Warning: The subject of this review contains discussions and depictions of multiple potentially disturbing topics, including (but not limited to): Suicide, self-harm, bullying, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and corporal punishment. Reader discretion is advised.

I’ve always been a Paladin player in every class-based RPG I’ve played that has them. Paladins are all about virtue and justice (often to a fault), and they’re known to be quite partial to smiting evil by smashing it with huge hammers that tend to be somewhat alarmingly satisfying to use. With that in mind, I was pretty confident I was in for a good time when Virtue and a Sledgehammer, developed by Deconstructeam and published by Devolver Digital, was brought to my attention. I shall now do my best to really “hammer home” my opinions on Virtue and a Sledgehammer.

In Virtue and a Sledgehammer, you play as Pratelle (aka “Prattie”), a young woman who initially appeared to me as though suffering from an especially severe psychotic break. Pratelle finds herself standing in her hometown holding a sledgehammer, which I’ve nicknamed “Maxwell Silverhammer” for reasons that will soon become obvious. Your main goal is to find and confront Pratelle’s sister, Nina. There’s a whole town’s worth of buildings standing in your way, but that’s nothing good ol’ Maxwell can’t help you fix. You’re intended to let your rage fuel you as you smash down every building you can find.

Every adult in Pratelle’s life, from her mother to her teachers to the clerk at the corner kiosk (where she used to buy candy), constantly and unfavorably compared Pratelle to her sister throughout the girls’ childhood and adolescence. As if that weren’t bad enough, all that praise definitely went to Nina’s head, and Nina made sure that, by talking down to her sister, Pratelle internalized every last bit of that shame. I honestly couldn’t blame Pratelle if she is actually having a psychotic break after enduring a life of that. If anything, I’d commend her for having made it this long.

I had hoped that would be the extent of Pratelle’s emotional baggage, but to quote the late Billy Mays, “But wait, there’s more!” Pratelle reveals that her mother is dead, and she blames everyone else in her hometown for that. Through flashbacks you’ll likely encounter as you play through Virtue and a Sledgehammer, you’ll find it also seems that the girls’ mother developed some form of severe dementia later in life and needed around-the-clock supervision and care because of that. Mother Dearest said some rather hurtful stuff about Pratelle when that dementia had spikes in severity.

The circumstances rendering Pratelle unable to tell whether or not her mom was even aware of what she was saying during those episodes, or whether it was more of a “drunken words are sober thoughts” situation, compounded everything Pratelle has had to deal with. The main reason I can’t tell if the events of Virtue and a Sledgehammer really happened is that all the townsfolk have been replaced by robots with CRT monitors for heads. They all remember Pratelle clearly, but what isn’t clear (to me) is if they’ve all actually become robots or if Pratelle is stripping them of their personalities in her mind.

After all, if it’s just a legion of robots saying horrible things to you rather than people around whom you’ve spent your entire life, that makes it a lot less morally difficult to smash them and all their homes to smithereens. There’s talk among the townsfolk that Nina has devised a method for everyone to upload their consciousnesses into machines, which is why I haven’t definitively figured out what’s going on here story-wise. I was originally going to joke about this being a psychological horror game for me, specifically, since you have to destroy so many computers, but I think I’ll refrain.

Gameplay-wise, Virtue and a Sledgehammer has five buttons in its control scheme: WASD to move, and holding left-click for different periods of time to swing Maxwell with increasing force. The movement controls can be rebound, but as far as I can tell, the left mouse button (nor the need to hold it down) cannot. You have to hold the button for a couple of seconds to swing with maximum force. That may not seem very long, but I suspect it’s still long enough to present accessibility concerns for some players. Virtue and a Sledgehammer also has full gamepad support.

The content warning I included at the top of this article mentions a lot of potential concerns about topics presented within Virtue and a Sledgehammer, but doesn’t include everything. Virtue and a Sledgehammer contains a considerably lengthier content warning than that. I’ve included a screenshot of it here so you can judge for yourself whether you’ll be better off skipping Virtue and a Sledgehammer because of its subject matter. Assuming neither that nor accessibility concerns are problematic for you, though, I’d generally recommend Virtue and a Sledgehammer. If nothing else, it’s by far the most cathartic game I’ve played this year.

A PC review copy of Virtue and a Sledgehammer was provided by Devolver Digital for this review.

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Virtue and a Sledgehammer

$14.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Simple, cathartic core gameplay loop.
• The story has multiple ways to keep you guessing.
• A detailed content warning is included.

Cons

• Even with a content warning present, there’s a lengthy list of potentially disturbing topics involved here.
• Swinging your sledgehammer might be an accessibility concern.