Blackhold: School is a Bitch
A downloadable game
NOTE: ALL depicted characters are of 18 years of age or older.
"This is gonna suck."
Descend into depravity with Blackhold, a new kind of roguelike from Vhiel, creator of Odyssey of Gianna! Experience the Black Hole, a dimension-warping space that takes the reality of Blackhold University and twists and reshapes it into a perversion full of mysteries.
A range of unknowable threats await the moody Eve Duskthorne and her allies, ready to subject them to any number of humiliating defeats. If you suffer this indignity, you can return to the scene of the loss to retrieve your fallen assets... if you so choose.
They stand a chance only with the help of the mysterious but charming Ariadne, who grants them the ability to weave powerful spells. Through merging archetypal Ingredients, you can create over 50 impactful and unique spell combinations to aid in the girls' quest to reach the bottom of the bottomless void.
Why does the Black Hole exist? What caused it to come into being? Why is it so... perverted?
Only by piercing downward through the lurid darkness can you find your answers.
Download
Install instructions
- Download the .rar file.
- Use an archive application, such as WinRAR, to extract the files.
- Inside the "BLACKHOLD - Demo" folder, run Game.exe.
Comments
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my god I can't even finish the demo before making a review.. I could never imagine seeing another masterpiece from the same artist right after Gianna! I hope you never stop making games!!
The first kinky moment I got was haigure and it caught me off guard as I haven't seen your beautiful content for almost a year! Can't wait to see what else lies in the demo!
I love what you did with the characters. Being able to control only one at a time feels smooth for me. And when I found out that half a character is left behind when you retreat, I just had to make a review. I love the encouraged use of different characters while keeping the focus on the individual you choose to play.
I've never seen this kind of combat before and it definitely makes things a lot of fun. With these kind of games where I wanna lose (but not on purpose), I need new gameplay mechanics to learn or challenges. Otherwise it's traps, bad luck and surprises that works for me. I've seen so many regular rpg combat systems that I hardly ever lose unless I take off my gear to handicap myself, especially when exp is involved.
I'm a FOMO kind of person, so it is upsetting when I don't get to genuinely lose to every type of enemy to experience all of your amazingly made endings. I've always wanted to see something done in any game that somehow pushes any unseen defeats to be encountered. It's probably just me but I also have a terrible habit of double checking every dialogue and interacting with every rubble on the ground on the 0.0001% chance that I'd see a mere message.
One problem I had was the shift button. I used third party software to rebind it to my side mouse buttons and I've been loving that. Being able to rebind, or at least having a mouse button alternative for shift would be awesome!
When this releases I'm gonna pay double, just as I did with Gianna. Thanks so much! Waiting for the full game is gonna be so hard to endure!
Nice to see you working on more stuff.
I'm loving your game as far as I played ;)
But I want to say that after a while, the game slows down when you are not in battle untill it freezes or crashes, I dont know if it will help you, thanks for your awesome games btw ;D
i love this demo, my one and only critique is i wish there were more ways to get items on the later floors
So, here are my thoughts/critiques on the Demo: (as of June 13, 2025)
As an avid Rougelike enjoyer, this game is definitely good at that. From what I've played and seen, I can definitely tell I will enjoy the full release. The game is definitely nothing like Odyssey of Giana, and that's not a bad thing. I love the originality behind Blackhold.
Unfortunately, and it was to be expected, there are some bugs that do need to be hashed out, like missing images (these have been reported in the discord, to my knowledge)
Unfortunately as well, there are a couple of things I'm not a big fan of and I do hope to see them changed in the full release:
1: I'm not a fan of the forced mouse only mechanics. I do hope keyboard/Keyboard and mouse gets added in the final release
2: the hub needs to be more noticeable or there needs to be dialog or a tutorial showing you that there's a hub. The button, as it is in the demo, felt kinda obscured.
Overall, the demo is a solid 8/10 to me. Minus my couple of issues, it has me excited for the full release for sure. Keep up the good work, Vhiel.
Not to be contrary, because arrow keys definately are not full keyboard, but arrow keys and enter do work if you can't use a mouse.
Alright full impressions after testing around for a few hours. Good foundation, needs some polish with the mechanics.
The set gameplay loop, for a rougelike. Is very well done, the system in place with the selves and the sheaths is very creative and I like it! It allows for a lot of interesting gameplay combinations. The setting is interesting and the few TFs there are, are relatively hot. Though I am not a fan of ghouls.
I will say the Core Combat is rough and needs work. Its very punishing and cumbersome. Its very easy to accidentally run into battles that you are automatically set to lose. The crafting and the spell system feels half baked. Its almost beneficial to just ignore all fights completely and run away. Especially because I couldn't find any point to the Currency you receive as it were.
Hopefully the gameplay is refined and given more point in the next demo/final game
Quite a good demo there is a bit of a bug with jumping where you can jump out of bounds I was able to jump back though.
I do hope you can expend on making the runs more unique for example adding more random encounters or ways to change up the playstyle per runs to not make thing feel the same, Being able to play as more then one characters can make some cool puzzles like the book puzzle or maybe sacrifice a opportunity from I run to make the next run more powerful.
Loved Odyssey of Gianna and I will be looking forward to the complete version of Blackhold
Will there be/are there transformations?
Off to a fascinating start! It's a definite change from OoG, but once I got used to the mechanics, things felt interesting enough to make me want more! I'm very excited to see where this goes, and I'll be exploring this demo in full!