Why ULTRAKILL's story is worth paying attention to

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  1. Why ULTRAKILL's story is worth paying attention to
Why ULTRAKILL's story is worth paying attention to Why ULTRAKILL's story is worth paying attention to

Why ULTRAKILL's story is worth paying attention to

4/1/2025 / 4 minutes to read / Tags: analysis, gaming

Alright, brace yourselves, hot take incoming: I really like ULTRAKILL. I know, right? Somebody had to say it. There’s not much to be said on the game itself that would justify the bandwidth it would take to deliver similarly scalding hot takes. But dropping the sarcasm for a moment, there is one community sentient I take issue with. Specifically the non-engagement with the less “videogame-y” parts.

Right off the bat, ULTRAKILL does not demand the level of seriousness I am about to give it. There are a million examples I could point to, from the sandbox literally being gm_construct to the museum that allows you to pick up and throw marketable plushies of everyone who worked on the game. My personal favorite has to be A R M B O Y ! ! !, a secret enemy that has the audacity to be placed next to a book. In ULTRAKILL, books are usually used to convey lore. They’re some of the only holdable objects with 0 gameplay purpose, their exclusive function is to deliver prose. When you get close to A R M B O Y ! ! !, his name appears on screen, an effect that Hakita often uses to break kayfabe.

But then there’s the book.

Armboy, a simple enemy design whose most prominent feature is the 2 large arms it supports itself with

A book placed next to Armboy

Armboy's book's contents, consisting of only his name. The font is so large it doesn't fit on the screen.

It’s a really funny game. It’s self-aware, and not in a quippy “I guess this is something I do now” kind of way where it’s almost embarrassed of what it is and trying to offset that. It knows what it is, and it’s proud of it. Most importantly, it has enough confidence in itself to break character for a gag before resuming like nothing ever happened.And even then it has more sincerity in its jokes than most games have in their climax.

Case in point, every layer in ULTRAKILL has a secret level. For the act finale layers, these are the Prime Sanctums. These house secret super-bosses that take up a considerable space in the lore, even more-so if you consider all the Greek myths they grandfathered in. Others are Johnathan Blow’s seminal work The Witness, or for the young’uns reading this, the game The Looker was making fun of. Even these joke levels are capped off with actual, literal testaments. As in the written word of God with a capital G.

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