It’s always a tricky thing to mix melee combat into a first-person perspective. While it’s usually relegated to being an absolute last-ditch effort to defend yourself, some games attempt to make melee combat a core part of their identity. Condemned uses it to craft a gritty horror experience, Zeno Clash uses it to weigh down its otherwise otherworldly presentation, and even Doom gives it some kind of elusive quality with the occasional berserk power-up. But what happens when you attempt to make melee combat not only a consistently viable part of your arsenal, but an essential one to boot?
Enter Viscerafest, a game co-developed by Acid Man Games and Fire Plant Games, with publishing responsibilities handled by Fulqrum Publishing. In a sea of FPS games that rode the wave of the boomer shooter revival, Viscerafest attempts to craft its own unique identity with plenty of interesting ideas that, for the most part, mesh together in a thrilling combination. But after a few years in Steam’s Early Access program, is it worth trying for yourself?
Caroline Paige’s Terrible, No Good Day
It all starts with Caroline Paige, the archetypal wisecracking protagonist. With a penchant for sadism and one-liners alike, she’s carved a successful career for herself as a full-time mercenary, where cash supersedes any moral or ethical quandaries. That said, she also managed to find time for love. In order to earn enough cash to pop the question to her boyfriend, Athens Fedder, she takes on a particularly hefty job involving Cromune, a mysterious scientist tied to the equally obscure U.S.C. Unfortunately, things take a sudden turn.
While Caroline is solely focused on bagging Cromune, a mysterious chain of events unfolding in the background is pushed to the wayside. Sure, Caroline’s refusal to acknowledge it is played for a laugh at first. But things only begin to escalate as her wanton destruction accidentally unleashes a force beyond her control, all while a mysterious figure attempts to guide her through the pending madness. What starts as just a simple job may ultimately evolve into saving the world.
Story-wise, there’s a decent attempt here to somewhat circumvent what you’d typically find in other FPS games. Caroline is cocky and confident, sure, and she’s more than a little chatty throughout the whole game, but there’s some interesting subtle changes she goes through as she finally engages with the reality of the situation. Chapter 3 in particular really leans into this — she stops wisecracking altogether, her character portrait loses its smile, and her whole demeanor changes dramatically as everything hits the proverbial fan. It’s neat stuff.
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Presentation-wise, Viscerafest oozes neon colors just about everywhere. Enemy designs are fittingly lanky and alien, you’ll rarely find anything that isn’t shimmering or shining, and everything feels appropriately high-tech. Defined enemy silhouettes are really important for a game like this, and while I did occasionally find myself losing track of enemies in all the chaos, there’s enough visual variety here to help you prioritize what needs to die first. As for the levels themselves, some have familiar themes, like moving trains or spacious cathedrals, but others are delightfully abstract without becoming too labyrinthine. Special mention should go to the game’s animated cutscenes, too. They really help sell some of the game’s more significant plot beats, especially in the latter third.
There’s some customization here that you can even fiddle around with. You can change how much information is presented in the UI, the actual scaling of the UI itself, whether or not your weapon shakes whenever you run around, it’s all nice stuff. Considering how difficult Viscerafest can become, it’s worth experimenting with just to find your perfect level of visibility.
A Visceral Trip
Viscerafest not only sets itself apart from other boomer shooters via its focus on melee combat, but also for its comparatively limited ammunition and its overall emphasis on aggression. It’s also really hard.
Sure, you’re going to be running and gunning as you normally would in a boomer shooter, but there’s a much more delicate balance you have to find between unloading everything you have and pulling back to let your fists do the work. At any time, you can swing your fist into the face of your closest opposition, dealing some light damage and getting some armor for your trouble as well. You can charge up this attack into a more powerful lunging punch as well, not only dealing more damage, but also piercing through multiple enemies. Once an enemy is down for the count, you’re not quite done yet — owing to her slightly monstrous traits, Caroline must also feast on her defeated foes to get some health back, demanding that you turn what’s left of your foe into chunky giblets before consumption. Mind you, this is going to be the single most consistent way to get your health back. Once a body is destroyed, you only have so much time before the newly-spawned healing item is suddenly whisked away, making each one a precious commodity.
