems to have reached its limits, the developers find even more ways to keep it feeling fresh and fun, bringing in interesting new characters or sending you somewhere different.

And then at a perfectly judged 10 hours or so the game wraps everything up in a satisfying ending that also opens the door for even more Tuesday-based adventures. There’s even some extra side-quests to tackle just for fun and to complete the cool Trophy list, plus a New Game+ mode which you’ll need to use to beat the game in under 30 rewinds.

Holy feces, this game is good! Perfectly Paranomal keep knocking it out of the park. First, a skateboard, then ripping off limbs and now time-travel; they keep finding amazing new ways to experience their unique universe. It makes me excited to see what weird and wonderful concept they come up with next.

The Holy Gosh Darn uses its time-traveling gimmick to full-effect, crafting a multitude of fun puzzles within a world packed full of wacky characters, witty jokes and crude gags. But perhaps the best thing about the game is how it expands on the universe that Perfectly Paranormal is building. It’s said that God created man in his image, and once you’ve spent a while in Heaven and Hell it makes a lot of sense – the denizens of the Afterlife are a flawed bunch, and thus so are the humans.

The Holy Gosh Darn is out here doing the Lord’s work! And God knows, he works in Mysterious Ways.