Hellboy-inspired Apocalypse Keys asks who will hold you as the world ends

“Hell is other people,” reads the oft-quoted line from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No ExitThe minimalist drama is about three souls that are trapped inside the walls of one purgatory room. The characters confess, bicker, seek absolution, seduce each other, and wax on about the existential terror of bearing another’s judgment. In 2013, cartoonist and writer Tim Kreider typed a line that would come to define a generation of online interaction: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

The new roleplaying tabletop game Apocalypse Keys shares much in common with these two disparate pieces of media, even if creator Rae Nedjadi and publisher Evil Hat Productions don’t mention either in the credits. This game has a strong Hellboy feel and an impressive mechanical heritage. Apocalypse Keys puts the vital need for connection — even love — front and center alongside the literal end of the world. This film explores the question of whether or not relationships can protect us against our worst instincts. It also enjoys the heel-turning towards oblivion.

Evil Hat Productions

They are monsters that work under DIVISION. A clandestine wetworks government agency, it has a funny acronym and a serious mission. Find Doors of Power to stop the Harbingers before they open them. Sessions consist of mysteries that the group, along with the guidance of a Keeper (the game’s moniker for a game master), flesh out collaboratively as they collect the eponymous keys of the apocalypse — evidence that can be as mundane as a waterlogged Walkman or as obvious as a bleeding crown of blackened roses.

Like Hellboy and its BPRD spinoff, the player-characters’ monsters have bucked their apocalyptic birthright in favor of saving humanity from unseen threats. Many would agree that the monsters are feared and despised by humanity because of their destructive power. Every DIVISION asset could be a mere few bad days from becoming their own Harbinger. The only thing that can stop them is their relationship with those on the outer fringes. The apocalypse can only be stopped by darkness, and you will need your friends to keep it at bay.

“I like to joke that Apocalypse Keys is built on the concept of ‘We’re not so different, you and I’ between the players and the Harbingers that they fight against,” Nedjadi told Polygon in an interview. “But it’s also a very emotional game — aside from the stakes about the world ending, which is a very huge possibility. It isn’t about whether you’ll get physically hurt, but whether your emotions are going to get the better of you, if you’re going to create havoc and cause problems for the people you care about.”

Players will recognize the Powered by Apocalypse design school: Classes as preconfigured playbooks with worksheets, Fiction-forward moves and a focus on players bringing their ideas to the world. Nedjadi lovingly referred to their game engine as a “Frankenstein’s monster,” borrowing interpersonal gameplay mechanics like bonds from emotional wuxia RPG Hearts of WulinClocks are anxiety inducing timers that appear within games. Blades in Dark; and lifting the delightful mystery solving mechanics from grannies-meet-Cthulhu title Brindlewood Bay.

Evil Hat Productions

Newcomers reading through the 300-page core rulebook won’t feel lost among the chapters, which manage to dissect and present Apocalypse Keys’ agenda like a step-by-step guide to heart surgery — staggering to imagine in full but surprisingly simple once you start. Each playbook, which is categorized according to emotional complexity and storyline, comes with an introduction and notes on best practices. In the section Keepers, you will find helpful tips and tricks for placing each kind of character into the most dramatic situations.

The simplest of tricks can be the most effective. Apocalypse Keys’ bag is the devastating success. The success of each playbook is determined, like in other RPGs that are similar to this one, by adding two 6-sided dice with the appropriate modifiers. Traditionally, anything below a six is a miss, results beyond a 10 count as unmitigated success, and everything else ends up mixed — that is, leaving room for the Keeper to allow success, but add a complication or a price. These characters, whether they are playing as fallen Gods, eldritch Scions or manifestations of eternal hunger, want to control their darker impulses by rolling at the sweet spot in between. Going higher than nine means slipping toward the baleful fate promised (or threatened) by whatever lurks in their hearts’ hidden shadows.

As corruption progresses, it is measured by ruin. Achieving too much will cause characters to quit the game or retire prematurely, bringing about the end of the world as the latest harbinger. Players are able to change their result by using their bonds with other players, non-player characters and Darkness, the force that drives their abilities. As the rulebook reads: “You have so much power, but what you truly have is this: magic and fear. Healing and hope. It will have to be enough.” Staged as flashbacks or small interpersonal moments, leaning on these connections might prove the difference between thwarting a Harbinger or watching the world be remade in the horrific image of whatever lurks beyond the door.

Nedjadi said designing Apocalypse KeysThe project saved them at the peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic and during their mounting health crisis in 2020, because it was something they could push forward little by little when everything else seemed to make sense. Their despondency shifted into cautious optimism as the pandemic progressed. This was reflected in their final version of game. The importance of bonds deepened, as did the hopeful bent to the RPG’s mysteries and playbook descriptions. The two currencies — darkness tokens and bonds — represent this tug between our worst impulses and better natures.

Most importantly, Apocalypse Keys doesn’t judge those who struggle to maintain balance but instead provides moments of connection, vulnerability, and intimacy as valves for the pressure of a judgmental, callous world pressing down on your characters’ shoulders.

Apocalypse Keys champions player expression wherever possible, providing constant on-ramps for interaction between the group, revealing a terrible secret or complication, or melting into the arms and lips of your fellow monster — heck, there’s a whole section in the book titled “I Almost Called This Game Apocalypse Kisses.”

Hell isn’t other people in this RPG, but they might be the only thing standing between you and a rapidly opening door to cosmic annihilation.

Apocalypse KeysYou can purchase the game now at Amazon and your local retailer, as well as via Evil Hat Productions’ online store.