T w e n t y S i d e d

Haydee is a 2016 Metroidvania-style third-person shooter that centers exploration and platforming…and survival. Many people would consider those descriptions somewhat redundant to “Metroidvania-style” but I think it’s important to point out survival was an aspect of almost all video games of the Metroid and Castevania era, and an important distinction for those games and the “genre” as a whole is that later exploration opens up areas seen but not available early in the game. Survival in Haydee is much more like early Resident Evil games: you have to avoid getting hit and conserve your ammo, medpacks, and saves. On top of that, your inventory is small and non-specialized and save points are rare. And just as you have to have a typewriter ribbon available in Resident Evil to operate a save point, Haydee must have a diskette…a separate inventory item. Over the past decade two sequels have been released to increasingly positive ratings. But I suspect most people don’t notice the game until they see the cover art:

The most superficial search, or just checking Haydee‘s Steam page; confirms the main character (who is indeed the titular “Haydee”) is THICC. The game seems designed specifically to ogle her. And yet, it’s not an “adult” game. It actually feels a lot like a Tomb Raider game designed by someone who wanted to take the giggling prurient views of Lara climbing over ledges to the max.

The tutorial actually does a masterful job of “show, don’t tell” to both explain the character you’re playing as and guide you through learning the controls. To start with, whether you are *all* “Haydee” or not, there are clearly a lot of you, and you are to some degree a robot or cybernetic being, given the arms:

Your first challenge is to approach a door and press the correct button on your keyboard or controller to activate it. Next you learn to use the “jump” button to climb:

Climbing over a ledge, or jumping to a ledge, comprises three actions. First, jump UP to grab a ledge, fall across a narrow gap and grab the ledge on the opposite side, or jump across a gap with precise timing to grab a ledge on the other side. Successfully doing any of these actions results in this:

OK, you know this. Next, once you are on the other ledge, you climb(jump) again and/or push UP on your controller to ascend. Except Haydee adds a step. Doing this causes the character to pull herself over the ledge half-way:

And Haydee (the main character) will just stay there, until you press JUMP again (the third step). Then she will clamber up onto her feet.

So if Haydee is *that obvious,* how does it have a good reputation? Surely staring at the main character’s behind and bouncing bosoms can’t carry a game to a stellar rating? Well, no…it usually doesn’t. The bottom line is that Haydee is actually pretty smart, well-designed, and fun to play. Is there a reason the player character is so…exaggerated? I don’t know yet. I suspect the rationale, if it exists and if it’s given, will be thin. I have NOT looked up the end of the game, so I can’t tell you anything about “reasons.” For the record, there are dozens if not hundreds of skin mods for this game, including a few I found that don’t do anything but give Haydee more realistic proportions.

This isn’t a hard game, but it is unforgiving. If you “oops,” then you’re starting over from the last save/checkpoint. Or even from the beginning if you learned you missed something important much earlier on and you can’t remember what order to do things in, or where something is in the mazes you explore. Getting back to Haydee’s body, this also serves as an important context clue:

If you see something like that, the game is telling you “people die here a lot. You will be learning something new.” In that particular case it’s the first time you have to jump a lethal gap. I missed my first try. There’s an achievement for that. In fact I fell three or four times before I found the right placement and visual cues. Portal 1 and 2 feel (and look) very similar, although the smoothness of motion in those games keeps me guessing on jump timing. Haydee feels a bit more regimented; I don’t think I’ve missed a jump since that first challenge.

The second time an important visual is presented by a dead predecessor is the first enemy you face:

The Haydee body in the middle of the room is there when you arrive. The message is that the robot in the room can kill you. Having just picked up a gun, I attempted to shoot the robot. The gun, however, did not come with ammunition. And you can only take a couple of hits. Your best bet is to draw the robot away, then run past, loot the body (it has a keycard you will need to leave the level) then run to the grate in the corner and enter the crawl-way that the robot cannot fit in. Without getting hit, preferably. You will find some ammo for the gun further down this way. You can then learn how to kill the robot with the gun on the way back, but as I have read repeatedly you should conserve your ammo and this is still the tutorial level, and you can, as you already proved, easily *avoid* this robot, just run past. Return to the area you can use the keycard you looted and the tutorial is done.

As you can see, I did NOT avoid getting hit. I should also note you *can* take non-lethal fall damage from certain heights, although I apparently avoided that.

The tutorial itself can be learned in a few minutes. I spent about forty testing controls and figuring out how the game worked. I suspect if I give it another couple of tries I should be able to do the tutorial without damage. The biggest question is the robot you encounter toward the end; it can cross the small room in only a couple of seconds and *does not stop moving* while you loot the body. I played this segment with a controller and suspect this slowed me down. The camera view is over-the-shoulder and a bit distant from the character rather than above and behind, which means the player is acting on a “V” where the character Haydee is looking at a point to their front-right and you the player are looking at a point to your front left. When you “point” in the direction you want to move then run forward, Haydee actually runs slightly to their right, moving the cursor to the right as well. This became less-problematic as I played, so it is at least consistent and can be incorporated into the brain’s assumptions. And in a way, that’s the final argument to Haydee’s prurient design: you, the player, aren’t looking at Haydee; you’re watching the cursor. Because that’s where you’re going/aiming, and that’s how you stay alive.

That’s it for this week, see you soon!

Paige Francis He/him