Helheim

What is Helheim?

Helheim is a Norse action-RPG built for the Super Nintendo and playable in a browser window. Its frame of reference is the dark isometric dungeon crawler of the late nineties: a lone figure on tiled ground, rooms that hide something, and a story delivered in short bursts rather than long cutscenes. The setup is blunt. The sea gives back a half-drowned stranger on the beach below Ulfsvik, with no memory of the night raiders broke the peace of the gods on Lysøy.

The errand list that follows is a whole small saga: lay Bersi's drowned oarsmen to rest, wake Karr the Haugbui in his barrow, swear the oath ring's trial in Nastrond, then carry that ring through the Iron Wood and up the Trollfell, where Hrung the Bergbui has sat on Tyr's stone for a hundred winters. Two heroes are on offer. This is the SNESdev Game Jam 2026 edition, and it costs nothing to play.

How to play

Choose a hero and start walking. Movement is free in eight directions, and combat is built around a basic strike plus one equipped skill that can be swapped on the fly. Levels hand out stat and skill points, so a run gets stronger as it goes; mead carried on the belt is the healing supply. Talking to people, picking things up, trading and travelling by rune stone all sit on a single interact button, which keeps the pace brisk.

Between fights the route opens up: a village, burial ground, halls, a frozen and a sunken section, a wood, and three floors of the Trollfell. A smith, a healer and a gambler appear along the way, alongside rare and unique items and magic that goes beyond the two starting skill sets. Side quests are flagged in the world with a gold exclamation mark over whoever has something new to say, which makes them easy to find without a journal. There are no saves, so the whole thing is meant to be finished in one sitting.

Controls

The browser build maps Super Nintendo inputs onto the keyboard. Arrow keys walk in eight directions, X strikes, Z uses the skill currently on A, and S drinks mead from the belt to heal. A handles talking, picking up, trading and rune-stone travel. Q and E page through available skills, Enter opens the hero panel for stats and skills and opens the game menu when pressed again, and V opens the bag. A gamepad also works in the browser version.

Inside the panels, Q and E turn the page. Text cards advance with A or X on a keyboard, while Start or B skips them outright. Anyone unsure of the layout can open HOW TO PLAY on the title menu, which repeats the key list before a run begins. Players who prefer a controller or original hardware can take the ROM elsewhere; the browser build is simply the fastest way in.

Tips for your first run

The game is short but it is not forgiving of a half-finished session, because there is nowhere to store progress. Plan a single block of time, and treat the two heroes as different puzzles rather than skins: the Berserker leans on Bear Strike, Wolf Leap and Battle Roar, while the Seidkona works with Ember, Rime Ring and Seidr Step. A few habits make the first attempt smoother.

The five bosses are set pieces, not wall-of-flesh checks. Karr the Haugbui, Asgaut the Oathsworn, Hrafnhild the grave-witch and Atli the Oath-Breaker come before Hrung the Bergbui, who is twice your size, slams the ground, throws rocks and calls his taken. Arrive with a full mead belt and a skill chosen for the room rather than the corridor leading to it.

• Finish it in one sitting; nothing is saved between sessions.
• Drink mead early instead of hoarding it for a boss.
• Swap the skill on the skill button in the corridor, never mid-fight.
• Chase gold exclamation marks for fresh dialogue and side quests.
• Spend stat and skill points as they arrive rather than saving them.
• Play at NTSC speed if the choice exists; PAL runs everything slower.

Content and replayability

The map is more generous than the 30-minute story estimate suggests. Ulfsvik, the Haugfield, the Barrow of Karr, the Frozen Halls, the Sunken Halls, Karr's chamber, Nastrond, the Iron Wood and three levels of the Trollfell plus the Troll's Hall make up the spine, with the Hollow Mound and a Deeper Barrow waiting for anyone who wants to go back down. Filling in everything pushes a run to between 40 and 60 minutes.

Five bosses anchor that route, and the side content is scattered rather than stacked: a smith's boy, Ketil's amber, a myling, porridge owed to a gardvord, Bersi's boatswain and Tufte's grave horn all count toward a complete run. The Hollow Mound is listed among them, which rewards players who treat optional doors as content rather than decoration. Two heroes with six distinct skills between them, plus rare and unique items and a gambling NPC, give a second pass something to change.

Presentation and performance

This is pixel art with intent. Story cards carry hand-finished pictures, skies shift through HDMA gradients, moons drift, fire flickers and snow falls, and the scene transitions use mosaic, ripple and iris wipes. It reads as a late-nineties cartridge rather than a modern engine wearing a retro filter, which suits the isometric framing.

Technically the build is a 512 KB LoROM with no special chips and no SRAM, and it runs on real NTSC and PAL hardware from a flash cartridge as well as in accurate emulators. The browser version runs the same ROM through an emulator core. One quirk worth knowing: game logic advances per frame, so PAL consoles move everything at five-sixths of the NTSC speed while the music keeps its tempo. NTSC is the intended pace.

Who should play it

Anyone who misses the specific pleasure of an isometric crawl with a tight map and a short clock should start here. The Norse framing is used for texture as well as names: drowned oarsmen, oath rings, barrow dwellers and a troll on a stolen god's stone. Players who like picking a class and seeing it change within half an hour get that, and players who want a complete arc in one evening get that too.

It is a poorer fit for anyone who wants a long campaign, mid-session saves or a game that unfolds over weeks. The commitment is a single sitting of roughly 40 minutes if everything is chased, and the browser build is the lowest-friction way to test that. Fans of Super Nintendo homebrew, and of the technical craft behind it, will find extra to admire in what the cartridge does without extra hardware.