What you need to know
- Helljumpers is a community-made Helldivers 2 mode coming to Halo Infinite soon. It’s being made by The Forge Falcons, a team of talented fans using the game’s Forge mapmaking tool to create custom gameplay experiences.
- Strongly inspired by Arrowhead’s popular co-op shooter, Helljumpers will feature intense encounters against Banished and Covenant enemies, complete with custom-scripted stratagem call-ins, randomized objectives, dynamic enemy spawns, a colossal Halo 3: ODST-inspired map, and more.
- During a panel held during the October 4-6 Halo World Championship 2024 esports event, The Forge Falcons debuted its first-ever gameplay trailer for Helljumpers that you can watch below. This trailer also revealed that after over seven months in development, the mode is finally releasing on October 25.
- The mode will be playable on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC, and access to it will be completely free-to-play since Halo Infinite multiplayer is.
Ever since Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries implemented the ability to add PvE campaign enemies to maps in the game’s Forge mode mapmaking tool, its community has built many custom levels and modes that creatively make use of the feature. Among the most exciting of these is Helljumpers, an action-packed, Halo-flavored take on the popular co-op shooter Helldivers 2 that took Windows PC and PS5 gamers by storm earlier this year. First announced by The Forge Falcons — the skilled team of Forgers behind the mode — in late March, Helljumpers has been in development for over seven months now.
Featuring bespoke stratagem call-ins, randomized objectives, mid-match upgrade and progression systems, an extraction mechanic, a colossal map inspired by Halo 3: ODST’s gloomy nighttime cityscape, and more, Helljumpers is ambitious, to say the least (this overview covers its gameplay specifics in more detail). With 4,000+ script nodes and a maxed out Forge budget, The Forge Falcons have spared no effort in its quest to bring the bombastic fun of Helldivers 2 to Halo fans on Xbox and PC — and now, we finally know when the mode will be in our hands.
During a panel The Forge Falcons held during the October 4-6 Halo World Championship 2024 esports event, it debuted the first-ever gameplay trailer for Helljumpers, along with its official release date: October 25. You can view the trailer below, or by clicking this link to its YouTube webpage.
The trailer shows a squad of four players dropping into Helljumpers’ gloomy urban environment, recovering some sort of critical artifact and then infiltrating a relay tower to blow it to kingdom come before extracting on a Pelican dropship. Throughout the battle, waves of various types of Banished troops land en masse to impede the group, with the Spartans using their weapons alongside heavy artillery strikes and tools like defensive shields to fight their way to their exfil.
Everything from the visual design of and details in the map itself to the pace of combat and the mode’s custom-coded stratagems look absolutely fantastic, and based on what we know of Helljumpers’ structure, players can look forward to even more thrilling and chaotic encounters when its intensity ramps up after initial sets of objectives are completed. Overall, the Helldivers 2 inspiration really shines through in this teaser, and I can’t wait to experience the adrenaline rush of Arrowhead Game Studios’ hit in Halo once the mode drops in a few weeks. It’ll feel even more like the Starship Troopers-esque shooter once Halo Infinite gets third-person perspective support in November, which The Forge Falcons has already said Helljumpers will work with.
Something important to note is that once Helljumpers is out, you’ll be able to drop in without paying anything whatsoever since Halo Infinite’s multiplayer — including Forge mode and all the player-made creations that come from it — is completely free-to-play across both Xbox consoles and Windows PC (the campaign requires a purchase, though it is on Xbox Game Pass). This is a boon for Xbox players in particular, as Helldivers 2 isn’t available on Microsoft’s consoles.
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The dream, of course, is official matchmaking support for Helljumpers, though I’m not sure whether that actually has a chance of happening or not. The Forge Falcons’ CoD: Zombies-style Survive the Undead mode was briefly added to matchmaking earlier this year and is actually scheduled to become a permanent part of Halo Infinite’s content suite on October 8, but its matches are generally pretty quick — only a few minutes long, in most cases. In contrast, a full playthrough of the Helljumpers experience has been said to be between 3-5 hours long, which may be far too lengthy for matchmaking consideration.
Still, there’s always a chance it could be tweaked and adapted for matchmaking support at some point, and even if it’s not, you’ll always have the option of dropping feet first into hell with a group of friends. Don’t forget about Halo Infinite’s Custom Game Browser, either, which I’m sure will be flooded with players looking to squad up come October 25.