Combined with how dangerous even the weakest of enemies are, you have this incredibly madcap pacing that accompanies every single battle. The pressure is on consistently to not only duck and dive between cover but to take whatever opportunities you can to attack while attempting to minimize the risk to yourself. It makes every battle some kind of relentless ordeal. There are no easy wins in Viscerafest, sans the last two bosses, inexplicably.
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You do have some additional means of defending yourself. The game practically demands that you bunnyhop around, which gives you a substantial speed boost. You have a dash as well that can cover a large distance in an instant, and it’ll save your skin on the many occasions you’ll be pelted by dozens of projectiles. But even then, these only help so much.
The stress is only amplified when you get used to the game’s admittedly strange save system. You get an auto-save at the beginning of every mission, as well as one prior to every boss. And you get a quick save. That’s it.
But even quick saves have their own unique quirks. You can only manually save every so often when you find a dedicated save point item that’s found in the world. Sometimes they’re tucked away in secrets, but more often than not, they’ll bookend a particularly intense battle or a key point of progress. I have to wonder why they went with this specific direction instead of just giving you checkpoints, since I eventually hit a point where I would just use the save immediately after grabbing it. It’s nice to have the option to save wherever, but I feel like the happy medium between the two didn’t really need to exist.
I’m also mixed on the game’s very mild collectathon elements. In old school fashion, every level has a checklist of kills to make and collectibles to find, with hidden secrets hiding fun easter eggs and useful items in equal measure. But there are also little red skulls that you can collect for… the sake of collecting. I’m being facetious, of course, you can use them to buy modifiers that significantly affect Viscerafest‘s gameplay in a ton of different ways. But they still feel like a strange addition that otherwise doesn’t add too much, at least for me. I can at least appreciate the plenty of Easter eggs you can find. You’d be surprised at just how elaborate they can be.
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There’s definitely a huge learning curve here. Sure, you can approach Viscerafest with some prior knowledge and get decently far, but it really doesn’t share a lot of similarities with other boomer shooters. Your starting pistol, even, defies the typical expectations you’d have for what a pistol ought to be. Instead of being a low-power weapon that becomes immediately outclassed by the next thing you find, it acts as a powerful, long-distance option that also eats an ungodly amount of ammunition. It’ll never leave your constant rotation of weapons.
I should mention that my playthrough was significantly altered as I was going through it. The game was originally much harder at a certain difficulty level, of which there are six, but a large update significantly toned down enemy health values, attack damage, and attack speed, among other factors, for the Brutal difficulty I was playing on. It was still difficult, don’t get me wrong, but not to the same extent that I had originally felt during my first few hours.
Should You Play Viscerafest?
Viscerafest is certainly a complete package, but that’s not to say that I didn’t run into quite a few bugs. Caroline would occasionally stop dead in her tracks despite being in an open space, which did lead to a frustrating death once or twice. The game’s third chapter in particular had some unique issues: one involved the penultimate boss having an autosave placed just before a particularly lengthy dialog sequence, whereas other bosses were able to immediately jump into the action; another involved a particularly massive level, Alter Alvus, seemingly breaking whenever I started over from the beginning. If I ever loaded the autosave instead of resetting the level outright, I wouldn’t be able to get past the starting area.
However, I’d say that overall, what’s here is definitely interesting. It was certainly bold to eschew the typical gameplay of a boomer shooter in favor of something that exaggerates the intricacies of the subgenre with some additional melee focus. It’s occasionally frustrating, and you’re going to perish quite a bit (I crossed the 100+ death threshold by the end of the game). Still, I found that the intense difficulty made eventually overcoming whatever was ahead of me all the more rewarding.
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They’re not done yet, either. In a post on Steam (also posted to IndieDB) to celebrate the game’s launch, the Viscerafest dev team admitted that there is still quite a bit of work to be done regarding the final game. Bug fixes, some additional visual upgrades, more level updates, and even a substantial amount of music meant for Chapter 3 are all still in the works.
I had a great time with Viscerafest, warts and all. I did feel that the game’s intense difficulty demanded frequent breaks, but the escalating challenge, the gorgeous art and music, and even the shockingly in-depth lore for each and every monster and miniature piece of set dressing you can find on the wayside more than made up for it. It’s certainly one of the most unique shooters I’ve played in quite a while. While it’ll certainly need some adjusting to, I’d happily recommend anyone interested in Viscerafest to give it a shot.
Viscerafest is available for purchase on Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store.
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