The best thing about scrolling through game distribution platforms is that you’ll sometimes stumble on a game you didn’t know you profoundly wanted. Hellriders is one such game because until I stumbled on it, I didn’t realize how badly I needed a cheerleader vs demons game. But now I’ve found it, I don’t think I can live without it.
Hellriders follows a group of cheerleaders who just won the National Cheer Championships. However, their joy is short-lived as they discover that one team member made a deal with the devil to ensure their victory. Due to this deal, the girls get sucked into a portal that drops them straight into hell, forcing the girls to battle through all manner of monsters and demons as they hunt for a way back to the regular world.
Hellriders Knows What It Wants To Be And Goes All Out
Hellriders’ unwavering commitment to its theme is one reason it’s so fun. This commitment is evident from the earliest pages, as the whole game is written in the voice of a stereotypical cheerleader, featuring numerous references to classic high school films and digs at other members of her fictional cheer squad.
This commitment to the theme also carries through to the mechanics, as everything has been given a cheerleading twist. This is especially notable in the character creation section, as the game does a great job of helping players make thematic characters. Each character in Hellriders has four stats: Cheer, Chant, Choreo, and Charge. To get their character’s initial stat values, players roll on a series of tables to find their character’s personality, school club membership, and what two perks they start with, all of which boost specific stats.
The roll system is simple but flexible. Players only need to roll for basic actions when they attempt something with a chance of failure or are under threat. The player explains what their character is going to do and what their desired narrative outcome is. After this, the GM decides which stat is most appropriate for the attempted action. Then, the player rolls 2D6 and adds the rolled numbers together. Plus, if the player thinks one of their perks would help them perform the intended action, they can add an extra one to their roll. The action is successful if the player’s total is above eight. However, if the player’s total is less than eight, the action fails, and the player loses one of their Spirit points.
The Threat Pool System Makes Big Scenes Impactful
However, scenes featuring multiple or more complex hazards use a system Hellriders dubs the Threat Pool. At the start of a scene using the Threat Pool, the GM decides how many points the Threat Pool contains (with trickier or more consequential situations having more initial points) and then decides if they want to share the value with the players or keep it secret (for increased suspense).
Whenever a player makes a successful action when trying to overcome the scene’s hazards, a point is removed from the Threat Pool. When the players successfully remove all the points from the Threat Pool, the hazard is overcome, and the players can continue to the next scene.
The Threat Pool is an excellent addition to the game because it encourages players to work together to overcome grander threats or achieve significant storyline progress. This is great from both a gameplay and thematic standpoint, as it pushes players to find ways to support each other’s actions. At the same time, it captures the idea that the characters are all members of a well-practiced cheer squad, leading to some excellent character roleplay moments.
Another nice touch is having the Threat Pool go down whenever a player makes a successful action, no matter what the action was. This means that Threat Pool scenes are not restricted to combat, and players have more space to devise unique and creative solutions to their problems, meaning that longer sessions don’t devolve into basic hack-and-slash dungeon crawling.
The Spirit System Encourages Thematic Play
Another well-thought-out element is the Spirit system. In Hellriders, Spirit represents your cheerleader’s ability to continue their adventure. Spirit points are lost whenever a character fails an action. If a character hits zero Spirit, they fall unconscious. Thankfully, this is not the end of the game because resting in a safe space will allow a cheerleader to refresh their Spirit to full. This works on two levels. Firstly, having characters lose Spirit from every failed action rather than just painful ones adds tension to every dice roll and makes each one feel consequential. Plus, it also makes thematic sense as, to a teenager, the mere act of failure (and the social mockery it can bring) is often more painful than any physical injury.
Secondly, making it easy to recover Spirit and having total depletion only knock your character out rather than kill them perfectly fits the game’s campy teen-comedy vibe. It encourages players to be brash and take risks as while failure may slow the group down, a series of bad rolls won’t lead to the game ending prematurely.
Hellriders is a fantastic game that works mechanically and thematically. The game perfectly captures the feel of a classic American high school comedy while putting a unique pulp horror twist on it that calls back to classic horror B-Movies of the 1960s and 1970s. It combines this with easy-to-learn but highly flexible game mechanics that let each cheerleader get into all sorts of unique and memorable chaos. Combine this with some excellent production values, and you’re left with a game guaranteed to delight any table it is shown to.
Jonathon Greenall is a freelance writer, TTRPG designer, and visual artist. They love creating and exploring the often overlooked corners of indie media, spotlighting things that dare to be different.