Snowman in Hell

A snowman built by a group of children is created with a soul. Wanting to escape from the warmth of the rising sun, the snowman imagines itself in a colder place, only to immediately plummet into a fiery abyss. The snowman soon learns that it has arrived in Hell, a nightmarish landscape home to ghoulish monsters and the souls of the damned. One such soul is Vergilius, a talking skull who used to be a journalist until he was murdered while dealing with a criminal organization. Although Vergilius claims that there is no escape from Hell, he offers to help the snowman reach a colder place: Hell's lowest circle. Accepting Vergilius's offer, the snowman places the skull inside its head and ventures forth, encountering other snowmen along the way while unraveling the mystery of Vergilius's murder.

Snowman in Hell is a puzzle-platformer developed by students at the Aalto Media Lab of Aalto University, Finland. According to the developers, the character models and environments were made out of "clay and garbage" before being digitized for the game. As the titular snowman, the player must use a combination of platforming and environmental puzzle-solving to reach the exit of each level. The player's head containing Vergilius, who will occasionally offer hints in his dialogue, can be detached and launched into enemies to kill them as well as to push levers and other objects. The player can increase the size of their head and body by stealing snow from other snowmen. If the player loses their head to a hazard, or comes into contact with fiery objects or enemies long enough to melt away completely, they lose the level. The story, inspired by Dante's Inferno, is primarily explored in cutscenes featuring live-action stills of some of the developers playing the roles of the characters in a film noir style.