Malebolge

Malebolge follows Dante’s complete descent through the Hell of Inferno, from the dark wood to the frozen lake at the bottom. Its six chapters cover all nine circles, using places from the poem without inventing locations to connect them. You play as Dante, alive among the dead and carrying an oil lamp because he has mortal eyes. The oil runs out, and the creatures below do not wait for you to be ready.

Evade the damned

The creatures cannot see Dante. They track the traces left by a living body: weight, breath, warmth and moved air. Your odour settles, spreads and drifts with the wind; running doubles it, while stone blocks it. Standing still in the wrong place can give you away, but moving carefully can help you lose your pursuers. With a microphone, you can speak as Dante; his voice becomes breath that the beasts can smell. Some places require total silence.

Manage light and health

The lamp lets you see, but its light also makes you easier to find. If the oil runs out, Dante becomes blind but odourless. Reading a loose sheet also consumes oil.

Dante has three hearts. A light blow costs half a heart and a heavy blow costs a whole one. If he loses all three, he falls back to the last step he closed. Hearts do not recover on their own, though the few apples in Hell restore one.

Clear a path

The damned are already dead, so nothing can kill them. Each weapon only creates a brief opening: an arrow pins its target, while the Miserere scatters them. You can use that time to get through, but never to end a threat.

The souls who stop Dante want their names carried back among the living. You can promise to carry a name, take it by force or obtain it by lying. Each choice weighs differently in the book, and a heavy book smells of the way out.

Read the poem

Looking at an object tells you what it is and what it means in the poem. There is no narrator or cutscene. The damned speak through synthesized throats, using wordless syllables with human pitch, tremor and breath.

The game uses low-resolution rendering, snapping vertices, 15-bit colour and dithering, like a console game from the late 1990s. Its opening verses scroll over Gustave Doré’s 1861 engravings.

Dante’s verses remain in the original Italian in every language. Outside Italian, they can also be read in Longfellow’s English.